The darkness closed in on me like an iron claw. My breath was weak, my heart beating with difficulty. I knew my time was running out.

  The air smelled of ashes, steel, and betrayal. The battlefield, once my domain, now lay in ruins. Burning towers, torn banners, nameless corpses... all under a blood-stained sky.

  My hands, once feared by kings and gods, now trembled. Blood silently escaped my body, as if even it wished to abandon me.

  "Is this the end?" I wondered, my voice barely a whisper in the void.

  A shadow watched me from the top of the hill, with the same eyes that had once sworn loyalty. No last words, no compassion. Only silence... and a blade in my back.

  A betrayal.

  But I showed no pain. Only resentment... and calculation.

  "Interesting choice..." I thought as I fell. "Even in my end, I am still teaching them how to play."

  Memories of my tyrannical reign assaulted my mind. The spilled blood, the tears of the innocent, the screams of the condemned. My name, Vorgath, was synonymous with terror. And I knew it. I forged it that way.

  I felt no regret. Everything had been necessary. Everything... except trust.

  My consciousness faded. There was no judgment, no redemption. Only nothingness.

  And in that nothingness...

  I felt myself float.

  Like a piece off the board, without a player, without a war. A voice without a body, a power without a kingdom.

  But something pulled me. A subtle, almost mocking force.

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  My soul traveled through time and space, dragged by an invisible thread that tangled into a new destiny.

  A cry blended with my consciousness. Light. Warmth. A soft presence.

  I opened my eyes.

  And this time, I didn’t do it as a king.

  I did it as a newborn.

  Around me, figures dressed in noble robes approached. A woman with violet eyes held my tiny body gently, as if I were a fragile jewel. Beside her, a tall man with a regal posture looked at her with a restrained smile.

  "Our son..." she whispered.

  My new mind, still adjusting to the body, did not react. But inside... I understood everything.

  "Arin Cassius... Lirien D'Arvelle... nobles of the High Circle?"

  "This is no coincidence. It's... a second chance."

  I, King Vorgath, had been reborn as Aurelio Cassius D'Arvelle. Legitimate son of one of the most powerful houses on the continent.

  My mind remained intact. Cold. Calculating. But my lips only emitted a common cry.

  For now... I was a child.

  As Lady Lirien rocked me, her warm tears falling on my newborn cheek, something cracked in my tyrant's armor. I remembered the nurse who had raised me in my past life—her calloused hands, her palpable fear every time I came near. This woman embraced me without fear, singing a lullaby about forests and stars. I swore to protect that innocence... even if it meant staining my hands with blood again.

  But the game had only just begun.