Chapter Text
It's so cold.
Death is a cold, cold, miserable, lonely experience. He feels like his heart is beating too fast, a thump thump that’s trying to escape the prison that is his body. Logistically, he knows that his heart should be slowing down, but all he can feel is sheer terror.
He should be accustomed to his death. He should not feel pain, nor grief, nor fear. He knows, he has always known, that this would be his death. This was his fate. He has understood this; death is a fact. Impermeable, a brittle, hard truth he has known since he was old enough to form cognizant thoughts. From the whispers of his servants to the mocking tone of fellow nobles, he has always known that he would meet his end this way.
Perhaps it is this reason that he finally lets himself go slack. He can't focus on the words of whoever is cradling him ever so gently in their arms, nor on the way snowflakes smatter across his face. The metallic tang of blood fills his lungs, drowning his breath. It isn’t peaceful—but oddly enough, he is somewhat at peace. What else is there to do when you know that you are to die, and you have been raised for death?
It is such a cold, lonely place to leave this world. Cyrus hates the cold.
And then, stillness. No sound, no light—only the faint impression of being, without body or thought, a thread drifting in an endless void.
Flickers of light pass behind his eyelids—images he can’t grasp, like fragments of dreams scattered by the wind. For a moment, he thinks he feels warmth, soft and far away, brushing against the cold that has settled into his bones. It grows stronger, pressing against his chest, chasing away the void.
A sharp breath jolts him, and he gasps, his lungs burning with air they haven’t tasted moments before. The scratchy weight of a blanket rests on his shoulders, and the creak of wood shifts beneath him. He blinks, squinting against the dim light.
He is dead. He was dead.
So the question is, where is he?
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Upon awakening, as he dubbed it in his mind, Cyrus takes note of three things. First, he is lying down on ridiculously soft blankets, made from the softest fleece. It's a luxury that he hasn’t felt in a good two years. The war had not allowed for it.
The next thing is that the environment is wholly unfamiliar.The room around him is spacious, with an air of understated elegance. A hand-carved bedpost looms beside him, dark wood polished to a mirror shine. Heavy curtains frame tall windows, casting diffused light across the floor.
The third thing is how unsettling he feels in his body. There is an itch, slight and incessant, threatening to erupt from under his skin. The redhead rolls over, and groaning, stiffly sits up. Just a mere moment ago, he had been bleeding out to death, and now—
Now, he can't even see a speck of the auspicious colour anywhere.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and it is there where he realizes something unsettling. His feet don’t quite reach the floor the way they should—his legs feel shorter, the distance between him and the ground unnaturally small. His knees don’t bend at the usual angle, and when his feet finally touch the floor, they don’t fall with the weight of a grown man’s body, but with the awkwardness of a much younger one. The room around him seems too large, the furniture towering in ways it shouldn’t. His body, once accustomed to strength and height, feels strange, alien even. Something is terribly off, and he can’t quite place it yet.
There is a mirror towards the far left of the room. Shakily, he pads towards it, trying not to think about how his footsteps are weighted differently, and how his arms swing at a much shorter stride. He doesn't think, doesn't question a thing, content to push it all down and lock it away in the back of his mind. He doesn't, and he is quite content in keeping it so until he has to face his reflection in the mirror.
A youthful, young face stares back at him. Soft cheeks, round with baby fat accentuate the lack of definition. Dark auburn curls adorn his head, shorter than he has seen it in the past few years. Almost hysterically, Cyrus lifts a finger to pull at a few strands.
They bounce back.
It's this stupid, silly fact that causes him to lose it. His hair has always been longer than deemed appropriate for his status. Unruly and uncooperative, it had always brushed past his shoulder blades, often pulled into a low bun. And now-
Now, he is stuck staring at a reflection that can’t be older than thirteen. He stares until his vision blurs, until the boy in the glass becomes a stranger. Until he feels the quiet sting of tears slipping down his cheeks—and can do nothing but curse his cruel, cruel fate.
–
It takes him far too long to come back from panicking. In fact, Cyrus thinks he would have continued his hysterics until the sharp tugging that's clawing at his heart pulled him down into unconsciousness, if it had not been for a strange blue light emitting from beside him.
Immediately, he is alert. Years of training as a royal guard and a childhood of nobility keeps him cautious. The glow pulsates, filling the air with an almost otherworldly colour. It's not ink, nor parchment; rather, light shaped and held in place like a mage's artifact. (Like the toys he used to fiddle with as a child).
He wishes he had a sword. There was nothing more familiar than the weight of solid metal in his palm. His trusty weapon had been a close confidant, and now- well, now it was just Cyrus and his wits. His hands twitch from habit, seeking a hilt that isn’t there.
Dubiously, the redhead eyes the object. The light had shaped to become a rectangular screen of sorts, strange symbols dancing across its surface. Although he recognizes the punctuation symbols for what they are, he cannot begin to fathom what they could mean, especially strung together in such a strange order. The symbols rearrange themselves into a peculiar set of markings, unlike any runes he has ever seen. It seems almost alive—two curved crescents perched like raised arms, framing a grinning face that could only be described as unnaturally cheerful. The expression radiates an energy so enthusiastic it borders on madness.
[ q(≧▽≦q) ]
Cyrus stares. Blinks. Stares again.
“What,” he says hoarsely, “the hell is that?
As if in response to his words, the symbols rearrange themselves. Now, Cyrus is truly concerned. He backs away until the mirror is digging into his clavicle. Somehow, somewhere, he has been given a second chance at life. And he isn't about to throw it away in favour of a potentially dangerous artifact.
[ SYSTEM INITIALIZING… ]
Cyrus blanches. These weren't just runes; they were language. And it's a language he understands with full clarity, although he distantly knows that this isn't Vallancien. It looks like Anglissar, but sounded terribly stilted.
Taking his chances at negotiations, Cyrus hesitantly speaks. “What… what are you?” Instantly, he feels foolish, and he chides himself knowing that the artefact couldn't understand him, let alone speak to him. Someone had to be on the other side, sending a message, although it looked nothing like the tele-communications he was used to.
Strangely enough, the letters do respond to his words.
[ THIS SYSTEM GREETS ITS HOST! ]
This, Cyrus thinks, is something not to be trusted. A host implied that it was a parasite. That it was feasting and leeching off of Cyrus. A host was not something he wanted to be. Brushing that aside, Cyrus realized that holy Morganna, the artifact was sentient.
“You… you understand me?” he blurted out, instantly cringing at the unnatural high pitch of his tone.
The letters once again rearrange themselves.
[OF COURSE. SYSTEM WOULD BE A VERY POOR SYSTEM INDEED IF IT COULD NOT UNDERSTAND ITS OWN HOST (´｡• ᵕ •｡`)]
Cyrus blinks. And blinks again, because this ‘system’ was not making any sense. “Pardon me, but what,” he forces out. And then he glares at the screen like it had personally offended him, which it kind of had.
“Stop calling me that.”
[HOST? SYSTEM REGRETS TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE, IN FACT, THE HOST. SYSTEM IS BOUND TO HOST’S MIND, BODY, AND GENERAL SURVIVAL. CONGRATULATIONS! (^▽^)/]
Warily, Cyrus pinches his forehead, feeling all the years on him. This was absurd. Ludicrous. A sick parody of resurrection dressed in ribbons and smiley faces. He had died—bitterly, quietly, with blood in his throat and snow in his hair. It should have ended there. Instead, he finds himself shackled to an over enthusiastic magical... thing, speaking in riddles and faces.
The pain between his brows feels ancient, bone-deep — the weary ache of a man who has long since run out of patience. The kind carried by someone who once made impossible choices and buried too many mistakes, only to now find himself being congratulated.
Instead, Cyrus turns his focus to other things.
“Bound? That’s an awfully cursed-sounding word.”
Bound to his mind? That was what struck deepest. Not the body, not even the talk of survival—but the invasion of thought. How much did it know? How deep had it reached already? His secrets, his regrets, the pieces of himself he had buried beneath years of quiet grief and duty—were they just numbers now, catalogued somewhere in its memory?
“Remove yourself,” he mutters, tone glacial. “Whatever you are. Get out of my head.”
But the screen only blinks brighter.
[SYSTEM CANNOT COMPLY. SYSTEM IS ESSENTIAL TO HOST'S FUNCTION. SYSTEM PROMISES NOT TO PEEK UNLESS NECESSARY! ♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ]
He stares at it, deadpan. If the afterlife was a joke, this was a particularly cruel punchline.
[PLEASE DO NOT BE ALARMED. SYSTEM IS HERE TO HELP! SYSTEM HAS BEEN ACTIVATED TO FACILITATE HOST’S SUCCESSFUL REINTEGRATION INTO THIS NEW WORLD.]
New world. That phrase lingers, clawing its way into the pit of his stomach. A new body. A new voice. A new world.
“What did you do to me?”
[SYSTEM DID NOTHING. SYSTEM FOUND HOST POST-TERMINATION AND INITIATED RECOVERY PROTOCOL. SYSTEM IS MERELY FOLLOWING PRE-ASSIGNED DIRECTIVES.]
“So I died,” Cyrus says flatly. He already knew his fate- had come to accept his fate- but hearing it written so bluntly in front of his eyes is another matter altogether.
[SYSTEM CONFIRMS HOST EXPERIENCED COMPLETE BIOLOGICAL CESSATION. CONDOLENCES! (╥﹏╥)]
Cyrus pinches the bridge of his nose. He is cursed. He is speaking to a glowing rectangle that uses faces, which for some reason, he can term as ‘emoticons’, although having never heard the word before. He is, by all definitions, royally fucked.
And now, apparently, also a whopping child.
The System offers no real comfort. It blinks, beeps, and cheerfully declares that it needs to “recharge and consult its handbook,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Cyrus is left standing there — small, disoriented, and painfully aware that he is alone in a house he doesn’t recognize, trapped in the body of a child.
He supposes, after a moment too long of consideration, that he should explore where he is.
The elaborate room feels like something out of a memory he never lived in — the carved bedposts, the heavy curtains, even the faint floral perfume clinging to the air. His feet seem to know where to go before he does, guiding him toward the door, down a long corridor lit with morning light.
Everything feels wrong in a way that makes his skin crawl. Each turn feels rehearsed, each step placed too naturally, as though his body remembers something his mind refuses to.
And then he sees it.
A grand portrait hangs at the end of the hallway, framed in gold leaf. He approaches cautiously, the soft thud of his smaller footsteps deafening in the quiet house. The sight nearly knocks the breath from his lungs.
It’s a family portrait — a woman with warm, gentle eyes seated in the center, a younger version of himself on her lap, and a man standing behind them, one hand resting protectively on her shoulder.
His mother.
Cyrus grips the frame until his knuckles ache. She had been dead for years. He had buried her with his own hands, mourned her until there was nothing left of him to mourn with.
Yet here she is, smiling at him from within the paint, immortalized in a moment that shouldn’t exist.
Something inside his chest twists violently, a hot, sharp ache. His throat closes around her name before he can say it.
Distantly, he knows she is also dead in this life. What a cruel joke on him, he thinks, smiling morbidly.
He had known the same ache before: the hollow absence of a mother’s presence, the cold formality of his father’s remarriage, the sudden flood of younger siblings who seemed to appear from nowhere, each one a reminder that life moved on without him. He remembers the sharp sting of loss, the way the world shifted under his feet when he was just a boy of seven, and now the knowledge that it had already played out in this new life feels like a bitter echo.
Sudden footsteps from the end of the corridor distract him. He turns, and eyes a servant approaching briskly, tray in hand, eyes sharp beneath the neatly tied cap. “Young Master Cyrus,” the figure says, voice firm but not unkind, “you wouldn’t want your father to catch you wandering here again. Come along now—should you choose to partake in breakfast with your Father, he is waiting in the dining room.”
Cyrus straightens, a pang of unfamiliar unease twisting in his stomach. The words echo oddly, almost like a memory not his own. The corridors, the tapestries, even the faint scent of wax polish—all strangely familiar, yet impossibly foreign. He follows reluctantly, the servant’s steady pace guiding him deeper into a house that feels like it once belonged to him, and yet never did.
Internally, he curses the System with every fiber of his being. What a menace of a creature, thrusting him into an unfamiliar situation where he would have to exchange pleasantries and feign affection with his so-called “family.” He forces himself not to dwell on the odd, aching longing of seeing them again, and wonders—are they the same people he knew, the ones he remembered? Or are they merely echoes, shadows of those he once loved in his… past life.
Past life. The term tastes strange on his tongue, heavy with implication, yet disturbingly accurate.
The servant’s grip is firm but not unkind, guiding him down the long corridor. The walls are lined with portraits that Cyrus instinctively recognizes, though none of the faces evoke warmth—only a jarring sense of familiarity, like stepping into someone else’s dream. Every step makes him more aware of how small his legs feel, how alien this body is, and how much he hates the way he can’t just retreat into his old composure.
Finally, they reach the dining room. Sunlight spills across polished wood. The room smells faintly of buttered bread and something sweet—cinnamon, perhaps—but the comfort is lost on him. Cyrus hesitates at the doorway, eyes sweeping the room. The table is set neatly, as though expecting someone orderly. He is not that someone. He catches sight of his Father, and heart hammers faster.
Do you know, he wants to ask. Do you know that I died, just like you knew I was goinng to? He keeps quiet.
His father freezes when he sees Cyrus, his expression a careful mix of surprise and restraint. “You… you’re joining us?” he says, voice pitched low to avoid sounding too shocked.
Cyrus merely inclines his head. “I eat,” he says plainly. No explanation. No flourish.
The door opens, and Cyrus freezes. His stepmother, Eloise, steps in, and for a brief, disorienting moment, he hardly breathes. How twisted, he thinks, that it turns out even in this world, his father had remarried to the same woman.
Then his gaze drops, and his heart lurches. Peeking out from behind her gown is a tiny figure, tousled hair and bright, curious eyes—Lucien. A tiny stranger with his father’s laugh. No- his younger brother. Whole, unbothered, utterly carefree. A child untainted by worry, mischief playing on his lips.
Cyrus swallows hard, the image twisting something tight in his chest. He doesn’t know how to feel, how to greet, how to even exist in the same space as them. And yet, Lucien’s innocent glance finds him, a spark of recognition or perhaps just curiosity, and it’s like being punched with the weight of everything he’s lost—and everything he’s yet to understand.
He wonders for a brief moment if Selene has been born yet, but pushes the thought aside and turns his attention to the breakfast table. He knows how this dance goes. Even back then, he had been an unruly, rebellious child, tempered only by the grief that lingered from his mother’s passing. He remembers the months after Father remarried and Lucien was born—how he had avoided his new family, how he had loathed his father for moving on too soon.
Now, older in mind if not in body, he realizes how foolish he had been. Family was precious, and he hadn’t known it the first time around.
Although, that wasn't enough to break the icy awkward tension that had settled over the table.
Cyrus shifts on his heels, unsure how to navigate this domestic battlefield. The table is set for a small army of silverware and plates, all gleaming as though mocking him. Eloise smiles—too bright, too rehearsed—but it’s a smile meant to bridge the gap he hasn’t even begun to cross.
“Good morning, Cyrus,” she says, voice careful, almost trembling with effort.
He clears his throat, muttering something that might have been a greeting or a curse; even he isn’t sure. Lucien waves, and Cyrus stiffens. He wonders, briefly and bitterly, how he’s supposed to play this part, this careful game of family.
“Did you sleep well?” Eloise ventures, voice tentative.
Cyrus blinks. Sleep? He hadn’t really. He hadn’t really done anything in the last few moments. “As well as one can,” he says, tone neutral, betraying none of the panic still clinging to his chest.
Lucien shuffles closer, dragging a chair far too small for him. He stares up at Cyrus with unabashed curiosity, the kind only a three-year-old can muster. Cyrus suppresses the urge to recoil; the boy’s presence is like a mirror of the innocence he never had.
Cyrus barely touches his food, moving quickly as Eloise and his father chatter softly across the table. He catches snippets—“I’m glad he joined us,” “It’s been so long since he acknowledged your”—and suppresses a grimace. Their words are meant to coax, to welcome, but he could not care less at the moment.
He picks at his plate, eyes flicking to Lucien. The boy is a whirlwind of energy, reaching for a spoon, spilling juice, and then giggling as if the act itself is a tiny victory. Cyrus studies him, noting the exact way he tilts his head when curious, the careless curl of his hair, the way his small hands grip the edges of the table like a ship in a storm.
He knows this boy. Not as a father would, not as a brother would—he knows him as the child he once left behind, and for the briefest moment, a pang of something like guilt tugs at him. But he buries it. Observation is key. Strategy. Control.
Lucien glances up and squeaks, “You’re big! You’re not scary!”
Cyrus blinks, momentarily caught off guard. “I… am not scary,” he says, voice even, though internally he wonders if the boy is mocking him—or merely stating a fact. He hadn't interacted with Lucien much at this age. Was he five yet?
Eloise exhales softly, leaning back slightly, as if relieved the tension hasn’t escalated further. She reaches over to adjust a napkin for Lucien, her touch careful, tentative. Cyrus notices the subtle maternal gestures- how could he not, when he had loathed her for them once. Now, he is too tired to be angry at someone that never deserved his anger. The family may be alive, whole, and present before him—but he is the outsider. Always.
He stands abruptly, placing his napkin neatly on the table despite himself. Lucien’s wide, curious eyes follow him as he slips past the table, tracking his movements with uncontained fascination. Cyrus allows a brief, almost imperceptible nod in acknowledgment. The boy’s gaze lingers, bright and questioning, but Cyrus doesn’t linger. There’s nothing to be gained from indulgence—he has other matters to consider. Most notably the magic he had sensed in the hallways, and the runes the Manor seemed to be built into.
He had a System to interrogate.