It had been a day since I opened my eyes in this body.
A full day of silence, shadows, and unrelenting thoughts.
I hadn't slept. Not really. I just lay there, staring at the stone ceiling, letting the darkness speak. My mind refused to rest, trapped in a loop of questions I couldn't answer.
Why me?
Why this story?
Why this body?
At some point in the dead of night, my thoughts turned ridiculous—dangerously so. I began to wonder if this was all some twisted form of revenge. A punishment from the author himself.
Maybe he'd grown tired of my comments.
Maybe he'd seen the way I used to curse him out on the forums, calling his pacing trash, his worldbuilding lazy, his characters cardboard cutouts.
Was this divine justice?
Did he somehow reach across the boundary of fiction and reality just to hurl me into his own damn book?
The idea made me scoff aloud in the dark.
No. That was insane.
He was just a webnovel author. Probably living in some cramped apartment, surviving on instant noodles and caffeine. A guy like that couldn't trap souls or bend reality.
...Right?
After a night of fighting my thoughts—battling between denial and disbelief—I finally stopped trying to make sense of why this happened. No more theories. No more cosmic revenge fantasies. It didn't matter how I got here anymore.
What mattered was where I was—and who I was now.
According to the fragmented memories settling into place, I was Kael Thorne.
The second son of House Thorne—one of the Five Ruling Families of the Human Federation.
A name that carried immense weight. Influence. Fear.
House Thorne wasn't just nobility; they held command over the strongest guild in the Federation. A juggernaut in politics and power. And at the helm stood Kael's father—Lord Eldric Thorne, a man ranked SS+ in aura mastery. One of the strongest humans alive.
And yet, despite being born into that towering legacy…
Kael had been exiled.
Discarded.
He had never been welcomed, not truly. Not since his Awakening.
While his two sisters—each blessed with SSS- rank potential—were celebrated like royalty, Kael had awakened with merely A-rank potential. Still rare. Still powerful by most standards.
But not in the eyes of House Thorne.
From that day on, things shifted. The warmth in his mother's gaze faded. The affection his sisters once showered him with turned cold. Servants stopped making eye contact. In a house that worshipped strength, Kael had been deemed a disappointment.
Still, he lived in luxury. He trained under world-class champions. He had the name, the title, the bloodline.
But that didn't save him.
After a certain... event—he was cast out.
Banished for three years to this godsforsaken ruin.
Morvath's Vigil.
A fortress forgotten by history, remembered only by the wind and the dust.
And now, I was here.
Trapped in his body.
Living his punishment.
It all began at a function hosted by House Faldrin.
One of the Five Ruling Families, Faldrin was known for its militaristic pride and rigid sense of order. Their great hall was a place of cold opulence—grand, but joyless. It was supposed to be a celebration. A diplomatic gathering meant to reinforce unity among the noble families. But for Kael, it had been the beginning of the end.
Elara Faldrin.
The daughter of the house.
The only warmth Kael had ever known in a world that had otherwise turned its back on him.
She had been his childhood friend—the one person who never treated him like a failure or a burden. While others scoffed at his "mere" A-rank potential, Elara had spoken to him like an equal. She laughed with him. Trained with him. Listened when no one else would.
She was the only light in his suffocating world.
And Kael… had fallen for her.
Quietly. Deeply. Hopelessly.
But he had never confessed.
He couldn't.
She was SSS- ranked—genius-level potential. A future leader. A symbol of greatness.
He was… disposable. A political afterthought.
He feared that if he ever spoke his heart aloud, it would shatter the fragile bond they shared. So he kept it hidden—smiling when she smiled, bleeding in silence when she looked away.
Then came that night.
The event. The incident that defined Kael's fall in the novel.
According to the public story, Kael had attempted to rape Elara's maid during the function. He was caught. He was disgraced. And he was exiled by his own family.
In the novel, it was nothing more than a background detail. A character flaw explained away in a few sentences—an ugly mark that justified Kael's descent into villainy. Elara's hatred. Her trust issues. Her emotional walls. All traced back to that moment.
But now, standing in his skin—living in his memory—I knew the truth.
Kael never did it.
It was a betrayal.
A trap, carefully crafted by the people he trusted.
He had been approached during the function by the maid herself—Elara's maid. She told him Elara wanted to see him. It wasn't unusual. They often met away from the crowd. He had followed without question, heart fluttering with naive hope.
She led him to a quiet room in the east wing. Gave him a drink. Just juice, she had said.
And Kael, too trusting, too eager, drank it without suspicion.
The next thing he remembered was… wrong.
His body didn't move the way he wanted. His limbs were heavy. His vision blurred. His thoughts—fractured. He tried to speak but couldn't. His arms moved on their own. His breath came too fast. He was awake, but trapped—his own body no longer under his control.
Then the door burst open.
Elara stood there.
Behind her, nobles. Guards. His father.
They saw him—dazed, hovering over the maid who was now crying on the floor, her clothes torn just enough to tell a damning story.
Kael had tried to speak.
Had begged.
Had fallen to his knees in front of Elara, trembling, weeping, swearing that he didn't do it.
She didn't say a word.
She just looked at him. Eyes wide. Then turned and ran.
She didn't believe him.
No one did.
And that was the end.
Without trial, without question, he was sentenced to exile.
Three years in the ruins of Morvath's Vigil—to rot alone in a forgotten fortress.
Now, lying in his bed of stone and regret, the memory burned through me like a searing brand.
A sudden, raw ache erupted in my chest.
The betrayal. The disbelief. The humiliation.
It wasn't mine—not really.
But it felt real.
So real that I couldn't breathe.
My vision blurred.
My body trembled.
Tears welled in my eyes before I could stop them.
Kael had cried that day—cried harder than he ever had in his life. Not for himself, but for her. For Elara. For the bond that had been shattered. For the love he could never speak again.
And now, even months later, even with me in control of this body… the grief lingered.
The pain remembered.
I curled my fingers into the coarse fabric of the blanket beneath me, struggling to breathe through the weight crushing my chest.
"This isn't my pain," I whispered, though it didn't stop the trembling.
"These aren't my feelings. It's his. Kael's. Not mine…"
But I couldn't deny how deeply they cut.
How much it still hurt.
How even now, the memory of her back as she turned away felt like a knife twisting in my gut.
I gritted my teeth.
No. I won't let this control me.
I'm not the same person who knelt in that hall, broken and begging for someone to believe him.
I'm not Kael Thorne—not entirely.
And I won't drown in his sorrow.
Slowly, the trembling subsided.
The storm inside me quieted.
But the pain never vanished. It just settled into a cold knot deep in my chest.
A reminder.
Of betrayal.
Of love lost.
Of the cost of trusting the wrong people.
And somewhere, buried beneath the pain and shame, a quiet ember flickered.
Not hatred.
Not yet.
But something close.