The subway car stank of piss and broken dreams.
Kai Morwen—twenty-one, five-foot-six, perpetually tired—pressed his forehead against the smudged window and watched Tokyo blur past. Neon signs. Concrete towers. People who had their shit together.
Not him, though.
Never him.
"You're worthless, Morwen."
Manager Tanaka's voice still echoed in his skull. Three hours ago. Performance review. More like a public execution in the break room while everyone else pretended not to listen.
"Your numbers are down."
Down from what? Down from the impossible quota they'd set? Down from working fourteen-hour days on a salary that barely covered rent?
"Maybe if you spent less time reading trash online and more time working—"
Kai had wanted to say something. Wanted to tell Tanaka where he could shove his quotas. But he didn't. Just stood there. Nodded. Apologized for existing.
Same as always.
His phone buzzed. He glanced at it.
SATO: lol heard Tanaka ripped you a new one
SATO: maybe try not being useless?
YAMAMOTO: drinks friday? wait nvm forgot you're broke haha
Kai turned the phone off.
The subway lights flickered.
He'd spent last night doing what he always did—reading web novels until 3 AM. Cultivation stories. Progression fantasy. Villain protagonists who gave zero fucks and took what they wanted.
He loved those stories.
Hated his life.
"Next stop, Shibuya Station."
Almost home. Back to his coffin apartment. Instant ramen for dinner. Maybe jerk off to some porn and pretend tomorrow would be different.
It wouldn't be.
Tomorrow, Sato would "accidentally" spill coffee on his desk. Yamamoto would laugh. Tanaka would find something else to criticize. The cute girl in accounting—Yuki, the one with the nice smile—would look right through him like he was invisible.
Rinse. Repeat. Die.
"At least villain MCs have balls," Kai muttered.
The guy next to him glanced over. Kai ignored him.
Those protagonists in the novels—they didn't take shit from anyone. Someone disrespected them? Dead. Someone tried to humiliate them? Dead. Someone looked at their woman wrong? Really fucking dead.
They had power. Freedom. Harems. Everything Kai would never have.
The lights flickered again.
Longer this time.
Kai frowned. Looked up. The fluorescent tubes buzzing, dimming, brightening, dimming—
The train lurched.
Hard.
Someone screamed.
Kai's head snapped forward. The window. The tunnel walls. Moving too fast. Way too goddamn fast.
"What's happening?"
"Is the driver—"
"Oh my god—"
Another lurch. People tumbling. Briefcases flying. A woman's purse hit Kai in the face. He tasted blood.
The screaming got louder.
Metal shrieked. The sound of something fundamental breaking. The world tilted sideways and gravity stopped making sense.
Kai grabbed for the pole. Missed. His body lifted—actually fucking lifted—off the seat. Weightless. Floating.
Then crashing.
His head hit the ceiling. No. The floor? The window? Couldn't tell. Everything spinning. Bodies everywhere. Blood on the glass. Someone's arm bent wrong.
Pain exploded through his skull.
White flash.
Then red.
Then nothing.
"—won't last the night."
Voices. Distant. Muffled. Like listening underwater.
"Pity. Pretty boy. Shame about the mother."
"Orders from the Duke?"
"What orders? Boy doesn't exist. Never did."
Kai tried to open his eyes. Couldn't. His eyelids weighed a thousand pounds each. His whole body felt wrong. Too heavy. Too weak. Everything hurt.
"Should we just—"
"Touch him and I'll tell the Duke you're stealing from the wine cellar again."
A pause.
"Fine. Let the void take him naturally."
Footsteps. Fading. A door closing with a heavy thunk.
Silence.
Kai floated in darkness. This was death, right? Had to be. The subway crash. He'd died. This was... what? The afterlife? Some kind of limbo?
Except he could still feel things.
Pain, mostly.
His chest felt like someone had parked a truck on it. His throat burned. Stomach cramping like he hadn't eaten in days.
Dead people didn't feel hungry.
He forced his eyes open.
Wooden beams overhead. Old. Cracked. Dusty. Firelight dancing across stone walls from somewhere to his right. The smell of mold and something worse.
Not his apartment.
Not the hospital.
Not Tokyo.
Where the fuck—
Memories crashed into him like a second subway collision.
Not his memories.
A boy. Raelan. Sixteen years old. Bastard son. Mother dead—died screaming, blood everywhere, silver hair matted to her face as she pushed one last time and then stopped breathing. Father didn't care. Father never came. Just sent a servant to take the baby away.
Sixteen years of existing in corners. Eating scraps. Wearing hand-me-downs from brothers who beat him for entertainment.
Then three days ago. The Awakening Ceremony. Every child at sixteen had to attend. Stand before the Aether Crystal and let it judge you. Determine your element. Your worth.
Raelan had gone last. Always last. The bastard went last.
He'd placed his hand on the crystal.
It turned black.
Not dark blue for water. Not red for fire. Not any of the normal colors.
Black. Pure void-black. The crystal cracked. The priest stepped back. Started whispering. The Duke's face—Lord Theron Vorrath, northern warlord, Zenith Realm cultivator, Raelan's father—went from neutral to disgust in half a second.
"Void element."
Someone in the crowd gasped.
"Forbidden."
Another voice. Scared.
"An abomination."
The Duke had looked at Raelan for exactly three seconds. Then turned his back.
"Lock him in the eastern wing. No food. No water. We'll say he died of illness."
That was three days ago.
Raelan—the original boy, the one whose body this was—had crawled to this room. Curled up on the thin mattress. Waited to die.
And then Kai's soul arrived. Merged. The boy's spirit too broken to resist, fading like smoke, and the modern soul taking over.
Two minds. Two lives. One body.
Except now just one.
Kai opened his mouth. Tried to speak. His voice came out broken.
"Fuck."
The word hung in the dusty air.
He tried again.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
Better. Stronger. He forced himself to sit up. Every muscle screamed. His vision swam. The room spun.
Deep breath.
Another.
His hand—Raelan's hand, his hand now—touched his chest. Pressed against the solar plexus. Felt the core.
The Aether Core. The crystalline organ that formed at sixteen. The thing that determined everything in this world. Power. Status. Survival.
His was void.
Forbidden.
The element that consumed everything. The element that hadn't been seen in five hundred years. The element that made the Duke—his father—want him dead.
Kai—no, Raelan, he was Raelan now—smiled.
It felt wrong on the boy's gaunt face. Too sharp. Too knowing. The smile of someone who'd spent twenty-one years getting stepped on and just realized he had teeth.
"They want me dead."
His voice. Testing it. Getting used to it.
"Father wants me erased. Brothers want me forgotten."
He looked at his reflection in the cracked mirror across the room. Pale skin. Hollow cheeks. Black hair matted with sweat and blood. Dark circles under his eyes.
But those eyes.
Dark purple. Glowing faintly in the firelight.
Void element.
"They think I'm going to die quietly."
He stood. Swayed. Caught himself against the wall. His legs barely held him.
"They think I'll just... fade away. Make it easy for them."
One step. Then another. Slow. Painful. But moving.
"Fuck that."
He reached the door. Put his hand on the wood. Felt the core in his chest pulse. Felt something else—hunger. Deep, endless hunger. The void wanting to consume. To devour. To take.
"I died once already. Spent twenty-one years as nothing. As nobody."
His fingers curled into a fist.
"Not again."
The door handle was iron. Cold. He gripped it.
"You want a villain? Fine."
He opened the door.
"I'll give you a fucking villain."
The hallway was empty. Single torch guttering on the wall. Stone floor. Narrow corridor leading to stairs.
Raelan took a step forward.
His stomach growled. Loud. Desperate.
Right. Food. That was the immediate problem. He was literally starving. Three days without eating would do that.
He needed food.
And probably to not die in the next hour.
Those seemed like good short-term goals.
Long-term?
He looked down at his hands. At the faint black veins starting to show under the skin. Void corruption. The price of the forbidden element.
Long-term, he was going to burn this whole manor down. Kill everyone who'd hurt the original Raelan. Take everything the Duke had—power, territory, women, legacy. Everything.
But first.
Food.
He started walking. Each step hurt. His body was wrecked. Sixteen years of malnutrition and abuse. The modern soul had knowledge, memories, strategies. But the body was weak.
That would change.
Everything would change.
He just had to survive long enough to make it happen.
Voices up ahead. Two men. Guards, probably. Vorrath house colors—black and crimson.
Raelan pressed himself against the wall. Listened.
"—heard the bastard's still alive."
"Won't be for long. Duke's orders. No food, no water."
"Seems cruel. He's just a kid."
"He's void-touched. Forbidden. Should've been killed at birth."
"Yeah, well. Not our problem."
Their footsteps approached.
Raelan looked down at his hands again. The void core pulsed. Hungry.
He thought about Kai Morwen. The weak office worker who took abuse from everyone. Who died pathetic and alone on a subway floor.
Then he thought about the protagonists in those web novels. The villain MCs who gave zero fucks.
The guards rounded the corner.
Saw him.
Stopped.
"The bastard's out of his room."
The first guard—older, pockmarked face—sneered. "Get back in there before we—"
Raelan moved.
Not fast. He wasn't fast. His body barely worked.
But he moved with purpose.
His hand shot out. Grabbed the guard's wrist. And the void core in his chest activated.
Black-purple energy erupted from his palm.
The guard screamed.
His flesh turned grey. Then black. Crumbling to ash. The void consuming. Devouring. Eating through armor, through skin, through bone.
The aether in his core—the guard's cultivation, his life force, everything—rushed into Raelan like water down a drain.
Delicious.
The guard's body collapsed. Dead. Drained. Just a dried husk in armor.
The second guard stared. Mouth open. Face white.
Raelan looked at him.
"Run or die. Choose quickly."
The man ran.
Smart.
Raelan looked down at the corpse. Felt the stolen aether circulating through his system. Felt his core drinking it in. Growing. Strengthening.
His status window flickered at the edge of his vision. The mental interface that everyone had. Showing cultivation level, skills, stats.
[AETHER CAPACITY: 100 → 220]
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: VOID TOUCH]
[DEVOURING ABYSS ACTIVATED]
The hunger subsided. Barely. Just enough.
Raelan bent down. Searched the corpse. Found dried meat in a pouch. Grabbed it. Ate it without thinking. Tasted like leather and salt. Best thing he'd ever eaten.
Found a waterskin. Drank. Half the water gone in three gulps.
Better.
Not good. But better.
He straightened. Looked down the hallway. Toward the main manor. Where his father sat on his throne. Where his brothers trained and laughed and lived.
Where his future waited.
"One guard down."
He started walking.
"A few hundred more to go."
His reflection in a polished shield on the wall showed a gaunt teenager with glowing purple eyes and a smile that belonged on a corpse.
Kai Morwen died on a subway floor.
Raelan Vorrath was born in blood and void.
And he was hungry for more.
[END CHAPTER 1]