Dominic Ashborne woke up choking on ash.
Not the metaphorical kind. Real ash -fine, bitter, clogging his throat and burning his lungs with every breath he dragged in. His body convulsed, ribs screaming as he rolled onto his side and retched. Nothing came up except thin strings of bile and blood.
Cold bit into his skin.
The ground beneath him was mud layered with soot, half-frozen and uneven. His cheek pressed into it, and the shock of the temperature sent a shudder through his spine. He tried to push himself up.
His arms failed.
They trembled uselessly, muscles refusing to respond, as if they no longer belonged to him. Dominic sucked in air through clenched teeth and forced himself to stay conscious. Panic crept in, sharp and insistent, but he crushed it down by instinct alone.
Assess. First survive. Panic later.
Memories surfaced not of this place, but of dying.
A flash of headlights. The shriek of metal. Weightlessness. Then nothing.
This wasn't a hospital. There were no sirens, no sterile lights, no voices shouting his name. Only wind, carrying the smell of rot and smoke, and the distant howl of something that did not sound like any animal he recognized.
Dominic turned his head with effort.
The sky above him was a dull, lifeless gray, choked with drifting ash clouds. Charred tree stumps dotted the landscape like broken teeth. In the distance, jagged silhouettes of dead forest stretched toward the horizon.
Not Earth.
The realization settled with eerie calm.
His body shuddered again this time not from cold, but from pain. Something inside him was wrong. Very wrong. Each breath felt shallow, constrained, as if his chest cavity were too small for his lungs. His heart stuttered, skipped, then hammered weakly.
Internal damage.
He had no idea how he knew that. He just did.
Dominic clenched his jaw and forced himself to sit up inch by inch. The world spun violently. Black crept in at the edges of his vision, but he held on, nails digging into his palms.
That's when he saw them.
Footprints.
Fresh, half-formed in the mud. Human-sized. Several sets, moving away from him toward the treeline.
They hadn't helped him.
They had left him here.
A flicker of anger rose muted, distant, but present. Whoever this body had belonged to before him, they had been abandoned. Discarded.
Dominic let out a breath that turned into a weak, humorless huff.
"Figures," he muttered, his voice hoarse and unfamiliar to his own ears.
Speaking hurt. Everything hurt.
He looked down at himself.
Thin arms. Scarred. Too many old marks for someone his age. His clothes were little more than rags patched, stiff with grime, torn at the seams. His hands were calloused in the wrong places, fingers crooked slightly as if they'd healed poorly from past breaks.
This body had lived hard.
And it was dying.
Dominic tested his legs next. Pain flared immediately, sharp and deep, radiating up his spine. He bit back a groan and stopped. Moving too fast would kill him faster.
So this is it. Reincarnation. No cheats. No second chances handed on a silver platter.
He scanned his surroundings slowly, carefully, forcing his mind into focus. He was in a clearing if it could be called that surrounded by blackened earth and skeletal trees. No shelter. No water in sight. No weapons.
Predator territory.
Another howl echoed in the distance, closer this time. Low. Resonant. Intelligent.
Dominic swallowed.
He needed to move. Even crawling would be better than staying here.
As if in response to that thought, something shifted.
Not in the world but in him.
A pressure bloomed behind his eyes. Cold. Precise. Unlike pain, it didn't hurt. It observed.
Then words appeared in his awareness, imposed directly onto his consciousness.
[Continuum Evaluation System]
Subject: Dominic Ashborne
Existence Status: Mortal (Unrecorded)
Survival Probability: 12.6%
Observation initiated.
Dominic froze.
The words carried no warmth, no sense of welcome. They were clinical, detached like a coroner's report written before the body was cold.
A system.
So there was a system.
Relief tried to surface. Hope followed instinctively.
Dominic crushed both.
Because it didn't say assist.
It said observe.
"Is that all?" he whispered. His voice shook despite his effort to steady it. "No instructions? No help?"
There was no response.
Instead, another notice surfaced.
[Evaluation Note]
Intervention not authorized.
A short, humorless laugh escaped him, immediately turning into a coughing fit that left him gasping. Blood spotted the mud beneath his mouth.
"Twelve percent," Dominic muttered once he could breathe again. "That's generous."
The system did not correct him.
The pressure behind his eyes faded slightly, but the sensation of being watched remained not like eyes on his back, but like reality itself had taken an interest in whether he lived or died.
Dominic dragged himself forward, inch by agonizing inch, toward the shadow of a fallen tree trunk a few meters away. Every movement sent spikes of pain through his torso. His vision blurred repeatedly, but he kept going, driven by nothing more than stubborn refusal.
He reached the log eventually and collapsed against it, chest heaving.
The bark was warm.
That made no sense.
He pressed his palm against it and felt faint heat beneath the surface, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat. Dominic frowned weakly but lacked the strength to investigate further.
Not now.
He shifted just enough to tuck himself partially beneath the overhang of the trunk, using it as crude shelter from the wind. It wasn't much, but it was something.
Something was better than nothing.
Time blurred.
At some point, footsteps crunched nearby.
Dominic's eyes snapped open.
He didn't move. Didn't breathe. His hand twitched toward a jagged stone half-buried in the mud near his fingers. It would be useless but useless was better than nothing.
A shadow fell across the ground.
He waited.
A pair of boots came into view leather, cracked and caked with dried blood.
"Still alive?" a man's voice asked. Rough. Amused.
Dominic played dead, breathing shallow, forcing his body to remain limp.
The man snorted. "Waste of space."
Footsteps retreated.
Dominic exhaled slowly once they were gone, every muscle trembling.
He had been judged.
Found lacking.
Useful information.
Remember that, he told himself. Remember who decides what's worth saving in this world.
The pressure behind his eyes returned briefly.
[Evaluation Updated]
Subject response: Passive deception
Outcome: Survival
Survival Probability: 13.1%
A fraction of a percent.
No reward. No praise.
Just a number.
Dominic closed his eyes, exhaustion dragging him down again. But beneath the pain and cold, something else settled in his chest.
Clarity.
This system would not save him.
This world would not spare him.
If he lived, it would be because he took that right himself.
And if he died—
The Continuum would keep watching either way.