He opened his eyes to golden sunlight filtering through wooden shutters. The air smelled of earth, hay, fresh milk. A child's small body. Too small.
A warm voice called from outside.
"Vael! Vael, lunch is ready!"
The name struck like cold steel.
Vael.
He knew it. He had spoken it in battle, driven a blade through the heart that once carried it. Vael was the villain—the monster he had slain to end the darkness.
Memories flooded: the restaurant's warm lights, guitar strings under his fingers, his daughter's laughter, his son's proud first fish, Elara's hand in his on the deathbed. All gone. Stolen by time, now mocked by this reincarnation.
He curled into himself and wept—raw, wrenching sobs that shook his small frame.
Footsteps hurried. The door opened.
"Vael? Sweetheart, what's wrong?"
Strong arms lifted him—his father's, smelling of soil and honest sweat. His mother's worried eyes searched his face.
He looked at them: the crinkles when they smiled, rough hands impossibly tender, love shining through concern.
He couldn't tell them.
"I… fell asleep reading my magic primer," he lied, voice thick. "Bad dream."
His mother laughed softly, ruffling his hair. "My dramatic little scholar. Come eat before the stew gets cold."
His father squeezed his shoulder. "No more nightmares today, alright?"
Days became weeks, and weeks blurred into months, then years.
When Vael turned twenty, he was tall and broad-shouldered, his frame honed by a lifetime of farm work: hauling heavy loads of hay, repairing stone walls after winter freezes, guiding the plow through stubborn soil under the summer sun. His hands were strong and scarred in places from ropes, tools, and the honest wear of land that refused to be tamed easily.
His hair had lengthened, falling in dark waves he tied back when working. His eyes—still carrying the weight of three lifetimes—had learned to soften when he looked at his parents, to hide the old grief when strangers passed through the village.
The memories of his first life had become gentle ghosts. The second life remained sharper, like photographs kept in a locked box: vivid when he chose to open it, quiet when he did not.
He still opened the system sometimes, late at night when the house slept and the wind moved through the trees outside. The window always appeared the same.
Infinite.
No quests. No demands. Just endless numbers staring back at him like indifferent stars.
He used only the smallest fraction of it—enough to lift a fallen tree trunk without straining his back, enough to calm a frightened horse with a touch, enough to mend a broken gate in seconds when no one was watching. He told himself it was practicality. Survival. Nothing more.
His father's growing older, his steps slower, his back bent from decades of labor, though his eyes still carried the same quiet pride. His mother's hands trembled more noticeably when she kneaded dough, her movements careful, but her smile remained unchanged—warm, knowing, the kind that saw straight through every wall he tried to build.
They never pressed him about the long silences, the way he sometimes stared at the horizon too long, or why he still woke before dawn to sit on the hill watching the stars fade. They simply let him be.
One evening, on his twenty birthday, they surprised him again.
His mother had baked a honey cake—larger this time, studded with wild berries and nuts she'd gathered from the woods. His father had carved a new fishing rod—longer, sturdier, with a reel he'd fashioned himself from scrap metal and careful whittling—the kind that could handle the bigger fish in the deep river beyond the fields.
They sat together at the rough table under the lantern's warm glow.
His father raised a chipped mug of herbal tea.
"To twenty-years," he said, voice rough with pride and something like wonder. "And to the man you've become."
His mother reached across the table and squeezed Vael's hand.
"You've grown strong," she said softly. "Kind. Steady. We're proud of you every single day."
Vael looked down at the cake, throat tight.
He thought of the two families he had lost—one in a rain-soaked crash, the other in the slow turning of decades. He thought of the infinite power humming beneath his skin, useless against time, useless against memory.
And he thought of this moment—three people at a worn table, lantern flickering, the smell of honey and woodsmoke, the simple weight of being loved for who he was right now, not who he had been or might become.
He smiled—small, genuine, deeper than any he had worn in years.
"Thank you," he said, voice steady. "I'm lucky to have you both."
Later, after the cake was eaten and the lantern dimmed, he slipped outside to the hill.
The stars were bright. The night air cool against his skin.
But as he sat there, letting the quiet settle around him, a brilliant beam of light suddenly tore across the sky—not directly above the farm, but far across the land, miles away in the direction of the distant mountains.
It was pure white, crackling with ancient power, descending like a judgment from the heavens. The same light he had seen once before—on the day he was summoned into this world as the hero.
Vael froze.
His heart slammed against his ribs. The date, the season, the exact alignment of the moon and stars—it all matched perfectly. This was that day again.
The prophecies were activating once more.
He stared at the distant glow as it slowly faded into the horizon, leaving only a faint shimmer in the night sky.
Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow I will go to the countryside market. I will see his face—the new one fate has chosen this time.
He lay back on the grass, pulling his coat tighter against the chill.
Sleep came slowly.