My reflection didn't waver. The pale, aristocratic stranger with my panic in his eyes just kept staring back. For a long, silent moment, I did the only thing I could. I catalogued. It was an old habit from my accounting days, a way to impose order on chaos. When faced with a mountain of incomprehensible data, you start with what you know.
Fact one: I am in the body of Damon Mournblade. Fact two: Damon Mournblade is a character in a web novel I have read. Fact three: This character is scheduled for an early and unceremonious demise. Conclusion: I am, to use a technical term, royally screwed.
A knock on the door, firmer this time, shattered my frantic internal audit. "Damon? Are you decent? It's Marcus."
*Marcus. The brother. The Heir.* My mind scrambled, trying to pull up the relevant file from the cluttered archives of my memory. *Marcus Mournblade. The older brother. Charismatic, beloved, powerful Death affinity. The golden child of the Mournblade family. In the novel, he mourns Damon's death for about half a paragraph before getting swept up in the main plot.*
"One moment," I called out, the cold cello-voice still a shock to my system. I needed to get dressed. I turned from the mirror and saw a set of clothes laid out on a high-backed chair. They were, of course, black. Everything was black. A high-collared silk shirt, tailored trousers, and a long, flowing coat that looked like it was woven from solidified night. It was the kind of outfit that screamed "I find your mortal frivolity tiresome."
Dressing was another disorienting experience. The body moved with an ingrained, muscle-memory grace that I was merely a passenger for. My hands buttoned the shirt with an efficiency I didn't possess. It was like watching a video of someone else getting dressed, but from a first-person perspective. As I pulled on the trousers, a flicker of a memory, not my own, surfaced. *Damon, standing before a mirror, his father adjusting the collar of a similar shirt. The old man's voice, dry as dust: "A Mournblade does not dress for comfort, or for style. We dress for the grave. Our own, or another's."*
The memory was so vivid, so complete, that I stumbled. It wasn't like remembering a scene from the book. It was like remembering something that had happened to *me*. The scent of his father's dusty robes, the cold weight of the man's hand on his shoulder… it was all there.
*Okay. New data point. I have access to Damon's memories.* This was both a relief and a source of profound horror. I wasn't just a squatter in this body; I was a thief rifling through the previous owner's private drawers.
"Damon?" Marcus's voice came again, a hint of impatience coloring its warm tones.
"Coming," I said, and walked to the door. I took a deep breath, tried to channel the cold stillness I'd seen in the mirror, and pulled the heavy stone door open.
Marcus Mournblade was everything his brother was not. Where Damon's form was gaunt and pale, Marcus was tall, broad-shouldered, and radiated a vital warmth that seemed to push back the oppressive chill of the corridor. His hair was the same obsidian black, but his was cut shorter, styled with a casual elegance. His eyes, unlike Damon's flat grey, were a deep, stormy charcoal that sparkled with life and humor. He was smiling, a broad, charismatic smile that probably charmed birds out of trees and lesser nobles out of their inheritances. He was the sun to Damon's shadow.
"There you are," he boomed, clapping me on the shoulder. The gesture was friendly, but the strength behind it was considerable. This body, Damon's body, barely flinched. My old body would have been knocked into next week. "Feeling better? The servants said you were confined to your bed for three days. Had us all worried."
*Illness. Right. The novel mentioned Damon had been "unwell" before the Academy exams.* My brain raced. What kind of illness? How do I act? I decided to go with vague and non-committal.
"The fever has passed," I said, letting the body's natural stillness do most of the work. "I am… recovered."
Marcus's smile didn't falter, but his eyes scanned me with a keen intelligence. "Good. That's good to hear. You're looking a bit pale, but then, when are you not?" He chuckled, a warm, easy sound. "Father will be pleased. He hopes you will finally distinguish yourself at the Academy entrance examinations this year. Show them what a Mournblade is made of, eh?"
The subtext was as subtle as a guillotine. *You are the spare, the forgotten one, the disappointment. This is your last chance to not be a complete failure.* Azrael the accountant, who had lived his entire life in the shadow of a more successful older brother, felt a phantom pang of resentment that was immediately amplified by a wave of cold, bitter anger that was purely Damon's. The two emotions swirled together, creating a toxic cocktail of misery and fury.
I fought to keep my face impassive, relying on the mask of cold indifference that seemed to be this body's default setting. "I will do my best not to dishonor the family name," I replied, the words tasting like ash. It was a perfect, stock phrase, pulled directly from another of Damon's surfacing memories.
"That's the spirit!" Marcus clapped my shoulder again. "Come, walk with me. The carriage to the Fold-Gate leaves in an hour. I'll see you off."
He turned and began walking down the long, torch-lit corridor. I had no choice but to follow. My mind was a maelstrom of panic. I was navigating a conversation with a fictional character who thought I was his brother, relying on fragmented memories that felt like watching a stranger's home movies. Every step was a potential misstep. Every word could betray me.
";Are you prepared for the examinations?" Marcus asked, his voice echoing slightly in the stone hallway. "The competition will be fierce this year. I hear the Pyralis heiress is attending. A real firebrand, that one. And the Glaciem girl, too. Cold as her family's magic, but brilliant."
*Isabella Pyralis. Elara Glaciem. The main heroines.* My internal narrator supplied the information instantly. *Isabella, the fiery, battle-craving tsundere. Elara, the cold, calculating ice queen. They're both supposed to be part of the protagonist's harem.* The thought was so absurd, so out of place in this grim, gothic reality, that I almost laughed. A hysterical, bubbling laugh that I had to physically swallow.
"I have reviewed the necessary materials," I said, another bland, Damon-esque response.
"Good, good." We passed a large, arched window. Outside, there was no sun. Only a perpetual grey twilight hanging over a landscape of impossible architecture. Buildings seemed to be constructed from the colossal bones of long-dead beasts, and the trees in the distance had skeletal branches that bore fruit shaped like tiny, polished skulls. The Bone Gardens. It was exactly as the novel had described it. Horrifyingly, beautifully real.
"Just try to stay out of trouble," Marcus continued, oblivious to my world-shattering sightseeing. "Focus on the Affinity Assessment. Your control over the Death-aspected arts has always been… subtle. Try to make a good impression. Don't just stand there and make the instructors feel cold. That won't get you a high rank."
He was trying to give me advice. Genuine, brotherly advice. And all I could think was, *This man is going to mourn me for five minutes and then move on with his life.* The thought was cold and sharp, and it wasn't entirely mine. It was tinged with a lifetime of Damon's resentment.
We reached a grand staircase that spiraled down into a vast, cavernous hall. Servants moved silently through the gloom, their faces pale and impassive. Marcus stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to face me fully.
"Listen, Damon," he said, his voice lowering, the jovial mask slipping for a moment. "I know things haven't been easy for you. Father… is a difficult man. But the Academy is a new start. A chance to make your own name, away from the shadows of this place. Don't waste it."
For a heartbeat, I saw a flicker of genuine concern in his eyes. He wasn't just the charismatic heir. He was a brother, worried about his strange, withdrawn sibling. The realization was more disorienting than anything else. These weren't just characters. They were people.
Before I could formulate a reply, he smiled again, the mask back in place. "Now, go. Make us proud. Or at least, don't get expelled on the first day." He gave me a final, firm pat on the back and then turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing as he disappeared down another corridor.
I stood there, alone at the top of the grand staircase, the weight of his words, the weight of this new reality, pressing down on me. The brief connection, the flicker of brotherly concern, had done more to unravel me than all the gothic architecture and talk of Death affinities.
My legs gave out. I didn't fall, but I had to brace myself against the cold stone balustrade, my knuckles white. The world tilted, the torchlight swimming in my vision. The strain of the past hour—waking up, the servant, Marcus, the constant bluffing—had pushed me to my limit.
And then, I felt it.
It was a presence in the back of my mind. A flicker of consciousness that was not my own. It was weak, frayed, like a candle flame in a hurricane, but it was there. It was cold and bitter and filled with a quiet, bottomless despair. It felt… familiar. It felt like the face in the mirror.
It was Damon. The original Damon Mournblade. His soul, or what was left of it, was still here, trapped in the recesses of this mind with me. He wasn't extinct. He was just… weakened. A ghost in his own machine. And he was aware of me. He was watching me pilot his body, listen to his brother, and walk through his home. The horror of that realization was a cold, physical thing, a shard of ice sliding into my heart. I wasn't just a replacement. I was a parasite.