The system prompt didn't chime. It screamed.
WARNING: Superior energy signature detected - "Heaven's Chosen" now within binding range.
Initiating host unbinding sequence.
Stripping all associated attributes...
All accumulated favorability points... RESETTING TO ZERO.
A jagged blade of pure static carved through Leon Astor's consciousness. Not pain - something worse. The sensation of a thousand threads, each one tethered to a person he'd spent three years meticulously manipulating, being simultaneously yanked from his soul.
His knee hit the polished marble floor. The impact echoed down the corridor, too loud in the sudden silence.
Three years. Three damned years of smiling when he wanted to snarl, of praising idiots who thought magic was about bloodline rather than calculus, of remembering every servant's birthday and every noble's favorite wine. All for the numbers. The beautiful, climbing numbers in the corner of his vision that whispered how close he was to becoming someone who mattered in this backward, magic-obsessed world.
He'd been at ninety-seven percent with his "father," the Duke. Ninety-four with his "mother." Even the head cook, a surly woman who hated everyone, had granted him a hard-won sixty-three.
Now his vision swam, the familiar translucent interface flickering like a dying lamp. The numbers weren't falling. They were vanishing. One by one, starting with the lowest.
Cook Bronwen: 63... 42... 15... 0.
Stablemaster Garr: 71... 28... 0.
Captain of the Guard, Marcus: 88... 55... 12... 0.
Each zero was a little death. A connection severed. A door slamming shut somewhere in the castle he'd called home since waking up in this body, a confused Chinese office worker turned minor noble's spare son.
The high numbers went last. They held on, trembling.
Lady Eleanor Astor, his "mother": 94... 91... 90... Then a sickening plummet to 45... 10... 0.
Lord Cedric Astor, Duke of the Western Reach, his "father": 97... 97... 97... A stubborn, impossible loyalty. Then, like a dam breaking, 40... 0.
The final zero hit like a physical blow to the chest. Leon gasped, the air suddenly thin.
Silence. Not just in his head. The corridor was empty, but he could feel it. The constant, low-level hum of the castle's opinion of him - the mild approval from the maids, the respectful acknowledgment from the guards, the fond exasperation from his tutors - had gone dead. A radio tuned to static.
He pushed himself up, hand slick against the cold marble. His reflection looked back at him from the floor - pale face, dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, eyes that had spent too long practicing warm sincerity now wide with raw shock.
"System?" he whispered, the word tasting like ash.
No response. The interface was gone. Not minimized. Gone.
A distant fanfare tore through the silence. Trumpets from the main courtyard. The gates were opening.
The "Heaven's Chosen." She's here.
That was why. Some girl with a better pedigree, a shinier soul, a more compelling story for the damnable system that had dragged him here. It had found a better host. A more profitable investment.
A cold laugh bubbled in his throat. He'd been an app. A placeholder. And they'd just uninstalled him.
Footsteps approached - quick, light, belonging to Liana, the head maid. Leon instinctively straightened, the muscles of his face already arranging themselves into the pleasant, open expression she liked. A phantom reflex. The ghost of a dead strategy.
She rounded the corner, her crisp uniform perfect, her face usually a mask of professional fondness when she saw him.
Their eyes met.
Her step faltered. Not much. Just a half-second hitch. Her gaze swept over him, and there was no warmth in it. No familiarity. It was the look she gave visiting merchants of uncertain rank. Polite. Empty. Assessing.
"Young Master Leon," she said, and the title was a formality, stripped of the unspoken "our" that had always preceded it. "You are... unwell? The Duke has requested the family's presence in the Grand Reception Hall. Immediately."
He saw it. In the slight stiffness of her shoulders. The way her eyes didn't quite hold his. She felt it too. The absence of whatever invisible cord he'd spent years weaving between them. To her, he was just the Duke's awkward, adopted second son again. The charity case.
"Thank you, Liana," he said, his voice surprisingly steady. "I'll be along."
She gave a short nod, already turning, her duty discharged. No offer of a helping hand. No lowered voice asking if he'd been overworking himself with his studies again.
He was alone.
Truly, completely alone for the first time since the system had booted up with its cheerful, "Welcome, Host! Let's conquer this world through the power of SOCIAL CONNECTION!"
He walked toward the Reception Hall, his steps sounding hollow. The portraits of stern-faced Astors lining the walls seemed to watch him with new eyes. Not with the mild approval he'd cultivated, but with the distant judgment they'd shown on his first, terrified day here.
He could hear the crowd before he saw it - the murmur of nobles, the rustle of silk, the clink of ceremonial armor. He slipped in through a side entrance, blending into the shadow of a towering marble column.
The great doors of the hall were thrown open. Sunset poured in, gilding the figure standing in the doorway.
A girl. Maybe sixteen. Hair the color of spun gold in the dying light, eyes like a summer sky. She wore a simple, travel-stained dress, but she stood with a straight-backed grace that made it look like a queen's raiment. There was a light about her. Not magical, but... existential. She looked important. The room held its breath.
At her side, the Duke, his face an earthquake of emotions - awe, grief, dawning, rapturous joy. He looked at this girl like she held the meaning of his life in her hands.
Leon knew, with a sick certainty. This was her. The "Heaven's Chosen." The system's new favorite.
And then he saw it. A faint, golden shimmer around her, visible only for a second. A new interface, sleek and radiant, hovering just at the edge of his perception before his system-less eyes could no longer parse it. It was already working. Already binding.
The Duke raised his voice, booming with a tremulous pride. "My people! Today, the house of Astor is made whole! This is Elara! My true-born daughter, stolen from her cradle by fate and now returned to us by the grace of the gods!"
The cheer was thunderous. Elara smiled, a gentle, radiant thing, and the favorability of the entire court, Leon could feel it like a change in atmospheric pressure, swung toward her. A tidal wave of instant affection.
His father—no, the Duke—turned, his eyes scanning the crowd. They passed over Leon without a flicker of recognition, then returned, sharpening. Finding him.
The warmth in those eyes, painstakingly built from ninety-seven percent down to a solid, reliable ninety-six over three years, was gone. Replaced by a faint, puzzled frown. The look of a man trying to recall where he'd left a seldom-used ledger.
"Leon," the Duke said, the name a neutral identifier. "Come forward."
Every eye turned to him. The murmurs died. He felt the weight of their gazes, no longer curious or mildly friendly, but calculating. The displaced heir. The spare part that no longer fit.
He stepped out of the shadows. The polished floor felt like a frozen lake beneath his feet.
The Duke placed a heavy hand on Elara's shoulder. "This is Leon. He has been a... ward of our house." The pause was microscopic. Deadly. "You will treat him with the courtesy due his station."
Ward. Courtesy due his station. The vocabulary of dismissal.
Elara looked at him. Her blue eyes were kind. Apologetic, even. And utterly, devastatingly empty of any pre-existing connection. Her favorability toward him, he knew without checking a nonexistent screen, was a perfect, pristine zero. A blank slate.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Leon," she said, her voice like wind chimes.
He bowed, the motion automatic, drilled into him by a thousand lessons. "The honor is mine, my lady."
As he straightened, his eyes met the Duke's. In their gray depths, he saw the final confirmation. The ninety-seven percent was a ghost. The man before him had zero feeling for him beyond a vague sense of obligation. All those shared hunts, the late-night talks about statecraft, the proud nod when Leon mastered a complex spell theory... wiped away. As if they had never happened.
The system hadn't just taken the points. It had rewritten history in their minds. He was a stranger living in a house of strangers, wearing the skin of a life that had just been erased.
A hollow space opened up inside his chest where the system used to be. A cold, dark void. And from that void, something else stirred. Something that had been buried under three years of incessant social calibration, of forced smiles and calculated kindness.
It was quiet. It was fierce. And it didn't need anyone's favor to exist.
A whisper, not from a machine, but from the very core of what was left of him, coiled up from the darkness:
Fine.
Let it all go to zero.
Let's see what happens when I stop playing their game.
Behind his carefully schooled, politely vacant expression, Leon Astor began to smile. It didn't reach his eyes.