[Location: Manhattan, New York]
The class went on like it always did, or at least it pretended to.
The lectures continued, the chalk scratched against the board, the clock ticked, but none of it felt normal.
Not with the way the room kept tilting toward Zyel.
The stares never stopped.
It was not just Yelena Gilbert anymore, the crazy blonde who had already made a hobby out of watching him.
No, now it was everyone. Anyone whose eyes drifted even slightly in his direction would freeze for a second too long, like they had forgotten what they were doing, like they had just discovered something that should not exist but did.
Something… wrong. Or maybe too right.
Zyel had always been handsome.
That much had never been in question.
Even with his [Divine Blessing of Beauty] sealed, he had carried a natural charm that people could not easily ignore.
But now… now it was different.
The seal was gone.
It was not just "unsealed."
It was merging with him, sinking into him, rewriting him.
And it was spilling out.
His beauty was no longer something you noticed.
It was something that happened to you.
Something invasive.
Something that reached out and forced your attention back to him no matter how hard you tried to look away.
Especially the women.
They tried not to stare, but they failed.
The class dragged on for an hour, stretching itself thin over the tension in the room. Somewhere along the way, Zyel stopped reacting.
Or maybe he just ran out of reactions to give. The stares slid off him like they meant nothing.
But something else didn't.
That feeling.
It crept in quietly and refused to leave, curling at the back of his mind. His teacher, Ms. Nina Fletcher, and Yelena… they were different.
Their eyes did not just linger, they searched.
Like they were looking past his face and into something deeper.
Like they knew.
Or worse, like they were starting to understand.
Understand that something inside him had changed.
That he was not the same person who had walked into this room an hour ago.
That maybe he was not entirely human anymore.
That thought should have been ridiculous.
It wasn't.
Normally, he would stay back after class, exchange a few casual words with Ms. Nina Fletcher, something routine, something safe.
Today, that felt like a terrible idea.
So he didn't.
From that day onward, he was a completely different person, in every sense.
But that did not mean that everything he had done over the past eighteen years, or eight if you excluded the ten years of memory loss, meant nothing to him.
Remembering his past life had not just changed things.
It had cracked him open.
Split something inside him wide enough for endless possibilities to pour through.
He knew now. Really knew.
What lurked beyond the thin veil people called reality: gods, monsters, the supernatural.
All those things he had once dismissed as bedtime nonsense or exaggerated myths were not just real, they were close.
Too close.
Breathing in the same world as him.
And he had seen them.
Three gods from different mythologies.
Their voices, their presence, their blessings pressed into his very being.
His death. His reincarnation. Even Aylin.
Every single memory stood as undeniable proof that he had crossed a line no ordinary human ever should.
Something in him had shifted after that.
No, not shifted.
Evolved. Twisted into something sharper. Bolder. Hungrier.
A version of himself that refused to stay small.
A version that wanted power, meaning, something greater than whatever dull life he had been sleepwalking through before.
As for Ms. Nina Fletcher, the one person he could almost call a friend, he did want to keep that connection.
He liked her. Genuinely.
Just not today.
Today, something in him was still settling, still rearranging itself into this new version.
His outer self felt wrong, unstable, like it might snap if pushed too far.
Talking to people sounded exhausting.
Pointless.
So he did not wait for her like he usually did.
The moment class ended, he was gone. No hesitation. No looking back.
"Looks like she isn't following me today… my magnificent stalker, Yelena Gilbert," Zyel muttered, almost disappointed.
On the way to his dormitory, his eyes kept flicking over his shoulder, sharp and restless.
He checked corners, reflections, passing figures. Waiting. Expecting.
Nothing.
No sign of her.
For once, the shadow that usually clung to him had vanished.
"...Weird," he murmured under his breath.
"Hey, Aylin, do you think humans can sense the presence of divine blessings from me?"
[Most humans should not. Even those with supernatural senses should not be able to detect them. Divine blessings are formed from divine essence, master. Unless a human or a supernatural being has experience with gods or divine materials, they should not perceive their presence.]
[Some would not even realize they had received blessings from gods unless someone pointed it out.]
[Even you, my master~, would not have noticed those blessings if the gods themselves had not told you they were granting them.]
"I see… still, I cannot shake this feeling that Ms. Nina Fletcher and my stalker noticed something off about me."
[Maybe it was not the blessings they sensed, but the changes. Your awareness of your reincarnation, along with the unsealing of the three blessings, must have warped the presence you give off. Still, humans should not be able to sense something like that. They do not have a sixth sense for it.]
"I figured. Humans are not supposed to sense the supernatural. I know that because I am human, and I never sensed anything like that in either of my lives."
[Unless those two are not human at all. They could be something else, something wearing human skin.]
Zyel stopped walking.
Not slowed down. Stopped.
As if his body had briefly forgotten what walking even was.
"Supernatural beings? You are serious?"
[It remains a possibility, Master.]
"Yeah, well… whatever. Home first. Existential crisis later."
He shook his head, brushing it off a little too quickly for someone who had just considered that his stalker of three years and the woman he trusted as both teacher and friend might be inhuman things pretending to be normal.
He kept walking.
A few minutes later, he reached the men's dormitory.
The sky above had already sunk into darkness. Just as he stepped toward the gate, his body locked again.
This time, it was not confusion.
His pupils shrank, then expanded, as if trying to swallow something invisible.
"Oh shit… not this again."
His heart slammed against his ribs, wild and uneven.
Every hair on his body stood on end. A thick, suffocating dread seeped into his mind like ink in water.
He knew this feeling.
He knew it too well.
It was the same feeling he had in his past life.
Right before the sky decided to end him by sending a lightning bolt toward him.
"Come on… seriously? Another bad omen? What, is Zeus aiming for a retry? Did he miss something the first time?"
The sense of danger was not subtle.
It was overwhelming, crushing, absolute.
He looked up at the sky, expecting, almost waiting, for a bolt of lightning to tear through the darkness and erase him again.
But the sky was empty, still, and silent, with no clouds, no storm, and nothing at all.
Relief should have come.
It did not.
The dread only tightened its grip.
"Maybe I am just losing it… but then why is my heart trying to break out of my chest like this?"
Then, without warning, the world went quiet, not calm, not peaceful, but wrong.
The distant hum of vehicles vanished.
Conversations cut off mid-existence.
Windows stopped rattling.
Even the wind seemed to hesitate and then disappear.
Sound did not fade.
It was taken. Stripped away until nothing remained.
"What the fuck is this?"
Only two things were left.
His heartbeat, loud and violent, like something trying to signal from inside him.
And his breathing, uneven and strained, like a machine on the verge of collapse.
Then it happened without any sort of warning or transition.
One moment the world existed.
The next, it was soaked in red.
Not light. Not color.
Red, like something alive.
Like the sky had bled out and covered everything in its aftermath.
As if the world itself had been dragged through a rain of blood and forgotten how to be anything else.
"Hey… human trash."
A cold, murderous voice, laced with a strange amusement, cut through the silence.
Zyel turned.
Standing before him was a tall, lean man. Long, messy black hair veiled most of his face, shadows swallowing his expression. In his hand was a massive katana.
No.
Not just in his hand.
Through him.
The blade of the katana was already buried deep in Zyel's chest.
"I'm only following orders, human," the man said, his voice flat and detached, completely at odds with the faint, twisted smile tugging at his lips.
Like he was enjoying this.
Like this was fun.
The pain did not arrive all at once.
It bloomed.
First a sharp, precise sting, then a violent eruption that tore through his body, flooding his nerves with fire.
Heat spread from the wound, crawling through his veins, gnawing at his insides like something alive.
Zyel's breath hitched.
Then broke.
In the next instant, his strength drained out of him, as if his body had simply given up, abandoning him from the inside out.
"Hm."
The man let out a quiet snort as he drove the katana deeper, almost lazily, as if testing how far it could go.
The blade slid through flesh with sickening ease until its tip burst out from Zyel's back.
"Don't take it personally…" He paused, tilting his head, irritation flickering across his face.
"No, actually, do take it personally. I really do not like your face. You look… polished. Like some pampered noble. It annoys me."
His lips curled into something almost playful, almost cruel.
"If I had more time, I would have peeled that handsome face of yours off slowly… made sure you felt every second of it."
He planted his foot against Zyel's stomach and kicked him back without warning, yanking the katana free in the same motion.
The blade came out with a wet sound as Zyel's body collapsed onto the ground.
Blood poured out, hot and relentless, spreading beneath him as his life drained away far too quickly.
It was too fast.
Zyel could not even comprehend what had just happened.
One moment, there was only a voice, cold and unfamiliar.
The next, steel had torn through him.
And now he was on the ground, dying, his body already starting to feel distant.
The man did not spare him another glance.
Instead, he calmly took out a cloth and wiped the blood from his katana with careful, almost affectionate strokes, as though tending to something precious.
"Enjoy your death, you worthless worm."
With those words, he left, not even sparing Zyel a glance, as if he had just discarded something insignificant.
Cold crept into Zyel's body.
Not just cold, but something deeper, something final.
It felt like death itself had found him and decided to settle in.
'I can't believe I'm actually wishing this was another prank by the gods… but it isn't… I know it isn't… What the hell just happened? Who was that man? Why me? Why the hell me?'
The questions did not come one by one.
They crashed into each other, spiraling, overlapping, refusing to make sense.
He tried to speak, but his mouth would not move.
No, it was not that he could not speak.
He simply did not have the strength left to even try.
His vision flickered, fading in and out like a dying lightbulb.
There was no sound. Nothing.
Not even silence, but something heavier, something wrong.
As if the world itself had stepped away from him.
His thoughts began to slip.
Fragments. Broken pieces. Nothing stayed long enough to form anything coherent.
How long had it been since he was stabbed?
Seconds?
Minutes?
It felt endless.
Like he had been dying forever.
Then, something changed.
A shape. A presence.
Someone… or something… stepped into his collapsing world.
His vision barely held, but one thing forced itself into existence.
Purple.
Not just a color. No. It was overwhelming.
Beautiful in a way that felt deeply, terribly wrong.
A beautiful, dreadful shade of purple.
"It's my fault this happened to you… so it should be me who takes responsibility… to make this right…"
An unfamiliar voice slipped into his ears.
Even in that suffocating silence, it felt disturbingly soothing, like cold medicine being poured into a fresh, open wound.
Something dripped into his mouth.
Something warm, thick, and metallic.
It touched his dry tongue, spreading that unmistakable iron taste, and for a brief, horrifying moment, he could not tell whether it was helping him or claiming him.
His vision trembled.
The dreadfully beautiful purple that once filled it shattered.
In its place, red exploded.
Not just red, but countless points of it, writhing and multiplying like millions of fireflies igniting at once, swarming, crawling, and flooding his sight until there was no room for anything else.
The red seemed too bright, too alive, and felt equally wrong.
And then,
everything snapped.
Darkness swallowed it all in an instant.
No red. No voice. No feeling.
Nothing.
He just lost consciousness...
...
[Author's Note]
If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider adding my novel to your library and supporting it with Power Stones. It really helps! No pressure at all though. Arigato!