Ayanokouji Kiyotaka had always known life was a game of manipulation—a cold series of calculations where emotion was merely noise, and power the only music worth hearing.
He had played the game well.
Too well.
So when the end came—sudden, unceremonious, and bathed in silence—he felt nothing.
Until the moment he opened his eyes again.
The air was damp. The stench of old wood and mold clawed at his nose. Shadows danced weakly against the cracked ceiling above. He blinked, slowly, analytically, as he sat up from the straw-filled mattress beneath him. There was no pain. No restraints. No white room. Only a whispering cold... and a world he recognized.
Lord of the Mysteries...
The name floated in his mind like a memory, but it was more than fiction now. The textures were real, the smells too vivid, the weight of the atmosphere too crushing. He raised a hand—smaller than he remembered—and stared into the flickering candlelight.
"This isn't a dream," he murmured.
He was young again. A boy no older than seventeen. Black hair hung messily across his pale forehead, and unfamiliar clothes clung to his thin frame. He glanced toward the grimy window, where gaslights flickered beyond the glass.
He knew this place. Trier.
Not as a traveler, but as a reader. A reader who had once devoured the mysteries of this strange, steampunk world filled with gods, potions, and madness.
The world of Lord of the Mysteries.
He closed his eyes and forced his breathing into rhythm. No panic. No wasted thoughts. Information first.
This was Year 1349 of the Fifth Epoch, if he remembered correctly. The events of the main story were just beginning—Klein Moretti would soon become a Sequence 9 Fool.
Ayanokouji opened a drawer beside the bed. A few bronze coins, a pocketknife, a stitched notebook.
And beneath it, a vial.
He picked it up carefully, his fingers instinctively steady despite the whispering voice that tickled the edge of his mind.
The liquid inside shimmered with a dull silver hue, like moonlight caught in a bottle. Cool. Beautiful. Dangerous.
Spectator.
He smiled faintly. "A fitting place to start."
In his past life, he had no power—only supreme control over his own mind and others'. It made sense that his Beyonder path now would begin with the Spectator Sequence.
He pulled open the window, letting in the cold morning air of Trier. The city was waking up—distant sounds of factory bells, carriage wheels, and vendors calling in rough Loen dialect. It was all exactly as he remembered from the book.
Yet he knew: this was not some passive reenactment of a story.
It was real.
And so were the dangers.
The Evernight Goddess Church. The Secret Order. The Aurora Society. The True Creator's whispers. And beyond it all—the Gods of the Celestial Hall, slumbering in their Thrones, pulling strings through fate and faith alike.
His goal wasn't survival.
It was ascension.
Godhood.
Ayanokouji held the vial up to the light. In Lord of the Mysteries, becoming a Beyonder was a dangerous, irreversible step. The potion would affect his mind, his body, his soul. One misstep, and he could lose everything—even his humanity.
But unlike Klein, he had a massive advantage.
He knew what was coming.
He knew the potion's ingredients. The sequences. The factions. The betrayals. The symbols. The madness. The loopholes.
And he had no intention of being a pawn to the Lord of the Mysteries himself.
Without further hesitation, Ayanokouji uncorked the vial and drank it.
The taste was bitter. Then cold. Then sweet—like nostalgia wrapped in fog.
Pain flared behind his eyes, and reality fractured for a second. He clenched his jaw, maintaining clarity as his mind was rewritten, sculpted into something new.
Visions danced before him—endless rows of audiences clapping in silence, masks without faces, eyes behind mirrors. Logic twisted, but he didn't scream. He embraced it.
When the fog faded, and the voices died down, he opened his eyes again.
Sharper. Colder.
A Spectator had been born.
Ayanokouji took a breath and stepped into the light of the new day, the faintest smirk curling his lips.
Klein Moretti... I wonder what kind of man you'll become.