It all began with a 24-year-old named William Zeta, a university student who was about to finish his degree in Business Administration.
He was born in 1992. He was 1.75 metres tall, weighed 68 kilograms, and had a robust build. His hair was black and straight, and his dark eyes often reflected a mixture of curiosity and disinterest in the world around him.
It was a day like any other. The sky was partly cloudy, and a warm breeze swept through the city streets, carrying dry leaves and the distant murmur of traffic. William left his university dressed in his virtual office worker's clothes—a standardised uniform for those who practised in companies from the academic cloud. He walked slowly along the pavement, lost in his own world, listening to pop music through his headphones and humming the chorus enthusiastically.
"Control is an illusion, you and I are mistakes, but together... we restart the game," he sang with a smile, almost as if that chorus had a secret meaning only he understood.
Several people watched him as he passed by, with curious looks, some confused, others uncomfortable.
"Mum, that boy is singing a weird song," said a little girl, holding her mother's hand as they walked by.
"Don't pay any attention to him, dear. He's a weirdo," replied the woman, lowering her voice and quickening her pace as she discreetly pulled her daughter along.
But William Zeta was unfazed. He had learned to live ignoring the opinions of others, walking as if the world around him were just a passing backdrop.
However, on that day, something broke the routine.
William crossed the road with his eyes closed, completely absorbed in the song, just as the pedestrian traffic light flashed red, indicating "Stop."
At that very moment, a large white truck turned the corner at full speed, roaring like an out-of-control metal beast. It was travelling at over 100 kilometres per hour, and at the wheel was an old man with thick glasses, barely in control of the vehicle.
"Get out of here, you stupid kid!" shouted the driver, honking his horn repeatedly in desperation.
It all happened in a second. William opened his eyes only to see the sky for the last time. He felt his body being dragged by a brutal force, torn apart inside, as drops of blood clouded his vision.
"Oh, shit... why did this happen?" he whispered in a broken voice, before losing consciousness completely.
Silence enveloped him.
William Zeta lost all sense of time.
No pain, no cold, no weight. Only absence.
In that moment when flesh is torn and blood spills onto the asphalt, something deeper,more essential—began to detach itself from him. His consciousness expanded, as if the self that inhabited his body were merely a spark released from a broken torch.
He floated.
But not in the air, nor in the sky.
He floated in what seemed to be the idea of space. A formless expanse, where there was no up or down, only a dense silence that did not come from stillness, but from truth. A silence that looked at him. That understood him.
Then he thought:
"What am I if I have no body?
What am I if I have no name?
Where does man end and what inhabits him begin?"
A subtle mist surrounded him. Blue, translucent, it breathed with him, or through him. Fragments of memory began to orbit his consciousness: ageless faces, words he never said, feelings he once repressed. It was not a vision, it was a dissolution. Everything he believed himself to be was diluting, like ink in water.
He was no longer William Zeta.
He was... a question.
A crack of light opened before him, but not like a tunnel to the afterlife. It was more like an inner door. As if deep within his being there had always been something waiting for the right moment to manifest itself.
And he crossed it.
The absolute silence was broken by a subtle sound: the turning of a page.
William opened his eyes. The ceiling was high, covered with wooden beams and dust suspended in the golden light that streamed through the windows. He was sitting in a chair that was too big for him, with an open book in front of him.
The library smelled of aged paper and dampness, with that timeless aroma that only inhabits forgotten books. Wooden shelves ran along the walls like columns of an ancient temple. Everything was quiet... but unfamiliar.
And then he knew.
It wasn't his body.
It wasn't his voice.
It wasn't his age.
He looked at his hands. They were small, trembling. His skin was lighter. His clothes: a school uniform, a white shirt with a buttoned collar and wool shorts. The reflection in the glass of the display case confirmed the inevitable: he had the face of a child.
"What... is this?" he whispered, and the voice that came out of his throat was not his own, but inside his head, he was still William Zeta.
There was no pain, only an artificial calm, as if he had been inserted into a model of the world. He felt the beating of a heart that did not belong to him... and yet, every breath was real.
"I died," he thought. "And now I'm here.
But who is this child? And why me?"
At the back of the library, an elderly woman leafed through a book indifferently. She didn't even notice that the boy—William—had frozen, looking at everything with the eyes of someone who had seen more than a child should.
He didn't remember his original name.
But he did remember being someone else.
He remembered the truck.
He remembered the blood.
He remembered the question.
Now he was in another body, in another life. Reincarnated, not as punishment or reward, but as an interruption. As if the universe had pressed "Restart" without giving him the option to refuse.
He turned his gaze back to the book in front of him. The pages were filled with symbols he did not understand... and yet, each stroke seemed to hide something familiar. It was as if the knowledge had been waiting for him since before he was born.
Then he heard a whisper. Not in the room, but inside him. Like a thought that did not belong to him.
"The cycle begins again. This time, look beyond the reflection."
William Zeta in the boy's body slowly closed the book. The world was the same, but his gaze was not. Now, everything had a different weight. Every word. Every silence.
At that moment, two children crossed the hallway towards William, whose senses were still floating in a dense fog of confusion. One of them touched his shoulder familiarly, as if waking someone from a dream they couldn't remember.
The first, slightly taller, was named Kael Barrón. His hair was dark as ink spilled on ancient parchment, and his eyes were just as deep, as if they hid thoughts too mature for his age. His skin was fair, his figure slim, but he walked with a serenity that commanded presence. He was approximately 150 centimetres tall and his light body barely reached 42 kilograms.
At his side was Saul Contreras, a few centimetres shorter. His brown eyes, clear as amber in the light of dawn, sparkled with the volatile energy of childhood. His hair, the same soft shade, fell in somewhat unruly strands over his forehead. Also fair-skinned and slim, he was 147 centimetres tall and weighed about 40 kilograms.
"Xahir Quenn, what are you doing in the library so early?" asked Kael Barrón in a voice that seemed to float between respect and camaraderie.
"That's right! Why are you here half an hour before classes start?" added Saul, with a hint of amused surprise. "It's true that the Mana Awakening tests are coming up, but studying only the theory won't help you much," he joked, glancing at the books piled haphazardly in front of Xahir.
William Zeta, still caught between the turmoil of his old life and the gravity of his new one, watched them with distant eyes. These children... they spoke to him as if they had known him forever, as if his existence had deep roots in this world that he was only beginning to glimpse.
"Xahir Quenn? Is that who I am now?" he thought, and the question was not just a mental echo: it was an existential blow. At that precise moment, something cracked inside his consciousness. A click—subtle, almost imperceptible—but devastating. As if a forgotten lock had given way under pressure.
And then the storm began.
An avalanche of foreign memories overwhelmed him. Faces, words, habits, emotions, customs... Everything that made Xahir a complete being began to spill inside him as if a vessel were filling beyond its limits. William felt his mind collapsing under the weight of a life that was not his, but which he now had to assume.
He brought both hands to his head. The pain was sharp, piercing, as if a thousand invisible needles were stabbing his skull with each new fragment of memory.
"Xahir? What's wrong?" asked Kael, frowning with concern.
"Xahir! Are you okay?" exclaimed Saul, alarmed, grabbing him firmly by the shoulders.
But inside, nothing was fine.
"These memories... they don't belong to me. They're not mine. What kind of world is this?" he thought, as unfamiliar images flashed before his eyes: a training ground under a purple sky, words engraved in languages he had never heard before, symbols floating above magic circles.
"What if I'm not dreaming? What if this is the real reality, and my previous life was just a fleeting illusion? What defines reality if not the intensity with which we feel it?"
Little by little, the pain began to subside, like a tide receding after sweeping the coast. William—or Xahir, as everyone now called him—looked up. Kael and Saul were still there, looking at him with genuine concern. And in that gesture, so simple, so human, he felt a pang of responsibility.
"They're worried. I need to respond... I need to fit in, at least for now."
"Yes... I'm fine," he said at last, his voice slightly shaky. "It was just a slight headache. I guess I've been studying too much."
Kael and Saul exchanged a quick glance, then nodded, visibly relieved.
But deep in his mind, William Zeta—now Xahir Quenn—understood a disturbing truth: he was no longer in control of his own destiny. He had been thrown into a new world, governed by strange laws and ancient mysteries, and the only thing left for him to do... was to learn to swim in those waters before they swallowed him whole.
"You had us worried for a moment... stop playing those jokes," said Saul Contreras, his amused tone attempting to conceal his genuine concern.
"Brother, we've really had a rough time... ha ha ha!" exclaimed Kael Barrón, letting out a nervous laugh that bounced softly off the library shelves.
The atmosphere in the room was quiet, but not silent. You could hear the faint creaking of wood under someone's footsteps in another corridor, the whisper of pages being turned in the distance, and the faint hum of the magical light floating above the crystal lamps suspended high above. The air smelled of frozen history, of dust accumulated on ancient knowledge that lay dormant between worn covers.
Xahir Quenn—or rather, William Zeta trapped inside him—nodded with a forced smile. The gesture was correct, the expression appropriate... but his mind was far away. His eyes, though fixed on the faces of Kael and Saul, were looking inward, digging into a depth that none of those present could imagine.
"I must find out more about this world... about this new me..." he thought, as his soul oscillated between disbelief and determination.
He then remembered the countless anime he used to watch in his previous life. Stories of young people like him, torn from their grey realities by an absurd death — almost always caused by a truck — and thrown into worlds where magic and destiny intertwined in infinite labyrinths. Isekais, they were called.
"What if this isn't a dream? What if death was just the threshold to something greater?"
In his previous world, routine had devoured him. Morning coffee, classes, Excel spreadsheets, academic goals, empty conversations... Everything was measured, programmed, resolved. He lived in a system where free will was a well-packaged illusion.
But now...
Now he was in a universe where the laws were still unknown, where his very existence could be an anomaly or a miracle.
"If this place is real... I will do everything I can to escape my ordinary life. I will not be just another cog in the wheel. This time... I will discover who I am beyond the flesh, beyond the name."
As the books continued to emit their quiet presence, and the children around him resumed their conversation as if nothing had happened, Xahir Quenn sat up straight in his chair. His body was that of a child. His past, a fog. But his purpose was beginning to burn, small but steady, like a spark that had not yet found the wind to turn it into a fire.