Saaransh's breath hitched as he stared at the bck and crimson text written on the wall. The letters pulsed with an eerie glow before they faded into the nothingness; it seemed like they had never been there in the first pce. A shiver crawled down Saaransh’s spine.

  “Awaken, or be lost forever.”

  The words kept lingering in his mind; they were heavy with meaning. Who had left these messages? And that figure? What was that figure? Was it real or just an illusion

  His small fists clenched. He was still trying to wrap his head around the absurd reality of having reincarnated into this timeline and the Stoneheart family. The world was way too different, his identity was different, and his past now was nothing but just distant echoes in his mind.

  But not this?

  The moment he finally started to get rational, something or someone was already trying to shake him from it.

  “Should I raise my mana?”

  He nibbled at his lips. No. If he recklessly stirred his mana into his mana circuits right now, he might make himself get exposed before the awakening ceremony. That would be way too dangerous

  Yet…something about the warning felt too real to ignore and let it go unchecked. Was this an actual threat? Or was it just a delusion from the remnants of the betrayal that he got in his past life?

  Just as he was about to dismiss the message as just an illusion, a low murmur filled the air. The mana in the room shifted; it increased and started pulsing in the air with a slow, deliberate rhythm.

  This wasn’t his doing

  A ripple of motion flickered at the edge of his vision

  The shadows twitched unnaturally; they stretched towards him like grasping fingers

  For a moment, he heard a whisper. the whisper didn’t come from the surroundings but it came from Saaransh’s mind

  “you are not safe here.”

  Then, silence

  A cold fear settled in his stomach. His instincts screamed at him that this was not normal at all; this…this was something different, something dangerous. Something No one was watching him

  He had only two choices

  First, he could have just ignored the warning and acted like nothing ever happened. Continue pying the role of a clueless child and wait till the awakening ceremony of the stonehearts, just like any other heir of the family

  Or second, he could act now, by taking the the risk of exposure but gaining the strength to face whatever was lurking in the shadows

  His hands flexed

  “I wont be ambushed again.”

  His teeth clenched and his eyes burned with resolve, and his will was so sturdy. Slowly, he reached for the power, the slumbering strange power within him. It was an unknown power

  Something stirred

  A pulse of ancient, suffocating mana erupted from the within, which was raw and untamed

  “No... I didn’t mean to awaken it!”

  Pain

  Burning, searing pain coursed through him as his circuits began to get ignited. His young body trembled, overwhelmed by the sheer force of the energy that wasn’t supposed to awaken it yet. He could feel it, the rush of foreign ancient mana flowing through his veins and his mana circuits; it leached around his circuits like an invading force

  “What is happening? This man, it’s not normal.”

  It wasn’t his own. It belonged to someone else

  It was dark. Deep, ominous

  It was that kind of mana that left destruction in its wake. The kind that reeked of blood and ancient malice

  “if I stop the flow now, iam sure that I’ll definitely die.”

  He gritted his teeth. Stopping mid-process could rupture and damage his mana circuits, leaving him crippled. If anyone discovered him in this state, they would think that he was possessed. Or even worse than that, a demon in the skin of a human

  “I cant get caught now… not now.”

  He took a shuddering breath. There was only one option

  He let the mana into his circuits

  A sharp gasp tore around his lips as energy flooded his circuits, branding him with its dark essence. He could feel it. Writhing, twisting, molding itself into intricate patterns across his body, like markings written in a nguage long forgotten by time

  His eyes snapped open and then for the first time he saw it

  The mana was alive

  It slithered through his veins like a sentient force, whispering secrets he couldn’t yet understand. His once dormant circuits are now pulsed with the dark mana.

  “What kind of man is this?”

  The glow of the mana cast shadows against the walls; it wrapped the space around him.

  Then

  A voice came from the abyss

  “I have finally found you.”

  His blood turned to ice

  A fracture appeared to the self

  The room twisted because the reality cracked before him. Darkness came out after tearing the space; it was thick and suffocating. The presence beyond the tear was overwhelming it was ancient, predatory and impossibly vast

  He had felt fear before

  He had known terror

  But this…

  This was something else

  A cold, unnatural hand appeared from the the rift; its fingers were long

  His body reacted before his mind could. His mana started surging violently; raw and unrefined, it formed a weak barrier around him. But the force infront of it barely seemed to notice

  It had been waiting. Watching him

  And now, it had come for him

  “you are not just a reincarnated warrior.”

  The voice slithered through the room, which started seeping through the marrow of his bones

  “You are something else. Something much more dangerous.”

  Saaransh gritted his teeth; his small weight trembled under the weight of revetion

  He had been reborn into the stoneheart family

  But his past life’s memories, his status as a hero—none of that had prepared him for something like this

  Whatever was happening to him was beyond reincarnation

  Beyond reason

  And in that moment, as the abyss gazed back at him through the fractured air, he knew

  His life never truly belonged to him in the first pce

  It had always belonged to someone else

  Something…which had finally came to collect it