The desk lamp buzzed.
Its sickly yellow light struggled against the cluttered apartment, pooling weakly over stacks of textbooks, crumpled notes, and empty instant noodle cups teetering on the edge of collapse. The air smelled of cheap coffee and stale exhaustion.
Zhang Lu didn't notice.
His head lay heavy on folded arms, cheek pressed against the open pages of a dog-eared novel. The laptop beside him had gone dark hours ago, its fan long silent. Only the book remained—Lord of Mysteries—its worn spine cracked from obsession rather than age.
Midnight had passed. Friday had bled into Saturday.
Nineteen years old. University student. Insomnia addict.
"One more chapter," he'd promised himself.
A lie.
"If I ever got dropped into that world…" Zhang Lu muttered, eyes half-lidded as sleep crept in, "…I wouldn't play the fool like Klein."
His lips curved faintly, cynical.
"No tarot clubs. No noble sacrifices. Straight to the Sequences. Climb fast. Betray faster. Survival first. Everything else second."
People were variables. Useful. Neutral. Obstructions.
Emotions were inefficiencies.
The world slipped away.
Pain.
Sharp. Burning. Precise.
Like a red-hot poker twisting just left of center in his chest.
Zhang Lu's consciousness tore itself back into existence.
Dead?
The thought was detached, clinical.
Heart attack? Junk food and all-nighters? Pathetic.
Dying face-down in a web novel…
That would've been embarrassing.
His body felt wrong—too heavy, too unfamiliar. White light flared behind his eyelids as sensation rushed in all at once: rough wood beneath his cheek, the metallic taste of blood, damp cold air laced with mildew, tallow smoke, and something faintly herbal.
His eyes snapped open.
Not his apartment.
Candlelight flickered across cracked plaster walls. A single shuttered window leaked thin slivers of moonlight, painting silver lines across warped floorboards. The table beneath him was scarred oak, strewn with yellowed papers covered in dense, archaic script.
No laptop.
No electricity.
No city glow.
Just a book.
Leather-bound. Thick, uneven pages. Open to symbols he recognized despite the unfamiliar language—prayers to the Eternal Night.
His chest throbbed again.
He looked down.
Blood.
Coarse linen soaked crimson. A neat puncture wound gaped just over his heart, its edges dark and crusted. Fresh enough that it still oozed when he shifted.
Stabbed.
The realization landed cold and clean.
When? How?
He didn't go out. Had no enemies. No debts. No one who cared enough to hate him.
His hand rose instinctively. Fingers brushed the wound.
He flinched.
Not agony. A dull ache.
Wrong.
The injury was shallow now—partially closed, flesh knitting unnaturally fast.
Zhang Lu pushed himself upright. The chair scraped softly. The room spun, then steadied.
No dizziness.
No weakness.
Unnatural.
The space was cramped. One room. A sagging bed in the corner, a thin lump shifting beneath threadbare blankets. A cold stove. A single wardrobe. And—
A mirror.
Assess damage. Always assess damage.
He crossed the room. Floorboards creaked. Outside, muted sounds drifted through the walls—horse hooves on cobblestone, distant voices in a lilting accent, the toll of a far-off bell.
No engines.
No hum of electricity.
Victorian era. Or close enough.
He stopped before the mirror.
The face staring back wasn't Zhang Lu's.
Piercing ice-blue eyes. Too sharp. Too alert.
Snow-white hair fell messily over a refined, aristocratic face—high cheekbones, pale skin like porcelain, a sharp jaw smeared with dried blood. Ethereal. Fragile-looking. Dangerous.
The clothes sealed it: a black coat with tails, waistcoat, cravat. All bloodied. All expensive. All wrong.
Recognition hit like a spear.
Anthony Reid.
A name barely whispered in canon. A footnote buried in church records and fan theories—the bastard son of the Evernight Goddess, Amanises, and an unnamed high-sequence Beyonder known only as the Sergeant of the Dark Castle.
A man who should have been dead.
Memories crashed in.
Fog-choked alleyways in Backlund's East Borough. Moonlight barely piercing the mist. A raven-haired woman cornered by robed figures, serpent-and-hourglass sigils stitched into their cuffs.
Anthony had intervened.
Foolishly.
A dagger drawn. A brief struggle. Seconds of hope.
Then the woman turned.
Amethyst eyes. Cold. Regretful.
A spear of condensed shadow formed in her hand.
It pierced his heart.
"Forgive me, Anthony Reid," she'd said softly.
"Your bloodline… complicates matters."
Darkness.
Zhang Lu gripped the washbasin until his knuckles went white.
His breathing steadied. Panic was a luxury.
This was transmigration.
Into the worst possible world.
Lord of Mysteries devoured the weak. Beyonders went mad climbing Sequences. Gods treated mortals like game pieces. Outer deities watched from beyond reality.
But the body lived.
The spear had struck true.
So why was he still standing?
He searched deeper.
Anthony had been Sequence 8—Midnight Poet of the Evernight pathway. Weak, barely awakened. But the bloodline…
Divine.
Son of a goddess—even one slumbering, fragmented, or "dead."
That explained the resilience. The unnatural healing.
Near death had awakened something dormant.
Opportunity.
The thought was cold. Calculating.
High potential. No resources. No backing.
Perfect.
He ran a hand through snow-white hair. Soft. Annoyingly so.
The face, though…
Useful.
First: inventory.
The bed. A boy, no older than twelve. White hair. Too thin.
Liam Reid.
Anthony's younger brother.
Loyal. Dependent. Asset—or liability.
The table held scattered prayers, half-finished poems laced with symbolic madness. Acting method notes. A cracked jar containing three soli.
Pathetic.
The wardrobe concealed a hidden compartment.
Inside: a thin dagger etched with midnight runes—Whispering Blade. A half-empty vial of Midnight Oil.
Dangerous. Valuable.
No food.
His stomach growled.
Outside, Backlund stirred under gray dawn. Gas lamps flickered. Steam whistles cried in the distance.
Timeline uncertain. Klein Moretti—student? Nighthawk? Too early to tell.
Priorities formed instantly.
Survive.
Understand the assassination.
Exploit the bloodline.
The Evernight pathway suited him—deception, concealment, fate. Madness lurked at every step, but madness could be managed.
Someone had tried to kill him.
And failed.
That made him dangerous.
He cleaned the blood from his chest. The wound was already sealed—pink flesh knitting visibly.
Divine interference? Or something worse?
Liam murmured in his sleep.
Later.
Anthony—no, Zhang Lu—pocketed the dagger, the vial, the coins. Changed clothes. Buttoned the coat.
As he reached for the door, a pulse echoed in his chest.
Not pain.
Presence.
Distant. Maternal. Watching.
He ignored it.
Outside, the world of mystery waited—ruthless, mad, glorious.
He would conquer it.
One calculated step at a time.
Far across Backlund, in a black stone castle overlooking the Tussock River, a woman jolted upright in a silk-draped bed.
Raven hair spilled like liquid night.
Amethyst eyes widened in the dark.
Her hand clenched a silver pendant shaped like a spear of shadow.
Warm.
Pulsing.
Alive.
"…Anthony?" she whispered.
Church bells tolled in the distance, calling the faithful to pray to the Evernight Goddess—
Unaware that her forgotten son had returned.
Changed.
And far more dangerous than before.