Zul remembered the metallic taste of blood and the steady fading of light. For a single stunned moment he believed he was still in the alley where his life had ended. Then everything changed. He woke under a sky that felt wrong, a pale sun framed by strange clouds, and the foreign weight of another body in his bones. A name did not come at first. Memories returned in fragments like pieces of a burned letter. Faces of people he had loved flickered and disappeared. A voice, not of his old world, whispered a single task he could not yet understand: win their hearts.
He opened his eyes to a room of rough wood. The air smelled of smoke and stew. A woman sat at his bedside sewing. She startled when she saw him breathe. Her hands trembled slightly. "You are awake," she said with a careful smile. "Thank the gods."
"Where am I" Zul asked. His voice was his and yet not his. The sounds felt tilted, as if he spoke with an accent he had never known.
"On the road to Eryndor," the woman answered. "A traveler found you at the inn. You had a high fever. You asked for a name."
He searched his mind for the name the world had given him. Nothing answered. As he sat up, she handed him a bowl of broth with trembling hands. "Zul," she offered as if choosing from a list. "It suits you."
Zul took the bowl and thanked her. He did not know if he thanked her for the soup or for the temporary anchor of a name. He rose slowly and looked into a mirror nailed to the wall. He saw a man in his twenties with a scar across his jaw and eyes that had seen too much. His hair at the temples had a streak of silver that had not been there the night before when he had been someone else entirely. The reflection unsettled him but also steadied him. He had a body. He had breath.
Outside the inn the road hummed with life. Merchants shouted their wares. A cart clattered past bearing barrels stamped with a crest he did not recognize. Children ran through puddles. For a while he simply walked and let the ordinary noise of the world wash the rawness from his chest. Villagers stared at him but with easy curiosity rather than hostility. They saw a stranger returned from death and whispered prayers.
That afternoon a man in faded robes sat with him under a fig tree. His beard was white and his eyes sharp as polished metal. He introduced himself as Master Idir and spoke in riddles that somehow felt like instructions.
"You carry a borrowed life," Idir said. "You are a thread in a pattern older than the road. Three hearts. One task. The world will demand more from you than it does from a common man."
Zul laughed, a short bitter sound. "Do I have a choice" he asked.
Idir did not smile. "You always have a choice," he said. "Only some choices cost more than others."
Later that evening a caravan arrived from the capital. Among the travelers were ostentatious soldiers and a woman whose cloak caught his eye. She moved with the posture of someone used to authority. Her face was stern but not cruel. When she passed, her glance struck him like a hand. His pulse quickened for no sensible reason.
Word of a stranger on the road reached the capital faster than Zul could imagine. Before he had finished a second bowl of broth, a carriage with the royal crest rolled into the village. Two palace servants stepped down, and a messenger carried an invitation sealed in wax. The seal bore three stars and a crown. Zul could not read the script at first. Panic and curiosity mingled in his chest.
"Who are the princesses" he asked the innkeeper as she folded blankets. He had heard of the capital and its name, Eryndor.
"They are the pride of the king," she said. "Atlea is the eldest, she tends to the books and the law. Mare rides with the banners and breaks men who forget their oaths. Lya is young and dangerous in her own way. They say the three are as different as star, fire, sky, and sea. The court loves mystery."
Zul felt a hollow echo open inside him when she spoke of three and of tasks. He thought of Master Idir's whispered words: win their hearts. The phrase felt both simple and monstrous.
He slept that night on a pallet under the eaves and dreamed of three lights each calling his name. He woke convinced that the world he had been thrown into was not random, and that the only way to find out why was to walk its center. He had died once. He had been given another path. He would take it.