Archie sat motionless in a tall-backed chair at the center of the room, his thoughts drifting like smoke.
Only hours ago, he had been trapped in a cell barely large enough to stand. Iron walls had pressed in on all sides. Four years of silence. Four years of starvation. Four years of forgetting what it meant to feel human. Escape had become a faded memory, as distant as standing upright.
And now—this.
A bed fit for a king. A ceiling carved in ancient stone. A chamber wrapped in silence—but not the silence of despair. This one held weight, like the pause before something monumental.
He was no longer hungry.
He could breathe.
He could stand tall.
It should've been a blessing. But Archie didn't believe in blessings. Not anymore.
He didn't know if this was a miracle or the cruelest curse yet.
When he first woke, he didn't know where he was—or who he was. His body burned—every inch—as if thousands of needles stabbed into his flesh. The pain crawled into every bone and nerve.
Then came the blood.
Cough after cough until the sheets were soaked crimson.
But Archie didn't scream. He didn't cry.
He only stared.
Confused.
Cold.
Because this wasn't his body. Not entirely.
The boy from the dream had returned—red hair, sharp jaw, piercing blue eyes.
Ivar Starborn.
The name echoed in his mind like a curse.
"Why me?" he whispered to no one. "Ivar... why me?"
He pressed his back into the chair, trying to sink into the silence, to pretend this was still a dream.
He remembered once thinking something good was about to happen. An old man in the neighboring cell had been given two meals. Just two. Archie had hoped—begged—for a scrap. And when he received it, he thought it would bring joy.
Instead, it shattered him.
Because hope, he'd learned, was worse than hunger.
And this? This didn't feel like hope.
It felt like something else.
He closed his eyes.
That's when the memories started bleeding in—
Not his.
Not Archie's.
Fragments of a life that wasn't his own.
A boy raised among stars and prophecies. A noble bloodline.
Knowledge of a world far beyond cold iron bars.
Ivar's thoughts.
Ivar's pain.
Ivar's voice.
Slowly, those memories settled into him, like smoke wrapping around bone.
Was this who he was now?
Had Archie truly died in that cell... only for someone else to wear his skin?
So now he was Ivar Starborn. Just as the boy in the dream had said.
"I don't agree to this," he muttered, jaw clenched. "He clearly scammed me."
He tried to recall what else the boy had said in that dream—searched for any detail, any clue. As the images took shape, so did the sound of laughter—not human, but echoing like celestial wind. The voice of a star, giggling at the edge of the throne room in that endless court.
"The Fallen One is finally born... what will the gods do now?"
Archie tried to decipher the whisper, just as he had in the dream. But the moment he focused, pain lanced through his skull. His mind buckled, as though a divine force had pierced him.
He'd heard stories of voices like this—the voices of stars, or the divinity between them. Where he came from, there was a tale: when kings died, their souls became stars, watching forever from the heavens. But he'd never believed it.
Because if such stars did exist—watchful and all-knowing—why had they let an innocent man like him rot in a cell for four years?
He exhaled through gritted teeth, grounding himself.
A polished tea table sat nearby, a silver pot placed at its center like an invitation. His eyes locked onto it, and instinct stirred. It had been so long since he'd even seen tea. His hand reached for it—
And then it struck.
A memory. Not his own.
It pierced his mind like a blade. Ivar's memory—vivid, brutal. The moment of betrayal.
The same pot. The same table.
His sister, pouring tea with a smile as cold as winter. Her voice, distant and haunting:
"Goodbye, little brother. You never should have been born."
The tea had been poisoned. That's how Ivar died—betrayed by blood, left to fade alone.
Archie froze. His hand trembled above the pot. A blur of Ivar's final vision crossed his eyes—his sister walking away through shimmering light, never once looking back.
Seventeen. That's how old Ivar had been. Seventeen—and murdered by his own family.
Something heavy twisted in Archie's chest. Not just confusion anymore. Pity. Rage.
He understood the boy now, bit by bit.
But still… what do you want from me, Ivar?
Revenge? Redemption? A second chance?
"Answer me," Archie murmured. "Say something. Anything."
Then—
He remembered something.
A prayer. Spoken in the court of stars.
Not to gods. Not to kings.
To something older.
He closed his eyes. Tried not to picture the throne. Or the stars. Or the laughter.
Only the words.
Slowly, he spoke:
"Star of the First Order... Origin of all stars...
Born before light and the cosmos...
Let his wish be fulfilled—
even at the cost of my own."
The moment the final word left his lips, the ground beneath him shifted.
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the room.
He was in the Court of the Star again.
A vast space that defied logic, filled with light and silence.
And then—he heard a voice. A familiar voice. His own voice.
He turned.
Standing before him was a man in his late twenties. Gaunt, black-haired, wearing the same prisoner's garb Archie once wore. The man didn't move his lips, but his voice filled the court, deep and rumbling like thunder behind glass:
"How have you been, Ivar?
Sorry for suddenly dragging you into my world without warning."
And as the man spoke, Archie realized—that was him in other words his former body