My soul rushes forward, moving so fast I don't even realize whose body I fly into. I blackout.
I wake up, and immediately I notice my new body feels uncomfortable. It's like my soul is pushing on the boundaries of my body, trying to break free.
It hurts, but I force myself to calm down, to breathe. In, then out. Slowly my soul fits into the body, and the pain eases away.
The body feels small, so I raise my hands to my face, and am shocked to see two baby hands staring back up at me.
By the size of my hands, I must be around 7 or 8 years old.
Welp, whatever. At least I get a second chance at childhood.
I sit up.
Immediately, my eyes are filled with bright colors. Blue walls outline the room, covered with paintings of what looks to be wizards of some kind.
The room is huge, spanning probably three times the size of my hospital room from my last life. My bed is pushed up against the middle of the back wall, giving me a clear view of the room.
There is a chair and a table on one side, and a couch with a television in front of it. Both seems to be brand new. God damn, I think. I must be rich.
The television is huge, spanning at least 80 inches.
There is a closet on the right wall with the door wide open. I glance inside, and am surprised to see a massive walk-in closet with clothes filling up each wall.
The whole room radiates one word: Rich.
I move my hands around the bed, and it feels like pushing into a cloud. Soft, but curiously sturdy at the same time.
I start to move, trying to climb out of the bed, but as soon as I do, something snaps inside my head. A thousand memories crash down at once, too many for me to handle at once. It hurts.
A woman's soft hand on my dirty cheek. A father's cold stare. Five sneering faces at a dinner table.
The pain nearly knocks me out. Two lives, fighting inside my body arguing over which one is allowed to breathe.
After what feels like forever, the pain stops, subsides, and I'm let gasping, clutching at the silk sheets of my bed.
Ryn von Veylor.
The name rises, covered in humiliation and loneliness. I am the Sixth son of the House of Veylor. Adopted. Unwanted. I am the boy whose father never wanted, the boy with no talent, the boy who is only alive because of the love of his mother.
I lay back in bed, startled. For all of this elegance around me, Ryn's life, my life, was anything but.
I sigh.
Then I think. This boy has had a tough life, yes, but there's nothing saying I can't make it better. The memories may make me feel hopeless, but I've felt hopelessness before. I know that it isn't the end. For me, nor him.
So.
Let me reintroduce myself.
No. That's wrong. Let me introduce myself, for the very first time.
I am Ryn von Veylor.
I will not break.
I will not fall.
I will not be pushed down, as I have before.
This household took everything from me, from him. They made him a hollow shell of the boy he was.
Ryn hung his head and swallowed their cruelty.
I will not.
I will rise.
And when I come back, and watch this house burn to the ground…
I will smile.
I will laugh.
I will rejoice.
Then my monologue ends, and I feel like a complete idiot. I start laughing to myself,
'I can't believe I just had like an entire internal inner monologue. That's so fucking cringe.'
That type of monologue lowkey reminded me of that MC from the webnovel "The beginning of the End"
Wait.
No... that can't be right.
Holy shit.
I may not have heard of Ryn von Veylor before, but I've definitely heard of von Veylor.
I glance at my hand, and find the ring with the Veylor crest on it.
The same one that Eric von Veylor, and all the other Veylors wore in the story.
Eric von Veylor is the first of the Veylor household.
He's the cliché noble trope who makes fun of the mc for being a common folk then gets fucked by him and his harem in like 4 chapters.
I look deeper into Ryn's memories. The power system of this world is the same. Tattoos, attributes, auras. Everything is the same.
Yeah… but something is off. I've never heard of Ryn.
I mean, I've heard of all the other Veylors before. Victor, the father, one of the strongest across the nation. The siblings: Eric, Alissa, Alex, Ren, Lyssandra. All who were recognized for their talent by Victor.
I've heard of 5 siblings, but never a sixth.
That could mean a few things.
Option one: he awakened some super overpowered ability and got killed immediately. Eh. Not super likely.
Option two: the pressure under his families constant torture drove him to suicide. That's a real possibility. I mean, I feel like I've only gone through the tip of the iceberg with these memories.
There are some buried deep. Deep enough that I don't want to dive there.
Option three: He ran. Left and built a quiet life somewhere far away. Honestly, that is what I want to do, but first I need to take care of a few things.
First, I need power. Strength means freedom, and honestly, I'm done being at the bottom. In my past life and in this life. I will get strong enough where nobody can step on me, or push me down ever again.
Second, there are some people I need to save. Some of the side characters, like I mentioned before got absolutely fucked in the ending. Pushed off by the author, without rhyme or reason. They deserved better, and I will try and give it to them.
I want to give them the life I'm also striving for.
A life of freedom and enjoyment.
Yikes. That was cringe. Again.
I swear this world is messing with my inner monologues.
I walk over to the couch, and turn off the tv.
At the top: *****Breaking News! A New Illuminated Hero Awakens!*****
Whatever. Not my concern. What I need is the date. I need it to be before the story happens.
Then I see it at the bottom: June 11th, 1650 AC (After Creation).
According to the novel, year zero marked when the planet was born from two gods: Life and Oblivion.
Not sure how I missed the hint earlier, considering I was literally told the planet names when I first got here.
People here are ranked by attributes—from Mundane (normal humans) to Ascended (gods in the making).
Mundane, Common, Gifted, Illuminated, Peak, and finally Ascended. About seventy percent of people are Mundane, fifteen percent Common, ten percent Gifted, four and a half Illuminated, half a percent Peak—and only three have ever reached Ascended. All of them transcended into godhood and left this world behind.
Each person bears a tattoo that appears at age sixteen, its size and design reflecting their attribute and magical endurance.
The mundane have none; the Ascended have tattoos covering almost their entire body.
The tattoo's center mark represents your greatest weakness, so showing it to someone is an act of complete trust, and sometimes devotion.
Your attribute rank sets your ceiling, but everyone can awaken a Title. A title is a power that manifests at a major turning point in life. It raises your power enough to rival the rank above you.
Finally, there's Aura. It's a visible expression of power.
Everyone but Mundanes have it, though the higher the rank, the harder it is to control. An unchecked Illuminated's aura can knock out a Mundane from yards away.
In short: overall power fits a simple formula
Attribute (base potential) × Title (earned multiplier) = Aura (manifested mastery).
Oh yeah, one more thing. Everyone can use basic magic. Even mundane. It's in their skin. Think of a tattoo as an expression of their power, something that brings it into light, strengthening it.
Some say the strength of your basic magic is a sign for how powerful your attribute will be. That's why my 5 siblings are treated as prodigies.
Okay. That was a lot. Sorry. I just needed to make sure I remembered it correctly.
The year's 1650. That means the main storyline doesn't start for another eight years. That's when the protagonist and the heroines enter the academy in their third year, at age twenty-one. (The academy starts at eighteen.)
I hear a knock on the door, snapping me out of my thoughts.
"Young Master?" A sweet voice carries into my room. "The Lord would like to speak with you."