I was eight when I opened my eyes again.
Small bed, wood walls, smoke and mint on the air. A girl sat beside me, crying so hard she'd forgotten to breathe. Outside, rain hammered the roof. A woman stood near the door, cloak dripping, hands clenched like she could hold the world still.
"You're safe," she said. "I'll take care of you—both of you."
She meant me and the girl by the bed: Mira.
That was the night Ash Renfield died—
and I woke up in his body.
The rest came in pieces.
---
The woman was his aunt, Marian. My aunt now. She'd come to tell me that Ash's parents—a knight and a healer—were gone. A dungeon swallowed their party whole. The words felt too big for the room.
I wasn't him. The grief didn't care.
I tried to speak. My throat scraped out, "I'll try to be good."
"You already are," she said.
---
Ash had been adopted as a baby by two people who wanted noise in the quiet between quests. Then came Mira—two years younger, bright, loud, proud of everything. I saw it in his memories: a wooden practice sword too heavy for small arms; his father saying, "Feet first, swing later"; his mother's bread, always burnt at the edges.
They were simple and good. The world didn't keep people like them long.
---
Marian's apothecary sat at the edge of Eredale. Shelves of herbs, floors dusted with chalk. She was steady, practical, kinder than she let people see. She always saved the better heel of bread for us.
Her daughter, Ellyn, was my age and took apart every sealed jar just to learn the trick. She never called me "cousin." Just "Ash," like friendship was non‑negotiable.
Mira called me "big brother." Hearing it almost broke me.
That house became my second life—work, laughter, quills by day; rain and city hum by night. Once the house stopped feeling borrowed, the fear returned.
The System existed here too. People talked about Awakening the way farmers talk about harvest—inevitable, a little terrifying. For them, it was a story. For me, a warning.
Another way I could be beaten, betrayed, and bullied.
Some nights, after we closed the shop, I watched the river and listened to the rain. It sounded like another world arguing with this one. I didn't tell anyone. You don't tell a child her brother came back carrying ghosts heavier than swords.
---
Seven years slipped by. By fifteen, spring brought the letter.
Aunt Marian cried. Mira promised to write every week. Ellyn smirked and said she'd make sure they did.
I packed light: clothes, a knife, and silence.
---
Solstice Academy wasn't a school; it was a city pretending to be one. Towers cut the clouds, runes crept along the stone, and every hallway whispered the same question: How useful are you?
I didn't answer. I kept my head down. Classes, training, meals—clean and forgettable. Attention had a price, and I'd paid it before; my shoulders still remember the bill.
I tried to disappear. Elira refused to let me.
The elf from the northern provinces—silver hair, calm eyes, always at the top of the list. After sparring, she'd hand me a towel. My hands were clean. She knew it.
"Renfield," she said once, "you move like someone who's practiced something he won't name."
I took the towel and left. The next day, she was there again—quiet in the library, watching my form in the yard, never prying, just… there.
I told myself it didn't matter. But I started looking for her in crowds without meaning to. For someone who'd died once, I was getting used to being seen again. Being seen is a promise and a risk.
---
By the time the Awakening Ceremony came, I'd learned how to live without expecting much.
Eight when I woke in this world. Fifteen when I entered the academy. Eighteen when the Spire called my name.
When it branded me F‑rank, I wasn't shocked—just tired. Different world, same verdict.
Midnight disagreed.
I didn't laugh or cry when the correction came. I just breathed, like I'd been underwater too long and finally found the surface.
For the first time since the bridge, something shifted—not in the world, in me. A promise, maybe. A beginning.
A life that had been measured wrong, finally recalibrating.