The first thing he knew was the scent of roses and regret.
It filled his lungs—not air, but memory. Not breath, but being.
Aarion Vale was drowning in silk.
His eyes flew open to darkness. A velvet-lined prison pressed on all sides. The air was thick, cloying, heavy with perfume meant to mask the stench of decay. But he wasn't decaying. His heart hammered against his ribs, a wild, panicked drum screaming one undeniable truth:
I am alive.
No.
I was dead.
Memories, sharp as shattered glass, sliced through his mind.
Steel flashing. A demonic blade meant for his little sister. His own body, throwing itself forward. The searing, soul-rending agony as darkness took him. Lyra's scream, his name on her lips—the last sound he would ever hear.
And then… nothing.
Until now.
Now, there was this. This box. This silk. This suffocating scent of flowers.
He pushed. Wood groaned above him. A sliver of light, harsh and unwelcome, cut through the darkness. He heard gasps. Muffled cries. The sound of someone praying very, very fast.
With a strength he didn't know he possessed, he shoved harder. The coffin lid, ornate and heavy, swung open with a crash that silenced the room.
He sat up, gasping, his lungs burning with real air. Silk pillows and white lilies tumbled to the floor around him.
He was on a raised dais, in a grand hall filled with weeping people in black. Stained-glass windows cast colored shadows on their horrified faces. He was the centerpiece of his own funeral.
A woman with a face of carved ice and eyes red from crying—a mother's eyes—staggered back, a hand flying to her mouth. "Elian…?"
The name meant nothing to him.
His gaze swept the room. He saw his own hands—pale, slender, a nobleman's hands. Not his own. He wore clothes of fine black velvet, embroidered with a crest he didn't recognize. This wasn't his body. This wasn't his life.
But the memories of this body, this Elian, flooded in, a poisoned river.
Shame. Failure. A noble son, disgraced. A bottle of wine, a handful of pills. The sweet, welcoming embrace of oblivion.
Two deaths. Two sets of memories. Two souls crashing together in one fragile vessel.
The world tilted. The mourners' faces blurred, their whispers becoming the roar of a distant ocean.
"He was dead…"
"The pulse was gone for hours…"
"A miracle… A curse…"
Aarion—Elian?—clutched the sides of the coffin, his knuckles white. The ghost of a demonic blade still burned in his chest. The echo of his sister's scream still echoed in his ears.
And then, a voice. Not from the room. Not from the memories.
It was a whisper from a place deeper than bone, older than time. A voice made of starlight and sorrow, etched directly onto his soul.
"Breathe, my king. You are not alone."
As the voice faded, something shimmered into existence in the air before him. Lines of light, intricate and impossible, weaving together like liquid gold. They formed words that hung there, burning with silent power.
[SOUL DAGGER SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[HOST VESSEL: ELIAN VON CREST - STATUS: COMPATIBLE]
[SOUL SIGNATURE: AARION VALE - STATUS: CONFIRMED]
[CONDITION MET: DEATH IN SACRIFICE]
[WELCOME BACK, FORGER.]
The nobleman's mother took a hesitant step forward, her hope warring with her terror. "My son… can you hear me?"
Aarion looked from her tear-streaked face to the glowing, celestial text only he could see. He looked at the strange hands attached to his wrists, at the funeral for a boy he never was.
He had died a hero in one life.
He had awoken a coward in another.
A slow, cold rain began to patter against the stained-glass windows, the sky weeping for a story that was only just beginning.
He opened his mouth, and a stranger's voice, rough with disuse, scraped its way out.
"Where…" he whispered, his eyes locked on the spectral words, "…is my sister?"
And in the deepest chamber of his resurrected heart, the silver soul of a dagger named Lyria began to beat for the first time in two hundred years.
To be continued...