Alphonse had every chance in the world to be a better man.
He knew that. He'd known it for years.
Internally, he blamed his father. The old man had beaten him whenever the opportunity arose and when it didn't, he manufactured one. A dish left in the sink. A word spoken too loud. A look that lasted a second too long.
However that was the excuse. The comfortable lie he wrapped around himself like a blanket every night.
The truth was simpler. Something inside Alphonse had broken when he was very young. Now, at thirty-three, he was sure of it.
No relationship he'd ever had survived longer than a few months. His job as a patrol officer had stalled out at the lowest rung years ago. No relationship survived.
All that was left was one bottle of Smirnoff, three-quarters empty.
"Fuck it," he muttered. He tilted the bottle back. The vodka hit his throat like drain cleaner, and he swallowed without tasting it.
His apartment was the kind of mess that told a story no one wanted to read. Cigarette butts crushed into the carpet. A sink full of dishes he'd stopped seeing weeks ago. The only light came from his laptop, propped open on the desk, casting a pale blue glow across the walls.
On screen, a woman moaned. Tinny speakers made it sound distant, almost comedic.
Outside, a motorcycle screamed down the avenue. Then another. The city never shut up.
Alphonse sat on the edge of the bed. His head swam. The room tilted a few degrees to the left and then corrected itself.
"At least I'll sleep," he said to no one.
His eyelids grew heavy. His thoughts dissolved, sentence by sentence, word by word, until they were nothing. Morpheus came for him gently, which was more mercy than he deserved.
It started as pressure. A dull weight settling on his chest, like someone had placed a sandbag over his ribs.
Even through the vodka haze, his body screamed awake. His eyes snapped open, or tried to. The lids felt glued together, and when they finally peeled apart, the room was dark and blurred.
Someone was on top of him.
A shape. A silhouette. Hands pressing something thin and biting against his throat.
Wire.
Alphonse's fingers clawed at it instinctively. He felt the metal dig into his fingertips, slicing skin. His mouth opened, but no air came. Only a wet, choked sound.
Through the tears and the darkness, he caught a glimpse of the face above him.
The jaw. The brow. The flat, dead expression that said this isn't personal — this is just what I do.
His father.
Or someone who looked exactly like him.
Maybe this is it, Alphonse thought. The punishment.
For never fighting back. For never protecting what was his. For every time he sat frozen while the old man's fists did their work and he told himself next time, next time, next time. Next time never came.
His fingers stopped clawing. His arms fell to his sides.
Fine.
He closed his eyes.
He opened them.
Not slowly. Not groggily. One instant there was nothing. No light, no sensation, no self. The next instant, everything.
Light. Warmth. The sound of birds.
And pain. Screaming pain in his right eye.
"What the — "
He sat up. His hands flew to his face. The skin was swollen. His right eye socket throbbed like something alive was trapped inside it.
Yet that wasn't what made him freeze.
His hands.
They were small. Smooth. Unmarked by the cigarette burns, the scars from a broken bottle in Marseille, the calluses from years of gripping a service pistol. These were the hands of a teen. Or close to it. Young enough that the knuckles hadn't thickened yet.
"What the hell is this!" he shouted.
His voice cracked on the last word. That was not his voice. Not even close.
The room answered him with silence.
He was sitting on a bed wide enough for four people. Each corner rose into a carved wooden post, dark and polished, supporting a canopy of heavy fabric that draped down in folds. The sheets beneath him were white, embroidered with crests he didn't recognize.
The room itself could have swallowed his old apartment whole. Stone walls. A vaulted ceiling. Two massive windows stood open to the morning air, and through them he could hear birdsong.
Near the windows, a cluster of chairs and a reading table had been arranged to catch the light. Books were stacked there. A half-finished embroidery hoop. Someone had spent a lot of time in this room, sitting vigil.
Footsteps.
Coming from beyond a door he hadn't noticed.
"He's awake! He's awake!" a voice called out, "Go and call the Baroness! Quickly! Run!"
Alphonse turned toward the sound.
A girl burst through the doorway. Eighteen, maybe nineteen years old. She was slender, moving with the kind of unconscious grace that came from growing up in a place like this. Her golden hair fell loose around her face, catching the window light. Her dress, pale blue, flowing, cinched at the waist, looked like something from a history textbook.
She rushed to the side of the bed and dropped to her knees, her hands gripping the edge of the mattress.
"Brother?" Her eyes searched his face, wide and desperate. "Brother, can you hear me? Can you speak?"
Brother?
The word detonated inside his skull.
Is she my sister?
His sister was Sophie. Sophie Renault. Twenty-nine years old. Brown hair, tired eyes, a social worker's salary and a one-bedroom in Lyon. They hadn't spoken in eleven months.
This girl was not that Sophie.
And yet ...
Something stirred. Not a memory, exactly. More like a door opening in a room he didn't know he had. Behind it, images. Feelings. A second life pressed flat like dried flowers between the pages of a book he'd never read.
This girl was his sister. In this body's life. In this world's story.
He tried to speak. His mouth opened, his jaw worked, but his throat produced nothing. Just a dry rasp, like paper tearing.
"Oh ..." The girl's face softened. She leaned closer. "You were out cold for weeks. You probably can't even swallow. Here. Let me."
She raised her right hand. Her index finger extended toward his lips.
"Water Flow," she whispered.
A soft blue glow flickered at her fingertip. Then, droplets. Cool, clean water, forming from nothing, trickling from her skin onto his cracked lips and into his mouth.
Alphonse's eyes went wide.
Magic.
He could feel the water on his tongue. Cold, faintly sweet, impossibly real. In the back of his mind, behind that newly opened door, memories confirmed it.
There's magic in this world.
The thought hit him like a shot of adrenaline. The first genuine happiness he'd felt in years. Maybe decades.
His memories were still muddled, surfacing in fragments and flashes. But the pieces were beginning to connect.
When children in this world turned twelve, they were taken to the Great Oracle to receive a [Profession]. The ritual was sacred, defining the trajectory of an entire life.
The possibilities were vast. Common paths like [Swordsman], [Archer], [Blacksmith], [Herbalist]. Rarer ones like [Enchanter], [Beastmaster], [Alchemist]. And the coveted few — [Mage], [Paladin], [Hero] — that could reshape the fate of a bloodline.
His sister had received [Mage], with a specialization in [Water Magic]. Extremely rare in the empire. Nearly unheard of in the Hohenberg line, which had produced generation after generation of [Sword Masters] and nothing else. She was the family's pride. Their miracle.
And he ...
He pushed that thought aside. Later.
The water eased his throat enough to try again.
"S... Sister," he managed. The word came out hoarse, scraped raw, barely above a whisper.
Sophie's composure shattered.
Her eyes filled instantly. A sudden flood, tears spilling down both cheeks before she could even blink. A sound escaped her, half gasp, half sob, and then her arms were around him, pulling him into an embrace so tight it sent pain shooting through his bruised ribs.
"I was so scared," she said against his shoulder. Her voice was muffled, broken. "I was so scared you wouldn't wake up. The physician said, he said you might not, that your brain might have..."
She couldn't finish. Her body shook against his.
Alphonse looked down at the top of her golden head. He felt the warmth of her. The desperate, trembling strength of her arms. Somewhere inside this borrowed chest, he felt something that belonged to the boy who had lived here before him. A deep, genuine love for this girl.
He gave a small smile. As much as his swollen face would allow.
He wanted to maintain the mask. Innocent brother, freshly woken, still confused. It was harder than it should have been.
Because alongside that brotherly love, swimming in the same murky waters of the boy's memories, there was something else. A hunger. A fixation. The original Alphonse had looked at the women around him, all of them, with a desire that went well beyond what was appropriate.
What a freak this kid was.
He paused.
But I can't exactly blame him.
With Sophie pressed against him, he could feel the softness of her body through the thin fabric of her dress. The warmth of her skin. The slight, unconscious way she shifted her weight, her chest pressing against his.
He felt himself stir beneath the sheets. The beginning of something he absolutely could not afford right now.
He clenched his jaw. Forced his mind elsewhere.
Later. Not now. Control yourself.
Before he could speak again, a sound split the room like a thunderclap.
The door flew open, slamming against the stone wall hard enough to rattle the furniture. Alphonse's head snapped toward it, but he already knew who it was. The memory surfaced before the image did.
She stood in the doorway, chest heaving, one hand still gripping the iron handle.
The Baroness.
Isabelle von Hohenberg.
To most people in the territory, she was a figure of cold precision. The kind of woman who could read a ledger, identify a discrepancy, and have the responsible party removed from their post before lunch. She ran the barony's affairs with a hand so steady and a mind so sharp that even the neighboring lords, men who sneered at the idea of a woman managing anything more complex than a dinner party, had learned to respect her. Or at least to fear her.
Her marriage to Baron von Hohenberg had been a transaction. Her family offered her beauty and her administrative brilliance. The Baron offered his name, his title, and his bloodline of [Sword Masters]. Both parties got what they wanted.
Until that moment, the original Alphonse had never appreciated what that meant. Land management, trade agreements, tax collection, vassal disputes. He'd ignored all of it, the way a child ignores the foundations beneath the house they live in.
Yet the new Alphonse understood. Those skills were worth more than a hundred swords.
Still. His more mature, strategic mind could only hold the stage for so long before the other part of his brain seized control.
Because Isabelle von Hohenberg was, without exaggeration, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. In either life.
Her face looked like it had been designed by committee. Every angle deliberate, every proportion calibrated for maximum impact. High cheekbones. A straight, elegant nose. Lips that were full without being excessive, the kind that made men lose the thread of their sentences mid-word.
Her golden hair — the same shade as Sophie's, but thicker, heavier — cascaded past her shoulders in waves.
The dress she wore was formal, high-collared, appropriate for a woman of her station. It didn't matter. No tailor in the empire could hide what Isabelle von Hohenberg was working with. Her bust strained against the fabric, the stitching practically begging for mercy. Her waist narrowed dramatically before flaring out into hips that the local nobility chose to pretend they hadn't noticed. Noticing them was the first step toward a very dangerous line of thinking, and the Baroness was not a woman you crossed.
Her ass was something the court simply did not discuss. An unspoken agreement, like the location of a military garrison or the details of a trade embargo. Everyone knew. Nobody spoke of it.
"Alphonse!" Her voice cracked on his name. The cold precision, the legendary composure, gone. In its place, a mother's raw, undisguised terror and relief.
She crossed the room in three strides and threw herself onto the bed. Her arms engulfed him, pulling his head against her chest with a force that was almost violent.
"My boy. My boy. My boy," she repeated, the words tumbling out between ragged breaths.
He was her firstborn. She'd carried him when she was barely twenty. Although she tried, because the politics of noble houses demanded it, she had never been able to treat her children equally. Alphonse held a piece of her heart that no one else could touch.
Even now, at the age this body currently was, he was still just her baby.
Alphonse felt her warmth surround him.
He hadn't been held like this in —
He couldn't remember. Maybe never. Not in his first life. His mother in that world had stopped touching him when he was seven. After that, it was only flinching.
This was different. This was real. Fierce and desperate and aching with love.
He wanted to stay in it. To let himself sink into it and not think about anything else.
But his mind, traitorous and relentless, registered the fullness of her breasts pressed against his face. The softness. The way they yielded against his cheek with every breath she took.
He swallowed hard.
Not now. For fuck's sake. Not now.
"I'm sorry, Alphonse," Isabelle said. Her voice had steadied slightly, but the tremor was still there, running beneath every word like a crack in a foundation. "It's all my fault. I should have been there. I should have stopped him. I knew what he was capable of, and I... I let it happen. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The memories rose to meet her words.
He understood now. The swollen face. The blackened eye. The weeks of unconsciousness.
His father, the Baron, had beaten him. Not a slap, not a disciplinary cuff. A full, sustained assault. Because he couldn't wield a sword the way a Hohenberg was supposed to. Because his body was slight, his arms thin, his reflexes slow. Because he didn't fit the mold that ten generations of [Sword Masters] had cast.
What the Baron hadn't wanted to see, what he'd refused to acknowledge, was that where his body failed, his mind compensated. Alphonse had sharp wits, an instinct for reading people, a natural charisma that drew others to him. Traits that pointed strongly toward a [Mage] profession.
That was exactly the problem.
The Baron had forbidden Alphonse from being taken to the Great Oracle. No [Profession] ceremony. No classification. Because a [Mage] in a line of [Sword Masters] was an embarrassment. A stain on the family's legacy. Better to have no son at all than a son who couldn't swing a blade.
So he remained classless. A ghost in his own home.
When the Baron's frustration finally boiled over, when the boy failed some test with the training sword, or looked at him the wrong way, or simply existed too loudly in a room. The beating came. Hard enough to put him in a coma. Hard enough to crack something inside his skull.
Hard enough to kill him.
Because that's what happened, isn't it? Alphonse thought, the realization settling over him like cold water. The original Alphonse didn't survive that beating. He died. And I'm here because the body was left empty.
Isabelle could have protected him. She knew that. The Baron, for all his brutality, feared his wife's political acumen and her connections. If she'd drawn a line, he would have respected it. But she hadn't expected the punishment to go that far. A smack, maybe. A harsh word. Not this.
The guilt was eating her alive.
Alphonse looked up at his mother's face. Tears streaked her cheeks, following the same paths over and over, carving grief into her perfect features.
He reached up and placed one small hand against her cheek.
"Don't worry, Mother," he said. His voice was still hoarse, still barely there, but the words were clear. "I'm still here." Lie.
Isabelle's breath hitched. Her hand came up to cover his, pressing his palm harder against her skin.
"It won't happen again," he said.
Isabelle let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. She kissed her son's forehead, lingering there for a long moment, her lips warm against his skin.
"You're right," she whispered. "It won't. I'll make sure of it."
But Alphonse hadn't been speaking to them.
What might have sounded like a boy reassuring his frightened family was, in truth, a vow carved into the stone of his rebuilt soul.
A promise to himself.
His past father had destroyed his life once. Across thirty-three years and a bottle of Smirnoff and a wire around his throat in a dark apartment in a city that never shut up.
He would not allow it to happen again.
Not in this world. Not in this body. Not in this life.
He looked past his mother's shoulder, through the open window, at a sky so blue and vast it seemed to go on forever.
Somewhere in this world, there was an Oracle that could give him a name. A power. A [Profession] that would define what he could become.
Alphonse closed his eyes. Felt his mother's heartbeat against his chest. His sister's hand on his arm.
He'd been given something impossible. A second chance that no amount of prayer or penance could have earned.
He wasn't going to waste it.