The villain dies in every route. I should know — I wrote the guide.

Kael Ashborne logged 4,127 hours inside Throne of Ruin — the most brutally difficult dark fantasy RPG ever released. He cleared every route. Wrote the strategy guide the community still uses. Memorized every boss, every betrayal, every heroine, every one of the forty-seven ways the villain could die.

On the night he finally beat the final boss, his heart gave out at the desk.

He wakes up inside the game.

In the villain's body.

Cedric Valdrake Arkhen — firstborn of the most feared ducal house in the Empire, hated by every protagonist, scheduled to die in every single route, sometimes before chapter thirty. Worse, the reincarnation cracked Cedric's Aether Core. Kael wakes at the lowest possible rank in a body the world expects to be a monster.

*"I didn't save him because I was kind. I saved him because dead protagonists cause route collapses. That was the excuse, at least. It sounded better than the truth."*

He has three weeks until the entrance exam.

Forty-seven death flags.

A system called the Villain's Ledger that calls him a *malfunction* and counts the seconds until he fails.

And five heroines — each one stolen from a route she was supposed to fall into with someone else. Each one beginning to notice that the cold young master flinches when he thinks no one is looking.

*"You're not who you pretend to be,"* the saintess told him.

He smiled the way Cedric Valdrake would have smiled.

*"You should hope I am."*

But the world has a script.

And the script is watching.

Every change Kael makes raises the Narrative Deviation Index. The protagonists grow stronger. The Cult moves faster. The boundaries between the game and the people inside it start to crack — and somewhere beyond the screen he died in front of, something is still writing.

He came here to survive forty-seven death flags.

He'll have to kill the story to do it.

Aiden Crest heard the rumor three different ways before lunch.


That was how he knew it had been planted.


Real gossip wandered. It picked up crumbs, contradicted itself, changed clothes between corridors, and arrived breathless with three extra lies. Planted rumor marched. Same spine. Same wound. Same destination.


First version, spoken near the Silver practice courts:


"Valdrake staged Gate Eleven to get Silver access."


Second version, whispered under the eastern arcade:


"The saintess is covering for him because he contaminated her barrier."


Third version, delivered by a second-year noble who pretended not to know Aiden was behind him:


"Support Witnesses can be purchased. Lockwood is just Valdrake's servant with a title."


Two boys beside him discovered urgent interest in the courtyard stones.


Chapter 74 - Aiden Crest Hears the Rumor