Darkness.
Silence.
Then—a sharp, ragged breath.
"—Hah!"
Inside a chamber that smelled of faint lavender and expensive wax, a young man who looked to be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old snapped his eyes open. Air rushed into his lungs with a violent force, as if he had been drowning in a deep, pressurized ocean for an eternity. For a long moment, he couldn't move; his limbs felt like lead, weighted down by a gravity he didn't recognize, and his mind was a chaotic blur of white light and static.
"Where… am I?"
The words felt strange as they left his throat. His voice sounded different—softer, calmer, and possessed of a melodic resonance that didn't belong to the man who, only moments ago, had been hunched over a keyboard in a cramped apartment, eating instant noodles.
He slowly sat up, his muscles protesting with a fluid, unfamiliar grace. Then, he froze.
This wasn't his room.
There was no hum of a desktop fan here, no flicker of a blue-light monitor. Instead, silk curtains of deep crimson and gold swayed gently by a massive, arched window. Sunlight poured into a vast chamber filled with unimaginable luxury—golden filigree tracing the walls, polished marble floors that caught the light, and furniture carved from dark, exotic woods.
"…What is this place?"
His heart began to race, thudding against his ribs with a rhythmic power he didn't recognize. He looked down at his hands, resting on a velvet duvet. They were slim. Pale. Unfamiliar. There were no calluses from a mouse, no small scars from daily life.
"…These aren't mine."
Suddenly, memories flashed in his mind like a strobe light. The novel. The battlefield of the final chapter. Kaelen's brutal death at the hands of the humanoid monster. And then—the name that had burned on the screen.
Aether Valencrest.
"…No way…" His breathing grew uneven, his chest heaving. "Don't tell me…"
He threw back the heavy covers, his feet hitting the cold marble floor. He rushed toward a tall, gilded mirror standing in the corner of the suite. Each movement felt surreal, as if he were a puppeteer controlling someone else's body from behind a curtain. He stopped in front of the glass and stared.
Silver hair, fine as spun silk, fell over a forehead of ivory skin. His features were sharp, aristocratic, and devastatingly handsome. But it was the eyes that stopped his heart—calm, noble eyes the color of a winter sky.
It was a face he had never seen in a mirror, yet one he recognized instantly from the descriptions in the book.
"…Aether…" His voice trembled. "I became… that name?"
Silence filled the room, heavy and expectant. Then, a sudden, blinding headache struck him like a physical blow.
"—Ah!"
He grabbed his head, his knees buckling as a secondary flood of memories poured in—not of his life on Earth, but of a life he shouldn't remember. It was the weight of a past that had already happened, yet was happening for the first time.
In this flood, he saw himself as the Lazy Prince. He saw years of avoiding responsibility, being ignored by his father, and mocked by the nobles for never awakening his mana. But the memories didn't stop there. They pushed further, showing him the end—the last thing he had seen before the light took him.
He saw himself kneeling in the ash of the throne room. He saw the lifeless corpses of his brother and sister. He felt the cold, crushing grief of the man who had lost his entire world to the monsters.
As he clutched his chest, gasping for air, he realized the truth that it was his first life. The intense, burning glow from his chest in that final moment wasn't just an ending—it was the catalyst. The "Rune of fate" had reacted to his final wish, pulling his soul from the "reader's world" and fusing it with the prince of the past.
The glow in his chest had faded to a dull, rhythmic warmth, but its message was clear. He had been given the ultimate cheat: the knowledge of the future and the memories of the tragedy that was yet to come.
Aether looked out the window. The golden towers of Aurelia were still standing. The sky was blue, not bruised by smoke. His siblings were still alive, likely training in the courtyard at this very moment.
"I know how this story ends," Aether whispered to his reflection, his eyes narrowing with a sharp, terrifying determination. "And I refuse to let the last chapter be written in blood again."
The Lazy Prince was gone. The reader was gone. In their place stood Aether Valencrest—the only man who knew the world was ending, and the only one who could rewrite the fate.