The phone screen cast a faint blue light over the tired face of Alet Cain.
He was scrolling through yet another chapter of a novel that had once seemed decent—until it turned into a parade of clichés, as if the author were competing in "Who can make the hero more perfect."
And at the center of all that radiance stood him — Lucius Arden.
Beautiful by nature.
Effortlessly charismatic.
Weak only just enough to evoke sympathy.
And of course — the proud owner of a System that handed him power, treasures, and recognition on a silver platter.
Wills bent before him, rulers knelt, goddesses blessed him — and his harem grew faster than the story could keep up.
Alet rolled his eyes.
"Another one…" he muttered as yet another girl "unexpectedly" fell in love with Lucius after three paragraphs of conversation.
"Of course. How could we go without that."
He didn't despise the idea of power.
And he definitely wouldn't reject a System if it chose him.
Who would?
But Alet hated when the world revolved around a single person.
When he became the center of everything — as if every other character existed only as decoration along his path.
He turned the page.
Another perfect victory.
Another crowd shouting Lucius's name.
Another ability gifted by the System simply "because he exists."
Another hint at another girl joining the harem.
"So you're on top again," Alet exhaled wearily. "And again without effort."
He kept reading — not out of interest, but out of a strange, masochistic stubbornness.
He waited, waited for the moment when Lucius would become human. When he would fail. When he would pay a price.
When the story would stop being a fairytale for teenagers.
But chapter after chapter, nothing changed.
Eventually, he closed the book.
"That's enough. I'm tired of all this."
His voice was calm, even.
He set the phone aside and lay down on his bed.
For a moment, something pierced his chest — softly, but deep.
He ignored it.
And for the first couple of weeks it worked — until the pain began returning more often.
The weakness — deeper.
The breathing — heavier.
"It'll pass," he told himself.
It didn't.
When Alet finally ended up in a hospital, the doctors spoke calmly, honestly.
Cancer.
Advanced.
Aggressive.
Inoperable.
Death didn't come suddenly — it seeped into him slowly, like cold creeping into a crack in glass.
He spent his final weeks in silence, reading anything he could.
Sometimes he opened that novel… only to close it again.
> "If I had a System…
I would've lived differently."
-----
On the last night he lay staring at the dark ceiling.
The pain had dulled, becoming distant, almost foreign.
His consciousness drifted.
And when his breath began breaking into short, ragged gasps, he still managed to whisper — half a bitter laugh, half a plea:
"Just not into that stupid novel…"
Darkness closed gently.
---
Darkness didn't disappear — it simply… grew lighter.
First came sound.
Deep, pulsing, like someone's blood thundering right beside his ears.
Then — sharp, bright light.
Too bright. Burning.
His breath came in jerks.
His lungs were tiny.
His body — weak, as if it didn't belong to him.
Voices sounded above him — loud, hurried, emotional:
"Hold on, just a bit more!"
"She'll make it… she has to!"
Rough, warm hands lifted him.
The world swayed, as though he were seeing everything through fogged glass.
A thin cry escaped him — not by choice, but because his body demanded air.
Someone laughed in relief.
Someone else cried.
"Alive… he's alive…" whispered a woman's voice.
So warm it softened the very air.
He was pressed against her chest — warm, trembling, alive.
The heartbeat thundering beside him was deafening.
But strangely… calming.
He felt the scratchy fabric against his skin.
Smelled earth, hay, herbs.
He didn't understand where he was.
Didn't understand what was happening.
Couldn't think; his thoughts hadn't yet formed into anything coherent.
There was only one feeling:
He was alive.
So alien and so familiar at the same time.
He tried to draw a breath — weak, trembling.
His body responded poorly, as if it didn't know how to breathe.
The woman whispered again:
"My boy… my little one…"
He didn't know these words.
But he knew the warmth behind them.
He wheezed, and his tiny fingers curled instinctively.
Someone nearby sobbed with joy.
The world was new, strange, but soft.
Human.
No thoughts.
No memories.
Only a quiet, stunned wonder:
I'm here…? Why…?
There was no answer.
Not yet.
For now — he was simply a newborn in a peasant's home.
Weak.
Helpless.
And completely unaware that his previous life had ended,
and a new one had just begun.
-----
He opened his eyes — and saw a ceiling that creaked with every gust of wind.
The wooden beams had turned black from smoke, and the straw stuffed between them was damp and dark.
His tiny body trembled from cold, and each breath barely lifted his chest.
He couldn't remember who he had been.
But somehow he felt that once he had known how to breathe differently — deeper, steadier.
Now he was a child. Helpless.
And the world around him was harsh in its simplicity.
-----
Mother
Her name was Lissa.
A woman with tired eyes and hair the color of ashes — though she was barely twenty-two.
She held him gently, but without excessive tenderness: the way one holds someone they love, but cannot protect from life.
Lissa rarely smiled.
But when he first grabbed her finger with his tiny, stubborn hand — she quietly cried.
Soundlessly, as if afraid someone might hear her weakness.
Erren didn't know why, but her tears left a deep, quiet ache inside him.
-----
Father
He didn't remember his father at all.
Lissa spoke little, but sometimes, when she thought Erren slept, she whispered his name into the darkness — "Tarven" — and the light outside their window stayed on for a long time.
Tarven had been taken when Lissa was six months pregnant.
Not by soldiers of the Crown — soldiers never came to places this poor — but by collectors from the nearest garrison.
"Volunteers" for the war against the demons.
No one ever returned.
In the village, people spoke of demons as calmly as they spoke of bad weather:
"Another border post was breached."
"Another village to the north was burned."
"If only the Crown would send someone…"
But the Crown sent no one.
And men kept disappearing.
When Lissa finally accepted that Tarven would not return, her gaze became as gray as the fog that lay over the hills.
-----
Neighbors
The village consisted of nine houses, crooked like old men.
Neighbors had known each other since birth — knew who stole whose chicken, who lent a sack of grain, who'd hated whom for twenty years.
They didn't hate Erren — they simply didn't notice him.
Many peasants were born; few survived.
Old Melrin, who lived two houses away, sometimes gave Lissa a pinch of flour if she insisted long enough.
Half-blind fisherman Dan told Erren not to get underfoot — and yet sometimes tossed the boy a small fish.
But most often the neighbors looked at him as if they already knew:
a child from a home without a man was another shadow, another mouth too many.
-----
Work
When Erren turned four, Lissa placed him beside her at the well.
"Hold this," she said, giving him a bucket.
He could barely lift it.
But he lifted it. Day after day.
First — water.
Then — firewood.
Then — stones from the fields, so that in spring something could be planted.
Work never ended.
Even at night, waking from cold, he saw distant lights through the gaps in the walls — neighbors working too, fixing roofs, drying fish, sealing cracks.
In this village, no one lived to live.
Everyone worked not to die.
Hunger became familiar — dull, humming, almost calming.
He learned to live with it the way he breathed.
Sometimes he noticed other children laughing, running, playing.
He didn't know how to do any of that.
His body remembered exhaustion, as if he had lived too long already, far beyond his years.
-----
Strange Glimpses
Sometimes, sitting on the doorstep, he caught himself watching the world not as a child would.
At shadows moving across the ground.
At the wind playing over the fields.
At stars that seemed to know his name — not Erren, but another, from a forgotten life.
There were moments when his heart began to race for no reason.
As if somewhere far away, in a place he had never seen,
something called to him.
But the weight of village life crushed these feelings before they could bloom.
Work pressed.
Hunger hollowed.
Cold gnawed.
And yet inside him, deep down,
remained a void — smooth, quiet, like a crack in stone.
He didn't yet know that someday it would open.
And everything would change..