The first sensation that struck me was humidity.
Cold. Sticky. Like a shroud of shadows enveloping my skin, seeping into every pore. The environment wasn't merely humid—it seemed to pulse, breathing in harmony with my flesh.
Then came the pain.
A pain that spread slowly, tearing. It wasn't confined to one spot but consumed my entire body. Every bone ground down. Every muscle torn apart. Every nerve burning from the inside out.
I opened my eyes.
The darkness around me wasn't just the absence of light—it was a weight. Thick. The air, heavy, seemed to rot, as if the world itself were dissolving into something living and viscous. The smell… the smell was dense. Not exactly rotten, but ancient, tinged with iron and dampness. Something… that didn't belong to this place.
My vision distorted in the shadows.
I lay on my back. Beneath me, a pool of purple liquid. Its faint, flickering glow danced across the stones, casting shadows that crawled and contorted as if alive. The liquid clung to my clothes, to my skin.
I tried to move.
My body… resisted. Every fiber seemed to yield, to protest. My legs wavered, as if burdened by the weight of the world. The ground warped, the world spun, and before I could steady myself, I was swallowed again by the pool.
Then—the sensation.
An energy. Strange. Crawling across my skin.
It wasn't just cold. It was something… deeper. Something that coiled around my bones, penetrated my mind, seeped into everything I was.
And with it came the voices.
In fragments. Distorted images, like shattered memories. A name:
Yang Fei.
My vision blurred.
The name echoed in the darkness of my mind—a persistent whisper, something that should no longer exist yet refused to vanish.
I couldn't understand.
Memories arrived in pieces: a hazy childhood, a child barely comprehending the world. Blurred faces. Words that made no sense.
But then… certainty.
The truth struck me, cold as steel.
I hadn't transmigrated.
I wasn't someone from another world occupying this body.
I was this body.
The idea fixed itself like a blade tearing through my mind. Something inside me sought justification, a convenient explanation. But none existed.
Reality was cruel.
And reality… was that my name was Nael Supremium.
The illegitimate son of the Yang Ducal House of the Xia Empire.
A bastard who should never have existed.
The fog of memories was thick, but one detail remained crystalline: deficiencies.
— "Deficiencies," I repeated silently, as if the echo of my own voice could confirm the truth.
Delayed intellect. A mistake from birth.
The relentless disdain had always accompanied me. Yet I felt neither anger nor pain—only the icy resonance of realization.
I rose with effort. My body still screamed in protest, but I chose to ignore it.
I walked to the edge of the cliff.
There, the world loomed immense and somber. A high, infinite precipice stretched before me.
The darkness around poured like the hungry maw of a predator—formless, endless.
Looking up was facing an inverted abyss—a sky devoured by shadows, as if light itself had been forgotten.
Amid the heavy silence, I didn't seek answers. I merely observed, detached, the scene mirroring every fragment of my existence.
Every breath was a reminder: I was the mistake nature had repudiated, the existence that should never have blossomed.
And so, with slow steps, I remained there, immersed in twilight, where the world and I were one: inevitably destined to vanish into darkness.
The darkness spread over me like the hungry maw of a predator—formless, limitless. Looking up was facing an inverted abyss—a sky devoured by shadows, where light seemed to have surrendered to night.
Before me, an opening. A cave, or perhaps a tomb. The entrance gaped like a maw, from which darkness dripped. The air emanating from it was dense, laden with a past that crawled over the skin like an unwelcome touch.
The breeze from the depths was strange. Neither cold nor warm. Just… wrong, as if defying all natural laws.
I tested my breath. The smell differed from the purple pool where I'd fallen. It carried a dryness, like the scent of ancient stone forgotten by time.
The silence was absolute. No creatures, no whisper of wind. Only me. Only that.
I took a step.
The stone beneath my feet—worn yet firm—seemed to have awaited someone's weight for centuries. Perhaps I was the first. Perhaps not. But it didn't matter. I was already there.
Humidity soaked the air like a putrid exhalation. The purple liquid where I'd succumbed bubbled softly, its sickly glow staining the dark stones. Above, the cliff rose like an endless wall, swallowing all traces of light.
Mist crawled over slippery stones—thick, suffocating—as if trying to drag me back into oblivion.
I took a deep breath. The air was heavy, dense. A metallic taste invaded my throat, bitter.
I pressed my fingers against the wet rock. The pain was undeniable, real—a reminder that despite the numbness surrounding me, I was still alive.
— "Am I alive… or merely resisting?" I thought, emotionless, as if the doubt were just another variable to calculate.
Every sensation was data in a complex equation. Nothing ignited me—only the cold certainty of existence, fragmented and inexorable.
And so, between shadows and silence, I remained indifferent, observing the environment with the detachment of an analyst. Every stone, every breath of air narrated the story of a world that, like me, persisted without illusion.
And I didn't know if that held any relevance.
Gradually, memories imposed themselves—not as a flow, but as misaligned fragments. Each image fit erratically, never forming a whole.
— Ducal House Yang. — My mind murmured.
— The Duke. — Echoed, emotionless.
— The Duchess, the glances, the whispers… — the thought continued, cold and distant.
Those who ignored me. Those who pretended I didn't exist. Those who smiled as they pushed me off the cliff.
None of it troubled me. Not now. Not before.
Indifference had rooted in me early—a habit impervious to human fragility.
But the Duke was an exception.
His austere presence kept me alive.
— Food. Shelter. Safety. — The idea summed up, like reviewing an exact calculation.
His reasons didn't matter; his actions did.
Then came the arranged marriage.
The girl with almond eyes and dark hair.
The contained anger in her gaze, the veiled disdain in her voice, the way she frowned at every approach.
— "You are pathetic." — The words sounded cold, cutting, marked by emptiness.
It wasn't her tone or look that lingered.
It was the void those words carved within me.
Nothing had changed since then.
The fall.
The faces.
The laughter muffled by wind.
Their expectation that I'd never rise again.
Their hope I'd vanish.
What a waste.
Every fragment, every word became cold, precise data—analyzed and discarded like a failed experiment.
And so I remained, adrift in disordered memories, observing the world as if detached from myself, never letting disdain become more than an inevitable calculation.
I stood.
My body still protested, but the pain was distant noise—insignificant against the vast cliff and unfolding darkness.
There, in the twilight, the cave revealed itself: a fissure in the stone, black as pitch, devoid of reflection. An ancient, dense presence. Not a shelter—something waiting, silent and impassive.
Humidity intensified as I advanced. Drops of purple liquid trailed from the entrance like saliva from a ravenous maw, eager to devour the uncertain.
I paused.
Observed.
Felt nothing.
No hesitation. No curiosity. No fear.
Only the simple acknowledgment: this was the only path.
Without further delay,
I took the first step—
Every movement calculated and devoid of emotion, as if existence itself were reduced to the cold analysis of an inevitable experiment.