To the north of the empire, bordering the territory no noble house claims, stands THE WALL.
Two hundred kilometers of stone, granite, and towers stretching across the land like a scar. It separated the northernmost settlements of the empire from the Great Green Forest, a land so vast and so old that no one knew how far it stretched or what secrets it held.
But the empire had understood the dangers of that place, not now, but generations ago- and built a wall to protect itself, to guard against the inhabitants of that terrible place.
It was cold for most of the year, and when the sun did show its face, it never dared to stay for long.
No noble house held power in its territory.
And the Wall answered to none.
It was an appendage of the empire - no lord, no crest, and no influence.
The men who served there were no soldiers in any sense that the capital would recognize. They were disgraced nobles stripped of their names, criminals offered the choice between the Wall and the executioner, and mercenaries -the greedy ones who thought they could make it big.
It was, in every sense that mattered to the nobility, a place you went to disappear.
Which was precisely why Duke Gannon did not immediately understand what he had just heard.
For a moment, he wondered if the boy had lost his mind.
His son, the one who had spent the better part of his youth drinking through the family's wine cellar, brawling with household knights, harassing the maids- HE, the fool, the disgrace of the household, was asking to be sent to the Wall?
He found it very hard to believe.
"The Wall?"
The duke's voice was calm, but the air in the room seemed to grow colder.
"What is this new act of yours?"
✧ ✧ ✧
'I must be out of my mind.'
Jin knew what kind of place the Wall was. He, who had read the novel multiple times, was aware of why the Wall had been built and of why going there was a terrible idea.
But between disappearing to the Wall and losing the Gannon name entirely, he would take the cold.
'The duke's anger won't last forever. I just need to endure until things quiet down.'
That was what he told himself. Whether he believed it was a separate question.
What he hadn't expected was the duke's response.
He had prepared for anger, for dismissal, for a flat command to leave his sight. He had been ready to prostrate himself on the stone floor if it came to that - ready to hold the man's legs if that was what it took.
But he hadn't expected the question.
Not an immediate refusal — You cannot go to the Wall. Not — that is not your decision to make. But a question. The duke was suspicious and cold.
'The door hasn't closed yet.'
Jin kept his eyes level and his voice steady.
"It is not an act, Father."
He said it simply.
"I am aware of what I have done."
He let those words sit. It was, after all, the question the duke had asked twice and never received an answer to.
"I am aware of the damage I have done to this house. I am aware of what it costs you to stand behind my name. I am aware that keeping me here is a liability that has stopped being worth carrying." He held his father's gaze. "I am not asking you to forgive me. I am asking you to consider which solution actually serves you."
Something in the duke's expression shifted, not enough for Jin to notice, but it did.
Jin pressed on.
"The moment my name is formally stripped, it becomes a story. It will spread from the duchy to the capital within a fortnight- these things always do. People will ask what I did to deserve disownment, and whatever answer spreads, Lady Esther's name will be part of it."
He paused. "Count Sinclair is a proud man. I don't believe he wants his daughter's name carried through the capital as the reason a duke disowned his son - even if the fault is entirely mine."
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence than before.
The duke had not moved. He was watching his son with an expression that was hard to read.
"Send me to the Wall, and I will simply vanish. As you and my siblings have always wanted. Count Sinclair would be satisfied too. You keep the Gannon name clean. And I-" he held the man's eyes steadily - "receive the punishment I've earned."
He hadn't planned what came next. But it arrived on its own, and he let it.
"And if I die up there, the matter resolves itself entirely."
The room was very quiet after that.
The duke sat with it for a long time. Whatever moved behind his eyes was unreadable.
"Encrid." The duke looked at his son for a moment that stretched long enough to become uncomfortable.
Then he stood.
He was taller than Jin had registered from the floor - broad-shouldered, straight-backed, with the kind of bearing that commanded respect. He walked to the window and stood with his hands clasped behind him, looking out at something Jin couldn't see.
A long silence stretched between them.
"The Wall," he said finally, quietly, almost to himself. "You understand what it is."
"Yes."
"You understand that if you go, I cannot protect you." He didn't turn. "The Gannon name means nothing there. Your blood means nothing. Whatever happens to you up there-" He paused. When he turned, his gaze was direct and carried a strange softness Jin hadn't expected. "It happens to you."
Jin took it all in and let it settle into the weight of what it meant.
"I understand."
Another silence. The last one.
"Leave."
Jin blinked.
"Take what is in your possession." The duke had already turned back to his desk, already reaching for the quill, returning to work as if a decision had simply been made and filed and no longer required his attention. "Be gone by morning."
The words didn't process immediately.
Then they did.
And only when Jin rose from the cold stone floor, knees aching, head still pounding, did the text appear.
[ ✦ Emergency Quest Complete ✦ ]
[ Quest "Survive the Duke's Judgment" has been completed. ]
[ Result: Disownment avoided. The Gannon name is retained. ]
[ The canonical event has been successfully evaded. ]
[ Distributing Quest Rewards ]
[ Narrative Relevance Updated: 0.04% → 0.11% ]
[ Your existence grows marginally stronger. ]
[ New Feature Unlocked: Narrative Quests ]
Jin stared at the messages for a moment longer than necessary, then bowed respectfully to the duke.
"Thank you, Father."
✧ ✧ ✧
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Jin stood in the corridor with his back against it and did not move.
On either side of the study entrance, household knights stood rigidly in full armor, the crest of the White Griffin engraved across their breastplates.
They were trying hard not to stare at him.
But they failed.
Jin could feel their eyes on the side of his face. The looks weren't openly hostile, but they were far from friendly. It was obvious they didn't like him - or more precisely, they didn't like the original owner of the body he now inhabited.
He ignored them.
'Now what?'
He had been thrown into a crisis before he had even realized there was one. Somehow, he had navigated it using little more than instinct and the fragments he remembered from the novel.
And he had survived it.
But now that the door had closed, the immediate danger had passed, and he was left standing in a quiet corridor.
Only now did the full weight of the situation settle on him.
He had reincarnated.
He was inside The Last Age of Radiance.
Inside the real world of his favorite novel.
'I used to imagine being inside the novel,' Jin thought. 'But I never imagined I would end up as Encrid Gannon.'
"Young master…"
A small voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
Jin turned.
A boy stood a few feet away. He looked about fifteen at most - thin and slightly hunched, with sharp, alert eyes, like someone used to carefully watching the moods of a dangerous person.
He was looking at Jin with an expression that was difficult to read because he was trying so hard to be neutral. But beneath that effort, Jin could see it clearly.
Fear.
Jin had no idea who he was.
The knights behind him were still watching, and it made him uncomfortable.
He needed time to think.
A quiet place where he could process what had just happened and what he was supposed to do next.
Unfortunately, this corridor was not that place.
There was just one problem.
Jin had absolutely no idea where Encrid's room was.
He knew the name of the duchy, he knew the important members of the household, and he knew the political significance of the Gannon family within the empire.
But he had no idea which hallway led where.
Jin had inherited none of Encrid's memories.
'Shouldn't people normally inherit memories in situations like this?'
He had read plenty of transmigration novels. The protagonist usually inherited the host's memories and quickly adapted to the new world.
But none of that had happened.
He was simply himself inside a stranger's body, in a house he had never walked through, which left him with only one option.
Jin looked at the boy.
"Lead me to my room," he said.
✧ ✧ ✧
The Gannon estate lived up to the reputation of one of the four ducal houses of the empire.
'This is ridiculous,' Jin thought as he followed the boy in silence.
The hallway had vaulted ceilings, and the stone corridors were wide enough for six men to walk side by side.
Tapestries depicting scenes he didn't recognize hung between tall arched windows that let in pale, gray morning light.
Servants moved through the halls with practiced efficiency.
Several glanced at Jin as he passed, and he noticed the nature of those glances.
Fear. Hatred. Disgust.
A whole spectrum of unpleasant emotions.
'I can imagine how this bastard used to behave,' Jin thought. 'Definitely not someone people liked.'
The boy stopped before a door at the end of a side corridor. He stepped aside and lowered his eyes, hands folded neatly in front of him, waiting for instructions.
"I need some time alone," Jin said.
Then he added, "Do not disturb me."
The relief on the boy's face was as genuine as it could get.
"Yes, young master."
He opened the door.
The room was not what Jin had expected.
It wasn't dirty or rundown - nothing in the Gannon household could really be. But the room carried the faint atmosphere of a place that hadn't been cared for in a long time. As if the servants maintained it out of obligation rather than attention.
The furniture was good and expensive by the look of it - made of heavy dark wood, clearly crafted by skilled hands.
But a thin layer of dust had settled across the surfaces.
Jin took it in slowly.
A desk sat buried beneath scattered papers and unopened letters. A wardrobe hung half-open, clothes spilling carelessly from inside.
Three empty bottles lay sprawled across the floor.
And on the far wall, there was a painting.
Of a woman.
She was beautiful in a way he couldn't quite put into words. She had dark hair, soft brown eyes, and a bright, warm smile that made it easy to overlook the thinness of her frame.
And unlike the rest of the room, the portrait was perfectly maintained.
No dust touched its frame.
It was hung at a height where it could easily be seen from the bed.
Jin stared at it for a moment, then looked away.
He walked to the bed and sat down.
The mattress sank beneath him with an unexpected softness, and for a brief moment, he simply sat there, registering the sensation.
Then his gaze lifted.
A mirror stood against the opposite wall.
In it, a young man looked back at him - twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight. Black hair, slightly disheveled. Brown eyes still faintly red from what felt suspiciously like a lingering hangover.
The face itself wasn't unattractive.
But the softness around the jaw and midsection suggested a man who had spent a long time indulging every desire while asking very little of himself.
Jin studied the reflection in silence.
"I have reincarnated," he said calmly.
Then he frowned.
"Wait… since I wasn't born again as a child… is this transmigration?"
He thought about it carefully.
"But transmigration usually requires dying first… right?" he considered. "Does that mean I'm dead?"
The last thing he recalled was reading the newest chapter of the novel before going to bed.
'Did the Danald Train finally bomb our country?'
'Did the building collapse?'
Various possibilities flashed through his mind.
Then he sighed.
"…It doesn't really matter anymore."
He was now inside the novel, and even if he wasn't dead in his old life, Jin had no desire to go back.
That was something he had never understood when reading other transmigration stories. Why would the protagonist, no, why would anyone, for that matter, want to return to such a boring world?
A world without dragons, magic, power, or even aliens?
He preferred this world.
Even if he had ended up inside the body of Encrid Gannon.
It wasn't ideal, of course. But it wasn't the worst outcome either.
He still possessed knowledge of the novel. He knew how the story progressed, he knew the major events, he knew who the important characters were.
He knew the disasters that would shake the world.
The only thing he didn't know…
…was the ending.
The final chapters had never been released.
But still -
'There are things I can do,' Jin thought. 'I just need to think clearly.'
He needed a plan. He needed to understand his resources and his limitations.
His position within the family, his power, everything.
But before any of that -
Jin looked at the line of text floating silently in the air.
[ To access the Main Menu, think of the word "Menu" or say it aloud. ]
Jin stared at it.
Then, quietly, he thought.
'Menu.'
✦ ✦ ✦