A voice, low and slow like water moving under ice, tugged at him from far away.
Devra floated in the middle of a stage lit by moonlight. The world around him was black, save for the single silver spotlight. He wasn't just watching the dancer—he was the dancer. His bare feet glided across smooth, cool stone, each movement weaving through the air like liquid silk. His right side shimmered with detail—muscle, sweat, breath. But his left side… was only blur. Like someone had painted over half of him in swirling smoke.
The crowd was silent, but he felt thousands of unseen eyes. The blurred half swayed and twisted, out of sync with the other. It moved on its own, as if it belonged to someone else entirely.
Then, a snap.
The blur twisted sharply toward him, and the air itself split open—
Tap.
His forehead smacked lightly against a desk. His eyes flew open.
The dim theatre vanished. The dancer vanished. The blur vanished.
White ceiling. Buzzing lights. Dust motes drifting in the afternoon sun. The air was thick with chalk.
He blinked, feeling the wooden desk under his cheek. His ears filled with the steady, monotone voice of his history teacher.
Wait… history?
He straightened, rubbing his eyes, trying to shake the lingering cold of the dream.
"Isn't this supposed to be history class?" he mumbled.
Brok, sitting beside him, gave him a sideways look. His big shoulders nearly spilled out of the desk, and his messy brown hair was sticking up like it always did.
"What are you talking about?" Brok whispered back. "This is history class."
Devra frowned. "What? It's… history class?" He looked toward the teacher again, unsure if he had misheard something while drifting in and out.
The teacher's voice rolled on.
"…forty-five years ago, entire nations were swallowed in a single day by the Great Tsunami. The phenomenon remains unexplained. Science has no answers, no patterns. It came without warning. China, India, Japan, Russia, the United States, England, Pakistan, Seoul, Korea, and many other countries ceased to exist in less than twelve hours. Coastal lines were erased. Cities disappeared beneath the waves."
The chalk tapped the board, underlining the words Great Tsunami.
Devra's hand, holding his pen, stopped halfway through a doodle. His eyes sharpened.
The teacher went on, "A small amount of land survived—fragments of nations—tiny islands, high mountain regions, and plateaus spared by pure chance. The survivors came together, forming a single unified nation: the Federation. Our duty has since been twofold. One, to serve. Two, to fight against the sea monsters that now plague our coasts. The attacks increase every year. That is why the Wall was built: to hold the monsters back, no matter the cost."
Murmurs moved through the class. Everyone had grown up hearing about the Wall, but something in the teacher's tone made it sound more like a prophecy than a fact.
Devra's skin prickled.
He remembered his own world's history.
And there was nothing—nothing—about countries being erased by a tsunami.
His world had been… normal. Annoyingly, boringly normal.
So why was this one telling him the ocean had eaten half the Earth?
The thought hit him hard, like ice water poured down his spine.
This… isn't my world.
He didn't know how, but the feeling was too strong to ignore. The smell of the air was different, sharper. The light had a strange, pale tint. And everyone around him seemed settled in this reality, as if the Great Tsunami was as ordinary to them as World War II was to him.
Then another thought clawed its way up through the fog.
Memories.
They weren't dreams. They weren't visions. They were his. From another life.
He remembered sitting in his own world's version of this same classroom. The exact moment. He had been tired, bored, doodling lazily, until warmth and heaviness had wrapped around him. His eyes had closed. He'd been in that half-sleep where the teacher's voice becomes background static—
And then… nothing.
No crash. No pain. Just silence, like falling asleep inside a soft blanket.
Only later—much later—did the truth come.
A dark-robed man, gaunt and pale as moonlight, standing before him in an endless black field. His voice was a mix of gravel and wind.
> "You weren't meant to die. A clerical error. The worker of Yama took the wrong soul."
The words had been absurd. Unreal. But the man's eyes held the weight of eternity.
Yama—Lord of Death. Judge of the dead. The name alone froze his blood.
Devra had asked what would happen now. The answer had been simple.
> "The soul that should have been taken was in another world. You will take his place. He will remain in death. You will live as him."
No choice. No trial. Just… go.
And before Devra could speak again, a force had pulled him forward. No falling. No flying. Just shift. The black field melted into light.
When he opened his eyes again, he was here.
This desk.
This class.
This name.
The memories of this body's life had slid into his mind like someone had poured water into an empty glass. He knew his classmates' names. He knew his own handwriting. He even knew the taste of his favorite cafeteria bread.
But under all that, his real self was still there.
And now, the two sets of memories sat side by side like mismatched puzzle pieces.
This world was dangerous. The Great Tsunami was only the beginning. The Federation's wars with the sea monsters weren't just rumors—they were constant. People died. Soldiers vanished. Sometimes entire coastal towns disappeared overnight.
Devra's chest tightened. He wasn't a fighter. He wasn't a hero. He was a guy who had died in his sleep because some cosmic bureaucrat messed up his file.
So why send me here?
That was when the last thing Yama had said surfaced in his mind.
> "You will be given a boon. Payment for the mistake."
He had never been told what that boon was. No list, no manual, no flash of awakening power. Just the quiet assurance that something had been placed inside him.
Something… hidden.
And he didn't know if it was going to save him—or destroy him.
---
The rest of the lecture washed over him in waves. Every word about the monsters, the Wall, and the Federation's duty sounded less like history and more like a warning shot aimed directly at him.
When the bell finally rang, Brok stretched, groaning. "Man, I hate that guy's voice. Feels like he's reading an obituary."
Devra forced a small laugh, though his mind was far away. "Yeah… something like that."
Brok didn't notice. He was already packing up his books.
Devra glanced at the window. Beyond the school's yard, the horizon held a thin, dark line. He thought it was a mountain at first, but no—it was too straight, too unnatural.
The Wall.
It cut across the land like a scar, its jagged top crowned with watchtowers. Somewhere beyond that was the ocean. Somewhere beyond that were monsters that had wiped out half the world.
And for some reason, fate—or Yama, or blind luck—had dropped him here.
The blurred half of the dancer from his dream flickered in his mind.
Moving on its own.
Unbound.
Watching him.
He shivered, even though the sun was warm.
If Yama's boon was real… he was going to need it.