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

They called it Hollowmark.

A name spoken like a wound. Not a battlefield. Not a tomb. Something worse—a memory that refused to die.

Kael stood alone at the edge of the estate, the soil brittle beneath his boots. The gates had long rusted open, vines curling inward like fingers begging for silence. Statues of angels lined the overgrown path, heads bowed, mouths open. Not in prayer.

In screaming.

Even the light felt wrong here.

Not dim.

Hollow.

The air didn't resist magic—it ignored it. No birdsong. No insects. Just the quiet pressure of sorrow too old to name.

Behind him, his guards waited beyond the tree line. He hadn't brought them inside. He hadn't asked.

This wasn't their burden.

This was his.

Great Sage:
"Emotional density within Hollowmark exceeds ninety-five percent threshold. Historical trauma, dream residue, and soul fragmentation converging in unstable layers."

Kael exhaled. "In other words, nothing's worked before."

"Correct. All prior attempts at healing or restoration have failed. Survivors revert to silence. Flame rejects fuel. Prayer returns void."

Kael stepped forward.

One foot into the garden.

The mist curled around his legs, dragging whispers from the stones.

He didn't flinch.

The mansion loomed ahead like a corpse pretending to be noble. Blackened walls. Cracked stained glass. Doors that looked more like broken mouths than entrances. The once-grand courtyard was filled with still figures—residents, if they could still be called that.

They stood. Sat. Lay.

But none of them moved.

Eyes open.

Breathing.

Empty.

Kael slowed, heart heavy.

Not from fear.

But from recognition.

He'd seen this before.

On Earth.

In hospital beds filled with beeping monitors and forgotten souls.

In foster homes with children who didn't cry because they'd learned not to be heard.

He stepped into the center of the estate.

The moment he did, the ground pulsed—not violently, but like a sigh too long held.

The torches in the walls flickered.

And died.

His flame, still tucked quietly within his palm, guttered once.

Then went out.

Great Sage's voice returned, more distant now:
"Standard Phoenix Flame rejected. Healing flow suppressed. Emotional mirroring required."

Kael didn't move.

Didn't speak.

Only whispered to himself:

"This is the place fire feared."

Then he closed his eyes.

And walked deeper into the dark.

The inner courtyard was a mausoleum of breath.

They were all still alive.

Kael knew that.

But barely.

Dozens of figures sat or stood along the cracked fountain's edge, unmoving. Faces expressionless. Eyes open but unseeing. Some wept without sound. Others smiled in frozen loops. A few stared at the sky like they were waiting for someone to give them permission to blink.

The magic here wasn't physical.

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It was emotional erosion.

Soul-deep.

Kael raised his hand.

A flicker of Phoenix Flame spiraled up his palm — steady, blue-white, the fire that had healed war victims, broken glamours, and burned through dreamshackles.

It pulsed.

Then dimmed.

Then vanished.

Snuffed out like a candle against glass.

The courtyard did not reject it.

It simply... refused to feel it.

Kael let his hand drop.

Great Sage murmured:

"This field resists detached healing. Passive empathy insufficient. Source imprinting required. Emotional syncing recommended—warning: high personal risk."

"I figured," Kael whispered.

He walked to the center of the courtyard. Sat down cross-legged on the stone, ignoring the wetness, the rot-stains, the pressure of fifty fragmented memories pressing in like ghosts around him.

He breathed.

Not to steady himself.

But to open.

"If they can't feel the flame," he said softly, "then I'll give them the part of me that still hurts."

And so, he reached in.

Not for wrath.

Not for healing.

But for everything he had buried and learned to carry:

– The moment of death on Earth — the blur of wheels, the crush of steel, the final gasp before silence.
– The feeling of being called a mistake by a noble tutor who wouldn't look him in the eye.
– The failure on Floor 50 — Surtur's hammer shattering his bones, the fire giant whispering, "Flame is not loyal to feeling. It just consumes."
– His mother's letter, tucked under his pillow the night he left. "I wish I could have kept you safe longer."
– Seraphaine's voice: "I've never felt anything real."

His breath hitched.

The Phoenix Flame inside him responded.

But it didn't burst outward.

It spread—slowly, like ink into fabric, reaching through the stones and into the still bodies around him. Not burning. Not healing.

Syncing.

He whispered, not to the air—but to them:

"Take this."

The flame wove itself through their limbs, threading through sorrow like thread through old cloth. It didn't shine. It ached.

One woman blinked.

A man gasped and clutched his chest.

A child fell to his knees and sobbed—not because he remembered, but because he finally could.

And Kael sat there, still burning.

Still feeling.

Still giving.

Because in that moment, the flame was no longer his alone.

It began not with a shout, but a shiver.

One man — bare-chested, eyes dull with years of enchantment fatigue — staggered backward and clutched his own arms. His legs buckled beneath him. He didn't cry out.

He just remembered.

And that was enough.

A ripple passed through the courtyard.

The residents of Hollowmark—so long silent, so long stilled—began to move.

A woman screamed once. Not from terror, but recognition.

"I had a son," she whispered. "I had a son. I—I forgot his name."

Her hands shook. Flame licked gently across her fingers, not burning, just warming what had gone cold.

A boy dropped to his knees beside a crumbled fountain, weeping like a storm breaking across stone. "She told me to wait. She said she'd come back. I waited. I waited so long I forgot I was waiting."

One by one, the numb began to weep.

Sobs without language.

Tears without words.

A broken priest of Thornbloom fell into prayer beside a scorched statue, muttering fragments of oaths he thought he'd forgotten: "Bless the flame… bless the truth… bless the part of me that survived…"

Kael didn't move.

He knelt in the center, eyes closed, the Phoenix Flame still pulsing from his chest in soft, rhythmic surges — a heartbeat shared.

He wasn't casting anymore.

He was witnessing.

And still giving.

A local healer stood just beyond the gate, wide-eyed, lips parted in reverent awe. She clutched a talisman to her chest and whispered to no one in particular:

"He's not curing them. He's returning them. Piece by piece."

The estate itself seemed to breathe.

The vines pulled back from the walls.

The statues' tears stilled.

Somewhere deep in the stones, the echo of silence gave way to sound—not a scream, not laughter.

Just voices.

Real. Trembling. Alive.

The curse of Hollowmark wasn't lifted by fire.

It was unraveled by remembrance.

And now, everywhere across Luxuria, the myth would spread:

The Flame that healed not by touch—

But by choosing to feel with you.

Far from Hollowmark, across oceans of marble and doctrine, the mirrored halls of Superbia's Grand Cathedral rang with breaking glass.

A rune-tablet cracked down the center, its obsidian edges still glowing with the final images from the scrying relay. Kael kneeling in flame. The broken weeping. The light that did not burn.

A circle of bishops stood frozen around the shattered vision, expressions taut with fury, awe — and something deeper.

Fear.

"He didn't just mend them," one whispered. "He joined them."

Another hissed through clenched teeth, "Empathic syncing. Voluntary trauma tethering. Forbidden healing arcana. It's—"

"Heresy," a senior bishop snapped, robes lined with silver. His voice cracked through the chamber like a judgment. "That flame is Scourge-born. Unbound. Unregulated. Unholy."

The silence that followed was full of dread.

One of the younger priests — more scholar than zealot — stepped forward, gaze flicking to the cracked image of Kael's face, still half-lit with blue flame.

"But… he healed them. Hollowmark's been cursed for generations. No light reached it until him."

"Because it was meant to remain dark!" the elder bishop shouted.

He struck the floor with his staff.

Sigils blazed.

"Send word to the Watchers. Shadow-class. Track the boy. If the Flame of Mercy rises again… it rises under surveillance."

Another priest bowed low. "Shall we begin containment protocol?"

"No," the bishop said, voice like frost. "Not yet."

He turned to the mirror, now splintered down the middle.

"Let the world watch him."

Pause.

"Let them believe in him."

He smiled.

Then whispered:

"The greater the light, the sweeter the fall."

Vel'Serin slept beneath its mirrored domes.

But not her.

Seraphaine stood alone on a slanted rooftop of black-glass tile, barefoot in the chill, the wind tugging at the hem of her shadow-silk gown. The garden below shimmered faintly with dreamlight. Inside, her court slept, each heartbeat tied to illusions they called order.

She had dismissed her guards.

Turned off the music.

And now, with only moonlight and memory for company, she stared at the scry-glass projection hovering just above her palm.

It was nearly faded.

But she had seen enough.

Kael.

Kneeling.

Burning gently — not to cleanse, not to punish — but to feel.

To give.

To hurt with them.

Her fingers trembled.

Not from fear.

From something she didn't yet have a name for.

The image flickered out.

She didn't dismiss it.

She simply let it fade.

The wind kissed her cheek. Her veil, always perfect, always fastened, slipped slightly — revealing half her face.

She didn't fix it.

Her voice, when it came, wasn't loud.

It was a question meant only for the quiet.

"He burns without destroying."

A pause.

Then, softer still:

"How?"

Her eyes glistened.

But for once, she didn't wipe them.

She just stood there.

Not as a queen.

Not as a mask.

Just a girl.

Alone beneath a kingdom of veils—

Watching a flame she had no power to command.