'Ah, what the fuck.'
'What the fuck.'
The thought drifted through his mind as darkness surrounded him.
'I couldn't even live properly. Just... wasted it all.'
Kael had been an orphan on Earth. He had no parents, no siblings, no family to lean on.
He was alone.
He had lived in the orphanage for as long as he could remember, but he never felt attached to the place. Some people talked to him from time to time, but Kael never thought of any of them as "friends."
He remembered sitting at the dinner table once. Other kids around him were laughing and sharing stories about their day. Someone asked him a question—something simple, like what his favorite color was. He answered, but no one really listened. The conversation just... moved past him, like water flowing around a stone. That's what it always felt like. He was there, but not really there.
He never felt like he belonged in the orphanage. It was like he didn't belong anywhere.
But on his 18th birthday, they sent him out of the orphanage—he was an adult now. He had to live his own life.
He didn't feel bad about it at all.
Actually, he was quite happy.
He could live his life the way he wanted, and he would have a home of his own too.
But as the saying goes: "Nothing ever goes as planned in this accursed world."
Just after leaving the orphanage, Kael died.
He'd been crossing the street, earbuds in, thinking about the job interview he'd just failed. The truck came out of nowhere—or maybe he just wasn't paying attention. Either way, the hit was instant.
No slow-motion moment. No life flashing before his eyes.
Just the horrible crunch of metal hitting flesh, and then—
Darkness.
Cold.
These were the only things he could see and feel.
It was like floating in an endless empty space for forever. Kael didn't know how long he'd been there. He couldn't feel anything at all.
Until something pulled him out of that empty space.
It felt like his soul was tied to a rope and someone jerked it hard.
The void broke apart.
Light exploded into his vision—harsh, blood-red, and wrong.
Kael gasped. His lungs burned as he breathed in air that tasted like iron and smoke. His eyes snapped open.
'What...' he thought, confused, before terror filled his face.
Bodies.
Dozens of them lay on the ground, arms and legs bent in unnatural ways. Blood pooled in the dirt. It soaked into his hands as he pushed himself up, warm and sticky. The smell hit him next—blood and rot and something worse, something that made his stomach turn.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
The words ripped from his throat, raw and panicked. This wasn't the street. This wasn't a hospital. This was—
A battlefield.
Broken armor covered the ground. Swords lay everywhere, many of them still stuck in bodies—both armor and swords piercing through flesh and bone.
Just then, he heard a sound.
Far away from here, screams
Human screams. Growls and screeches that didn't sound human at all. Metal hitting metal—the sounds of war surrounded him, strange and terrifying.
He brought his hands up to his face, staring at them.
These hands—these weren't his. Rough, scarred, smaller than they should be.
He looked down at himself. Leather armor covered his body, torn and covered in blood. Muddy boots he'd never owned. Terror crawled up his spine.
'I died. I know I died. So what is this? What—'
Pain exploded in his head.
Kael screamed. He closed his eyes, grabbing his head as something forced its way into his mind. Not a voice—not exactly. More like information being shoved into his brain, strange knowledge carving itself into his thoughts.
A robotic voice echoed in his head, mechanical and broken:
\ PARTIAL MEMORY INFUSION PROCESSING... \
\ SYNCHRONIZATION: 23%... \
\ COMPLETE. \
The pain disappeared as suddenly as it came, leaving behind pieces of memory that weren't his own.
It wasn't exactly memories—more like information he'd received.
'Corvin. Bastard son of House Ashenlore.'
Images flashed through his mind like a broken movie. A cold stone house where no one smiled at him. A father who wouldn't look him in the eye. Brothers and sisters who laughed at him and spit at his feet.
The word "bastard" following him like a curse since he was a child.
And then—exile.
Not the kind kind.
The deadly kind.
They'd given him a rusty sword and sent him to die.
This body—Corvin's body—had been meant to die.
Breaking into his thoughts, someone screamed at him.
"BASTARD!"
The shout snapped Kael back to reality. A knight sat on a huge war horse twenty feet away, armor covered in blood. His helmet was up. A scarred, angry face stared down at him.
"Get your worthless ass up and move forward! NOW!"
Kael stared at him blankly. The knight spit on the ground. He turned his horse around, riding back toward the front lines where the fighting continued.
'Move forward? Into that killing?'
'I'll die.'
He didn't want to fight, but he had no choice. If he wanted to escape this place, he had to take the sword.
His hand moved on its own. It reached for a sword stuck in the dead body beside him. The blade came free with a wet sound.
Heavy, Strange.
He didn't know anything about fighting with swords.
'What am I doing?'
Around him, soldiers walked past, their faces empty with exhaustion and fear. Following orders because orders were all they had left.
Kael's eyes went wide with horror at what he saw.
Arrows—several arrows suddenly flew toward him. The kind of scene he would watch in movies. But now it was real. And deadly.
A black cloud against the gray sky. Death falling down in iron-tipped arrows. Men fell screaming—one arrow went through a soldier's throat three feet from him. Another broke against a shield.
Several came straight at him.
They missed.
By inches, by luck, by fate—Kael didn't know.
'Huh, Thank God', he thought.
He let out a shaky breath, his heart pounding in his chest.
Then something went through his chest.
He looked down stupidly at the arrow sticking out of his chest, right above his heart. Blood spread across his leather armor like a dark flower.
His legs gave out. He fell into the mud, gasping. Choking on air.
'No. Not again. Not like this.'
'I just wanted to live...'
Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision.
But somewhere in that darkness, something else stirred.
Something that refused to die.