In the beginning there was only darkness—
wet, cramped, suffocating darkness.
Same as the first time.
Same as the second.
Like being stuffed into a rush-hour train made of meat and panic.
He floated there, jammed shoulder to shoulder—if sperms even had shoulders—with a million other twitching things. White swimmers. Worms in boiling soup. They pulsed and wriggled and slammed into one another, every one of them hurling forward on pure brainless instinct toward some unknowable prize.
Most of them, anyway.
Not him.
The first time he'd been here, he remembered none of it.
The second time, he'd just been confused as hell.
But now—third run—he had a pretty decent idea.
This wasn't a replay. This was a fresh save file. A new roll of the dice. For whatever cosmic-joke reason, he—a man once named Wolf—had been tossed back into the game again. And again. And again.
Not because he'd been wise.
Not because he'd been kind.
If anything, the opposite. He'd been good at fighting. Good at killing. Excellent at getting killed way too early. Beyond that, his résumé was mostly blank space and bad decisions.
His thoughts cut off as his tiny world—the ball sack of some poor bastard who was apparently going to be his new father—shuddered with a deep, seismic tremor.
Then everything changed.
A tidal force seized him and the whole churning swarm, flinging them forward like a million white rockets into the void. For a heartbeat there was nothing but speed and pressure and roaring liquid darkness. Then the launch ended with a wet, sickening splat against fleshy walls.
New territory.
His soon-to-be mother.
The race began.
Only one winner. Everyone else? Fertility paste.
Wolf kicked into overdrive, thrashing his tail with everything his microscopic body had.
He shoved. He rammed. He bulldozed through the crowd. Same as last time, he was bigger, meaner, and somehow sharper than the others—a king sperm with anger issues and no crown.
He had no idea why it was always like this. Why the rest felt slower, weaker, dumber. He couldn't see for shit in this form—no eyes, no ears, no map.
Didn't matter.
He was winning.
Instinct screamed he was headed the right way. That was enough. Wolf—currently just one nameless speck in an ocean of millions—was already annihilating the field.
One sperm smashed into a wall of flesh and stuck there, twitching.
Another veered off into dead space, lost in the warm, pointless dark.
A third drifted too close. Wolf tore past it like a torpedo made of spite.
He was a spear through a tunnel of liquid fire. The world turned inside out—heat, pressure, madness—and then—
Impact.
He slammed into something solid and round.
An egg.
His goal. His door back into life.
He didn't hesitate.
He hurled himself at it again, ramming the surface with everything he had. Behind him, the others swarmed like starving insects, clawing for their own shot at existence.
The egg resisted.
He twisted, shoved, ground his head against it.
It held.
He screamed—whatever sound a sperm makes when it refuses to lose—and drove forward harder.
Then—
CRACK.
The barrier gave.
The others were a fraction of a second too late. They'd be washed away, forgotten, diluted into nothing.
He felt himself slip inside, fusing with the waiting other half that would become him. A quiet, patient presence—almost like a cousin he'd never met. There was a pulse.
Once.
Twice.
Then everything went silent.
Time stretched out like warm taffy.
He drifted, letting the stillness cocoon around him.
You could call it taking it easy.
Or, as people in the modern world liked to say—
he began chilling.
As the slow machinery of growth started its ancient grind, something deeper—older—stirred inside the tiny spark that would become him.
A memory.
A name.
Wolf.
His first life's name.
Then another memory: a rooftop, wind screaming, sky on fire.
His second life.
He saw himself standing on a hospital roof in torn military camo, roaring at the heavens like a cornered animal as missiles screamed down—
not just any missiles, but HIMARS, their thunder splitting the sky as they descended with cold, metallic indifference.
They never hit him directly.
Didn't need to.
They erased the building from under his feet, shredded most of his body, and buried what was left under twisted steel and broken concrete.
Pain.
Then emptiness.
A blank quiet that felt suspiciously like someone—or something—sorting souls the way bored workers sort mail.
And now?
Now he floated in a womb.
For the third time.
Outside, muffled by layers of flesh, amniotic fluid, and fate, he faintly sensed the tired breathing of the man responsible for this mess—his new father—lying there thinking, God, I hope that was a normal one. Please let that be a normal baby.
Oh, how wrong the bastard was.
Wolf had never been normal.
Not the first time.
Not the second.
And sure as hell not now.
If he'd had eyes, they would've narrowed.
Questions flickered through what little mind he had. Some wiseass, somewhere, once said not to overthink the reasons behind life's cruel jokes—just play the hand you're dealt.
Fine advice.
But still…
How the hell had he wound up here again?
He'd already tried—twice—to do something decent with the cards he got.
Tried to survive.
Tried to make something of himself.
Tried not to die screaming like a moron before thirty.
He'd failed spectacularly both times.
Yet here he was.
Back in the queue.
Respawned without consent.
He would've loved an answer.
A voice.
A hint.
Some cosmic shrug.
Instead, he got silence.
Silence and the slow, careful knitting of new flesh.
Cells dividing.
Muscle forming.
Skin weaving itself into existence.
Through it all, the steady thump of someone else's heart enclosed him—the soft, maternal drum marking the curse of life beginning again.
Wolf didn't weep.
He didn't laugh.
He didn't rage.
He waited.
Accepted.
Because in time, he'd grow teeth again.
Fists again.
A body again.
And the world would bleed for it if it had to.
But for now?
He floated in the warm dark, listening to the double heartbeat—half his, half hers.
If he was coming back again…
well, he wasn't complaining.
In the grand cosmic scoreboard, being alive beat being dead.
Being dead was silent.
Lifeless.
Boring.
And Wolf had never been good at staying quiet.
With nothing to do but wait and see what this new life had in store, his mind drifted back—dragged, really—into the past. Pulled by something deeper than memory, something he hated to name but couldn't deny.
Trauma.
The kind that carved who you were, and then kept carving until there was nothing soft left.
It started, as the memory of his first life always did, with the smell of blood and the laughter of vile men standing before a lone tree in a dead field. From that tree, a woman hung. Beneath her, a baby cried.
A brutal, medieval world of death and misery.
The scene he saw now wasn't something he'd witnessed. It was the story of his birth, told and retold by mercenaries who thought it was hilarious. A campfire joke.
They said his mother was dead before he hit the ground.
A hanging tree outside some burned-out heathen village. The mercenaries had grown bored after the killing and strung up every woman just for fun—even their own slaves. She'd been heavy with child, belly round with one of their bastards. Rope snapped her spine—
and Wolf slid out between her legs like a scream made flesh.
No cradle. No warmth.
Just mud, blood, and the sound of men pissing on the dirt.
They liked to say he bit the first bastard who tried to toss him into the burning fields.
They laughed at his defiance and decided to keep him as a pet. They named him Dog.
He remembered learning to walk on stone floors slick with blood. Remembered the weight of a rusted knife in hands too small to hold it. Remembered the day they threw him into a trench filled with moaning soldiers and told him to "earn his meat."
So he did.
He slit the throats of the wounded. Crushed windpipes. Learned how to stab between ribs before he learned how to read. Stripped the bodies for anything worth taking, digging through the dead like they were just another pile of loot.
He didn't cry. Not once.
Didn't smile either.
Beasts didn't.
They beat the softness out of him until nothing was left but bone, scar, and instinct.
By some miracle—or curse—he grew. Bigger and bigger, feeding on whatever dead things and wild green things he could get his hands on. By ten, he was stronger than half the ragged men in camp.
By twelve, he was faster than all of them.
The first time he truly killed, it was his "father."
He didn't feel joy. Or vengeance. Just… quiet.
One night, during another of the man's rage-drunk beatings, Dog decided he'd had enough. He took a spiked mace and gave him a single swing.
Skull cracked like an overripe melon.
Dog took his coin purse, his blade, and walked into the woods without a word.
That was where the legend started. In silence and stolen coin.
He made his name in blood, graduating from Dog to what he really was: a predator. A Wolf.
It wasn't a normal name.
It was his.
The world cracked open around him. Bandits. Soldiers. Nobles. Elves. Mages. It didn't matter.
He killed them all.
Built his own warband—The Black Wolves—a pack of killers who followed nothing but power. And Wolf? He had plenty.
He didn't just fight.
He broke people.
Tore men in half with his bare hands. Learned how to strike nerves so they spasmed, pissed themselves, and died screaming from a single jab to the gut.
He called it the Howl of the Inner Fang—a technique meant to destroy a man from the inside out.
It worked.
He'd exploded a paladin's heart once with just his thumb.
When the killing slowed, the women came.
Broken. Grateful. Tamed.
Wolf didn't fall in love.
He took.
And then… he saw her.
A sketch on a stolen scroll: a throne room of black stone, a silver crown, eyes like living fire.
Olga Discordia. Queen of the Dark Elves.
Tall. Cold. Pure arrogance wrapped in obsidian skin and burning magic.
Wolf wanted her. Not just to defeat. Not just to conquer.
To claim.
The only woman he'd ever looked at and thought: first wife.
So he marched.
Seven cities burned on his way to her.
The fortress of Eostia rose from the earth like a scar—towers of black, spires of bone.
He breached it in a day.
Cut through her elites.
Crushed her champions.
And then he stood before her.
She fought like a demon—magic, necromancy, blades, chains of fire. She threw everything at him.
It didn't matter.
He broke it all.
Then he broke her rule.
By the end of that night, her throne room was his. Her crown was his. Her armies were his. Olga herself knelt before him—not as a queen, but as a conquered sovereign who understood that the world had shifted forever.
Neither did Chloe, the knight-commander who'd fought harder than any of them, escape his gravity. She, too, bent the knee. The old order died; Wolf's order began.
Wolf became king.
The Seven-Shield Alliance fell.
The world knelt.
His throne room became a temple of power and excess. Queens at his feet. Priestesses on his lap. Former enemies draped in velvet, smiling through their collars.
Until that day.
The day the knives came.
It was supposed to be routine. Another afternoon of worship disguised as celebration. They smiled, happy to orbit him, some kneeling in front, others waiting and giggling like acolytes in a holy line.
Then, in an instant, everything changed.
From sleeves.
From belts.
From hidden sheaths and secret folds—
Knives.
Wet and quick.
Olga. Chloe. Celestine. Even the timid little elf.
They stabbed him together. No speeches. No threats.
Their eyes weren't even their own.
He remembered choking on his own blood, his throne cold beneath him.
His voice cracked as he rasped, "Not you too, Olga?"
She just kissed his cheek.
Then pushed the blade deeper.
Darkness swallowed him.
And now?
Now he was here again. Floating. Soft meat forming. Nerves stitching. Organs waking.
Inside that growing coil of flesh, Wolf remembered.
Not the throne.
Not the kingdom.
Not Olga standing victorious over a pile of broken crowns.
No.
This time another memory rose up from the deep. His second hell.
His second life.
The modern one.
The pathetic one.
He was born in Finland.
Somewhere gray, cold, and silent.
Into a cracked apartment with piss-stained walls and two people who should've been chemically sterilized before puberty.
His mother—a rail-thin addict with rotten teeth and collapsed veins.
His father—a broken-faced drunk who smelled like piss and turpentine, who beat her for fun and beat Wolf for breathing.
They didn't even name him at first.
Just called him "that thing."
The state took him at two.
That was the last kindness the world ever offered.
He grew up in care homes full of screaming kids and dead-eyed staff who watched TV more than they watched the children. Nobody taught him anything. Nobody hugged him. He learned fast—if you weren't useful, you were forgotten.
Then one day, when he was around eight, some scrawny, wide-eyed little nerd tried to talk to him. Elias. That was the worm's name. The boy smelled like milk and sweat and fear.
Wolf almost ignored him—until Elias started bringing things.
Stolen candy. A beaten-up Game Boy. Eventually, whole games burned onto discs.
That was when it happened.
When Wolf found his first real love:
Screens.
Games.
Worlds that made sense.
Elves with glowing eyes. Warriors with flaming blades. Cities of gold. Forests that sang.
For the first time in either life, Wolf didn't want anything from anyone.
He didn't need people. Didn't trust them.
He had elves to befriend.
Undead to command.
Castles to burn and kingdoms to build.
He played the ever-loving shit out of Warcraft III. Every faction. Every custom map. Every campaign.
Then it was Total War. Age of Empires. The Sims—where he locked weaklings in pools and laughed as they drowned. Mount & Blade—where he rebuilt the Black Wolves in a digital frontier. And World of Warcraft—where he roleplayed a king, seducing blood elves and executing guild traitors like it was nothing.
He didn't care about real people.
They were soft.
Annoying.
Unreliable.
The ones in his monitor made more sense.
Then puberty hit.
And with it came rage.
Because outside his glowing kingdoms, the real world was rotting.
New faces on the streets. New languages in the stairwells. New gangs prowling buses and schoolyards. In Wolf's eyes, they weren't workers or neighbors—they were intruders. Threats. Loud, entitled, violent. Pissing on bus seats. Groping girls behind the bike racks. Preaching that their god demanded women hide their beautiful bodies like they were something shameful.
He hated it.
He remembered standing in the rain, watching a girl from his class get dragged away behind the gym by three older boys—older, bigger, laughing as she screamed.
No one stopped them.
No one called for help.
No one cared.
Wolf did.
And he beat the absolute hell out of them.
After that, he trained.
Not for sport. For war.
He lifted until his muscles tore.
Ran until his lungs burned.
Fought every day—boys, men, dogs, anyone who'd swing back.
His body remembered. Somewhere deep in the meat, the strength of his first life lurked. Unnatural. Wrong. Like the world hadn't figured out yet that this wasn't what a human was supposed to be.
He didn't just get strong.
He became a weapon.
No one understood.
No one knew.
Not until he joined the police.
On paper, he was just another quiet Finn.
Boring. Reliable. Forgettable.
Behind the badge?
He was Wolf.
And every time he crossed paths with some swaggering little street-king, some loudmouthed thug trying to carve up his country, he made sure they learned two things:
Finland wasn't theirs.
Wolf would never kneel.
He met them in alleys.
In stairwells.
In the back of police vans where the cameras didn't reach.
Arms "slipped."
Heads "hit the doorframe."
Bones "broke in the struggle."
He shoved knives into dumpsters and kicked batons down stairwells after they'd done their work. He wiped blood off his boots before stepping back into the fluorescent-lit stations, face blank, pulse steady.
He didn't stop.
But the law didn't sleep.
Whispers started.
Complaints.
A girl with a bruised jaw and a foreign name who wouldn't shut up.
Internal affairs. Files. Meetings.
They were going to take his badge.
Then his freedom.
So he vanished.
And then came Ukraine.
He signed up to the Foreign Legion with fake papers and very real hate.
He wasn't there to "help."
Not there for flags or slogans.
He was there to bleed something.
Anyone.
And bleed they did.
Just not him.
He turned on his own squad during a recon mission—
crushed one man's skull with a rock,
garroted another with bootlaces,
shot the last one while laughing, then walked away.
After that, he crossed no-man's-land toward Russian lines with their dog tags dangling like trophies.
They didn't ask many questions.
They gave him a rifle.
He gave them results.
He became the Ash Wolf.
The killer behind enemy lines.
The ghost that haunted the road into Bakhmut.
He helped cut the last supply route, slaughtered the fleeing defenders, painted concrete and snow with their blood.
At first they called him a rumor.
A story.
Propaganda.
But Wolf liked being real.
Too real.
He got cocky.
Too many kills.
Too much blood.
Too much fame in the wrong reports.
So he went for the hospital fortress on his own. One man. One rifle. One pair of hands.
He slashed throats in surgery rooms.
Tossed grenades into ammo dumps where babies used to cry.
Strangled a colonel with surgical tubing and watched his eyes bulge and fade.
Then he saw them.
Trails across the sky.
Missiles.
HIMARS.
Too fast.
Too late.
He laughed as the roof cracked and fire poured in.
Then—darkness again.
And now?
He was here.
Again.
A fucking baby, floating in someone else's blood and warmth, with the memories of gods and monsters screaming in his skull.
His tiny body already knitting itself stronger than anything this world would understand.
His thoughts already darker than anything a priest could scrub out.
He wasn't just reborn.
He was reloaded.
And this time?
In the rage-twisted theater of his mind, one thing was certain:
The world wouldn't survive him.