He could afford to be relaxed. By his count he had at most a year before the main story began, and three years before his character was scheduled to be eliminated.
In his previous life he had read Dark Header more than a hundred times, so he knew exactly how the story was supposed to play out. He had come across the worn out volume in the corner of the local library, and after reading it once he had become completely obsessed with it. He had never imagined that the obsession would one day be his only survival manual.
Since there was still time before the story properly began and the main protagonist made his appearance, Ran decided to simply chill and enjoy himself until then. The weather really was very nice. Sitting there with his tea, he thought idly that it would be wonderful to sprout wings and fly up into the sky to look at the scenery.
The moment that thought entered his mind, a sudden pain hit him and he lost control of his body.
Ran crumpled to the floor, trying to make sense of what was happening. His body was burning up. This was not the same as anything he had felt before. It was as though someone had set him on fire from the inside, every inch of him at once.
Before he could figure out what was going on, Anna's voice echoed from outside, politely asking permission to clean his study.
At this point Ran could not move a muscle. All he could do was scream for help inside his own head and hope that somebody would save him.
Outside the door, Anna waited. When no answer came, she decided that the room must be empty and let herself in.
The first thing she saw was the broken teacup on the ground. There was no sign of the seventh prince anywhere.
She crouched to gather the shards, complaining under her breath that the cost of this one teacup would have fed her family for a month. Then something moved behind her, and she turned around to find a crow cawing at her.
Instead of being frightened, Anna picked it up. She felt sorry for the poor creature and wondered how on earth it had gotten into the study, of all the rooms in the palace, when the devil himself lived here.
Meanwhile the crow, who was Ran, was trying to wrap his head around the entire bizarre situation. Unfortunately, before he could make sense of any of it, Anna carried him to the window. She was afraid that the little thing would be crushed to death if the scary seventh prince came back and found it in his study.
Ran tried to tell her that he was the so-called seventh prince.
Anna, regrettably, did not understand crow.
She dropped him out of the window and told him to fly far, far away.
Ran did not fly. Ran dropped down the side of the tower like a falling projectile, entirely unable to defy gravity. He watched his life flash before his eyes as the ground rose to meet him, and then, refusing to die as a frigging crow twice in two lifetimes, his tiny brain went into overdrive trying to work out how to survive.
He had wings. He remembered that he had wings.
He flapped them frantically, praying with everything he had that it would work before he splattered across the flagstones. It worked. He figured out flight in the space of a few desperate seconds and soared back up into the air, thrilled beyond words that he was actually flying.
The thrill lasted about as long as it took him to level out. Then a colder thought arrived: was he ever going to be able to turn back into a human?
By nightfall he had managed it. He returned to his study in his own body, having switched back and forth between human and crow several more times until he finally understood how to do it on purpose.
The only problem was that this ability had never been mentioned anywhere in the book. Not once, in over a hundred readings. And now he could transform into a crow simply by willing it.
Ran wondered whether it was some kind of curse from the crow that had latched on to him on the very first day he reincarnated. No matter how long he thought about it, he could not work out why he had gained this strange power, and the fact that it did not exist anywhere in the novel left him more confused than before.
In the end he decided to go with the flow, but to keep the ability a secret from everyone, since a development like this could potentially ruin the progression of the story he was depending on.
He was certain of one thing, though. Whatever this was, it was tied to manis.
Just then, word came that it was time for the evening ritual, and he left at once for the one event he had been eagerly anticipating.
The evening ritual was a sacred event held once a month, where the emperor and his principal children gathered together. Although it was called a ritual, in practice it was a succession test, and the seventh prince was not even considered a candidate worth counting.
Ran had only ever read about it. Seeing it up close was quite different. As the seventh prince, he had to sit at the very end of the table.
He was nearly blinded by his brothers. All that blonde hair and pale, luminous skin, and then his own dark head at the end of the row, which beside them made him look no different from a crow that had landed on the tablecloth.
Out of nowhere, someone began mocking him for daring to hold his head up instead of hunching the way he usually did.
Ran recognized him instantly. Sailos, the eighth prince, seventeen years old, his half-brother, and a boy who clearly did not consider himself anybody's younger brother. Sailos kept picking at him, trying to get a reaction, and Ran was already irritated. He genuinely could not understand what gave this brat the audacity to talk trash when the two of them were both cannon fodder who appeared in the story for a handful of pages before being swept off the board.
Soon Sailos was infuriated at being ignored and barked at him for acting deaf.
Before the situation could escalate, the first princess appeared and advised them both, mildly, not to make a scene in front of their father.
Sailos, who moments ago had been acting like the alpha of the table, instantly shrank into a wet mutt and apologized to her.
Watching the first princess take her seat, Ran finally worked out the arrangement of the others. Starting from the first prince, they were seated exactly according to their rank, and the brighter the gold of their hair, the stronger their power. Every one of them could wield manis, the special power unique to this world, the thing that gave them their identity as royals.
The seventh prince was the only royal ever born without it. Black hair, no manis. That was why, in the book, his personality had curdled into something so twisted.
A few minutes later the man of the moment entered, the one with manis at its peak, and everyone rose to their feet to greet him. It was the emperor, standing at the summit of power in this world.
After the salutation, he ordered the ritual to begin, and placed his hand on a blue stone.
That blue stone tablet was an ancient artifact left behind by Prasa, the first emperor. When manis was infused into it, the tablet measured the strength of the one who touched it. The measure was simple: how far the light radiating from the tablet could extend.
In the emperor's case, the light travelled all the way to the edge of the table, which was considered an insanely impossible feat.
It left Ran wondering. In the book, had the emperor's light originally reached the edge of the table?
Afterwards, the emperor called for anyone who wished to take on the challenge next, and the first prince, Rasia Aberan, immediately raised his hand.