Kael didn't start his new life with a prayer. He started it with a snarl.
He sat on the cold, damp floorboards of the cabin, clutching his chest where a phantom heart attack still echoed. His vision swam with the memories of two lives—one of a corporate drone who died hating his kin, and one of a noble heir who died fearing his.
"You bastards," he hissed, his voice cracking. He wasn't talking to the Truman family. Not yet. He was looking at the ceiling, addressing whatever cosmic entities had plucked his soul from a modern hospital bed and shoved it into this decaying meat-suit.
"Of all the people. Of all the worlds. You drop me here?"
He waited. He stayed silent, bracing for the chime of a system notification, the glow of a status screen, or the booming voice of a 'Grand Sage' offering him a legendary sword. He wanted a 'Golden Finger'—some reality-breaking cheat to tip the scales.
A minute passed. The only sound was the rhythmic, sickly thwack of waves against the cabin's stilts.
"No system? No starter pack? Nothing?" Kael let out a harsh, jagged laugh. "Figures. Even the gods are as useless as my old man."
The thought of his new father—Duke Alistair Von Truman—brought a surge of bile to his throat. The memories were vivid: the Duke's face, as expressionless as a tombstone, as he signed the decree of banishment. He hadn't just kicked Kael out; he'd sent him here to be seasoned like a piece of meat.
"You wanted a sacrifice, didn't you, 'Father'?" Kael spat the word like a piece of gristle. "You ruined this name, you ruined this body, and you sent me to this hellhole to wait for the reaper. Rot in whatever hell this world offers. I hope the shadows eat you first."
Kael struggled to his feet, his legs shaking. He crossed the room to the window, the wood groaning under his boots. He peeled back the salt-crusted curtain, and the breath hitched in his throat.
The sea wasn't water. It was a churning, leaden soup of oily currents and bioluminescent rot. The fog didn't just obscure the horizon; it felt like a living membrane, pressing against the glass.
He stared out at the dark expanse, his paranoia—the one trait that had survived the transmigration intact—spiking into red-alert territory.
"He's out there," Kael whispered to the empty room.
He didn't know if it was Cthulhu, Dagon, or some nameless, many-angled god of the Truman lineage, but he could feel the pressure of a Gaze. Something massive was resting beneath those lightless waves, waiting for him to slip, waiting for his sanity to fray so it could pour its filth into his mind.
In this world, pollution wasn't about smoke and oil. It was about Existence. To be seen by the sea was to be stained by it.
"I see you," Kael muttered, his eyes narrowing as he backed away from the window, locking the heavy iron latch with a trembling hand. "But you're going to have to wait. I've survived one life of bullshit; I'm not letting a giant squid have my marrow without a fight."
He retreated to the corner of the room, the farthest point from both the door and the window. He didn't have a Golden Finger. He didn't have a hero's destiny.
All Kael Von Truman had was a soul full of spite and a mind that didn't trust the shadows. In a world of eldritch horrors, that might just be the most dangerous weapon of all.