CHAPTER 1 — The Punch That Woke Me Up
> "Hooray! Salary day!"
I threw my phone on the bed and did a tiny victory dance in my one-room apartment. Noodles on the table, cheap cola fizzing, life felt—finally—manageable.
Today was even better. My favorite web novel, Twelve Disasters, was releasing its final chapter.
"After three years of updates, it's ending…" I said to the empty room. "Come on, Aiden Cross, get your happy ending, man."
I scrolled, heart pounding. The hero survived the twelfth disaster, saved the princess, broke fate's chain—classic stuff. I actually smiled.
Good ending, I thought. But something's missing.
My thumb hovered over the comment box.
"Good ending," I typed, "but the story needs a better villain."
Then I laughed, shoved a forkful of noodles into my mouth—and choked.
Heat burned through my chest. The world blurred. My vision tunneled until everything went dark.
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Pain.
> It came before the light.
My jaw cracked, my ribs screamed. A voice shouted near my ear, furious and raw:
"You think I forgot what you did?!"
Fists rained down.
My brain reeled—who, what—
"Wait! Stop!" I tried to say, but the words drowned in blood.
When my eyes finally focused, I froze.
Aiden Cross.
The hero. The regressor.
The guy I'd just been reading about.
He was punching me like I'd personally kicked his dog and stolen his destiny.
"What kind of monster does this to a face this handsome?" I wheezed, half-delirious. Then I caught sight of that face in a mirror shard beside me—
Blonde hair. Grey eyes. Too sharp. Too perfect.
The face of Lucien Draxil.
The villain.
"No, no, no, no…" I whimpered, tears spilling as ridiculous laughter bubbled out. "This isn't real. I'm dreaming. I'm not that guy!"
But the reflection didn't vanish. The blood on my lip dripped in real time.
I was Lucien.
I was the one who bullied the hero.
I was the reason he regressed.
"Rehan…" I whispered my real name like it could pull me home. It didn't.
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The Memory Crash
> The world tilted, and memories not my own slammed into my skull.
Lucien's voice echoed inside my head—arrogant, cruel, confident. He'd sabotaged Aiden's entrance exam at the Royal Arcana Academy, thinking the commoner boy was beneath him.
But the exam wasn't ordinary.
Here, everyone was born with two hearts—a real one for blood and a Mana Heart for power. The test measured both: your strength of spirit and your mana flow.
Lucien had tampered with Aiden's mana crystal, shattering his flow on purpose. That moment cost Aiden his future—and ignited the chain of tragedies that created the Twelve Disasters.
And now, somehow, I was inside his body, paying the price for his sins.
The Glitch
> Aiden's fist stopped mid-air. The torches around us flickered, freezing in place.
The air shimmered like static.
Then a voice whispered inside my skull—cold, mechanical, wrong.
> [Timeline Error Detected. Foreign Variable Inserted.]
My breath hitched. The world snapped back, the sound of dripping blood suddenly deafening.
Aiden didn't react. He just glared, panting. "This time, Lucien, you won't ruin anyone."
He walked away, leaving me sprawled on the floor.
Aftermath
> For a long minute, I didn't move. The stone felt like ice against my back.
I turned to the cracked mirror again. The face looking back was bruised yet irritatingly beautiful. I snorted, half-sobbing.
"Great. I transmigrated into a gorgeous sociopath. Universe, you've got jokes."
Then my reflection blinked—once, twice—and for a heartbeat its eyes glitched red.
"No… this is real."
My laughter died.
"Rehan's dead," I murmured. "Only Lucien remains."
But something deep in my chest disagreed.
Both hearts—one pounding blood, the other pulsing with faint blue light—throbbed together.
The second one whispered, almost alive.
> Bug detected.
I pressed a trembling hand over my chest, feeling both hearts beating out of sync.
"I'm not the villain," I said softly. "I'm the bug."
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End of Chapter 1