Darkness.
First there was nothingness. An absolute abyss, without light, without sound, without form. An absence so complete that even thought seemed stifled. But then, like a spark in the blackness, the senses emerged.
A tremor. A vibration in the air. A shiver ran down a back that didn't feel like its own. Then a sigh. A breath escaping from cracked lips. Breathing hurt, as if the lungs refused to accept this new existence.
The eyelids opened. Slowly.
Dim, flickering light. A hanging spotlight swung from the stone ceiling, casting intermittent flashes over the office. Shadows stretched and danced like silent spectres. The scene looked like something out of a nightmare he had read, discussed, hated....
But never imagined to be so real.
-No..." he whispered in a voice that was not his own.
The air was permeated with a sweet, pungent smell, a cross between cheap perfume and something I didn't want to recognise. There was a barely perceptible hum in the air, like the echo of an ancient spell that had yet to dissipate.
He sat up with difficulty, every muscle protesting. His heart pounded furiously in his chest, each beat a reminder that this... was real.
In front of him, spread out on the plush carpeted floor of the office, were four female figures. Their bodies covered in scraps of what had once been formal school uniforms. The trembling light hid the most atrocious details, but he couldn't help but see their faces.
The heroine of Celestial Ice, with her silver hair scattered like a fallen halo, and her face stained with dried tears. The promise of purity and coldness shattered.
Dark Rose, her gaze lost between humiliation and restrained rage, her ceremonial dress torn at the edges. She still exuded that dark majesty, despite everything.
The sister of the original protagonist, whose expression was frozen in a rictus of pain and shame.
And finally, the sister of the original villain... his own sister now. A tragic beauty, kneeling as if apologising to the world for something she had not done.
-No, no, no, no, no..." he repeated as he stepped back. Every step back was a stumble over the carpet, over the overturned chairs, over reality.
He looked for his reflection in the window. A bloody moon rose in the night sky, tingeing everything with a pale red. And there, in that cursed glass, she saw him:
Messy hair, crimson eyes with a slit pupil like a reptile. A smile that hadn't formed but was still on his face. It was him. No, it was not him.
He was the secondary villain.
The hated. The infamous. The destroyer of the canon.
-It wasn't me! It wasn't me!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, as if he could convince the universe, the walls, those unconscious girls... or himself.
And then he felt it. A brutal surge of energy coursing through his veins. His mana, or the mana of the body in which he now resided, was unleashed in an uncontrolled explosion.
The stained glass windows in the office exploded. The walls creaked. A black aura, as thick as coal smoke, surrounded him.
And from the shadows, something awoke.
A whisper in the deepest part of his mind. Old voice. His own voice, but also someone else's.
-Welcome, successor of my will....
-What? Who are you?
-It doesn't matter. Now, we are one.
-No! I don't want this!
-Late. The story has already begun.
And with those words, a flood of memories hit him. Images, scenes, fragments of what this villain had been, of what he had done... of what he had planned.
The power of "Dominion". The ability to claim, train and control anything that was declared to be his. But to use it, he needed mana, far more than had. That's why no one feared him. That's why everyone despised him. A useless monster, until the day that power would awaken.
That day had come.
-I've got to get out of here... I've got to change this...
And in the background, under the office desk, a communication sphere glowed faintly.
It was on.
Everything had been passed on.