.
I looked up… and froze.
Two suns.
Two glowing spheres hanging side by side in the sky, like cosmic eyes staring down, ready to drop and crush the world at any moment.
And that's when my brain decided to short-circuit and start rambling internally like a lunatic. Judging from the imaginary judgmental tone in your future thoughts, I know exactly what you're thinking:
"What is this guy on about? Get to the point already, you babbling idiot."
Alright. Fine. I hear you. Let's rewind and do this properly.
Deep breath.
Here we go.
This is the story of how the incredibly charming, devastatingly handsome, universally adored individual—
Who?
Me, obviously—Chase Sullivan: age thirty-eight, divorced, proud owner of a barely profitable convenience store somewhere in Florida—
…ended up transmigrating (or reincarnating or whatever cosmic nonsense this is) into the world of Divitara.
And before we continue:
Yes, I'm alive.
Yes, I'm terrified.
And no, I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing.
Back in Florida, life wasn't exciting—but it was familiar.
Since I ran the store alone, most days were spent juggling inventory, dealing with suppliers, stocking shelves, and pretending I didn't want to strangle customers who asked if everything was "100% organic" for the fifteenth time. The routine was relentless. The bell over the door chimed, the register beeped, and the fluorescent lights hummed like they were slowly draining the last bit of my soul.
Monotonous? Absolutely.
But it was my monotony.
The days blurred into each other—wake up, unlock the store, work, close up, eat, sleep, repeat. Same tasks, same patterns, same problems. A loop so predictable I could practically live it on autopilot.
Here?
Not so much.
But today was the day the electrical system decided to malfunction. Most of the lights weren't working, and the billing system was down. The fluorescent tubes flickered sporadically, casting the aisles in an eerie half-darkness that made everything look like a stage set for a low-budget horror film.
However, the central light was still on, creating a single pool of normalcy in the chaos. I remember cursing under my breath, wondering why everything always broke down at the worst possible time.
As I was looking for the electrician's contact on my phone, scrolling through my disorganized list of numbers with growing frustration, an old lady stepped into the shop.
She looked like she was supposed to be resting, enjoying a carefree life with family, sipping tea on a porch somewhere and watching grandchildren play. But you know how the new generation turned out. Too busy with their own lives to care for the elders who raised them. It made my chest tighten with anger, though I had no right to judge.
She asked if I was free to help her cross the road since she had poor eyesight. Her voice trembled slightly, and I could see the milky film over her eyes that spoke of cataracts or worse. I wasn't busy at the moment, despite the electrical issues, so I decided to help her out. It seemed like the decent thing to do, the human thing to do. Besides, what kind of man would I be if I turned away someone so clearly vulnerable?
I placed my phone into one of my pants' side pockets, felt the familiar weight settle against my thigh, and stepped out of the store. The afternoon sun hit me immediately, that oppressive Florida heat that made everything shimmer and sweat bead on your forehead within seconds. I took her hand—it felt fragile, like bird bones wrapped in tissue paper—and we started to walk across the road.
There were no vehicles around. The street was empty, quiet in that way that should have felt peaceful but instead felt ominous, like the pause before a thunderstorm. Suddenly, a truck started honking from nowhere.
The sound shattered the silence like a gunshot, making my heart jump into my throat. I quickly became focused because there was no way in hell that a truck should be here.
Trucks aren't allowed on this road, and I hadn't seen one here in forever. It was a residential street, for Christ's sake. The regulations were clear. I quickly looked to the right side as the sound was coming from there, my body moving on instinct, my military training kicking in even after all these years.
It was a big truck, one of those eighteen-wheelers that had no business being anywhere near this neighborhood. I wasn't able to see it properly because my mind was already running like F1 cars would, already deciding what I had to do.
I was busy pushing the old lady away from the road, using every ounce of strength I had to get her to safety. My hands gripped her shoulders, and I shoved her hard toward the sidewalk, not caring if I hurt her in the process because broken bones would heal but getting hit by that truck would not.
As I pushed the old lady away, my life flashed before me. It wasn't like they describe in movies, with every moment playing out in perfect detail. It was more like a slideshow of regrets—all the choices I'd made, mostly wrong ones, and thoughts of Amelia, my ex-wife. Her face appeared in my mind, beautiful and cold, the way she'd looked the day she told me she was leaving. I thought about all the things I should have said, should have done differently.
The truck flung me like a cannonball, and the impact was so sudden, so violent, that I didn't even feel pain. One moment I was there, and then I knew no more.
When I woke up, everything was different. The change was so unexpected that for several moments I couldn't even process what I was experiencing. The air smelled wrong—fresh and without any smell, like waking up in a garden surrounded with great smells, except there were no familiar scents of car exhaust or sewer's foul smell or the particular mustiness of Florida humidity. My body felt heavier, like wearing clothes that didn't quite fit, like I'd borrowed someone else's heavy cloths and it didn't fit right on my frame.
That's when I noticed the two suns , one on the horizon and one on the directly above me .
Two actual suns, not some optical illusion or reflection, but two distinct burning orbs casting their light across an alien sky. I realized with a sinking feeling that the truck hadn't just killed me. It had thrown me into somewhere else entirely, some impossible place that violated every law of physics and reality I'd ever known.
I am Chase Sullivan, middle-aged shopkeeper, divorced, former military ,unremarkable as it can be. That was my identity, the sum total of thirty-eight years of mediocre existence. And now I was lying in dirt that wasn't Earth's dirt, surrounded with some kind of plants that looked almost familiar but not quite, their leaves the wrong shade of green and their stems twisted in geometries that Earth's nature shouldn't produce. I was staring at a sky that had no business existing.
My hands were different too, younger—much younger—and calloused in unfamiliar places. These were working hands, but they bore the marks of different labor than I'd ever known. They were belonging to whoever had died here before I'd been dumped into their body, which was a thought so disturbing that I had to push it away before panic overwhelmed me completely.
The only thing I knew for certain was that I was far, far from home. Farther than distance could measure, farther than any journey could take me back. I was in a different world, a different reality, trapped in a body that wasn't mine with no idea how I'd gotten here or if I could ever return.
As I processed everything, trying to make sense of the impossible, suddenly it felt like I was under attack by this body's memories. They crashed into my consciousness like waves breaking against rocks, each one bringing fragments of a life I'd never lived. The headache was getting worse, pounding behind my eyes with an intensity that made me want to scream.
But I had a decent of experience maintaining composure. Twelve years of honorable service in the United States military taught me that much. I'd learned how to stay calm under fire, how to function when everything was falling apart around me. But let's not talk about the past right now. That was a different man in a different world, and dwelling on it wouldn't help me survive whatever this was.
As I sifted through these new memories, sorting through them like files in a cabinet, I was shocked to my core. This world has magic and something called a "Guide," whatever that meant. I don't mean the stage tricks from my old world, the sleight-of-hand nonsense and smoke-and-mirrors entertainment. I mean real magic. Fireballs conjured from nothing, wind manipulation that could knock a grown man off his feet.
This boy had seen a mage doing these two types of magic once, someone who came from the city with adventurers to investigate something here in the village of Greenvale, although they left quickly. The memory was vivid, burned into this body's mind with the clarity of childhood wonder—flames dancing on fingertips, wind swirling in impossible patterns.
The body's original owner was an orphan named— "EVERETT!" Someone was shouting this body's name. The voice cut through my confusion like a knife would cut butter, pulling me back to the present moment. That meant they were calling for me, for whoever I was supposed to be now.
From the memories I had received just now, I understood that Gareth was calling me. He was an orphan too, another farm hand, and this body's only friend left in the entire village right now. Let's roll with Everett from now on, I decided. All the existential crisis would be left for later when I would be alone and could afford to fall apart. Right now, I needed to maintain the pretense of normalcy, needed to be be just Everett.
"Everett, what are you doing lying there in the dirt?" Gareth's voice came closer as he ran toward me. "Get up and let's hurry for lunch, otherwise it will be gone, and we will have to go hungry for the rest of the day."
He said those words as fast as he could while running toward me, his breath coming in quick gasps. The urgency in his voice told me this wasn't an exaggeration. This was a real concern, a daily struggle that shaped every decision these people made.
I had to reshuffle some of the memories to understand the situation fully, to piece together the context of this new life. More than enough times they had gone hungry because they appeared late there, and there was nothing left to eat. All of the soup—or a thick soup with some vegetables and a little bit of meat, whatever you wanted to call it— gruel, would be gone. Gareth was in a hurry to go to the village leader's house, where meals were apparently distributed. And apparently their home come orphanage, because only orphan in the village were Everett and Gareth .
They went hungry not because of someone targeting them or some conspiracy against orphans, but rather because the village's conditions were not good for some time. Although people were migrating from Greenvale, seeking better opportunities elsewhere, the village leader was trying to do everything he could to prevent migration and provide everyone every chance to live a better life. However, the prospects were looking grim. The memories showed me a community slowly dying, bleeding out as families left one by one for the cities.
Greenvale Village was a border village of a barony named Barony of Wolfmoor. That was all Everett knew about the larger political structure he existed within. His world had been small, confined to these fields and this struggling community.
I was still processing memories about how he died here, and I got nothing. The last moments were blank, erased or simply absent. He was just working in the field, removing some weeds under the hot sun, and then everything became blank. No pain, no warning, just nothing. It was unsettling, that empty space where death should be.
Everett was fourteen years old, height six feet or more but thinner, his body have some muscle but not enough .
There was no recollection about his parents, no warm memories of parents, only Alden. The village elder, Alden, was his guardian. He raised him adequately, which was probably the kindest way to describe what seemed like bare-minimum care for an orphan nobody wanted.
As I was processing all these memories, trying to integrate a lifetime of experiences that weren't mine, Gareth arrived before me. He grabbed my hand without hesitation, his grip surprisingly strong for someone so young, and started running toward the village.
He was dragging me alongside, towing me like cargo, and I stumbled after him because what else could I do? I was Everett now, whether I wanted to be or not. Chase Sullivan was dead, killed by a truck on a street in Florida. This was my life now, and I would have to figure out how to survive it.
That will wait for later lets eat my fill now.