Reborn as the Empire's Blind Prince

1. False Sight

"No—" Ming Ho's screamed as he pushed himself upright.

He lunged forward as his lungs burned for oxygen.

His chest heaved, dragging in ragged shallow breaths. His hands scrambled against the ground, his fingernails catching on dry dirt and the sharp blades of grass.

Then, he felt the heat hit him.

A merciless, scorching sun beat down directly onto his face.

He blinked his eyes. He strained them, trying to find even a flicker of light or the silhouette of anything, but he couldn't see a damn thing.

Nothing but total darkness.

"Where am I?" he asked aloud, his voice a hoarse rasp. "And why is everything so dark?"

He reached up, expecting to feel bandages over his face as to why he couldn't see.

He rubbed his eyes, his knuckles pressing into his eyelids until static patterns flared in the void, but when he pulled his hands away, the blackness remained absolute.

A cold butt oily sweat began to break out on his neck. Panic began to claw at his throat.

'Wait. No. This isn't right.'

He remembered the blue light of his computer. He had been working on his scholarship report for three days straight, the one his entire future depended on.

He remembered the soreness of his eye and the headache so intense it felt like a knife being driven into his head.

And now? He was here. Where was 'here'?

A sharp, hot pain flared suddenly from his stomach.

"Shit!"

Ming Ho's hand moved there instinctively, pressing against his clothes. The fabric was heavy, soaked through with a thick, sticky liquid.

But strangely, the wound wasn't burning. It felt tight and he could feel the edges of the skin pulling themselves together, a bizarre, crawling sensation of flesh knitting back to flesh. It was healing.

'What is happening to me?' he thought.

He raised his hand right up to his face, expecting to see his fingers slicked with blood. Instead, all he could see was a dark void where his hand should have been.

"Wha—?"

Ming Ho remained silent, listening to the empty air. The sounds of the city were gone. The thrumming of his broken ceiling fan was gone. Nothing but the mocking whistle of wind through leaves.

'Did I actually die from that headache?' he thought, the sun searing his skin. 'But if I died... how am I still alive? How can I feel the grass? And the sun?'

The realization came slow but it hit him like a real blow, turning his blood to ice.

'Shit. Could I have transmigrated? Like, in a new body.' He gripped his own hair, his breath coming in short, panicked bursts. 'But I'm blind. I'm actually blind.'

The thought was unbearable. In his world, he was a student, a worker, a man who relied on his eyes for everything. To wake up in a world of pure sensory input with no sight felt like being buried alive.

He felt a sudden, desperate urge to scream, to tear at the darkness until it broke.

Just then, his head throbbed. An intense, agonizing ache spiked through his skull as memories that weren't his suddenly flooded in like a broken dam.

"Aarghh!" he screamed, clutching his head as he collapsed back onto the grass.

The body belonged to a prince. To be precise, Lucian Everstar, the sixth son of the prestigious Everstar lineage.

The Everstars, Princes of the Valerian Empire, were a family forged in the crucible of war, a clan defined by power, wisdom, and absolute dominance on the battlefield.

They were a family of monsters clothed in silk and gold. Every one of Lucian's five older brothers was a genius, a warrior, a paragon of the Everstar name.

Lucian was fifteen, soon to turn sixteen. He was the emperor's sixth son, and he was blind—the biggest flaw in a flawless lineage.

In the Everstar household, mediocrity was a sin. Strength was not just expected; it was the only thing that mattered.

Lucian had spent his entire life being treated like a commoner—no, worse than a commoner. He barely existed to any in the palace. Not to his father, his brothers, even the servants.

He was never at any event or involved in anything except a few selected dinners. He was mainly wheeled around in a chair as he could not walk on his own.

In fact, the only reason he was still alive was the family's ancient, blasphemous law: an Everstar does not kill an Everstar. If not for that single rule, his own brothers and his father the Primarch would have discarded him years ago.

But that was about to change.

In two weeks, Lucian would turn sixteen and face his Ordeal, the Awakening ceremony. It was a universal rite of passage.

If he couldn't awaken his essence, if he couldn't prove he held the Everstar spark, he would be banished.

And in this empire, "banishment" was just a cover name for a quiet assassination.

Lucian had never even seen a sword, let alone held one.

He had never walked more than a few steps without help. What were his chances of surviving two weeks?

Ming Ho felt Lucian's lingering emotions crash into him, a lifetime of sorrow, the weight of being a disappointment, and the silence of a boy who had died inside long before the blade that killed him ever touched his stomach.

'Wait... How did he die?' Ming Ho thought, his mind racing. He searched the memories, but they ended in a sharp and stinging blur.

Ming Ho touched his stomach again, feeling the drying blood. He wasn't a huge novel reader, but he knew the tropes.

Usually, the protagonist enters the body of someone who was just killed and they know everything about them and how they died.

He looked at the darkness around him. Why murder a blind kid who was already doomed to be banished in fourteen days? It was redundant. It was cruel.

'Why was I transmigrated into the body of a blind prince, if he was going to die sooner?' Ming Ho asked himself.

Ding!

The sound wasn't in the air. It was a digital chime etched directly into his brain.

[Transmigrator recognized]

[You have received an early Transmigration Gift]

[Loading System...]

[Transmigration Early Perk System]

Old Name: Ming Ho

New Name: Lucian Everstar

Age: Fifteen

Bloodline: The Everstar Lineage

[Transmigration perk: Due to the Old Lucian being blind, you have received a Primordial gift. False Sight]

[Activating False Sight...]

[10%... 20%... 40%... 60%.... 100%]

[False Sight Activated.]

Light. violent blinding light surged into his mind. Ming Ho felt a headache that made his previous scholarship migraine feel like a tickle.

"Aaargghhh!" He screamed, doubling over.

The pain was a massive ache, pressing against his eyes from the inside. The sunlight from above made it worse, turning the void into a searing white-hot oven. He instinctively slammed his palms over his face, gasping for air.

Then, miraculously, the pain vanished.

He kept his hands over his face, but he didn't see darkness. Everywhere was highlighted in a sharp, high-contrast film of white-grey translucent light.

"Holy shit." Lucian muttered in awe.

It wasn't normal sight. It was a luminous blueprint of the world. He gently removed his palms, but the moment the direct sunlight hit his new eyes, the stabbing pain returned. He quickly shut them tight.

'I can't keep my hands on my face forever,' he thought, his heart racing. 'But if I keep my eyes closed... I can still see.'

Through his shut eyelids, he could see the patterns of his own silk robes. He could see the embroidery on his sleeves—intricate, golden thread rendered in glowing white lines.

He looked around. He was in a rose garden. Somewhere that looked private, he was the only one there. He could see the energy that flowed through the stems of the flowers.

He held the moment, taking in the alien life he had just inherited.

'So this is it,' he thought. 'Lucian Everstar. The blind prince of a shitty empire. Not exactly the future I imagined for myself.'

He let out a long, shaky exhale. He thought of his desk, his computer, the report he never finished. It all felt like a dream from another life. No more noodles at 3 am or exhausting report that he had to submit to get better grades and keep his scholarship. 

Thinking about it, he realized in his old life he barely had anytime for himself. He was working three jobs and still trying to maintain good grades, he never enjoyed life like a normal teenager.

Ming Ho gasped in relief.

'As much as I feel relieved, I can't bring myself to think it's all over.'

He swept his eyes over the garden, taking in again, the world he had entered.

'I've read novels about this but never have I read of a blind prince. And this false sight thing.'

He struggled to stand. His legs were weak and heavy because the old Lucian never used them, always confined to a wheelchair.

The pain in his stomach was gone. He was standing on his own for the first time in this body's history.

Lucian looked at the ground. There was no sword or knife to suggest he'd killed himself. It wasn't suicide that was his first conclusion. There was just a dark, oily stain of blood on the translucent grass.

How strange. Where everything was light energy, he could see the red of the blood.

'This was outright murder,' he thought, his mind sharpening. 'But by who and why? What good is stabbing a person who is already dead in two weeks? It doesn't make sense.'

He tried to recall the final moments, but all he felt was a sharp sting.

'Tsk.' He shoved the thought aside.

As he turned to move, something caught the light of his False Sight—something shining on the ground with a dense, heavy glow.

He reached down and picked it up. It was a ring, heavy and cold, with a star emblem etched into the center. An Everstar ring.

Only the emperor's sons possessed them.

He rolled the ring between his fingers, his jaw tightening.

'Think about it properly,' he told himself, the weight of the ring cold against his palm. 'Lucian was blind. He had nothing, no power, no respect, not even the ability to walk on his own. His brothers had everything. So why kill him now, right before his Awakening?'

'Isn't that cruel?'

He paused, the thought turning cold in his mind.

'Or... there's more to the story. Something I can't remember.'

If the old Lucian hadn't been killed, he wouldn't be here. Maybe he would have been transmigrated into a different story or a different life, or maybe even still alive but now he'd never know.

Now Lucian's memories were his. Not only did Lucian have such a cruel life, he had a cruel death. Ming Ho thought the best thing he could offer was to find the killer and learn why they did it. And if this was going to be his world, he'd need to learn about it too.

"Could it have been one of his brothers?" he whispered to the empty garden. "And what was the punishment for that again?"

He paused, digging into the legal memories of Lucian that guided the Everstar house. Attempted murder against a fellow family member was the ultimate taboo.

"Oh... I found it," he muttered, a cold, jagged smile pulling at his lips. "Forced Abdication."

He slipped the ring into his pocket, his mind already shifting from victim to predator.

"This would seem interesting."

The silence of the garden suddenly felt too deliberate. No one was coming to help. No one was even looking for him.

'I've been out here long enough,' he thought, scanning the glowing outlines of the trees.

'From Lucian's memories, he had a maid who was supposed to be by him at all times. Where could she be?'

He searched around and then the garden gate groaned open.

A faint sound of footsteps, then the rhythmic click of boots on stone echoed from the walkway.

Lucian turned his head, his closed eyes watching as a glowing, white figure approached through the garden gate.