Sothing unexpected happened.
For soone who had already died once, waking up in pain should not have surprised as much as it did. Pain, after all, had been my most loyal companion across two lives. It had followed from the cold halls of Boleoti Manor, to the hands of servants who smiled while striking a starving child, to the mont my own father’s sword pierced through my chest.
No.
Not my father.
Even now, even after death, regression, and another brush against the jaws of the underworld, I could not bring myself to call that thing my father.
My father had warm hands.
My father slled faintly of iron, pine, and the ink he used when reviewing estate docunts late into the night.
I rember that father, whose hands were large and warm.
When I was very young, he would let sit on his lap while he reviewed docunts.
Sotis he would tap the page and ask, "Leonard, what do you think this number ans?"
I did not know, of course.
I was a child.
Still, I would pretend to study the docunt very seriously before saying sothing foolish like, "It ans the steward should write bigger."
My father laughed every ti and my mother would scold him gently from her seat by the window.
"You are encouraging him, my lord."
"And why should I not? A future duke must learn to speak confidently even when he is wrong."
"Please do not teach our son such strange things."
"They are not strange, my lady. They are necessary to be a good heir."
Back then, Boleoti Manor was cold only because the North was cold.
Later, it beca cold because everything inside it had already begun to die. Just as I have died.
The man who killed did not sll like pine.
He slled like putrid smoke trapped beneath skin.
He smiled with my father’s lips, spoke with my father’s voice, and wore his face with such perfect cruelty that for years, I thought my mories were the ones lying to .
I had been Leonard Boleoti.
The heir of the Duke of Boleoti.
A proud son of the North.
A child who should have inherited snow, steel, and an honorable na.
Even writing it now feels strange.
Leonard Boleoti.
In my first life, I never understood why my father locked my mother away under the excuse of recuperation. She had always been frail, but her illness changed after that. It beca secretive and guarded. The servants who once adored her stopped eting my eyes.
And the physicians who were supposed to treat her ca and went at odd hours. The maids whispered that the duchess needed peace, that too much affection would disturb her recovery, and that I must be a good son and wait.
So, I waited, like a fool. I waited.
What a stupid child I was.
But then again, children are often stupid in the shape of trust.
One evening, I stood outside her door and heard her coughing.
It didn’t sound like her usual cough.
It sounded wet and painful, like sothing inside her was tearing little by little.
"Mother?" I called.
The maid guarding the door grabbed my shoulder at once.
"Young Master, Her Grace is resting. Let us not disturb her."
"But Mother is coughing."
"The physician has already attended to her."
"I want to see her."
"You cannot, young master."
I rember struggling with all the strength a child could muster. I rember biting the maid’s hand hard enough to taste blood. I rember the door opening just a crack, and for a single mont, I saw my mother’s hand hanging limply over the side of the bed.
And then the door closed.
That was the last ti I saw any part of her alive.
When she died, my father did not even weep.
That was the first crack.
The second ca when he remarried almost imdiately. The woman he brought into Boleoti Manor smiled as if she had been waiting outside our gates for years, one hand resting on the shoulder of the boy she called my new brother. She smiled at in front of others. She called poor child. She touched my hair as if she had the right to do so. They wore mourning clothes for three days.
But on the fourth day, she slapped while wearing my mother’s favorite earrings.
"Do not look at that way mutt," she said, wiping her hand with a handkerchief afterward. "You should learn early that pity is not an inheritance."
Her son laughed behind her.
I looked desperately toward the doorway.
My father was standing there.
He saw everything yet he turned away.
I think that was the mont sothing inside broke, though I did not yet know what shape the pieces would eventually take.
I could not understand it then. I could not understand why my father, who once carried to the training field and praised for holding a wooden sword properly, would allow that woman and her child to treat worse than a slave.
I could not understand why he looked at with disgust, why he ignored the bruises, and why his principles rotted one by one until nothing remained of the Duke of Boleoti except his face.
Everything beca clear only on the day I died.
The thing wearing my father’s body laughed while my blood spread beneath .
"You still look at like a betrayed son," it said. "Humans are so sentintal, it’s hilarious."
I could not move. The blade had pierced too deeply. My body was no longer mine. It beca a broken thing left on the floor.
"You are not..." I tried to say.
It smiled mockingly.
"Not your father? Finally. How much more stupid can you get? Well, what did I expect of humans like you?"
I think I hated it more because it sounded amused.
The demon told everything not because it needed to.
But because it wanted to insult even in death.
It told perhaps because it thought a dying boy deserved the courtesy of despair. Or perhaps because demons enjoyed seasoning their victories with unnecessary cruelty.
It told that my father had fought. That he had resisted for years.
That there were days when the demon could barely move his hand because the original soul inside the body still clung to the bones like a starving wolf refusing to abandon its den.
It told my father had tried to kill himself more than once to stop the possession from completing. Poison. Blade. Even a fall from the northern watchtower. Every attempt failed or, worse, weakened him enough for the demon to devour more of what remained.
The demon laughed when it said that.
I still rembered the sound. It rang in my ears, sharp and grating.
"Did you know? Every attempt helped ," it whispered. "Desperation weakens the vessel. Your father should have known that. He was oh so foolish."
I wanted to kill it.
Even now, writing this, my fingers hurt from how tightly I am holding the quill.
I had hated my father for years.
But he had been trapped.
I thought he abandoned .
But he had been dying.
There are so truths that do not heal anything. They only make the wound go deeper, and more painful.
Because by the ti I learned the truth, there was nothing left for to save. I was powerless to even do so.
As I lay dying, the demon leaned close and told that the empire was already crawling with their kind. Not every monster wore horns and not every corpse stopped breathing. So smiled from high council seats while so blessed children in temples. So even poured wine for emperors and whispered policy into their ears.
And according to him, only one troubleso house remained difficult to touch.
Konstantin.
I had laughed then. Or perhaps I had only choked. It was difficult to tell the difference when one was dying.
With the last of my strength, I prayed that the head of that house would drag those demons down with him, even if the rest of us were already lost.
Then I opened my eyes in my eight-year-old body, curled on the floor while my stepmother’s servants beat for spilling soup I had never been given.
At first, I thought the afterlife had a cruel sense of humor.
Then one of the servants kicked my stomach, and I realized I was hungry.
I wasn’t dead nor was I hallucinating.
I felt the familiar hunger that didn’t stop plaguing when I was this age.
The relief that struck was so sharp it almost hurt worse than the beating.
I had returned.
I was eight again.
The servant sneered. "Look at him. Still pretending to be pitiful."
Another one grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. "Madam said not to leave marks where outsiders can see."
"Then hit his stomach."
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because I had returned to the past, and the first thing the world offered was a beating.
How nostalgic.
I did not fight them. I let them think I was broken because it made easier for that way.
A child who scread was entertaining.
A child who stopped reacting beca boring.
And boring things were often left alone.
That gave ti to think.
My mother was already gone. My father was already changing, already slipping sowhere I could not reach, maybe he is already gone. But the empire had not yet fallen into the sa darkness I rembered. There was still ti. Not enough to save everything, perhaps. Not enough to save him.
But enough to make those damn demons bleed.
Getting away from Boleoti Manor was easy.
That was the most ridiculous part of it all.
My stepmother and her son had always thought cruelty made them clever. It did not. It rely made them predictable.
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