A young man was standing in line at his favorite local spot to grab himself something to improve his mood. Jacob was about to read the final chapter of his favorite story. This was both a happy and sad event.
The author had been posting daily chapters every single day for 10 years and the story had yet to grow stale. Everyone who read it seriously were fans while all those who hated the story were said to have bad taste or just be trolls. The book 'When Our Eyes Meet' held the number one spot on the site for 10 years, after only being released for a single month.
Jacob was one of the few early readers who read it in the first week and he commented on every chapter. He had even gotten several shout outs from the author so he was looking forward to the final chapter.
*Ding!*
Jacob heard the notification that the chapter had been released.
"Next," the person at the counter called. Jacob walked up and told her his usual order but ordered double desert so he could offer a portion as a sacrifice, hoping that God would keep him strong as the final battle between Edward and Ivar would come to a conclusion.
Just as he opened his phone to read the title, Jacob felt a pain in his side. He looked over to see his ex with madness in her eyes. He then looked down to see that her hands were covered in blood and holding onto something that was touching him.
The pair had not spoken in nearly 2 years after she left in the middle of the night. The last he heard about her was that she had gotten married and had a son.
"Are you al-" '-right?' he was going to ask before he fell the ground in pain, his brain not even registering that she was the one that had stabbed him. He looked on helplessly as she jumped on his body and stabbed him repeatedly in the middle of a restaurant.
The next few moments were a blur. He saw someone tackle his ex while a woman kneeled over his body. He saw her lips move and knew she was trying to say something but he couldn't hear a word. The only thing he heard was a beeping sound that was getting slower and slower.
'Crap. Guess I'll have to wait till I'm out of surgery,' Jacob thought, thinking, no, hoping that he was going to survive. But by the time that the paramedics and police got there, he had succumbed to his stab wounds, three of which hit vital spots that made him bleed out very fast.
Jacob had left the world, unable to understand why he had died or able to finish the story that had accompanied him through over a third of his life.
---
When Jacob opened his eyes, he saw that he was not on the floor as he had last remembered, nor was he in a white hospital room. Instead, he saw a young teen with black hair and black eyes staring at him in hatred.
"Damn you, Ivar! I swear on my mother's grave, that I will be the one to kill you. You and your entire family will pay for what they have done."
Jacob looked at the boy in confusion before a flood of memories hit him. They all came pouring into his mind in a moment for the past 13 years of the previous host's mind and gave Jacob all the information he needed.
'I'm the villain?!?!' Ivar thought to himself as he saw Edward storming away
Ivar wanted to call out to him and stop him but then thought better of it. After reading the story for so many years and inheriting Ivar's memories, he knew that the relationship between the duo was broken.
Edward's mother was a servant of the Von Grid Household who was having an affair with Ivar's father. This could have been accepted if his father was the true duke but that rank actually belonged to Ivar's mother, Eleanor von Grid. When Ivar's mother found out about the affair, she killed both Ivar's father and Edward's mother in a fit of rage. She spared Edward but he was kicked out of the house and being forced to live on the streets.
That was part of the prologue that the author had written when many asked why there was so much hate between the two characters.
But what Ivar knew, and Edward would not know until he turned 25, was that the pair were actually brothers. This was a secret that their father had kept for years and the only people who knew were Edward's mother and a close friend of their father who protected that secret. He would also be the one to inform Edward of it, in order to get him to try and kill Ivar when Edward's hatred was finally starting to simmer.
"Great. So now I have a sworn enemy because my father couldn't keep his dick in his pants," Ivar shook his head at the thought and walked back into the courtyard before entering their castle. Ivar was actually planning to give Edward some money to live on since the boys had grown close but it seemed that plan didn't come to fruition thanks to Edward's declaration.
"Is he gone?" Eleanor asked Ivar from the top of the stairs
"Yes, Mother," Ivar replied obediently, looking up at the beauty that was his mother.
She had the same pale skin that he did but instead of black hair and black eyes that he had, her eyes were golden and she had long blonde hair that was braided into a ponytail.
"Do you think I was too hard on him?" she asked him, curious about his answer
"No, Mother. Father disgraced the family. If you were to allow the son of a mistress to continue to live here, that would only sully your honor, even if a minority would praise you for it."
Eleanor was not truly being cruel. Edward could still live at an orphanage or with his mother's relatives. It was not like he truly had nowhere to go.
"Good. For that answer, we can stop your training 10 minutes early tomorrow," Eleanor smiled as she appreciated that her son was so smart.
'10 minutes? You train me for 4 hours everyday! 10 minutes doesn't mean a thing!' Ivar thought to himself but he did not say it out loud. That would only make the spartan he called Mother increase his training.
So instead of saying that, he simply returned to his room and mentally prepare himself for his future.
'It's weird. It's not like I am Ivar or Jacob. I have both their memories yet I don't truly feel like either,' Ivar thought as he looked in the mirror at his face.
Unlike most other Isekai protagonists, when Jacob reincarnated into Ivar's body, the two minds fused together into one, inheriting the memories and personality traits of both.
And because of that, it was nearly impossible to predict just how much the plot would change.