The sound of the water enveloped everything, like a deep murmur that trembled on the surface of the skin. Beneath the warm liquid, amid irregular bubbling, a boy remained motionless with his eyes closed, suspended between a dead silence and an almost painful tension.
His held breath vibrated in his lungs, an almost agonizing endurance that could break at any moment.
And so it did.
A visceral impulse, the primitive spark of instinct, detonated deep within his being. His body reacted before his mind could formulate a coherent thought.
The boy burst out of the water as if escaping from an unfathomable abyss, breaking the surface in a violent splash, gasping, coughing, and sputtering out the bathwater that clung to his face and soaked his clothes.
His hands clung to the edge of the bathtub as he coughed forcefully; each spasm burned his throat like bitter acid. The water that had invaded his lungs came out mixed with a nervous tremor that wasn't entirely his.
Confusion.
Disorientation.
A cold void where memories should have been.
Around him, the bathroom was too luxurious for his immediate understanding: polished white marble with golden veins, a toilet decorated with elaborate ceramic inlays, and above his head, a radiant chandelier whose crystals reflected the light as if belonging to a noble mansion of some wasteful aristocrat.
But none of that was what captured his attention.
In front of him, suspended in the air like a solid mirage, a blue holographic window floated silently. Its edges emitted a soft hum, as though an indescribable energy vibrated within it. It was cold, sharp, impossible to ignore.
[Status Window]
"What the hell?" the boy muttered, still gasping.
The blue screen projected clear letters, arranged with surgical precision.
....
....
[Status Window]
Name: Reinhard Ashfield
Rank: G
Strength: G
Agility: G
Endurance: G-
Intelligence: G-
Aura Control: G-
Talent: G
Profession: [Special – Level 1]
....
....
The boy frowned, his breathing still unsteady.
"Reinhard… Ashfield? Who the hell is that?" he asked in a low voice. "And where the hell am I? Why am I lying here in this bathtub…?"
The confusion wrapped around him like a heavy fog. The name displayed on the screen didn't resonate in the slightest within his memory. It was as if he were reading it for the first time, as if that name belonged to a complete stranger. And yet… there was a suspicion, an invisible thread tying him to that foreign identity.
He stumbled out of the bathtub, letting the water drip from his clothes in a constant patter that echoed through the silent bathroom. To orient himself, he walked toward a large full-body mirror over the sink. His steps sounded heavy, dense, as if they didn't entirely belong to him.
In front of the mirror, an unfamiliar figure stared back.
A teenager with short hair, dark like wet coal, wearing a long-sleeved button-up shirt clinging to his body due to the water. His tie, undone and hanging crooked, dangled like a remnant of some prior event. His face was marked by defined, balanced, almost perfect features, and his silver eyes glowed with an unsettling moonlike sheen.
Too attractive to be casual.
Too perfect to be him.
"Now I'm even more confused than before," he murmured in disbelief. "As far as I remember… this obviously isn't me."
He tried to pronounce his true name.
His own.
His real identity.
His original self.
"My real name is… it's… my name… is…"
And he couldn't.
A mental block strangled him from within. As if an invisible force grabbed his memories by the throat, preventing him from even brushing against them.
He couldn't remember the first letter.
A bitter frustration ran through his chest.
"Wow," he exhaled with a cold, almost resigned tone. "I can't remember my real name. How unfair."
A void carved its way through his mind, merciless and unexplained.
And then fragmented memories arrived without permission: He was in his room after coming home exhausted from work, and a strange homeless man at the train station had offered him a book of dubious origin.
....
....
"Hey kid, would you like to take a look at this book? It will increase your luck."
He turned around, where there was a ragged homeless man with a dirty coat and bare feet, yet wearing wrinkled and torn pants, with a short stature.
The boy looked at the strange book the homeless man offered him—a purple book with shimmering sparkles that glowed like stars, covered in very strange and incomprehensible symbols.
"Mmm, I'm very tired today, and I need something to entertain myself and rest, so why not?"
"But I don't have money to give you, sir," he said, embarrassed.
"Don't worry, money is the last thing I need to find a great narrator like you," replied the hooded old man as he walked away.
"OK? What a strange homeless man… I thought he was going to stab me," the boy whispered, trembling discreetly.
....
....
"After that, the last thing I remember…" he said slowly. "I tried to cast one of the strange spells from the book."
"I never thought they would work, but my luck hasn't increased."
A dense silence wrapped around that revelation.
"In short… I fell asleep because of that book," he concluded. "And I transmigrated into this body."
The serenity with which he said that was unnatural. He knew it. Any normal person would be in shock, screaming, denying their reality. But him… no. Calm covered him like a frozen veil.
As if he had been born with it.
He had already read fantasy novels like this; in fact, he was a big fan of them, but he never thought something like that would happen to him.
The next second, a burning sting burst in his wrists, like a deep tingling that did not belong to his skin. He looked down. His veins glowed faintly, pulsing with an almost reptilian movement.
And before his eyes, deep wounds—cuts too clean, too recent to be accidental—closed with a slow but steady regeneration. The flesh stitched itself together without leaving a trace.
"What the fuck?! This body had its veins cut!"
"This was a suicide," he said with a bitter, incredulous voice. "Damn it. I reincarnated into a dead man."
The weight of that phrase fell on him like an anvil.
Why did he reincarnate?
Who was that homeless man who offered him the book?
Where had he woken up?
And why had the original owner of this body decided to end his life?
Nothing had answers.
But staying in the bathroom wouldn't bring him any closer to them.
He pushed the door and stepped out.
A luxurious room greeted him, illuminated by daylight filtering through thin red curtains as fine as silk. The air was filled with a faint scent of varnished wood and freshly brewed tea, even though there wasn't a recent cup anywhere.
It was a spacious room magnificently furnished: red leather carpets, an enormous bed with fine fabric sheets, a dark wooden cabinet, shelves packed with books, a perfectly organized desk, and a set of armchairs with a tea table completing the decoration.
"What a luxurious room…" he murmured. "I doubt the original Darius killed himself because of lack of money."
He walked among the furniture, feeling the soft creak of the carpet under his wet feet. Then he saw a modern tablet on the desk, next to an elegantly placed envelope.
Immediate curiosity.
An instinct to know what was happening.
"I should check it. Something tells me this might give some context about this body…" he said as he approached.
He grabbed the letter first, feeling it heavy, made of a type of thick paper uncommon in his old world. He opened it carefully. The letters were written with real ink, fluid yet nervous, marked by desperation.
Gently, he began to read it.
"To anyone who is reading this letter… well, actually I left it for my uncle. But if you're a snoop who came into my room without permission, at least make sure to deliver it, please.
…I'm getting off topic.
Uncle, if you're reading this, it's because I'm no longer in this world.
Thank you for taking care of me all these years, since my parents disappeared from my life. Thank you for everything you've done for me.
Uncle… I should've listened to you and not gotten involved in matters that were beyond my reach. I'm so sorry. I've ruined everything. They will come for me, and not even the police will be capable enough to help me this time.
I should've stayed with you in the underworld when you warned me, but the damage is already done, I can't turn back time. I wish I could… Forgive me for being a useless person who has only caused you trouble and for forcing you to clean up after me every time. The mafia has been driving me crazy lately, and I can't take it anymore.
Uncle, you are my only family, the only thing of real value I have, and my older sister too, of course.
And this is the only way I can protect you from them. When you finish reading this letter, please burn it and move to another country far from here. I will no longer be here with you.
The Maximoud family, the most dangerous mafia in the entire human continent, is furious because I have too much forbidden information and files that cannot come to light. I won't say what they are or where I hid them, all of that to protect you.
Take care, uncle. I love you.
P.S.: Please don't let my sister enter my room, and if she ever wants to, throw my computer into the sea. You'd be doing me a great favor.
Your nephew,
Reinhard Ashfield."
"So I was right…" he murmured. "The letter confirms it completely."
The original Reinhard… had killed himself. And that letter was addressed especially to his uncle.
He continued reading every word, feeling a strange weight in his chest. The content spoke of guilt, persecution, and desperation. It mentioned "the Maximoud family." The information he had stolen and discovered didn't seem pleasant. And from what the letter made clear, that family was a mafia.
"This explains a lot…" he whispered.
The surname Ashfield was synonymous with the Golden Hand, one of the most powerful criminal organizations within the novel [The Rise of the Heroine of Light].
Yes. A novel he used to read out of boredom; it was a long story about some kind of prophecy and the future destruction of the universe.
He didn't know it very well, since he read it only when he had a little free time, because his job overworked him a lot.
He had only read the novel from volume 1 to volume 5, so he never learned what the Maximoud family did, although he knew of their existence.
That novel had 15 complete volumes, and 3570 chapters; he hadn't even read half of the story, only up to 1500 chapters.
His knowledge of the novel was a little limited, so he wasn't very aware of the nature of the information the original Reinhard had stolen from the Maximoud.
Yes. He had reincarnated inside a novel he didn't read often.
But then… who was the uncle Reinhard Ashfield mentioned? What information did he have about the Maximoud family? And what kind of danger had driven him to cut his veins in a luxury bathroom?
He hid the letter under the mattress.
"The original Reinhard wanted to burn this. And I should too… but not yet," he decided.
He needed every clue possible.
"I can't stay here. If he killed himself because of something… it means I'm also in danger," he stated, swallowing hard. "I need to get to the bottom of this if I want to survive."
While he was thinking, the tablet suddenly vibrated. A sharp buzzing filled the room.
Darius tensed.
A holographic notification appeared:
["Congratulations, Reinhard Ashfield.
Your application to enter our prestigious Zenith Academy of Talented and Promising Resonants has been approved.
We expect great achievements from you, and we trust that you will be able to leave a significant mark on our institution in the future. We will welcome you with enthusiasm in three weeks.
Your user ID will be sent to your current location within the next 48 hours. Please remain attentive to our emails."]
His heart sank.
"Shit…" he breathed deeply. "Shit, shit, shit. The worst thing that could appear… exactly what I feared."
An academy of Resonants.
The starting point where everything in the novel began to turn new and unreal.
And also… the place where most background characters like him died easily.
"You were right about one thing, original Reinhard," he said with a mix of sarcasm and resignation. "You died and left your problems to me."
He let out a bitter laugh.
"Does that mean I just got into another idiot's mess?"
"But what a load of crap."
The weight of that borrowed responsibility fell on him.