The first thing Lucien felt was cold.
Not the kind that nipped at fingers or crept beneath one's shirt, but the deeper kind—the kind that curled into your bones like an unwelcome guest and made the world seem unfamiliar.
He gasped.
It wasn't for air, not exactly. It was as though his lungs were grasping for meaning, as if something in him needed to be sure this was real.
He blinked. Once. Twice.
Above him stretched a sky that wasn't his. Pale violet and streaked with clouds that moved too slowly, like smudges across glass. It pulsed faintly, as though breathing with a life of its own. There were no birds, no planes, no stars he could name. It was eerily quiet.
He sat up, wincing at the slick dampness beneath his palms. The ground was stone—old, uneven, and stained with age. Moss crept between the cracks, and a faint mist hung in the air like breath on a mirror. The scent of rust and mildew filled his nose, familiar and foreign all at once.
Lucien touched his chest.
No blood. No pain. No shattered ribs or spreading warmth of injury. And yet, he could still feel it somewhere—what had happened before. The crack. The scream. The world blurring into black. It haunted him like the memory of a bad dream that refused to let go.
He looked down at his hands.
Smaller. Younger.
The fingers were his, but not quite—the lines softer, the skin smoother. He flexed them slowly, marvelling at how real they felt. How real he felt.
And yet… this wasn't right.
This wasn't home.
"Where am I?" he whispered, but his voice came out wrong—too high, too light. The question vanished into the mist like a secret never meant to be heard.
The alley stretched around him in both directions, crooked and crookedly lit by strange neon signs that buzzed faintly. Letters he didn't recognise flickered in blue and orange above rusted doorways. A smell of something sweet and burning drifted past, and a creature—no bigger than a cat but with far too many legs—skittered over the wall and disappeared into a vent.
He wasn't alone.
But he was utterly unknown.
Then—a hand. Soft, warm, and small, it gripped his shoulder with quiet certainty.
Lucien turned sharply.
A boy stood beside him. Five, maybe six. Wide brown eyes, too bright for this place, stared up at him as though he were a lighthouse in the fog. There was something achingly human about him—something real and steady in a world that was anything but.
The boy blinked.
"Big brother," he said quietly.
Lucien froze.
Big brother?
And then, like a door creaking open inside his head, memories began to spill through—half-formed at first, then faster, more vivid. A tiny home at the edge of a loud, gleaming city. Hot soup in chipped bowls. Shadows outside the window. A lullaby hummed off-key. Laughter in a shared bed. Chubby fingers wrapped around his own.
He knew this boy. Had always known him. But that was impossible.
He had never been here.
He had.
He hadn't.
Lucien's breath came faster. It was as though two rivers of memory were crashing together inside him—his life before, on Earth, quiet and kind and human—and this one, built from dust and hunger and whispers in the dark.
Two lives. One boy. And a body caught somewhere between.
"Who are you?" he asked, though he already knew.
The boy only tugged at his hand, voice sharp now with urgency. "We have to go. They'll be looking for us."
"Who will?"
But the boy didn't answer.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren began to wail—high and metallic and hungry. Lucien didn't know how, but he knew that sound meant danger.
He didn't need more convincing.
He took the boy's hand and ran.
They tore through the alley, feet slapping against wet stone, past bins of steaming refuse and doorways that hissed when they passed. Overhead, cables sagged like vines and buildings leaned as if eavesdropping. A woman with metallic eyes watched them from a fire escape, but said nothing.
The city twisted around them. Down narrower streets, over strange glowing sludge that fizzed beneath their steps, into tunnels that breathed faint clouds of steam and whispered in languages Lucien couldn't place.
It was terrifying.
It was familiar.
They stopped at last behind the crumbling remains of what had once been a metro platform—its rails rusted and warped, its signs hanging askew. Lucien leaned against the wall, panting, while the boy crouched beside him.
"They came again," the boy whispered. "Last night."
Lucien looked at him.
"Who?"
The boy swallowed. "The ones looking for mutants."
Lucien felt the word thud in his chest like a second heartbeat. "Mutants?"
"They took Mum and Dad," the boy said, barely audible now. "They burned the roof. I saw them. I ran. I didn't mean to... but I ran. And then I found you. Just like always."
Lucien stared at him. "What do you mean, just like always?"
"You were in the gutters. Same place. Same way. Like you were waiting to come back."
The ache returned—different this time. He remembered the fire. The panic. The way his brother had screamed as he was pulled away. He remembered other things too, stranger still—hunger, betrayal, names spoken like curses.
But deeper than memory was certainty.
He had been here before.
Or someone like him had.
Lucien closed his eyes.
I died for being kind, he thought bitterly. And now I've lost everything all over again.
He looked at his brother—his eyes red-rimmed, his clothes too thin, too dirty.
"I don't know this world," Lucien said aloud, softly.
"But you will," the boy replied, with something like hope.
Lucien opened his palm.
There, nestled in the centre, was a speck. Black as coal, warm to the touch, and pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. It hadn't been there a moment ago. It didn't look dangerous. It looked like a seed.
His brother gasped. "Lucien… what is that?"
Lucien stared at it, and for the first time, he didn't flinch.
"I don't know," he said.
But something in him—something old, something buried—did.
And this world, cruel and vast and waiting, was about to learn it too.