A dull pain throbbed in the back of his head, as if someone were methodically driving a red-hot needle into his skull. The man tried to move his arm, but the limb felt foreign.
The first thing he sensed was the cold. Not the soft chill of the air conditioning he was used to in his apartment, but a biting, damp draft sweeping through a vast stone hall.
"Are you awake?"
The voice was quiet, nearly a whisper. The man forced his eyelids open.
The ceiling. It was far too high, painted with faded frescoes where the angels looked more like tortured sinners. He was lying on a bed large enough to accommodate four people.
'Where am I?.. Yesterday was the audition for the role of the King... We were celebrating...'
"You missed dinner. Evelina was very upset."
Cheon Ma sat up abruptly. His head spun. A teenager stood before him—pale skin, hair the color of a raven's wing, and eyes... eyes that held not a single drop of childhood sincerity.
Who was this? The face seemed familiar, but his memory refused to provide a name.
"Kid?"
His voice sounded hoarse.
The teenager flinched ever so slightly. His hand, resting on the hilt of a sword, tightened.
"You remember that you have a son. Surprising."
Cheon Ma ignored the sarcasm. His gaze fell upon a full-length mirror in the corner. From the silver depths, a stranger stared back at him. A man in his prime, with the face of a predator and an aura so heavy the surrounding air felt as thick as resin.
He looked at his palms. This wasn't his body. This wasn't his face.
'Am I... dead? No, that's impossible. I just got that role...'
Panic began to rise in his throat, but Cheon Ma—an actor accustomed to keeping a straight face on stage even during the most absurd mishaps—did what he did best. He put on a mask.
Cheon Ma's expression instantly froze, turning into a dispassionate void. This skill was the only thing that had fed him over the last few years when everything on set went to ruin.
The teenager by the dresser didn't move.
Cheon Ma slowly lowered his legs from the bed, trying to feel every joint of this new, heavy body. His feet touched the cold stone floor. The sensation was too real for a dream or a hallucination. The grit of the stone, the sting of the cold, the weight of his own mass.
"Water."
The boy hesitated for a fraction of a second, then stepped away from the dresser. He moved silently, like a shadow, never taking his eyes off the man on the bed. Approaching a table set with a silver pitcher, the youth filled a goblet.
While the boy was occupied, Cheon Ma glanced at the mirror again. Thick black eyebrows, hair of the same hue, obsidian eyes, and a scar barely visible across an earlobe. This was the face of a man used to killing—or at the very least, ordering deaths.
He thought feverishly.
'Where is the makeup? Where are the cameras?'
There were no lighting rigs under the high ceiling. No lavalier microphones on his silk shirt. Only the smell of dust, old wine, and something sweet, reminiscent of incense.
The teenager held out the goblet. He didn't come close, staying at arm's length as if fearing the man before him might lung for his throat at any moment.
Cheon Ma took the cup and took a sip.
The water was ice-cold. It cleared his mind slightly. He looked at the teenager over the rim of the goblet. The boy stood tall, his back unnaturally straight. His posture was that of a soldier before a tribunal.
"You said... Evelina is upset?"
Cheon Ma tried to start a conversation, fishing the name from his memory.
The boy narrowed his eyes. A fleeting look of surprise, mixed with suspicion, flashed across his face.
"She waited three hours for you in the small dining room. She said she had 'important business' with the head of the family. Но, I suppose after your... condition yesterday, she no longer expects an audience."
Cheon Ma set the goblet on the nightstand. Every word this boy spoke triggered a strange echo in his head, as if he had heard them somewhere before. Or read them.
He tried to recall the previous evening. The audition. The script he was memorizing on the subway... What was it called? Something cliché about magic and aristocrats. "Father of..." something.
Rising to his full height, Cheon Ma asked:
"Where are the others?"
He turned out to be significantly taller than he expected. The teenager had to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact, and in that moment, the mask of "submission" on the boy's face cracked for an instant, revealing pure, undiluted hatred.
"Ethan is in the library. Leon..." — the boy faltered, and a shadow of something like fear crossed his face. — "Leon is in the garden. If you intend to punish him again, I..."
He didn't finish the sentence; the hand on the sword hilt turned white at the knuckles.
Cheon Ma looked at him silently.
"Lead the way."
Cheon Ma walked down the corridor, each step echoing heavily against the high vaults. The hallway seemed endless. The boy—Kyle—walked slightly ahead but hugged the wall.
Inside, chaos still boiled within Cheon Ma, but his face remained a mask. It was his only defense. A mid-tier actor knew: if you forget your lines, just hold the pause. The audience will assume it was intentional.
They passed under a massive arch, and Cheon Ma suddenly stopped.
Directly in front of him, above the entrance to the main hall, a massive bas-relief of dark, nearly black stone was mounted into the wall. In its center sat a coat of arms: a shattered crown entwined with a wreath of thorns, from which tongues of frozen flame erupted.
Cheon Ma's heart skipped a beat.
'The shattered crown. The thorns...'
He slowly shifted his gaze to the massive oak doors. The same pattern was repeated on the polished bronze handles. Lines of text he had read on his tablet screen only hours ago began to flicker in his memory like frames from an old film.
'The crest of House Hellsworth symbolized power gained through suffering and blood. A crown that would never be whole, and a flame that would never be extinguished'
Cheon Ma felt his mouth go dry. He stepped toward the wall and touched the cold stone of the bas-relief. His fingers trembled slightly, but he immediately clenched them into a fist.
This wasn't a film studio set. The detail was terrifying: the chips in the stone, the centuries-old dust in the crevices, the smell of genuine ancient rock. No decorator would spend this much effort on a crest that would flash on screen for a second.
"My Lord?" — Kyle's voice sounded sharper. The boy froze, staring at his father's hand on the crest. — "Are you looking for something?"
Cheon Ma didn't answer. He stared at the crest and the final lock in his head finally clicked into place.
The Villainous Father and His Shadows.
The novel he had criticized before bed. The script he had laughed at, calling it "cardboard."
If this was Hellsworth, then he was Viktor. The monster his children were destined to torture to death three years from now.
Evelina, the eldest daughter, who was supposed to plant poison in the first chapter.
Kyle, standing right behind him, who would one day sever his arm.
Cheon Ma slowly pulled his hand away from the stone. The cold of the bas-relief seemed to have seeped into his bones. This wasn't a prank. This wasn't an audition.
He had fallen into a script where the finale was his own execution.
'If I am Viktor, then four of my executioners are sitting behind that door. And right now, they are likely discussing exactly how I'm going to die'
He pushed the heavy doors open.
The aroma of roasted meat and expensive spices hit his nose. Three people sat at a long table.
A girl with a perfectly straight back and hair styled in an intricate updo—Evelina. Beside her, a slender teenager buried in a book, who didn't even lift his head—Ethan. And at the very end of the table, almost hidden by the massive back of the chair, sat a small boy. Leon.
Upon Cheon Ma's entrance, such a silence fell over the hall that the crackle of a log in the fireplace was audible. All three froze. Evelina slowly lowered her silver fork, and the sound of it hitting the porcelain rang out like a gunshot.
She raised her eyes to him.
"Good morning, Father," — she said, and Cheon Ma saw her fingers tighten slightly on the edge of her napkin. — "We did not expect you to be... in a state to come down."
Cheon Ma walked silently to the head of the table. Every movement was an effort; his body felt as if it were filled with lead. He sat in the massive armchair, feeling four pairs of eyes full of hatred fixed upon him.
'Scene One'
Cheon Ma thought, looking at Evelina, who was already reaching for the wine pitcher to fill his glass.
'Try not to die before dessert, Cheon Ma'