I died like an idiot.
One second I was swearing at a moderator in a glow-lit chatroom, the next I was choking on someone else's rotten breath and the smell of wet earth so thick it felt like it had weight. No dramatic light show, no booming cosmic orchestra — just cold air and someone else's ribs rising where my lungs should have been.
My head was full of memes, bad decisions, and the faint memory of a late-night pizza order. The world blinked into focus in slivers: a wooden beam overhead, rain hissing on thatch, a goat bleating like it had a vendetta. My hands—smaller, callused, smelling of smoke and hay—scrabbled for purchase on straw. I tasted metal and spat a curse before I even knew the language.
"You awake, Chief?" a woman asked. Soft, tired voice. Not the voice of a moderator. Her hair was a tumbled dark mess pinned back with leather; her face was practical, marked by sun and work. She held a steaming mug as if it contained the meaning of life. Her eyes were river-stone gray and pinned me with an expression that said she was used to nonsense and had a low tolerance for it.
"Chief?" I croaked. My throat sounded wrong, high and thin. "Bro, you've got the wrong idiot."
She blinked, then a twitch at the corner of her mouth—almost a smile. "You're the one who swore at Old Harven for taking the last of the fresh milk, then banged on the councilhouse door at dawn and declared yourself chief. You passed out after that."
That made less sense than most things life had thrown at me, and I'd been through some weird stuff. I dug for memories of my death—some heroic car crash, a stupid fall, a vending machine incident—but the details were slippery, like oil on water. One thing was clear: I wasn't twenty-four anymore. I was eighteen, or at least wearing an eighteen-year-old's body. Classic transmigration trope. Annoying. Inconvenient.
"Where's my phone?" My first instinct was the same as always. The woman looked at me like I'd asked where dragons kept their chargers.
"Phones aren't a thing here, Chief," she said. "We have horns, bells, and gossip." She nodded toward the doorway where the village pressed close—sun-browned faces, teenagers with knives and bad attitudes, kids who'd never seen a screen. "Call me Lira. I fixed the churn you broke when you wandered into Harven's barn."
"You fixed it?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes. "No. I convinced it to fix itself. Whistled at it a bit."
I laughed, a stupid sound that didn't fit the scene. "Right. Whistling milk churns. Of course. Sensible."
Lira's mouth softened. "You're not funny. But you're alive. That's enough." She glanced at the crowd, efficient and watchful. "The council will want to see you."
Of course they would. Of course I'd wandered into authority while unconscious. Classic. I tried to stand and my legs betrayed me; unfamiliar muscles protested. A kid with a missing front tooth squinted up at me. "You sure, Chief? You can't even stand straight. We could use the entertainment, though."
I forced the voice I used to rile people online—the flat, borderline cruel tone that cut through nonsense. "Listen up. I might look like a kid, but I know how to run a forum. Same difference. Give me a bell and a rule and I'll sort you into roles." It came out like a dare. The laugh I wanted landed instead as a cough.
Lira stepped closer and put a hand in mine. There was a scar across my palm—jagged, dirty. I didn't remember earning it. The weight of someone else's life settled on me and for the first time since the chest full of someone else's ribs and the wet-sour breath, I felt small. "I'm Lira," she said. "I run the healer's work and the soup kettle. I fixed your shame when you passed out in Harven's barn."
The councilhouse was squat with a skull nailed over the lintel like someone had tried to be decorative and terrifying at the same time. Inside, three elders waited like grumpy game moderators: Edda—sharp and brittle as broken pottery; Borrik—a broad, old fighter who looked like he'd bite a sword for breakfast; and the third whose name didn't stick. They asked questions like detectives and expected better answers than I had.
Who were my parents? Where did I come from? What right did I have to lead? I tried charm, the only real weapon I'd kept. I threw out barbed compliments, soft insults, promises of food and walls. People wanted someone who would do something, or someone to blame. Maybe both. The elders exchanged tired looks, the kind people give when choosing a scapegoat for the next season's failures.
Under the council table, Lira's fingers found mine and held on like an anchor. "You're not fit to be chief," she whispered. No cruelty. Just fact. "But neither are any of the others. Maybe that's the point."
My comeback—smart, sarcastic, perfect for a forum roast—died on my tongue. Instead I heard the other kind of word I hadn't used in years: responsibility. Not noble. Not shiny. More like a bill stamped "due."
"All right," I said, surprising myself with the steadiness. "I'll be your chief. But I have conditions."
The elders snorted. The boy outside rolled his eyes. Lira's fingers tightened. "First," I announced theatrically because performance is the language I still knew, "we modernize. We start with the well and the walls. Then we—"
A ripple of laughter. People preferred a liar with a plan to a good man with no direction. That was cold comfort, but it was something.
Lira leaned close. "Don't make enemies faster than you can kill them."
I wanted to tell her I'd spent my life baiting people online and lived to tell the tale. Instead I said, "No promises," and meant it both as a joke and a threat.
Outside, rain drummed on thatch and somewhere a goat made a sound like someone trying to return their life's regrets. I was thirty-six years of sarcasm and regret boxed into someone else's bones, suddenly the village's thinnest hope. I had no idea how to lead. But I knew one thing with terrible clarity: I wasn't going to die quietly.
Lira lifted her mug and gave me a look that read, silently, Try not to ruin us. I grinned, because old habits die slow, and because there was a ridiculous, stubborn part of me that liked the challenge.
"Alright, then," I said. "Let's get to work.