Pain.
It seeped into every corner of his awareness, saturating every breath, every heartbeat, every sluggish flicker of thought. The world above him was a cold, grey smear of towering trees and falling rain. The air reeked of blood, rot, and wet earth.
Slowly, Luciel forced his eyes open.
His vision blurred, water streaking across his face and mingling with the blood clinging to his pale skin. The forest canopy above him was unfamiliar, dark branches crowding the sky, thick leaves sagging under the relentless downpour.
His body… it didn't feel like his.
His bones ached in ways he didn't recognize. His limbs were heavy, alien, pinned to the sodden ground by the weight of exhaustion and injury.
He tried to move.
Agony lanced through him the moment his fingers twitched. Pain radiated from fractured ribs, torn muscles, a sharp tightness in his chest with every shallow, wet breath. His skin stung beneath the cold rain, raw and split open in places where sharp rocks and branches had torn through him.
He clenched his teeth.
Slowly, through the haze of torment, details bled back into his mind. His memories — both of Daniel Carter and Luciel Eloi Vaelmont — intertwined like frayed threads. The bookstore. The child. The truck.
The waterfall.
A shiver passed through him — not from the cold, but from something deeper, primal.
He remembered falling… water swallowing him whole… then nothing but suffocating black.
His eyes fell on the soft, flickering light in front of him — a pale, translucent window hovering in the air.
==[Status Window]==
Name: Luciel Eloi Vaelmont
Race: Half-Elf
Age: 12
Potential: ???
Rank: E+
Strength: -E
Agility: -E
Stamina: -E
Intelligence: S+
Mana Core Capacity: -D
Charm: S+
Affinities: Ice , ???
Skills: [ Temporarily Locked ]
====
His gaze lingered on the stats. What caught his attention was the disparity between his physical stats and his mental ones.
S+ Intelligence.
It explained the unnatural clarity. Even now, in the haze of blood loss and splintered bones, his mind worked with ruthless efficiency, processing, calculating, remembering. Names, faces, facts, tactical advantages — it all came unbidden, a cold flood of knowledge from two lifetimes blended into one.
Charm: S+… useless.
He dismissed it. Meaningless, here.
His gaze lingered on one particular line.
Potential: ???
That single, flickering symbol unsettled him.
His potential had been B rank. Not exceptional, but respectable. This… question mark… what did it mean? Unmeasurable? Undefined? Could it have dropped below measurable thresholds, or risen beyond them?
He narrowed his eyes, frustration cold and clinical.
A variable. Unexplained. Dangerous.
No one he knew of had a '???' in their potential field. He committed the anomaly to memory.
Affinities: Ice , ???
More uncertainty. Ice was understandable, but the undefined slots… Did it mean latent affinities? Or sealed ones? He wasn't sure. He recalled — elemental affinities were typically fixed at birth.
He made a mental note:
Investigate affinity acquisition and potential fluctuation once stabilized.
His Skills were locked for now. Probably because of the merger or his mental state.
He tested his mana, reaching inward toward the core he instinctively felt.
Weak.
Flickering.
A shallow pool of energy, cold and sluggish. The sensation made him grimace.
Mana Core Capacity: -D.
His core capacity was slightly higher but he barely had any mana right now.
Still… there was something else.
A quiet resistance beneath the surface, like a thin sheet of ice atop a frozen lake — fragile, but there.
He let the thought drift.
His crimson gaze swept the forest around him.
A strange place.
Ancient trees, gnarled roots, foliage denser than any he remembered from the elven forests. The sky was a murky grey behind the downpour. Shadows flickered between branches, shapes moving at the edge of perception.
The world was… wrong.
This wasn't his native world.
Not the Empire. Not the forests of Vaelmont.
A Gate…
The realization came slowly, but with it came another wave of dread.
He was trapped inside a Unique Gate.
A place where time, space, and logic bent unpredictably.
And the worst part—he had no idea when it would open again.
Unique Gates… they don't stay stable. They open and close randomly.
It could be a day.
A week.
Or years.
The thought would have terrified him once. But fear was something he no longer truly felt.
Cold. Logical. Controlled.
That was all that remained.
His survival was a matter of calculation now — not hope.
Blood, thick and sticky, clung to his skin and clothing. His robes were shredded, mud-soaked and crusted with dried blood. His left leg protested with sharp, piercing agony as soon as he tried to move it.
Fractured. Maybe broken.
His fingers, slick with blood, traced the jagged line of his ribs. The bone shifted beneath his touch.
The clinical assessment grounded him, let him compartmentalize the agony and focus.
He moved his hand to his face, feeling the unfamiliar contours of this new body.
His hair was damp and clung to his skin.
His eyes… crimson.
He remembered those eyes. The reflection in a gilded mirror in Vaelmont's ancestral estate.
This was his now.
Luciel Eloi Vaelmont.
And Daniel Carter.
Merged. Whole, yet fractured.
Another surge of bitter emotion welled up in his chest.
He should have died. Twice.
But something in this cruel, cursed world refused to let him.
Very well, he thought coldly.
His gaze drifted upward again.
He'd have to survive here — alone — with no way of knowing when, or if, the Gate would open.
His instincts told him the place was dangerous. The distant growl of unseen beasts, the unnatural quiet between the drumbeats of rain.
He'd need to recover.
Heal what he could.
Find shelter.
Then weapons, Food, Mana sources.
His mind raced ahead, already planning.
I have no choice.
The world wouldn't offer him mercy.
And he wouldn't ask for it.
The screen flickered one final time before fading into the misty air.
The storm above rumbled like distant drums of war.
He was bleeding, broken, and barely conscious.
But he was alive.
And for now… that was enough