Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 3: Tenth Son

The body belonged to the son of a Duke, more precisely, Asher Wargrave, the tenth child of the esteemed Wargrave lineage. The Wargraves, Dukes of the Zarethorne Empire, were a family forged in the crucible of battle, a clan defined by warfare, renowned for their martial prowess and hardened by generations of conflict.

Asher was sixteen, soon to turn seventeen. As the Duke’s tenth son, he commanded both respect and deference wherever he went. But in a household where excellence was the standard, mere birthright was not enough.

The Wargraves were a family of prodigies, every one of Asher’s nine siblings was a genius in their own right, as were his parents, uncles, and aunts. Mediocrity had no place in such a lineage.

It was not enough to be talented; he was expected to be extraordinary. In truth, the Wargraves were less a noble family and more a lineage of monsters draped in glory.

In this new world, every individual, noble or commoner alike, underwent an awakening upon reaching the age of fifteen. It was a universal rite of passage, one that transcended status or lineage.

Yet, despite its inevitability, the true nature of the awakening remained a mystery to Ethan. Still, as an avid reader of fantasy novels, he possessed a general understanding of what it might entail.

The process of awakening occurred at fifteen, but success was not guaranteed. Not everyone was able to awaken. Each person was granted up to three attempts, at the ages of fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen.

Should they fail all three, their fate was sealed.

They would forever remain ordinary, destined to live a life devoid of power or potential in a world that revered strength above all else.

But Asher had done the unthinkable, he had failed his awakening at the age of fifteen. And that was where everything began to unravel.

Though the world granted a second and even a third chance in the years that followed, failure, however temporary, was an unspoken disgrace within the Wargrave household.

In a family where strength was not merely expected but demanded, such weakness was intolerable.

This was not just any noble house, it was the domain of monsters, a lineage bred for war, where power was legacy and mediocrity a sin.

After Asher failed his first awakening, the ridicule began. His siblings, who had never harbored affection for him to begin with, seized the opportunity to mock and belittle him. Love had no place among them, only ambition.

Each was vying to become the next head of the Wargrave family, and Asher’s failure made him an easy target.

Even the servants, once courteous by duty, began to look upon him with thinly veiled disdain. Some of the maids had awakened on their first attempt, yet the youngest son of a Duke, born into privilege and legacy, had not.

In their eyes, he was a disgrace.

But Asher did not yield. He did not crumble beneath their scorn or the weight of their contemptuous gazes.

Instead, he turned inward and endured. He pushed his body beyond its limits, embraced the pain, and welcomed the silence.

Day after day, he followed a merciless routine: wake, eat, train, sleep, then repeat. No distractions. No excuses. Just sheer discipline.

When Asher turned sixteen, his second chance at awakening arrived. Every gaze was fixed on him, watchful, expectant, unforgiving. Could he redeem himself? Could he finally cast off the stain of his first failure?

Even if he succeeded, the whispers would not vanish. The shadow of that first disgrace would linger. But what followed silenced even those whispers, replacing them with stunned disbelief.

Asher failed again.

A second failure, unthinkable. Unforgivable.

This time, it broke him.

He felt their stares, piercing, mocking, heavy with scorn. The weight of their disdain crushed him, and the cruel satisfaction in their eyes, the schadenfreude, was unbearable.

He could no longer pretend to be unaffected. Retreating to his room, he shut out the world.

For days, perhaps weeks, he did nothing but cry, eat, and drink. He drowned his sorrow in alcohol, desperate to blur the sharp edges of his reality.

In that darkened room, surrounded by silence and the bitter scent of failure, Asher was no longer the tenth son of a Duke. He was just a broken boy, clinging to the bottom of a well he could no longer climb out of.

But none of it brought relief.

The drinking, the tears, the isolation, it solved nothing. If anything, it pulled him deeper into the abyss, swallowing what remained of his resolve. Day after day, the same cruel routine unfolded.

His siblings no longer needed to lift a hand against him. Their words, cutting, relentless, were far more effective than fists. Each passing comment chipped away at what little strength he had left.

Eventually, Asher broke.

One morning, unable to bear it any longer, he paid a maid to procure a drug. She didn’t question him. She didn’t dare to. It wasn’t her place, she was but a mere maid.

That night, Asher made his choice.

He swallowed the drug, not out of recklessness, but with quiet, deliberate finality. For him, it was not a cry for help, it was an escape. A way to silence the voices, the judgment, the failure. A way to disappear from a world that had never offered him a place within it.

Asher Wargrave, the tenth son of a Duke, died not on the battlefield, but in a lonely room, defeated not by enemies, but by the weight of expectation and silence.

Ethan felt Asher’s emotions crash into him like a tidal wave, fleeting moments of joy, fierce determination, quiet resolve... then sorrow, despair, and finally, death.

’At least it wasn’t a painful death.’ Ethan thought, his steps steady as he approached a small table. Resting atop it was a bottle, half full of the very drug Asher had used, and beside it, a folded letter stained faintly at the edges.

He didn’t bother reading it. He already knew its contents. The memories were as vivid as if they were his own.

Without hesitation, Ethan tossed the bottle aside and shredded the letter, letting the torn fragments flutter to the floor like discarded regrets.

Despite having lived through Asher’s final moments, Ethan could feel no lasting weight. The sorrow, the fear, the hopelessness, they belonged to Asher, not to him. And though they had touched him, they did not claim him.

’I wonder why none of Asher’s memories carried any history of this world.’ Ethan mused as he moved toward the window.

Outside, the compound exuded discipline and order. Armored guards patrolled the perimeter with mechanical precision, their eyes sharp and movements rehearsed.

Maids and butlers drifted across the walkways with practiced grace, their steps silent, their expressions composed. Everything moved with the harmony of a well-oiled machine.

Beyond them, tall, elegant trees stretched skyward, their branches twisting like serpents of green and gold. They dotted the landscape in spiraling formations, giving the estate a strange, cultivated beauty, as if even nature here had been trained to obey.

Yet even in all its grandeur, it felt unfamiliar. Alien. Beautiful, but not his.

’If I jumped from here... would I truly die?’ Ethan wondered, eyes fixed on the distant ground below. Or would time simply rewind, dragging me back to the moment I awoke in this body?’

It was a strange thought, one that likely never crossed the minds of those who fantasized about reincarnation.

While others might revel in the thrill of a second chance, Ethan’s mind traveled a darker, more curious path.

’What if someone, granted a new life in a new world, chose to throw it away immediately? Would the force behind the reincarnation intervene? Would it stop them, desperate to protect whatever plan or design it had for them? Or... would it let them die? Just like that. No resistance. No purpose. Just an end.’

The question gnawed at him.

He felt no attachment to this life. Not yet. The emotions he had inherited from Asher had already faded into the background like a story read too many times.

But somewhere in the back of his mind, the real question lingered:

’Would it end?’

’Would I go back to Jennifer?’

’Would I wake up once more in Asher’s bed as if nothing had happened?’

The temptation to test the theory was real, dangerous, but real. Not born of despair... but of curiosity.

The kind that could kill a man just as swiftly as any sword.

”Isn’t this the part where I’m supposed to hear that ding, system activation sound, right after I get my memories?” Ethan muttered under his breath, more to himself than anyone else.

He furrowed his brow, sinking deeper into thought. ”Don’t tell me I’m about to be the only transmigrator without a system.”

He paused, weighing the possibilities.

”Well, in some stories the systems only activate during the awakening. Guess I’ll just have to wait for mine.”

With a resigned sigh, Ethan stepped away from the window, brushing off the nagging unease.

’I’ve been awake for over thirty minutes. Why hasn’t a maid come by to check on me? Or at least to just greet me?’ he wondered silently.

Before the question could linger much longer, a gentle knock echoed from the door, as if answering his unspoken curiosity.