That Time I Got Reincarnated as a King (Old Version)

The first thing Kael noticed was the quiet.

Not silence, exactly—there were sounds everywhere. Birds chirping in perfect harmony. Wind chimes tinkling in symmetrical tones. Footsteps gliding across polished paths without urgency or weight.

But it was all... composed.

Not a living village, but a melody on repeat.

Bloomvale was beautiful.

Too beautiful.

The cobbled streets were bordered with flowering vines that curled around every lamp post like they'd rehearsed it. Each home had identical rose-stone arches and white-lacquered doors. Even the smoke from the chimneys twisted in choreographed spirals, as if the air itself feared disorder.

Children ran laughing through the square.

But Kael's stomach knotted.

None of them stumbled.

None of them screamed in joy.

They laughed the same way—three beats, a breath, then again.

Behind him, Rimuru floated higher, casting a faint reflection against one of the glass-blossom shop signs.

"Okay," the slime whispered. "This place is creepy. Like theater kids who never left the stage."

Kael didn't smile. He didn't speak.

He simply watched.

A street musician plucked strings from a crescent-shaped harp beneath a lilac canopy. His fingers moved gracefully—but his eyes never blinked.

A noblewoman passed by with a basket full of dreamfruit and faintly glittering bread. She smiled at Kael, bowed with impeccable grace, and continued walking—without glancing to either side.

Kael stepped forward, down the path toward the main square.

The moment he did, a group of villagers pivoted instinctively, faces lighting up.

"Welcome to Bloomvale, noble traveler," they chorused.

Perfect pitch. Unified cadence.

Rimuru hovered low and muttered, "Okay, no, absolutely not. That's some cursed musical theater energy."

Kael's voice was low. "Why do they all sound like they've been… tuned?"

He opened a mental channel.

"Great Sage. Full scan. Anything unusual?"

A pause. Then the answer came—cold, clinical:

"Emotional waveforms inconsistent with standard human variance. Artificial dream-layer enchantments present. Group empathy suppression detected. Primary magical architecture: Lust-type."

Kael's jaw tightened. "So it's real. It's not just… a weird town."

"Correct. Residents are bound in a persistent low-emotion harmonic field. Likely the result of ritual binding or inherited enchantment matrix."

A small child ran past—tripped lightly.

She fell… and immediately laughed.

Not from surprise.

Not from pain.

But because her body had been trained to respond with the appropriate sound.

Kael crouched. "Are you alright?"

She looked up at him, eyes blank and clear.

"I'm happy," she said. "We're always happy here. Aren't we lucky?"

The words didn't match her voice.

They sounded borrowed.

Kael slowly stood again.

Rimuru pulsed beside him like a ripple. "It's like… they can't feel what they're saying. Like every word got copied from someone else."

The wind passed through the square again—only this time, Kael noticed it didn't disturb the flower petals.

They hovered.

Suspended.

Beautiful, in place.

Even as the trees rustled in agreement.

This wasn't peace. It was programming.

He looked around—at the smiles, the painted cheer, the perfect postures and synchronized glances.

And his flame stirred.

"This place is a cage," Kael said, voice low. "And they don't even know they're in it."

The breeze curled gently around his cloak.

But even that felt too symmetrical.

Somewhere, deep beneath the town, something pulsed.

It wasn't evil.

It was worse.

It was empty.

The illusion cracked not with a scream, but with a flicker.

As dusk settled over Bloomvale, Kael followed the faint, almost imperceptible pull beneath the cobblestones — a tug in his mana sense, like a heartbeat just under the skin of the world.

It led him to the edge of the village, where immaculate façades gave way to something older. Quieter.

A shrine.

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Nestled in a curve of garden walls, it was small — painted in rose-tinted gold, shaped like an open hand holding a flame. A statue of a veiled noblewoman stood at its center, arms spread, expression soft.

But her eyes weren't carved shut.

They were sealed.

"Great Sage," Kael murmured. "Where's the locus?"

A pause.

"Beneath. Subterranean chamber detected. Entrance concealed behind eastern altar."

Kael moved softly along the shrine's edge, fingers brushing ivy-choked bricks. One patch gave way with a subtle click. A shimmer of illusory script flashed—then vanished.

Stone scraped against stone.

A hidden stairway unfurled, descending into warmth and silence.

Rimuru hovered beside him. "This feels like the part where horror music plays."

Kael conjured a flame in his palm — blue-white, low, steady.

It cast no shadow. It refused to.

The deeper they went, the more the air changed.

Not in temperature — but in texture.

Filtered.

Dead, but sweet.

Like candle smoke at a funeral.

At the base of the stairs, the passage opened into a vast subterranean chamber. Too smooth. Too symmetrical. A dozen concentric rings of red crystal pulsed from the floor outward, each etched in Lust-script — sigils that shimmered with soft, rose-colored light.

Mana flowed through them like blood through veins.

At the center stood a pillar — obsidian black, polished and perfect. Bound in glowing, golden chains.

Kael stepped closer.

Faces flickered in the crystal beneath his feet.

Not reflections. Memories.

A woman clutching a dying child.

A man screaming in despair.

A girl laughing, wild and untrained.

Frozen. Flattened. Trapped.

"Dream-binding lattice confirmed," Great Sage intoned, unprompted.
"Emotion siphoning consistent with ritual-grade Lustcraft.
Residents' spiritual signatures linked to anchor pillar via soul-thread resonance."

Rimuru didn't speak.

Even he couldn't.

Kael circled the pillar.

Each golden chain shimmered with engraved vows:

"Let sorrow pass from me."
"Let fire never touch my heart."
"Let my soul sleep, so my smile may last."

Kael's voice was quiet, but it broke the silence:

"They gave their emotions up… willingly?"

"Likely not," Great Sage replied.
"These vows were inscribed retroactively via dominion binding.
Consent was bypassed by layered enchantments."

Kael stared down again.

Some of the faces looked peaceful.

Others screamed.

But all were still.

"Ira taught me that flame is a choice," he whispered.
"To rage. To feel. To burn — and survive the burning."

He stepped forward, resting his hand against the pillar.

It pulsed.

And in that instant—

He felt it.

The emotional dam.
The flood waiting behind the grid.
Grief and fury.
Joy and betrayal.
Years of memory, pressed into silence by something that called itself mercy.

And Kael was done.

Kael stepped back from the pillar.

His palm still burned — not with heat, but with something deeper. A resonance. The echo of stolen emotions pressed against the edge of his skin, begging for release.

He looked at the golden chains. The silent floor. The glowing lattice of control…

And his breath trembled.

"This isn't peace," he said quietly. "It's pause."

Rimuru drifted beside him, tense and unusually still.

"Kael…"

Kael didn't answer.

He reached deeper — past the anger, past the rage of Wrath, past even his fear.

He reached for the place where Phoenix Flame lived.

Not as a weapon.

But as a promise.

The flame responded.

Blue-white light bloomed across his arms, feathered and radiant. It didn't roar. It sang — soft, sorrowful, like a memory on the edge of waking.

The shrine trembled.

Above, the wind in Bloomvale shifted. The air shimmered — as if the world itself was exhaling for the first time in years.

Kael raised his hand.

"I'm not here to destroy you," he whispered to the pillar. "But you don't get to keep them."

And softer still:

"Flame… forgive."

The fire surged outward.

Not in a blast.

But in a bloom.

A single petal of blue flame touched a golden chain.

It unraveled.

Another kissed the crystal floor.

It glowed… then cracked.

All at once — the enchantments shattered.

Like a wave through stained glass, Phoenix Flame rippled up the stairwell and into the square. It flowed through the village in slow, sweeping arcs — over rooftops, through alleyways, around gardens and spires. Gentle as snowfall. Brighter than starlight.

Wherever it passed:

Chains melted.

Glamours broke.

Smiles faltered… and became real.

A woman dropped her basket mid-step, clutching her chest with wide, shaking hands.

A teenage boy fell to his knees, sobbing for reasons he couldn't name.

Couples turned to one another with trembling eyes. Some screamed. Some laughed. Others stood frozen in silence as memory returned like a flood.

One man ran into a fountain and didn't stop — laughing, choking, crying all at once.

And from within the crowd, a child emerged.

Maybe six years old.

Tangled hair. Dirt-smudged cheeks.

She looked like she'd been crying for hours — without knowing why.

And now, finally, she could.

In her hands, she held a wilted dreamflower — petals half-burned from the flame.

She approached Kael with wide eyes and trembling lips.

"You… you gave the crying back."

Kael knelt.

"It was always yours," he said softly. "They just took it."

She reached out and touched the flame still swirling in his palm.

It didn't hurt her.

It glowed.

"You're the fire that gives things back," she whispered.
"You're… the Flame That Forgives."

The square fell into silence.

No illusions now.

Only breath. Only weeping.

Only life, raw and unscripted.

Above them, phoenix light shimmered in the sky — drifting upward like embers toward a sky that suddenly felt too big to be false.

Rimuru blinked, slowly.

Then grinned.

Then shrugged.

"Well," he said. "Guess we're officially in the business of emotional arson."

The flames had faded.

Only a faint glow remained — humming in the flowers and stones, as if the village itself was still remembering how to feel.

Kael stood at the edge of the square.

Watching Bloomvale breathe.

The shrine behind him was silent now. The golden chains were gone. The sigils had dimmed.

What remained wasn't peace.

It was possibility — the raw, aching space that comes after pain, before anything new can grow.

A former priestess sat slumped against a cracked fountain, dreamfire still singed into the folds of her once-ceremonial robes. She wept openly now, unafraid of what the tears meant.

Others wandered the plaza like ghosts waking from a dream — touching walls, touching each other. Relearning how to be alive.

The child with the half-burned flower sat in the garden nearby, where ivy crept over soil left untended.

She wasn't crying anymore.

Just sitting, knees tucked to her chest, staring down at the scorched petals in her hands.

Kael approached quietly, his cloak trailing the last hints of fading firelight. Rimuru floated a respectful distance behind, unusually hushed.

Kael knelt beside her.

"You okay?"

She didn't look up.

"I don't know what okay feels like yet."

Kael nodded, gentle. "That's alright."

He paused.

"But whatever it is… I think you're closer than before."

She blinked. Then turned, eyes meeting his.

"My mom cried. Just once. A long time ago. They said she was punished for it. So I stopped."

Kael didn't know what to say.

So he didn't say anything. He simply opened his palm.

A flicker of Phoenix Flame bloomed in his hand — soft, slow, silent.

The girl stared at it.

"Will it hurt?"

"No," Kael said. "It's not that kind of fire."

She reached out.

Touched it.

And it curled around her fingers like warmth after winter. No burn. No illusion. Just heat — and something deeper.

She smiled.

Not big. Not theatrical.

Just… real.

And that was enough.

From the plaza, a murmur began.

A name, passed from lips that now remembered how to whisper.

"Flame of Mercy…"
"The Flame That Forgives…"

Kael stood.

His heart heavy — but not burdened. Just full.

Rimuru floated up beside him and nudged his shoulder with a soft gurgle.

"Well," the slime muttered, "you just turned a cult town into a crying garden. Again. I give it six hours before they start carving statues."

Kael didn't laugh.

He looked out over Bloomvale — over blooming petals and bare faces, over people rediscovering their hearts.

"This wasn't a victory."

"No," Rimuru said, quietly. "But it was healing. And that's louder than fire."

Kael closed his eyes.

Just for a moment.

And when he opened them…

Bloomvale wasn't perfect anymore.

But it was true.