Luke slowly closed the window and locked it.
The apartment grew quieter. With the wind shut out, only the faint hum of the heater remained, along with the occasional drip of melted frost hitting the floor.
He looked at his reflection in the darkened glass.
Same face.
Same body.
But not the same man.
Luke turned away from the window and walked back toward the middle of the room.
He needed to think.
Not panic. Do not speculate wildly. Think.
He was no longer dealing with the story as a reader. He was inside the machinery now, and if he made one wrong move, the people who had originally destroyed Luke would notice him far too early.
The corporation.
The bloodline family behind it.
The Bureau.
And eventually—
the female lead.
Luke's eyes narrowed slightly.
In the original novel, the first year after the divorce looked calm on the surface. That was the trap. Nothing openly catastrophic happened immediately. There was no dramatic kidnapping, no instant betrayal, no obvious death sentence hanging in the air.
Instead, threads were being tied.
The corporation continued to feed original Luke benefits, status, and promises. They made him feel chosen. Important. Valuable.
Not because they respected him.
Because they were preparing him.
Preparing his soul.
Preparing his body.
Preparing him to use Ice Seal.
Luke sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.
Ice Seal.
Even now, just thinking about it made something cold settle deeper inside him.
In the original story, that ability had remained hidden from Luke almost until the end. He had believed his power was merely Ice Manipulation with some uncommon traits. Useful, maybe. Worth recruitment, maybe. But nothing extraordinary.
That had been the lie.
The corporation and the family backing it had known better.
They knew Ice Seal could permanently inscribe a sealing mark onto another person's soul and shut down their power at the source.
A monstrous ability.
A forbidden one.
And the price was just as terrible.
Life force.
To use the seal at full strength, Luke had to burn himself away.
That was why the original him died.
Used once.
Disposed of once.
That was all his value had ever been.
Luke leaned forward and clasped his hands together.
But now the timeline had changed.
The Will of the World had awakened him a second time.
His soul had merged with fragments of Time and Space during transmigration. The Will had accepted those fragments instead of rejecting them. It had integrated them into his power.
Which meant he was no longer the same person the corporation thought they were raising for slaughter.
That was good.
It was also dangerous.
If they realised his soul had matured too quickly, if they noticed his power had evolved beyond the limits they expected, then every hidden eye around him would turn sharper.
He needed information.
And he needed control.
Luke raised his hand and let a thin mist of frost gather above his palm.
The ice formed easily now. Too easily.
A small crystal flower bloomed above his skin—delicate, precise, each frozen petal almost transparent. Silver traces moved faintly inside it, and at the edges of its shape, the air warped ever so slightly.
Time and Space.
Still hard to believe.
He closed his hand, crushing the ice flower into glittering dust.
The first problem was obvious.
Tomorrow he had to meet Emily.
That alone was dangerous.
Not because she would suspect transmigration. That kind of thing was too absurd. But because she knew the original Luke well enough to notice changes in behaviour. And Emily was intelligent—more observant than most people in the novel gave her credit for at first.
If he acted too differently, she would notice.
If he acted the same, he might walk straight into old mistakes.
Troublesome.
The second problem was larger.
The corporation.
In the original story, they approached Luke with smiles, benefits, and long-term plans. They gave him what looked like an opportunity—promotion without Bureau limits. Better treatment. Better money. Access to circles that ordinary power users could never reach.
And later—
a marriage proposal into a bloodline family.
That had been the decisive blow.
For the original Luke, it had felt like climbing into the sky in one step.
For the people above him, it had simply meant the tool had accepted the leash.
Luke let out a quiet breath.
"I need to know how much they already know," he murmured.
Did they only know about Ice Seal?
Or had they already noticed signs of the second awakening?
No.
That seemed unlikely.
Tonight's awakening had happened suddenly. Unless someone had been actively watching his apartment with a specialised ability, they should know nothing yet.
That gave him a brief advantage.
Small.
But precious.
He stood and walked toward the table where the original Luke had kept various scattered documents. Bills. Bureau notices. Corporate correspondence. Personal junk. A few half-organised folders.
Luke began searching through them carefully.
He found what he expected.
Employment transfer records.
Benefit packages.
A draft agreement.
And, deeper in the folder, a contact name tied to the corporation's talent division.
His expression cooled.
There it was.
The hook.
Not yet a chain.
But close.
He kept reading.
The corporation had framed everything perfectly. Support for his future. Respect for his ability. Recognition of his talent. Pathways for advancement are impossible within the Bureau's stricter structure.
On paper, it looked reasonable.
Attractive, even.
Only someone who knew the story could see the poison in it.
Luke set the documents down.
One year.
That was how long the original story gave him before they pushed him to the final stage.
One year to strengthen his soul artificially with treasures.
One year to prepare the sacrifice.
One year until the male lead became the target.
Phoenix Flame.
Luke's eyes darkened at the memory.
The male lead had been nearly impossible to kill because of that inheritance. A bloodline ability connected to rebirth, vitality, and terrifying, destructive fire. Even among powerful families, it was one of the most abnormal inheritances in the novel.
And because bloodline families considered killing one another taboo, sealing had been the perfect answer.
Not death.
Worse.
A living ruin.
A broken heir.
A body left behind with no future.
That was what they had wanted.
That was what Luke had been shaped into accomplishing.
And in the original version of events, he had succeeded—
almost.
Not completely.
The male lead survived through the heroine's intervention and the power of her newly awakened system.
That was as far as Luke had read before his own death and transmigration.
The disadvantage Luke faced now was that the story had been told from the viewpoints of the female lead and the other important characters. Every time Luke appeared in the story, it was only when the plot involved the villains, the female lead, or the male lead. Luke had been nothing more than a third wheel used to improve the relationship between the two leads.
Luke had no real point of view in the novel until the very last moment.
And that was the most interesting part.
Looking back on it now, Luke could tell the original had known he was being used by the villains. For some strange reason, he had also seemed confident that he would survive whatever the result. He had expected to be saved.
But no one came.
At the very last moment, he had begged the female lead to save his life.
But by then, it had already been too late.
From that final scene, Luke could think of only two possible reasons.
First, hatred.
Hatred for the male lead, who had always stood between Luke and the female lead.
Second, trust.
The original Luke had trusted someone to save him.
And that person had failed to appear.
Because Luke had read only the first volume, he could not solve the mystery behind it.
Which meant he was walking into unknown territory.
He hated that.
Readers always thought partial knowledge was a blessing.
It wasn't.
Partial knowledge was a cliff edge hidden by fog.
You knew danger was there.
You just didn't know where the ground ended.
Luke rubbed his temple.
There were too many moving pieces.
But survival still followed the same principles.
Hide strength.
Gather information.
Avoid committing to any faction too early.
Stay close enough to the plot to predict it.
Far enough to avoid being crushed by it.
His gaze shifted toward the children's drawings still tucked into one corner of the room.
The original Luke had taken some things after the divorce. Not because he was sentimental enough to treasure them properly. Maybe because throwing them away would have forced him to admit what kind of man he had become.
Luke stared at the childish lines in silence.
He checked the time.
Late.
Too late to do much else tonight.
But sleep didn't feel possible.
Instead, he sat cross-legged on the floor and closed his eyes.
If power existed inside him now in a more complex form, then he needed to understand its structure before tomorrow.
He let his breathing slow.
At first,t there was only darkness.
Then cold.
Not external cold, but the vast frozen inner sea he had glimpsed during awakening.
Ice.
Boundless.
Silent.
Then the silver lines appeared.
Thin currents moving through the frozen expanse, not freezing things but suspending them—holding motion in an eternal pause.
Time.
Then violet distortions spread at the edges, bending shape and distance, creating impossible angles where none should exist.
Space.
The three did not reject one another.
They interlocked.
That was the terrifying part.
The Will had not given him separate abilities randomly piled together. It had fused them into one evolving foundation.
Ice remained the base.
But Time and Space had become the laws through which that ice could act.
Luke's mind sharpened.
If Freeze stopped targets in temporal stasis, then Space should allow targeting tricks, field distortions, traps, or displacement through frozen structures.
And Frost Phantom Substitute—
His eyes opened.
He had almost forgotten that name in the shock of everything else.
Freeze. Ice Manipulation. Ice Seal. Frost Phantom Substitute.
That one had not yet been tested.
Luke lifted his hand again, frost gathering around his fingers.
"Let's see," he said softly.
He activated the ability.
The soul power inside him shifted instantly.
A chunk of frost peeled away from the floor and rose in front of him, twisting into a rough human outline. For a brief moment, it resembled him—a translucent ice double, unstable but recognisable.
Then, in the next blink—
Luke's position changed.
He was suddenly standing two meters to the left.
The ice figure appeared where he had been before.
A substitute.
A decoy.
A displacement technique.
His eyes widened.
The ice body lasted only a moment before collapsing into powder.
Luke looked at the scattered frost, then at the place he had stood an instant earlier.
"…Good."
Very good.
Not flashy.
Not overwhelming.
But practical.
For escape, deception, dodging fatal attacks—
extremely useful.
He exhaled slowly.
The soul cost had been noticeable, but nowhere near as brutal as Freeze.
That meant he now possessed at least one ability suitable for real combat movement without instantly draining himself dry.
A real survival tool.
That mattered.