Chapter 3: His Name Now

The bathroom was small, more practical than pleasant. The floor tiles were uneven, each cool square pressing into the soles of his feet. Against the far wall sat a wooden tub—stained dark from years of use, its edges worn smooth by hands and water long before his own.

The water inside was warm, steam rising faintly into the ceilings. Drawn from the well nearby and was heated. Ruvian unbuttoned his linen shirt and shrugged it off, letting it fall in a limp heap beside the tub. Then he stepped in, slow enough to avoid splashing.

The heat wrapped around his legs, climbed to his waist, and settled there.

For a while, he just sat there, elbows resting on the rim, listening to the faint creak of the wooden boards.

When daylight finally found the narrow window, it slipped across the surface of the water. His reflection stared back, broken into ripples, bent just enough to look like someone he doesn’t recognize.

So, he took the chance to analyse his new body.

‘Fifteen maybe, or younger, if judged by the way his cheeks still held a trace of softness. But… there was more to the shape of his body than youth.’

There was discipline etched into the line of his shoulders. That born from repetition of stacking firewood, hauling grain, and carrying water.

He studied his limbs, pale skin flushed from the bath. His hair was wet and dark, clinging to his forehead in messy strands, and when he reached up to brush it aside, it was strangely soft.

Then, his gaze locked with the eyes in the reflection.

Those eyes didn't belong to Yuzuki Nozomi.

They were darker, slightly blue and terrifying. There was no kindness in them, no warm light or girlish charm.

He somehow liked it.

He dragged a hand over his face. There was no point in denying it anymore. The name had begun to settle in his mouth, no longer foreign, and no longer borrowed.

“Ruvian Castelor…”

Leaning back, he rested his head against the rim of the tub. His thoughts began to settle around him. The fragments of memory slowly stitched themselves into coherent.

He knew what was coming.

The first big arc of this novel.

Zian Herga, the bright-eyed, hopelessly idealistic, and cursed with a hero complex protagonist, was about to get chewed up and spat out. By the second semester at Velthia Academy, the kid would be framed, disgraced, and tossed out like last week’s trash.

After that incident, he'd head back to his village thinking the worst was over.

But it wasn’t.

The place would be gone. Burned to cinders. Ash in the wind. The bodies of his family left scattered among the ruins, stripped of whatever dignity they had in life.

A cruel, calculated turning point.

“What a classic setup for a power fantasy,” he muttered under his breath.

‘It all happened because he was still weak during the first big arc.’

Somewhere in that wreckage, Zian would fall to his knees, fists trembling, and swear to get stronger—to protect the weak, and to never, ever be powerless again.

And because this was a world that played favorites, the universe would answer.

The System would descend.

[Voice of the Strong].

From then on, Zian Herga would stop being just another unlucky kid and start turning into an impenetrable fortress. Monsters would crumble like brittle statues. Villains would be destroyed with a single slash of his sword.

Ruvian leaned forward, letting the water trail from his chin. His gaze was far away, buried in pages he had once scrolled through.

He had read the damnable novel until chapter 1602.

He had seen the slow erosion of the hero’s resolve, the flickers of doubt and the inescapable realization that raw power meant nothing when the world insisted on breaking faster than the protagonist could mend it.

In the end, Zian had failed to save his people, the world as well. Not because he lacked any strength, but because fate was never fair to him.

The beasts at the border grew too many. The calamity that swirled around the continent’s skin refused to wait for him to be ready.

People died not from weakness, but from timing. From his absence. From him being in the wrong place while they all stood somewhere else.

‘One man, no matter how mighty, could not be everywhere at once.’

And now, Yuzuki Nozomi—no, Ruvian Castelor found himself dragged into that very same story. Even worse, not as the hero or as a supporting cast member.

Just an extra character in the crowd. A fleeting ripple in the current of a much larger story.

But the story was his to know.

‘Haaa. Should I change it? Should I intervene? Help that naive loser?’

The thought bloomed something in his gut, an uneasy sickness. A single careless move, and everything could fall apart.

He’d seen it happen before in another novel, people thinking they could change their fate.

‘No, obviously, why would I gamble my life on some self-righteous fool who’s just doomed to fall?’

There was no logic in throwing himself onto someone else’s path, especially when that path was already painted in failure.

So instead, he would forge his own.

If the world insisted on heading toward ruin, then he would face it as a wall.

The water had long turned cold. He barely felt the chill sink into his skin. When he rose from the tub, the ache in his muscles was dull.

He wrapped himself in the coarse towel, the fabric rough against his damp skin, and stood in the silence of the room for a moment longer.

Two weeks.

That was all the time left before Velthia Academy opened its gates.

Ruvian didn’t feel ready.

Not for the world before him, nor for the dangers that hovered at the edges of his thoughts.

‘Well. Let's survive first. Everything else can burn for all I care.’

It was the only truth he could hold on to, a weak thread in the middle of a storm. He dressed in silence, the gentle scent of rosemary remained on his skin.

Ruvian sighed, rubbing his face as if to wipe away the weight of the future.

****

Ruvian pulled the tunic across his shoulders. The stitching scratched faintly against his skin. The seams a little tight, as though tailored for his body.

He remembered Ruvian's mother, late into the night, pouring silent affection into every crooked line to knit these clothes.

But the memory made his skin itch more than the fabric. Somehow, he felt uncomfortable with the affection from the memory.

‘Strange. How a scrap of cloth can drag your mind halfway across time. I don’t even know if I should be calling her “my” mother. This isn’t… really my memory.’

Affection is fine, when it’s yours. But when it’s borrowed? It feels invasive. He can’t even decide if he should honor it or throw it away. What’s the point of clinging to something that never belonged to me in the first place?

Well, it’s not like he can wipe off those memories.

He let the thought slide from his mind, pushed it away and made his way down the staircase.

The kitchen smelled faintly of honey and smoke.

The table was small, yet it welcomed him. A bowl of porridge steamed quietly in front of his seat, the honey forming lazy spirals across the top with a few chopped nuts scattered on top of it.

Across from him, a small figure hunched over her bowl, legs swinging beneath the bench with aimless rhythm.

She gripped her spoon with both hands, half asleep, her messy black curls spilling over her face in every direction.

‘So that’s her, huh? My… little sister. Or, well, his little sister.’

Ciela Castelor.

Five years old, maybe a little less. Small in the way that invited instinctive protection, but brimming with disorganized energy only children seemed to possess.

She wasn’t spoiled with toys or luxuries, but there was softness around her. She looked up now, catching Ruvian in the act of staring with her mouth full.

Something warm, coiled in his chest. A feeling not entirely his, but one he couldn’t bring himself to reject. As if watching her was somehow more grounding than anything else.

“Why’re you lookin’ at me like that?” she mumbled, cheeks full like a chipmunk mid-heist.

Ruvian blinked, caught off guard.

‘Had I been staring that long?’

“You… you look like a squirrel,” Ruvian said flatly.

Her face scrunched, offended, until a smile broke through.

“Whaaat~ No. I don’t. And squirrels don’t eat porridge,” she declared, full of absolute certainty and none of the logic to back it up.

The warmth of her childishness spread through him, filling his hollow. Ruvian sighed, spooning another bite into his mouth.

Normally, their father would have already been at the head of the table, halfway through his breakfast, preparing for another long day of work.

A wheelwright by trade, he spent his hours surrounded by splinters and iron. It was honest labour.

He didn’t speak much, but when he did, it was always steady. “He left early,” their mother had said when Ruvian came downstairs.

His gaze deviated to Ciela, still kicking her legs and chewing like breakfast was the most important mission of her life. It was a small life, tucked away from the chaos that ruled elsewhere.

‘For now, at least.’

He set his spoon down.

Throughout the meal, or what passed for one, he tried to piece together the original boy whose body he now inhabited.

There was no mystery to him. The memories painted Ruvian as a quiet child, dutiful to a fault, the type who never raised his voice and never caused trouble.

‘At least, he's not a troublemaker. So, it wouldn't be a problem to impersonate his character.’

He can easily imitate that, but with his sister? A totally different story. The original Ruvian spoiled her rotten. That is something he couldn't afford to be.

‘What kind of sis-con does that? A brother’s job is to keep a child grounded, not feed every ridiculous whim like a personal servant. Piggyback rides included!’

Even now, halfway through her porridge, she kept sneaking glances at him.

‘No surprise this chipmunk stuck to him like a limpet.’

Then, a thought fitted briefly across his mind, a deeper question lingered. What had happened to this family when the world collapsed?

‘Did they… survive?’

He already knew.

The answer sat in the back of his mind. He pushed the thought aside and reached for his spoon again.

“Eat slower,” he said.

Ciela just grinned, honey on her face and zero intention of listening.

****

Ruvian returned to his room.

“It's been 2 hours and 9 minutes since I’ve been here. What a shame, this has the potential to be my greatest nightmare…”

The moment he realised he was inside the damnable novel, he immediately tracked the time as he always did out of habit.

‘No, since this is now my reality, the worst is yet to come…’

Breakfast had done its job, as his stomach no longer protested with the sounds of a dying beast, but it had done very little to quiet the deeper, more inconvenient hunger clawing at the edges of his thoughts.

‘If I want to survive, I need to plan.’

The room he stepped into wasn’t particularly impressive. His eyes swept over it with quiet familiarity.

It was home.

Or at least, it had been for the other him.

A plain wooden desk sat beneath the window, its surface scuffed from years of use, as if someone had tried to polish it at some point.

To the right, just beside the wardrobe, a neat stack of boxes rested against the wall. They contained everything he’d need for his departure:

Academy-issued clothing, crisp notebooks, a second-hand pair of boots, and a small leather pouch heavy with the jingle of coins saved.

The original Ruvian had packed and bought them. Ruvian stared at the boxes for a moment longer than he needed to.

Shaking off the weight of it, he moved toward the desk, pulling the chair back with the quiet finality of someone about to start a contingency plan.

The surface was cluttered with stray papers, study notes, practice schedules, and the rough draft of a letter he’d probably meant to send to the academy.

None of that mattered now.

Ruvian swept the scattered papers aside and found a fresh sheet. The quill in his hand felt foreign and awkward.

He hesitated, before finally setting the tip of the quill to the paper.

“First, the story must progress as it should.”