"T-this c-can work."
"N- no, it will work..."
"It should work.... Please."
"I...I don't want to die."
In a room where the only source of light was what seemed to be a glowing stones, a man in tattered robes stood, surrounded by discarded bottles of dimly glowing fluids.
He seemed so frail that the slightests passing of wind would be enough to knock him over.
Before him was a cauldron where his trembling hands constantly dropped herb after herb, only to end up with a liquid that only barely emitted a glow and wasn't even the right color.
What was this? His tenth failure in a row? He had no idea.
The only thing he knew was that with each failure, he got closer and closer to his demise.
As if reminding him of the little time he had left, the man suddenly burst out in a fit of coughs, forcing him to cover his mouth.
The moment he moved his hand away, he noticed that there was blood on it. It was clear as day that he was dying.
But.. he didn't want to die, not yet, not until he became the greatest alchemist....just like he dreamt.
The dream of young Elias Verdan.
__________
Born to the renowned Verdan family, a family known for their genius in alchemy, the expectations for Elias was even greater.
He had grown up watching his father create a miracle inside the cauldron using herbs and that was his goal, become an alchemist just like his father.
No, become one even better.
But unlike his father and brothers, Elias lacked the gift.
His formulas failed, his concoctions fizzled, and when he tried to force results, explosions were often his only outcome.
Even when he tried following an already established formula, the outcome remained the same.... A failed product.
He wasn't skilled in potion concoctions, weapon enchantments and none of any of the alchemic fields.
He was encountering failure after failure that he was soon titled: The Failed Alchemist.
It wasn't long before the Alchemist Guild cast its judgment: "Elias Verdan, you are a disgrace to the Verdan name. You lack the gift of Alchemy. Leave, and never return."
Banished, stripped of his family name, Elias wandered until he found himself in a forgotten village on the edge of the frontier. A place where neither Guild officials nor mocking peers would remind him of his failures.
Here, the villagers pitied him, sometimes offering him scraps of food. Yet when he began coughing blood, even they started avoiding him.
A decision which he completely understood, since the village had no alchemists to cure them if they caught whatever he had.
Hell, he couldn't even cure himself, so how would he expect to cure someone else.
And so, Elias locked himself away in his hut, working feverishly, desperately, furiously—fighting a losing battle against the inevitable.
Each failure weighed heavier. His body trembled with weakness, and his once-bright golden eyes dulled.
On his twelfth attempt, as the cauldron cracked and another useless potion spilled across the floor, Elias fell to his knees. His vision blurred, his chest tightening, and the world spinning around him.
"Father… I'm sorry… I wasn't… good enough…" he whispered, his body collapsing beside the smoking cauldron.
Darkness took him.
But the end of one story is always the beginning of another.
__________
Dimensions away from Elias's world was a line of seven planets constantly rotating around the big ball of energy known as the sun, each planet holding a unique feature the others lacked.
But the most unique of the was a big blue planet known as Earth, the only one naturally capable of holding life.
This earth was home to Julian Ward, a world renowned Polymath, having multiple Nobel prizes in his name.
He has achieved everything a scientist could dream of at an incredibly young age, except one... happiness.
Julian was a twenty five year old orphan raised in a Catholic orphanage. His dream had always been to become the greatest scientist, following the footsteps of his greatest heroes.
And young Julian held the advantage amongst his peers, he had a perfect photographic memory and his brain could process information faster than normal.
With these advantages, he quickly separated himself from the rest and was immediately identified as a genius.
He went on to fulfill his dreams, making discoveries years ahead of his time.
But even with everything he had achieved, Julian craved one thing above all, family.
As an orphan, he always wandered what it'd be like to have a family, what it'd feel like to be cooked for, what it'd feel like to come home to people waiting.
Julian had tried, God knew he tried.
He dated a few women in his early twenties, but each one ended the same way. The first seemed perfect, she was kind, attentive, supportive—until he overheard her telling her friends that she "finally bagged a genius worth millions."
The second admitted during an argument that she never loved him, she just wanted his connections. The third didn't even bother hiding it, she introduced him to her father as if he were some trophy she'd won.
Julian never hated them for it. He couldn't. After all, people naturally gravitated to power, wealth, and reputation. But what gnawed at him was the certainty that no one ever approached him for him.
Not Julian, the awkward boy who grew up lonely in the church library, spending nights reading about stars and cells by candlelight.
They only ever saw Julian Ward, the polymath, the Nobel laureate, the living legend.
And so he grew older, surrounded by colleagues who envied him, governments that courted him, and investors who begged for his innovations.
Yet when he returned home to his quiet penthouse, there was no laughter, no warmth, no family.... Just a bunch of research papers waiting for him.
Late at night, he would sometimes watch families in the park from his balcony, their laughter drifting up like music. He would clutch his chest then, not out of sickness, but because of a hollow ache no medicine could cure.
That was the cruel irony—Julian Ward, the man who solved the riddles of genetics, chemistry, and physics, could not solve the simplest equation of life: how to be loved.
He remembered once, after a lecture in Paris, a journalist asked him, "Professor Ward, after all your achievements, what is the one thing you still desire?"
Julian had smiled politely, but deep inside, his heart whispered an answer he could never admit aloud:
"I just want someone to wait for me at home."
But he knew that would never happen.
And so, Julian buried himself in research, pushing the limits of what humanity could achieve, even as the loneliness consumed him.
Little did he know, fate had already chosen a different path.
Driving home after a late night lab session, Julian's mind wandered.
His body ached from another sleepless night, his eyes bloodshot from hours of equations and experimental failures. He should have pulled over or called for a driver, but he didn't care.
What did it matter?
The Nobel medals decorating his office walls, the billion-dollar patents signed in his name, the universities begging for his lectures… none of it filled the empty void in his chest.
Julian let out a humorless laugh, his voice hoarse. "World's greatest mind… yet I can't even figure out how to be happy."
His hands tightened around the steering wheel, knuckles turning white. Rain began to fall, pattering against the windshield, and in the reflection of the glass he thought—just for a moment—that he saw the faint image of a child.
A boy with messy hair, smiling at him. The kind of smile he always wished a brother… or son… would give.
The image vanished as soon as he blinked, leaving him to think of it as just a trick for the lights.
"Family, huh?" Julian whispered bitterly, shaking his head, focusing back on the road.
He had a lecture early the next day so had to get home and sneak in a few hours of sleep.
His thoughts were interrupted when a bright flash of light blinded him.
Squinting, he noticed heavy truck swerved out of its lane, skidding across the rain soaked asphalt, horn blaring and heading directly towards his car.
Time seemed to slow down and Julian's mind, faster than any computer, calculated trajectory and speed of the incoming truck.
He knew instantly there was no escape and for the first time in his life, Julian Ward felt fear. Not of death itself—but of dying alone.
"…I don't want… to die like this…" he whispered, his voice trembling.
The truck crashed into his car as soon as he finished his words and he felt his bones and organs crushed with no hope of him surviving.
Julian's final thought was not of his discoveries, nor of the acclaim he earned but of a warm kitchen, of laughter at a dinner table, of a family that never existed... A dream that remained unfulfilled.
Darkness finally took him[1].
_____
In the darkness of the void was multiple glowing streams made of millions, no billions of small glowing orbs.
These orbs were the souls of the deceased traveling in a straight line. Whether they were headed for judgement, reincarnated or the purgatory was unknown.
Suddenly, a man...no, not quite. It stood upright as if a man, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.
It looked more like a nebula, in the shape of a man or at least, that was the most any mind could comprehend of it.
It moved towards one of the glowing streams and extended it arm, picking up a single glowing orb.
It brought the orb to 'eye' level before smiling (?) How we understood that it was smiling was unknown, we just could[2].
"Poor child," the being whispered. "Brilliant, yet broken. Desired by all, yet loved by none. You longed for warmth… and so, warmth shall be given."
A ripple spread through the void. Another presence emerged —vast, heavy and suffocating. Unlike the first, which radiated warmth and comfort, this one radiated sovereignty. Creation itself bent beneath its authority.
This was no wandering spirit, this was the Creator of Elias's world.
"You would interfere with my tapestry again?" the Creator's voice rumbled, sounding like both earthquakes and thunderstorms at the same time.
The nebula-being chuckled softly, its voice echoing everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "Not interfere, I want to trade. The one you cast out, Elias Verdan… his soul wanders rootless, yes? He yearns for redemption, a new tale."
The Creator was silent.
The being continued, lifting Julian's glowing orb. "This one, Julian Ward, has the knowledge of ten thousand lifetimes. But more importantly… he has the hunger. He will live. He will build. Through him, your world will change."
"And Elias?" the Creator asked.
"He shall not be erased. His thread shall not be cut. Instead.." The nebula responded. "He will walk another path. In another story, a tale not yet written[3]."
The Creator considered this, its presence weighing down the void. Finally, it responded:
"So be it."
The nebula-being smiled again, pressing Julian's orb gently against the Creator's hand, allowing it to flow into a different dimension.
"Awaken, child of Earth. Take up the vessel of Elias Verdan. Live the life he could not."
Like that, two stories began, one of a science genius reincarnated into a world of Alchemy and another of a failed alchemist reincarnated into a world of science.
[1] Truck-Kun strikes again.... Damn, I always wanted to say that 😅
[2] This is actually from my own perspective... How I understood that the being was smiling was unknown to even me, I just knew that it was.
[3] Of course we'll get his story.. Sometime