Falling into the Void was not what Justin expected. There was no pain, no screaming, no vision of his life flashing before his eyes.
There was just… nothing.
One moment he was being dragged down by slimy little monsters, and the next, he wasn't. He had no body. He couldn't feel his arms or legs.
He couldn't feel the cold stab wound in his back or the deep cut in his leg. He couldn't even feel the wind on his face. He was just… there.
A thought floating in a vast, empty blackness.
Well, this is boring, he thought. Is this the afterlife? Just floating around forever? I hope they at least have good books.
There was no up or down, no left or right. Just an endless, silent, and very, very dark space. He tried to remember what had happened.
The Duke's betrayal. Gregor's cold face. The feeling of his own men watching him die. A flicker of his old anger sparked, but it had nowhere to go. It just fizzled out in the emptiness.
He floated like that for what felt like an hour, or maybe a year. Time didn't seem to exist here. He was getting used to the quiet when, without any warning, everything changed.
FLASH!
A light appeared. It wasn't a warm, friendly light. It was a blindingly white light, so bright it felt like staring directly into the sun. It hurt, even though he didn't have eyes to hurt with.
The peaceful nothingness was gone, replaced by a light so intense it felt like it was erasing him.
And then came the messages.
They weren't sounds. They weren't words written on a wall. They felt like they were being burned directly into his mind, one after another, in cold, sharp letters.
[Critical Host Body Failure Detected]
Host body failure? Justin thought, confused. Is that a fancy way of saying I died? I could have told you that. I was there.
[Searching for Compatible Vessel...]
A vessel? Like a ship? Am I going to be a boat now? I don't know the first thing about sailing.
The white light pulsed, and another message appeared, even more confusing than the last.
[SSS-Rank System, Chrono Dominion, Activating...]
[Temporal Anomaly Detected... Triggering Reset Protocol.]
The word "reset" made him pause. Reset what? The last few minutes? He hoped so. He'd very much like to reset the part where his friend stabbed him in the back.
But the final message was the one that made his non-existent stomach drop.
[Temporal Reset: -60 Years]
Sixty… years?
Before he could even begin to understand what that meant, the white light exploded. It felt like being shot out of a cannon. His senses came rushing back all at once, and it was overwhelming. He could feel pain again. He could feel cold. He could feel air.
GASP!
He woke up with a choked, desperate gasp. Air rushed into his lungs, but it felt like he was breathing fire. His chest burned with every breath.
He was lying on a bed, a very lumpy and uncomfortable bed. He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn't obey. His arms and legs felt like they were made of wet noodles.
They were tiny, weak, and useless.
With a huge effort, he managed to roll onto his side. He coughed, and it was a small, weak sound, like a kitten sneezing. This wasn't right. His cough was supposed to be a deep, manly sound that made people stand up straighter.
He slowly opened his eyes. He was in a small, dusty room. The air was thick with the smell of old wood and neglect. A single, grimy window let in a sliver of gray morning light.
The furniture was simple and cheap, a rickety wooden table, a wobbly chair, and the sad little bed he was lying in. He knew this place. He had seen rooms like this in the servants' quarters of Stark Castle.
Panic began to bubble in his chest. Where was he? What had happened? He pushed himself up, his arms trembling under his own weight.
He felt impossibly light. He looked down at his hands. They were pale and small, with long, delicate fingers. These were not the strong, calloused hands of a warrior. These were the hands of a child.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. They were like two little twigs. He stood up, and the world spun. He had to grab the wall to keep from falling over. He felt a profound weakness, an ache in his bones that felt ancient and deep.
His eyes fell on a tarnished mirror hanging on the opposite wall. It was a cheap piece of polished metal, not real glass, and it was so cloudy he could barely see his reflection.
Stumbling like a newborn deer, he made his way over to it. He wiped a layer of dust off with his sleeve and leaned in close.
He stared in absolute horror.
Looking back at him was not the face of Commander Justin, a man in his prime with a strong jaw and a few handsome battle scars. Looking back at him was the face of a boy.
A pale, malnourished boy of about ten years old, with big, fearful eyes and hair the color of straw. His face was thin, his cheeks hollow. He looked like a sad little ghost.
Just as his mind was about to break from the confusion, the door to his room burst open with a loud BANG! It wasn't knocked on; it was just shoved open.
A servant woman stood there. She had a sour face, and her lips were curled up like she'd just smelled something bad. She didn't even look at him.
She stomped over to the little table and dropped a wooden bowl onto it with a loud CLANK! A bit of the grey, watery slop inside splashed onto the table.
"Here's your meal, Young Master Robin," the woman sneered, her voice dripping with contempt.
She turned to leave, then paused at the door and looked back at him, her eyes full of scorn. "Try not to die today," she said, as if she were talking about the weather. "It would be an inconvenience."
And then she was gone, slamming the door behind her.
Justin, or whoever he was now just stood there, frozen. Her words, her sneer, the disgusting-looking gruel… none of it mattered. Only one thing mattered. The name she had used.
Robin.
The name hit him like a physical blow. A memory from his past life surfaced, a piece of old castle gossip he had overheard years ago. They had spoken of the Duke's third son, a boy named Robin Stark.
A sickly child, born during a great disaster, a boy everyone called a living curse. A forgotten son who had died quietly of a "mysterious illness" before he was even a teenager.
He looked back at the mirror, at the pale, weak face of the boy. He looked at the forgotten, dusty room. He thought about the sneering servant.
All the pieces clicked into place with a horrifying, final DONG!
He wasn't in the afterlife. He hadn't become a boat. The system, the reset, the sixty years… it was all real. He had been sent back in time.
He had been stuffed into a new body. And in the universe's cruelest joke, he was now Robin Stark. The forgotten, cursed, and hated third son of the very man who had just sent him to his death.
He leaned his forehead against the cold, dusty mirror, and for the first time in his life, Commander Justin had no idea what to do next.