The Demon Emperor's System: I Rose From a Dead Body

Cold.

That was the first thing. Cold stone under his back, cold air in his mouth, and a dull ache under his ribs where something sharp had gone in.

Adrian Vale opened his eyes.

A stone ceiling. Black beams. One candle burned on a table to his left, and the flame leaned sideways like it was scared of something.

He tried to sit up. His body didn't listen.

*Okay. What is this?*

The last thing he remembered was his desk. Two monitors, a cup of cold instant noodles, a loading screen for a game he'd never heard of. Demon Realm Online. Black background, red letters. *Press any key to wake.*

He had pressed a key. Then nothing.

Now this.

His right hand twitched. That was something. He dragged it up across his chest and felt wet cloth, stiff and sticky. He looked down.

A silk shirt, white once. The whole front was dark red now, with a hole in it the width of two fingers. The room smelled like pennies and smoke.

He stared at the hole.

His heart wasn't beating.

He waited. Counted to five. Pressed two fingers against his throat, then his wrist. Nothing. His chest sat still like a shut door.

His tongue found a coppery taste at the back of his mouth. His lips were cracked. His whole body felt like a coat that belonged to someone taller, hanging off him in the wrong places.

The hand was wrong, too. Long fingers, soft palms, clean nails. A heavy silver ring on the middle finger, stamped with a wolf's head. Adrian had never worn a ring in his life.

"I'm dead," he said. It came out as a croak. "I'm dead and I'm talking."

"You were dead."

The voice came from right beside him. A woman's, low and calm. The kind of calm you hear right before somebody breaks a plate.

Adrian turned his head. Pain ran down his neck like a hot wire.

A girl sat on the edge of the table with one leg crossed over the other and a long curved sword lying across her knees. She looked about twenty. Black hair cut sharp at the jaw. Skin pale as paper. Two horns curled back from her forehead, dark and polished like wet river stones.

Her eyes were red. Not red like a bad photo. Red like the inside of a forge.

She wiped the blade with a strip of cloth. Slowly. Front, then back.

"Interesting," she said. "Most of them stay down."

Adrian's mouth was dry, which made no sense, since he had no pulse. "Who are you?"

"You don't know me?" One eyebrow lifted. "That's new. Two nights ago you were screaming my name across the Gilded Hall."

"That wasn't me."

It slipped out. Stupid. He watched her face.

The cloth stopped moving.

The candle popped. Outside, a dog barked once and went quiet.

"Say that again."

"I mean, I don't remember. My head's..." He let it trail off and pressed a hand to his temple.

That was when the memories hit.

They didn't come like a story. They came like a bucket of ice water to the face. A wide marble hall, hundreds of people laughing. A man with golden hair and a kind smile, saying *Poor Adrian, you really have no idea what you've done.* A ledger with a number at the bottom. Forty-one thousand gold crowns. A pair of red eyes across a candlelit room, and a blade coming in fast and clean.

Pain. Then a long fall into black.

Adrian dragged in a breath he didn't need.

Somebody else's memories. Somebody who had lived in this body before him, and died in it.

The somebody's name was Adrian Vale.

Same name. Exactly the same.

*That's not luck.* The thought landed flat and cold. Nothing about this felt like luck.

"Your face just changed," the girl said. She was watching him now the way a cat watches a hole in the wall. "Remember something?"

"Yeah." He made himself look at her. "You. Seraphina."

"Good." She slid off the table. Her boots made no sound on the stone. "Then you know why I'm here."

"Somebody paid you."

"Somebody paid me." She tilted her head. "Thirty thousand crowns. Half up front. I'm very good at what I do, so I'd really like to know how you're lying there talking to me."

"I'd like to know that too."

"Funny." She wasn't smiling. "Your heart stopped two hours ago. I watched it. I checked twice, with my own hand. Then I sat down to wait."

"Wait for what?"

"My employer. He's late with the second half." She shrugged, one shoulder. "Dead men don't mind waiting. You didn't, until just now."

Her hand shifted on the grip.

Adrian looked at the room again, properly this time. A study. Bookshelves, half of them knocked flat. A desk split down the middle. Papers all over the floor, and a dark smear of blood leading from the doorway to where his body lay, like someone had dragged him.

Someone had. Her, probably.

He tried to roll onto his side. His legs were dead weight. His arms shook. He got one elbow under him and the whole room tilted sideways.

Then something thumped inside his chest.

One beat. Heavy, like a fist on a door.

Then another.

Seraphina went very still. Her red eyes dropped to his shirt, to the hole, to the place where a heartbeat shouldn't be.

"Well," she said softly. "That's rude."

"Wait."

"No."

"Just listen for a second. Whoever hired you..."

"Don't." Her voice was almost kind. "Don't try to talk your way out. They all do. It makes the next part harder for me."

"I can pay you more."

"With what?" She laughed, short and dry. "You owe forty-one thousand crowns, little lord. The pig farmers in the lower district know that number. The beggars know it."

He had no answer. She was right. He'd just watched the ledger in somebody else's head.

His heart kept hammering now, faster, as if it was trying to catch up on two hours of work. Blood moved in his ears. His fingers tingled. Alive, then. Alive for how long was the real question.

Seraphina set the cloth down on the table, neatly, the way a person tidies up before leaving a house. She turned the sword in her hand until the point hung over his chest, right above the old wound.

"It's nothing personal," she said. "I want you to know that."

"That's what people say when it's personal."

For one half second her mouth twitched. Almost a smile.

Then it was gone.

"Close your eyes," she said.

Adrian didn't. He looked at the point of the blade, at the candle shaking in its light, at the red eyes above it that did not blink.

*I just got here.*

Her arm drew back.

The blade came down.