Pain was the first thing he felt.
A dull, relentless ache throbbed behind his eyes, as if someone had driven a spike straight through his skull and left it there. He groaned softly, lifting a hand to his temple, only to freeze mid-motion.
Something felt… wrong.
The hand was his—but it wasn't.
The skin tone, the faint calluses, the way the fingers trembled ever so slightly—it all felt unfamiliar, like wearing someone else's body a size small. His breath hitched as fragments of memory began surfacing in his mind, not as dreams, but as facts.
Names he had never spoken.
Places he had never visited.
Faces he had never seen.
And yet, he knew them.
"No…" he whispered hoarsely.
The memories didn't belong to him. They pressed in from every direction, layered over his own—clashing, overlapping, refusing to settle. His head throbbed harder as he tried to separate them, his thoughts from not his thoughts, but the more he resisted, the more violently the pain flared.
Then—
Laughter.
Dry. Ancient. Mocking.
"Hahaha…"
He stiffened.
The sound didn't come from the room around him. There was no echo, no sense of direction. It wasn't heard through his ears at all.
It came from inside.
"Hahaha! Finally—finally! This emperor has found a suitable vessel!"
His breath turned shallow. His heart slammed against his ribs as he instinctively looked around, even though he already knew—he knew—there was no one there.
"A thousand years," the voice continued, dripping with hatred, "a thousand years trapped in that cursed chamber… and now I will take my revenge on those bastards."
The laughter faded.
Silence followed—heavy, expectant, crushing.
Then the voice returned, no longer amused.
"…Hm?"
There was confusion now. Irritation.
"Why…" it muttered, slower, sharper, "why have I not taken control of this body yet?"
The air felt thick, oppressive. His vision blurred as the presence pressed closer—deeper—as if something ancient was probing his very existence, rifling through his thoughts with impatient force.
"The host soul should have dissipated."
A pause.
Then rage.
"What are you?" the voice roared, no longer distant, no longer echoing—now it was right there, crashing against his thoughts like a hammer. "Why are you still here?!"
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
The screaming tore through his mind, shaking his consciousness to its core, as the ancient presence turned its full attention toward him—
toward the one thing that should not have remained.
(MC POV)
I grabbed my head.
The pain was sharp—violent enough that my knees buckled and my vision swam. For a moment, I thought I might faint, collapse into the darkness clawing at the edges of my sight. It felt as though my skull was being split open from the inside, memories flooding in without order or mercy.
My whole life flashed before me.
Not just one life.
Two.
One was undeniably mine.
I was thirty years old—no, had been thirty. A teacher at one of India's most prestigious literature universities. I taught Sanskrit. Not as a dead subject to be memorized, but as a living language meant to be spoken, heard, and understood.
My classroom was always small. Not because I was selective, but because I refused to compromise. I only spoke Sanskrit. I lectured in Sanskrit. I answered questions in Sanskrit. If a student addressed me in any other tongue, I simply waited.
Most left.
Those who remained… mastered it.
They weren't many, but they were brilliant. Focused. Devoted.
I had loved that life. Truly loved it. The quiet respect of the classroom, the cadence of ancient verses spoken aloud, the strange, almost sacred satisfaction of preserving something timeless in a world rushing forward without looking back.
I had a beautiful fiancée. A future that felt stable, earned, complete.
Yet no matter how deeply I searched those memories, there was a hole.
A clean, terrifying absence.
I couldn't remember how I died.
And then there was the other life.
This one.
In this world, I was the son of a wealthy businessman—one of the major figures in the shipping industry of the Eastern Continent. I had lived six years as a normal child. No magic. No strangeness. Just private tutors, sprawling rooms, and the ever-present hum of engines, waves, and distant machinery.
Until my sixth birthday.
My father had taken me to the shipping docks that day. He'd said he wanted to show me "how everything works," though I doubt I understood much of it at the time. I remembered the sharp smell of salt and oil, the towering cranes looming overhead, the endless rows of containers stacked like metal mountains.
We were walking beneath one of the cranes when it happened.
A sharp metallic scream—high, wrong.
I looked up.
The crane above us snapped.
For a heartbeat, the world froze.
Then tons of metal began to fall.
That was the first time my magic awakened.
I didn't speak a spell. I didn't know how. I didn't even understand what I was doing. I just wanted it to stop. Wanted it not to fall. Wanted us to live.
The air exploded outward.
Not enough to save the crane—only enough to push it. Just enough for it to miss us as it crashed into the dock beside us, shattering concrete and steel in a deafening roar.
Silence followed.
Then screaming.
That was also the first time I saw my father afraid.
He didn't ask if I was hurt.
He didn't wait for the workers to come running.
He picked me up.
And he ran.
Not toward help. Not toward the authorities.
He ran to the family's private dock nearby—his grip painfully tight, his breath ragged, his heart pounding against my chest as if he already understood what my survival meant.