That bright, dynamic, all-consuming red was the last thing Zion Astrea ever saw.
The energy from the meteorite did not simply explode; it unwove reality. It was a force that treated matter as a temporary suggestion, and Zion was its primary text. There was no pain, only a profound, terrifying sensation of dissolution. He felt his body, his very molecular structure, being systematically taken apart. The roar was not of sound, but of existence itself being violated. He was erased, not just killed.
Then, nothing.
A vacuum so absolute it threatened to suck away the concept of self. No light, no sound, no sensation of up or down. Just an infinite, chilling emptiness that pressed against the fading edges of his consciousness. He drifted, untethered from time and space. His mind, the last fortress of Zion Astrea, felt thin and frayed, dissolving thread by thread into the indifferent dark.
Memories, sharp and unbidden, stabbed through the black. They were not comforts; they were indictments.
The sterile, cold light of the Ignis lab. The hum of machinery that had been his only companion. The ghost of a protein bar in his mouth, tasteless. Silas's face, tired and concerned, always from the other side of a security door. "Go home, Z. Get some real rest."
Home. An empty apartment with a view of a city he never truly inhabited. A refrigerator containing a single, expired carton of milk. A photograph on a desk of a friendship he had been too busy to nurture.
A life measured in data streams and containment percentages. A life of brilliant, profound, and utter solitude.
He had been disintegrated by a cosmic accident, yes. But he had lived as a ghost. He had no one to mourn him. No family. No legacy beyond classified research. The crushing loneliness of his existence was now mirrored by the infinite loneliness of the afterlife. It was a fitting, pathetic end.
If I had lived better… The regret was a physical agony in his formless state. If I had said yes to Silas. If I had left the lab for something that wasn't work. If I had built a family… would this emptiness feel so absolute?
Time was meaningless, but the regret was a constant, gnawing companion. He was dissolving, and the sum of his existence was a lifetime of cowardice—the cowardice of avoiding a life outside his work.
Then—
Light.
Not from the void, but suspended within it. A rectangle of translucent crimson, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic inner fire. Like a slumbering beast's heart. It was an impossibility. An intrusion.
[BOOT UP COMPLETE]
The stark, white letters burned against the red. Alien. Final. Below them, a single option glowed with soft, terrifying insistence:
[NEXT]
Zion recoiled. What fresh hell was this? A cosmic joke at the expense of the faithless? Salvation felt like a foreign concept. Yet, this was something. A variable. An equation he had not calculated. A sliver of glass-sharp hope warred with the crushing despair.
His will—the stubborn, analytical, desperate will that had defined Zion Astrea—reached out from whatever core of him remained. There was no other choice. There was only the void, or the button.
He pressed it.
[NEW HOST DETECTED]
[ESTABLISHING SOUL SIGNATURE...]
[ANALYZING KARMIC IMPRINT...]
[ACCEPT: YES / NO]
The prompts were cold, mechanical. They spoke of a process, not an afterlife. A system, not a salvation. Host. The word was a cold, clinical label. Karmic imprint? His life flashed again—the isolation, the final moment of irrelevance. An imprint of absence?
Instinct screamed. Analysis was for the living, the anchored. In this void, there was only instinct.
YES.
The crimson light did not just brighten; it erupted. It was a silent supernova, detonating in the infinite and scouring the nothingness away. He felt stretched. Unmade. The very fabric of his being was pulled apart and violently shoved back together in the space between impossible moments.
The searing brilliance faded.
The void was gone. Utterly.
He was elsewhere.
And the crushing solitude was shattered by one undeniable, overwhelming sensation: he was not alone.
---
Soft, encompassing warmth wrapped around him. A shock after the eternal cold. It was painful, almost. He was held. Cradled securely against a yielding softness. He blinked against a gentle, golden glow.
Hair like spun gold cascaded around a face bathed in flickering candlelight. A woman looked down. Her gown was pale, flowing, adorned with delicate, embroidered pink petals. Tears welled in her eyes—large, gentle, the color of a summer sky—sparkling like captured starlight as they gazed at him with an overwhelming, terrifying tenderness.
Who—?
Before the question could form, sound shattered the moment.
CRASH!
A door of heavy, dark wood burst violently open, slamming against the rough stone wall with a force that shook the room.
A man filled the doorway. Immense. A mountain of scarred, mud-spattered leather and dulled steel plates. The smell that rolled off him was a brutal poem of its own: fresh, cold night air, the deep, honest scent of horse and earth, and the sharp, coppery tang of blood. In one gauntleted fist, gripped with unconscious tension, was a long, wicked arming sword. Its polished silver blade glistened darkly. Wet. Fresh blood.
Confusion churned into a dawning, horrifying suspicion. Something was wrong. Profoundly wrong.
His swimming gaze dropped downwards.
Tiny hands.
Soft. Pink. Impossibly small. Pudgy fingers flexed weakly against nothing.
Swaddled limbs. Bound tight in soft, unfamiliar, scratchy wool. Utterly immobile.
A baby's body.
The realization did not dawn. It smashed into the core of his being. A physical blow. A tidal wave of impossible truth. Zion's fragile grip on this new consciousness shattered. That tear-streaked, beautiful face, the blood-streaked giant, the candlelit room—it all whirled away into merciful blackness.
---
Consciousness returned in a slow, thick tide. The truth settled over him again, heavier and more inescapable than before, seeping into the phantom limbs of his memory and the core of his new, infantile essence.
Reborn. Not a metaphor. Not a dream. Reborn.
The golden-haired woman—Elowen—smiled down, her face radiant with pure, unguarded love. He felt the gentle, rhythmic patting on his back—a soothing anchor against the silent storm of disbelief and fractured memory raging inside his skull. The armored man—Cassian—stood nearby. His blade was gone, leaned against the soot-blackened hearthstone. A profound, weary relief had softened the harsh lines of his face into a wide, genuine grin. The firelight played over the scars on his knuckles and the fine stubble on his jaw, revealing the young man beneath the warrior's weariness.
"What a brave little boy," Elowen murmured, her voice a soft, melodic balm. Her cool finger stroked his cheek with infinite care. "What do you think, Cassian?"
The man—Cassian—chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrated in the air. "He has your eyes, Elowen." He leaned in slightly, his large presence somehow gentle now. "Sky-blue and fearless."
Her summer-sky eyes, luminous with emotion, looked from him to Cassian. "How about we call him… Adam?"
Cassian straightened. His grin settled into something deeper. Protective. Proud. He met her gaze, then looked down at him, his own eyes—a steady, earthy brown—holding his. "Adam." He tested the name. Nodded firmly. "A strong name. A good name. Adam it is."
Immediately, sharp and impossible to ignore, a crimson rectangle flared into existence right before his unfocused eyes:
[SYSTEM UPDATING…]
[HOST DESIGNATION CONFIRMED: ADAM]
[WORLD SYNCHRONIZATION: IN PROGRESS…]
Adam. The name echoed where Zion used to be. It felt like a stranger's skin stretched over his bones. A burial shroud for the man he was.
No, a voice, clear and sharp, cut through the infantile confusion from within. It was Zion's voice. My name is Zion.
His tiny fists clenched reflexively in the soft, scratchy blanket—the only defiance this useless body allowed. The enormity of it all pressed down—vast, terrifying, and beneath the shock, a single, terrifying spark of something else.
A family. A connection. The very thing he had regretted lacking.
It was a second chance. A grotesque, miraculous, impossible second chance.
He was trapped in a baby's body, in a world of swords and candlelight, given the name Adam. But the consciousness, the will, the regret that was all Zion Astrea.
And his second life had truly begun.