The office sat like a crown atop the high-rise, framed in angular steel and sheets of mirrored glass. Outside, the city stretched in every direction, blurred by a ceiling of low-hanging clouds the color of iron. Inside, the quiet was cultivated—thick carpet muffling footsteps, recessed lights glowing with sterile warmth, and a desk the size of a small aircraft wing anchoring the room in authority.

  Behind it, a man in his mid-fifties tapped through a floating screen of semi-transparent data. His silver hair, combed back with the precision of habit, gleamed faintly in the overhead light. The suit he wore was tailored to perfection—slate grey with a whisper of pinstripes that caught only the sharpest angles of illumination. Understated power.

  The soft chime of an incoming call vibrated through the air. He accepted it with a flick of two fingers.

  "Yes?"

  His voice was clipped. Smooth. Efficient.

  A beat passed as he listened.

  "Uh-huh."

  His eyes narrowed. Shoulders leaned slightly forward.

  "Viable? Are you certain?"

  Silence. Then, a shift—the corner of his mouth curled upward, slow and measured.

  "Good. I want the team assembled in thirty minutes. Full prep. Get the body secured and cleared for injection."

  Another pause. This one longer.

  "I don’t care if it’s not stabilized. This is the window. Use Kwon’s batch."

  He severed the call without waiting for acknowledgment.

  Rising from his chair, he adjusted his cufflinks and fastened the top button of his jacket with unconscious precision. Then he stepped toward the window. Far below, the city moved with its usual apathy—horns bleating in the distance, traffic inching through narrow arteries of concrete and chrome. From this height, it all seemed irrelevant. Predictable.

  He watched the sprawl for a few long seconds.

  Then the smile returned—thin, composed, but unmistakably satisfied.

  The room smelled of wood smoke and age—dry timber soaked in the weight of years. Callum blinked slowly, eyelids dragging like anchors, his vision thick with haze. The ceiling above him sloped downward in an uneven arc of exposed wooden beams and thatch. The walls were made of stone and rough plaster, the architecture undeniably old-world. There were no monitors. No machines humming softly in the background. No sterile white light. Just the soft groan of wood under its own weight and the hush of wind slipping through an open window.

  He sat up with a grunt and immediately froze.

  There was no pain.

  No throbbing in his skull. No broken ribs. No pins and needles in his limbs. He felt... fine.

  His breath hitched in his throat as he pressed a palm to his chest, running his hand down over his sternum. The fabric beneath his fingers was coarse and unfamiliar—roughspun linen, scratchy but clean. A tunic. Simple. Earth-toned. Completely alien to anything he owned.

  He curled his fingers against it, half-expecting to feel bandages, stitches, some mark of injury. But there was nothing.

  “What the hell…” he rasped, his voice rough and uneven from disuse.

  said a voice.

  He jerked, twisting sharply to look around the room. But it was empty. Just stone, timber, and faint shafts of golden light streaming through the window.

  The voice was calm, deliberate, masculine, but with an artificial smoothness. Not quite human. Not quite anything. It didn’t echo off the walls. It didn’t come from the air. It came from inside his head.

  “What—where—who the hell is talking to me?”

  “Wait, what?”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and placed his feet on the wooden floor. Cool planks creaked beneath his weight. He gripped the edge of the frame with white-knuckled hands, steadying himself.

  The room remained quiet, touched only by the sound of distant birdsong and the faint stir of wind rustling through trees. Outside the open window, he could make out treetops and slivers of blue sky. There were no cars, voices, buildings, or power lines.

  Nothing made sense.

  The last thing he remembered was Sadie calling his name, the flash of a car, the sound of impact—that awful, bone-deep crunch of metal folding and pavement rushing up to meet him.

  A tremor worked its way through his chest. His grip tightened on the frame. Nails scraped wood.

  This wasn’t a hospital.

  This wasn’t Earth.

  The van skidded to a hard stop beneath the hospital’s emergency access ramp, tires shrieking as they gripped damp concrete. The air was thick with engine heat and the tang of oil, punctuated by the mechanical hiss of hydraulics and the background hum of backup generators.

  Two security officers stood ready, hands folded across their belts, radios clipped to their shoulders, eyes alert. They didn’t move until the van’s side door slammed open.

  Dr. Lysa Kwon stepped out first, her black coat snapping around her like a banner. One gloved hand clutched a sleek, brushed-steel case marked with a single red word: KWON. A recessed scanner pulsed green from its handle, in perfect time with her rapid, purposeful stride.

  “We’re cleared for OR-9?” she snapped without breaking pace, her gaze already locked on the hallway ahead.

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied the closest guard, falling into formation beside her. “Admin is waiting topside. This way.”

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  She didn’t acknowledge him. Her focus was absolute. Behind her, two med-techs in matching black coats moved in step, silent and sharp-edged. Security cleared the path ahead with crisp radio calls and nods exchanged like chess pieces sliding into place.

  The corridor gleamed sterile white, each footfall echoing off polished tile like a ticking metronome. At the far end of the lobby, a girl stood at the reception desk—shoulders tense, hands braced on the counter, eyes raw with crying.

  “I just want to see him! Please—Callum Stroud. He was hit, and he was brought here!”

  The receptionist winced, caught between policy and panic, her voice swallowed by the approaching cadence of Kwon’s boots. The girl’s head snapped around just in time to see the team surge past—a black blur of authority and motion. She turned to follow, stumbling after them, but they were already gone. A guard murmured into his shoulder mic as they vanished around the corner.

  “Where’s the prep team?” Kwon barked, pushing through a set of double doors that hissed open on contact.

  A harried administrator intercepted her mid-hall, lab coat hastily thrown over wrinkled scrubs. “OR’s almost sterile. Patient’s prepped. No signs of consciousness since arrival. Flatlined on entry.”

  “Vitals?” she demanded.

  “Minimal activity. Brain function’s just under three percent.”

  She didn’t blink. “More than enough.”

  He grunted and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The floor met him with a cool bite, wooden planks stiff beneath bare feet. He stared down at his legs, then turned his forearms slowly, studying the skin and muscle like they belonged to someone else. They felt real, solid, warm, and most importantly, alive.

  But none of it made any sense.

  ,

  His thoughts snagged on something heavier.

  He froze. The words didn’t come from the room. They threaded through his thoughts directly, a calm presence nestled just behind his consciousness.

  He blinked, lips pulling into a tight grimace. “You want me to rejoice in dying?” The sarcasm was automatic, rising like a shield. “Sure. I’ll get right on that.”

  The question caught him off guard. He exhaled through his nose, dragging a hand down his face.

  “No,” he admitted quietly. “That’s not what I mean.” He hesitated, voice dropping into something closer to honesty. “Yeah… I’m glad to be alive. And from what I can tell, unhurt. But I don’t understand how. How did I go from dying on a city street to waking up here like nothing happened?”

  He leaned back slowly, eyes tracing the lines of the thatched ceiling. “Wait. Are you trying to tell me this is heaven?”

  He rubbed his temples, jaw tight. “Why would it do that? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, the familiar gesture almost making him laugh. It was the same motion he used whenever someone at work asked him to fix a device that wasn’t plugged in. The voice, maddeningly serene and precise, was clearly managing him, like a well-trained customer service agent in a cosmic tech support department.

  “Sure,” he muttered. “Let’s start.”

  He hesitated, then sighed. “Status,” he said, low and unenthusiastic, like a gamer reciting a cheat code.

  A translucent window burst into view before him, hovering, clean, and sharp-edged. A row of labeled tabs stretched across the top: Inventory, Statistics, Quests, Mail, Bestiary, Skills.

  He blinked at it, dumbstruck.

  For years, he’d imagined something like this after late nights reading light novels and playing RPGs. But now it floated before him, impossible and real.

  “Okay…” he muttered. “That… wasn’t supposed to work. What the hell is this?”

  Callum narrowed his eyes.

  “No,” he said flatly. “I feel fine. Just… surprised. Can you explain how this works?”

  Callum blinked slowly, trying to absorb the sheer volume of information. It was dense—layered in structure and utility, but it followed a logic he could recognize. It felt almost like reading patch notes for a game update or navigating an unfamiliar interface that still used a familiar design language.

  Familiar didn’t mean safe, though.

  And none of it felt right.

  Still, it was something. A thread of structure in a world that had, until now, felt completely unmoored.

  His hand drifted to his chest again, rubbing lightly at the skin above his sternum. A dull ache lingered there—nothing sharp, just a vague memory of tension. He exhaled and leaned forward slightly.

  “Let me see my stat screen,” he said.

  The interface shimmered and responded instantly. The glowing window shifted and reformed, a new panel unfurling in front of his eyes like a status sheet straight out of an RPG. Numbers and labels populated the screen, methodically charting the state of his new body and mind.

  He scanned it, brows knitting as the reality settled in.

  “Kind of underwhelming,” he muttered. “Guess I’m not starting as a hero.”

  : Callum Stroud

  : 23

  : 0

  : None

  

  

  Curious, he tilted his head. “Hey, um... strange voice in my head. Is the base stat for a standard human ten?”

  He glanced around again, eyes searching the room for any physical source. A floating orb. A flicker of light. A shadow. Something. But the rustic chamber gave him nothing—just flickering firelight across timber and thatch, the earthy smell of old wood, and the persistent stillness of the air.

  The stat screen hung there like a contradiction—digital and unnatural, hovering above a floor that creaked under bare feet.

  He scratched his head, fingers grazing the short hair at his temple. The disbelief still clung to him like fog at dawn. A part of him wanted to laugh. Or panic. Or wake up.

  He didn’t do any of those things.

  Instead, he asked, voice low, “Also, what do I call you? Do you have a name?”

  There was no warmth in the voice. No electronic inflection or artificial friendliness. It simply existed. A smooth monotone that carried no burden of identity, like a thought that wasn’t quite his own.

  The quiet pressed in tighter, as if the voice had displaced something vital from the air itself.

  Still rubbing the center of his chest, Callum shifted uncomfortably. A subtle tightness had begun to bloom there, initially unthreatening but persistent.

  “Hmmm,” he muttered. “What about Alfred?”

  He froze for a moment, fingers still. “I’m not sure. It started feeling a little off a few minutes ago. Not exactly pain, just... weird. Like someone pressed too hard in the middle of my chest.”

  The pressure deepened. It swelled outward, like a knot under the skin, pulling tighter with each breath.

  “But now...” he whispered.

  The pain struck hard and fast.

  His entire torso locked up, muscles seizing as something writhed deep inside his core. The dull ache exploded into a fire surge, heat radiating through his ribs like a burn blooming from the inside out.

  He arched violently, hands clawing at the air. His breath left him in a silent cry, jaw stretched wide, but no sound came.

  It wasn’t just pain.

  It was a scream written in every nerve.

  Something within him twisted and pulled, wrenching free like it had been bound, buried, and suddenly forced to surface.

  In that last searing second, just before everything went dark, one final thought carved through the agony like glass:

  And then it was gone.

  His body collapsed backward onto the bed, motionless, breath stolen from him as darkness smothered the room.