The end of Leo's first life was a blur of London rain and the scream of tires. A modern boy of chemistry sets and logic, he died in a world governed by cold physics.
He awoke as Henry Tudor, Prince of England, in a world where the physics were anything but cold.
In this fifteenth-century England, the laws of the Church were iron: the supernatural was a black stain, a forbidden path leading straight to the pyre. To draw a rune was to sign a death warrant. Yet, history held a single, shimmering exception. Every child knew the tales of Merlin, the Great Magus who stood beside King Arthur. Merlin had not been burned; he had been the architect of a golden age. He had proven that if a man's merit was great enough, and his loyalty to the crown absolute, the forbidden could be transformed into the divine.
Henry Tudor decided, before he could even walk, that he would be the next Merlin.
******
By age thirteen, Henry had turned his royal apartments into a sanctuary of "Sanctified Science." To the public, he was a pious prince. Behind locked doors, he was a criminal of the highest order.
The room smelled of heavy incense, used to mask the sharp, metallic tang of his real work. In the center of the room sat a massive iron cauldron, its surface etched with silver runes that Henry had painstakingly copied from forbidden scrolls.
"The law forbids the fire," Henry whispered, his eyes reflecting the blue flames beneath the pot, "but the law cannot ignore a miracle."
He was not just practicing magic; he was conducting Alchemy. He used massive alchemical cycles chalked into the stone floors—circles within circles that mapped the flow of "Aether." He spent his royal allowance on rare herbs—Wolfsbane from the mountains, dried mandrake, and lavender soaked in the blood of a white hart—and performed precise rituals that required the timing of the stars and the steadiness of a surgeon.
******
His secret did not stay secret for long. One evening, the heavy oak doors were thrown open by the King's Guard. Henry was found standing in a cloud of sulfurous smoke, his hands glowing with the residue of a transmutation.
His father, King Henry VII, stood with the Archbishop, their faces shadowed by the flickering torchlight. In the center of Henry's ritual circle lay a pile of common stones that had been turned into pure, shimmering gold, and a vial of a glowing tincture that had cured his own page of a lethal fever only hours before.
"Do you know the penalty for this, Henry?" the King asked, his voice a low rumble. "The Church demands the flame for those who meddle with the unseen."
Henry did not flinch. He knelt, but kept his head high. "Merlin meddled with the unseen, Father. He did so to build Camelot. I do not seek power for myself. I seek the Philosopher's Stone to end England's hunger, and the Elixir of Life so that your reign may never end. Judge me not by the law of the fearful, but by the merit of my works."
The room was silent. The Archbishop stepped forward, looking at the gold and the medicine. In this world, the supernatural was terrifying, but a Prince who could command it was a weapon the Crown could not throw away.
"The boy speaks with the clarity of the ancient Magus," the Archbishop whispered. "If he has the soul of Merlin, then the laws of common men do not fit his shoulders. He has proven his merit. He has earned our trust."
The King reached out, not to arrest his son, but to pull him up. "Then let it be known: within these walls, there is no heresy. There is only the Great Work. You will be my Alchemist, Henry. You will be the shield of the Tudors."
Henry smiled, a thrill of triumph coursing through him. He had done it. He had cheated the law and gained the freedom to pursue the ultimate secrets of the universe. He truly believed that as long as he was helping, as long as he was "good," he was untouchable.
He did not know that even Merlin's light had ended in darkness. He did not know that his greatest mistake was only a few years away—a blunder so terrible that even the unconditional love of a kingdom would feel like a curse.
******
By the time Henry reached eighteen, he was the sun around which the English court revolved. He was no longer just a Prince; he was the Royal Alchemist, the "Gold-Maker," the living heir to Merlin's legacy. His merit was unquestioned, and the trust the people placed in him was absolute.
Then came the Crimson Blight.
It started in the shipping docks—a supernatural plague that turned the skin to glass and the lungs to ash. As the death toll climbed, the eyes of England turned to Henry. They did not pray to the heavens; they looked to his laboratory.
Henry worked for seventy-two hours without sleep. His laboratory was a chaotic symphony of rituals. A massive cauldron sat at the heart of a complex alchemical cycle, filled with rare herbs—crushed dried lotus, powdered white hart horn, and sanctified rosemary. He traced runes of "Purity" and "Restoration" into the very air, his fingers bleeding from the sheer output of power.
"Just one drop," Henry whispered, his eyes bloodshot. "The Elixir of Mercy."
He did not notice the shadow that had crept in during his brief hour of rest. He did not see the drop of Malignant Mercury slipped into his brew by a court mage—a man whose name was lost to history but whose heart was consumed by a black jealousy of the "Boy-Merlin."
When Henry finally unleashed the vapor of his cure over London, he didn't bring life. He brought a catalyst. The plague didn't fade; it mutated, feasting on the alchemical energy of the "cure" and sweeping through the streets with ten times its original ferocity. Thousands died in a single night, their bodies crystallizing in the moonlight.
******
Henry stood on the palace balcony, watching the city scream. He waited for the guards to seize him. He waited for the King to strip his titles. He waited for the Archbishop to scream "Heretic!"
Instead, the King arrived and pulled Henry into a firm embrace.
"Do not weep, my son," the King said, his voice thick with genuine pity. "We have found the viper. A jealous sorcerer from the northern wastes had infiltrated your lab. He has confessed under the rack. He sabotaged your noble work."
Within hours, the real culprit was dragged to the center of London. The Church themselves led the procession, declaring Henry a "Victim of Malice." As the pyre was lit and the saboteur screamed, the crowd didn't look at the fire—they looked up at Henry's window with tears in their eyes, shouting words of encouragement.
"Forgive yourself, Prince Henry! We know your heart was pure!"
To Henry, their love felt like hot lead poured into his veins. He locked himself in his laboratory for thirty days, refusing food.
"They should hate me," he snarled at the empty air, smashing a crystal vial. "It was my cauldron. My runes. A true Magus would have seen the sabotage. I was arrogant. I was blind. And they... they treat me like a wounded child."
He realized then that being loved despite a blunder was a far worse prison than a dungeon. If they punished him, he could pay his debt. But because they forgave him, the debt was eternal. He could no longer bear to be an "Englishman" if he could not be a responsible one.
On the thirty-first night, Henry donned a simple traveler's cloak. He left no gold, no jewels—only his journals and a single letter on the King's desk.
"I am not Merlin. I am a boy who played with the stars and burned the earth. You give me grace I have not earned, and so I must find a land where no one knows my name, to seek the atonement you refuse to give me."
He slipped into the night, heading for the docks. He sought the furthest point on the map, a place where his alchemy would be a strange curiosity rather than a divine mandate. He set his sights on the East—on Japan—to bury the Prince and find the man.