"You're worthless."
Those words never really left. Even now they were still sitting somewhere in the back of his head, quiet but heavy.
"Are you even worthy of being called an Ironhart?"
His brother had looked at him like he was nothing. Not with anger. Not even with disappointment. Just... nothing. Like looking at a stranger on the street. Someone who doesn't matter.
Lucas had been on the ground that day, sword dropped, hands shaking, the other kids laughing behind him. The sun was brutal. The dirt was hot. And his brother just stood there over him, arms crossed, waiting for an answer Lucas didn't have.
He never did find one.
Lucas snapped out of it.
He was sitting on a bench. Some random bench on some road he didn't recognize. Both hands pressed against his head like that would somehow help.
It didn't help.
"Where in the world am I!?"
He said it out loud. Nobody around him reacted. He probably looked insane.
He took a breath. "Okay. Think." Last thing he remembered was his room. That tiny, falling apart excuse for a room where the walls were thin and the floor creaked and he fell asleep hungry more nights than not. He had lain down because he had nothing left in him. Closed his eyes.
And then woke up here. That was it. That was all he had to work with.
He opened his eyes properly and looked around.
Normal street. Busy. People everywhere. He almost felt relieved.
Then a man floated past him.
Not walked. Floated. Feet completely off the ground, totally calm about it, going about his day like this was nothing.
A woman nearby raised her hand and a small flame appeared in her palm. She looked at it for a second, then closed her hand. Gone. Like she was just checking the time.
Then someone crossed the street on the other side and they moved so fast their body actually blurred, there one second and gone the next.
He stared. He kept staring.
"...Not again," he muttered.
Not panic. Not screaming. Just that hollow feeling in his chest when reality stops making sense and his brain hasn't caught up yet.
He looked down at his hands. Turned them over. Normal. Still just hands. He pressed them together and felt the resistance.
'Can I do that too?'
He had no idea. He didn't even know where he was, so.
Then the headache hit.
Not a normal headache. It was like something slamming into the inside of his skull without warning, sudden and sharp enough that he doubled forward on the bench and made an embarrassing noise.
His vision went weird. His whole body tensed up. It felt like someone had grabbed the inside of his head and started forcing things in like memories, images, names, faces. None of them were his, all of them arriving at once and not caring that there was no space for them.
"Lucas... Ironhart..."
The name came out of his mouth. He didn't decide to say it. It was just there.
And the moment it was out, everything else followed.
The memories settled like pieces snapping into place. A whole life, someone else's life, suddenly sitting inside him like it had always been there. He could feel it. The weight of it.
Lucas Ironhart. Fourteen. Born into one of those families everybody knows the name of, where strength is expected, where you either keep up or become a problem. His own family had quietly given up on him, then officially. Packed his things, opened the estate doors, and that was it. No argument. No second chance. Just gone.
He breathed out slowly. 'What are these memories… and why are they in me?'
A merchant crossed the street ahead of him, cargo floating lazily behind in a big cluster. Crates, bags, random stuff. And right in the middle of it, slowly rotating as it drifted along, a large mirror.
It swung his way for just a second as the merchant passed.
White hair. Sharp red eyes. A face that was genuinely striking. The kind of face people notice. The kind that doesn't belong on someone sitting confused and alone on a roadside bench.
The mirror kept going.
He raised his hands slowly and touched his face. His cheeks. His hair. White, all of it, real, solid, his now.
"I'm not Reji anymore."
Quiet. Just him and the street.
Then something appeared in front of his face.
A screen. Floating in the air, transparent, impossible, very much there. Text on it that had absolutely no business existing.
[System activating]
He went still.
Stared at it.
"...System?"
More lines appeared, one after another.
[Player successfully Transmigrated]
[Player – Lucas Ironhart]
[Level – 1]
[Health – 100]
[Mana – 10]
[Strength – 4]
[Agility – 3]
[Defense – 5]
[Stamina – 7]
[Unallocated Stat – 0]
[Magic – not awakened yet]
[Age – 14]
[Skills – null]
He read it all. Twice.
He knocked his knuckles against the bench "Ow! OW! That hurts!" The sun on the back of his neck was real. The hunger sitting in his stomach was real.
"Am I in a game?" He shook his head before he even finished saying it. "No. This isn't a game."
Games didn't feel like this. Games didn't have splinters in the bench and the ghost of someone else's pain still sitting in his chest.
This was real. All of it.
The screen updated one more time.
[Task: Immediately head to Sylvas Magic Academy]
[Failure to complete the task will result in enforced penalties.]
*****
[Task: Immediately proceed to Sylvas Magic Academy.]
This was not the first time it had appeared. It wasn't even the third. It just kept coming back, patient and annoying, like a knock on a door that never stops.
"I can see it," he muttered under his breath. "I get it. I'm going. Just give me a second."
He wasn't ready to move yet. His head still hurt from earlier. And honestly he had just found out he was in someone else's body in a world where people floated and made fire with their hands so maybe he deserved thirty seconds to sit on a bench and process it quietly.
He leaned back and looked up at the sky.
The message appeared again.
[Task: Immediately proceed to Sylvas Magic Academy.]
His eye twitched.
"Okay you know wha-!?"
Then his body stopped.
Not slowly. All at once. His arms wouldn't move. His legs wouldn't move. He couldn't turn his head or shift his weight or do anything at all. He just sat there, completely locked, trying to push his hand forward and getting nothing.
Huh? Why can't I move?
A message appeared.
[Warning: Continued disregard of the assigned task will result in enforced penalties.]
A pause. Then one more line.
[Penalty: Termination.]
"WHAT!?" His eyes went wide.
Then his body was his again.
Just like that. He could move. He flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders, confirmed everything still worked.
He stood up.
"...Okay," he said quietly to nobody. "Okay. I get it."
He wasn't going to test that again.
Getting directions had been easy enough. A few questions to the right people and he found out a carriage heading toward Sylvas Academy would be passing within the hour. He got on, and here he was, moving. Doing what the screen wanted. Being a good little player.
He hated it a little.
The trees rushed past outside. The carriage rocked. For a moment it almost felt normal, just a ride, just a road, just a regular morning.
Then-
[Staring outside won't make you look any smarter.]
Lucas's eye twitched.
What is this thing's problem.
The man sitting beside him glanced over, probably because Lucas's face was doing something involuntary.
Lucas smoothed his expression out and turned slightly towards the man beside him.
"Hey, sorry quick question." He gestured vaguely at the air in front of him. "Can you see this? Like, these words floating right here?"
The man looked at him. Then at the air. Then back at him.
"...Kid," he said slowly, "did you hit your head?"
Lucas stared at him for a second.
"Right," he said. "Never mind."
He turned back to the window.
'So only I can see it. Got it.'
[At least now you've figured that out. Took you long enough.]
'I will not react. I will not—'
[Never met someone as dumb as you, honestly.]
'SHUT UP.'
He clenched his fists in his lap and stared very hard at the trees outside. The man beside him had quietly shifted two inches further away. Lucas couldn't blame him.
The rest of the ride passed without incident, unless you counted the screen making three more comments that he refused to acknowledge. The other passengers chatted quietly among themselves. The road got smoother as they went. Slowly the trees started to thin out.
Then the driver called back "This is your stop" and the carriage rolled to a halt.
Lucas stepped down, bag over his shoulder. Handed the driver the fare. The carriage pulled away and disappeared back down the road it came from.
He turned around. And stopped.
Sylvas Magic Academy sat at the end of a wide stone path, and the word school did not even come close to covering it.
The buildings were massive, tall cylindrical towers with smooth polished surfaces that caught the light in a way that made them look almost unreal. Clusters of glowing clouds hovered near the upper floors, not drifting, just sitting there like they had been placed deliberately. The whole thing looked less like somewhere you came to study and more like somewhere you came to bow.
"...This place is expensive," Lucas muttered.
A familiar screen popped up in front of him.
[Task complete.]
[Reward: Mana Perception — Skill +1]
"Mana Perception?" He tilted his head slightly. "What does that even do?"
[Skill – Mana Perception (Passive): Allows the user to sense and visualize mana in the surroundings, including flow, density, and energy structure.]
He read it carefully. Slowly.
"...Okay," he said after a moment. "That's actually not bad."
He started walking toward the entrance.
The closer he got the more people he noticed, a long line near one of the side sections, young people around his age, some standing straight and confident, some fidgeting, some staring at the towers with that wide-eyed look of someone trying not to look wide-eyed. A sign above the section read: Application Registration — Entrance Exam.
Lucas joined the back of the line.
He watched the others while he waited. A few of them had nice clothes, the kind that said money without trying. Some had family crests on their bags or jackets. Everyone looked like they belonged here in a way he wasn't sure he did.
The line moved. Eventually he reached the front.
The woman at the counter didn't look up. She had a ledger open in front of her and a pen in her hand and the practiced efficiency of someone who had processed a hundred of these already today.
"Name?"
"Lucas Ironhart."
"House identification?" she said, her voice carefully neutral.
He handed over the card. It was in a bag his family gave him before they pushed him out the door, the last thing the Ironhart family had ever handed him. She examined it. Her expression didn't change but her eyes moved slowly across the details.
She handed it back.
"Your name has been registered," she said, the professional smile back in place. "Proceed to Block 4 for the entrance test."