Prologue, Chapter 1 – From Heaven to Hell

Prologue, Chapter 1 – From Heaven to Hell

There was no pain.

No sound.

Only a silence so dense it felt like it had swallowed even the idea of time.

Lian's last memory was the alley: the cold barrel aimed at him, the bang, the damp ground, the smell of trash and blood mixing together. That strange sense of relief when everything went dark.

Dying had been… simple.

This wasn't.

He couldn't feel a body, but he felt. Like he'd turned into a point of consciousness floating in an immense space, with no up, no down, no light. An absolute nothingness, cut every now and then by a whisper that came from nowhere.

A tug.

Not physical, but heavy. An invisible thread hooked into some part of him, pulling him toward a direction that didn't exist. With every "second"—if you could even call it that—the pull grew stronger, more insistent, like a tide deciding to swallow the whole beach.

"I died. This should be the end, but…", he thought, trying to cling to any logic that made sense in that void.

The problem was that he was thinking too much for someone who was dead.

Something started to vibrate in the distance. Not sound—the silence stayed absolute—but a kind of tremor in the space around him, like the void itself was shifting, making waves.

Suddenly, on that nonexistent horizon, a point appeared.

A tiny glow.

It grew slowly, from spark to flame. From flame to lamp. From lamp to sun. The light opened into a white fissure, ripping the dark like someone had sliced a sheet with an invisible blade.

A portal.

Part of him wanted to back away. Another part—the same part that had stared down a gun barrel and said "shoot" without trembling—only thought:

"Whatever it is… I just hope it isn't the door to hell," he concluded, surrendering to the force that pulled him.

The portal swallowed him.

Noise.

The silence shattered under a brutal roar: rapid gunfire, explosions, screams, metal twisting, something heavy collapsing. The portal's light vanished in a dirty, yellowish flash that blinked and died, blinked and died, as if the world were burning in frames.

Air slammed into his lungs like a punch.

Lian gasped, chest locking up, lungs forced open. The first breath came loaded with smoke, dust, and the stink of gunpowder. He coughed, choking. The second brought pain in his ribs, muscles protesting like they'd already been beaten before. The third came with the cold realization:

He was alive.

"Damn it," he thought, feeling his entire body complain at returning.

Lian opened his eyes.

The sky above was a sick gray, cut by columns of black smoke rising from destroyed buildings. Concrete skeletons stood around him—some still upright, cracked; others already turned into heaps of rubble. Burned-out cars blocked part of the street. Shattered glass covered the ground like someone had dumped a truckload of star shards onto the cracked asphalt.

A building ahead was fully on fire. Flames licked at glassless windows, spitting sparks into the wind. Far away, sirens wailed—long, hysterical. Closer, the dry rattle of burst fire. And crossing the sky, a metallic howl: something heavy slicing the air, followed by another explosion.

Lian blinked fast, trying to stitch logic together.

The last thing he remembered was a miserable village, an alley reeking of smoke, a scrawny mugger with a revolver. There were no collapsing buildings. No war. No—

He looked at his hands.

And froze.

They were his. And they weren't.

The fingers were thicker, packed with calluses. The skin darker, sun-burned. Thin scars crossed the tendons; an uneven line ran over the back of his right hand, like an old badly healed cut. On his wrists, tattooed symbols he'd never seen in his life.

"These aren't my hands," he thought, turning his wrists slowly like he was testing a borrowed tool.

He forced himself to sit up. The whole body protested. A sharp spike detonated in his right shoulder; his back screamed like someone had used him as a mattress under a falling building.

The clothes weren't his either. A thick uniform, stained with dry dirt, blood, and soot covered him. Under it, a sweat-glued shirt. On his chest, a tactical vest with pouches, straps, armor plates. On his thigh, strapped tight, a pistol. On his back, the unmistakable weight of a rifle.

On his chest, a patch with letters he didn't recognize… but understood perfectly.

Corporal Rid.

The surname hit him like a silent punch.

"Rid… seriously?" he thought, mouth going dry.

His throat dried out.

He brought a hand to his face. Found a sharper jawline with rough stubble. The nose looked less obnoxious than the "toucan nose" he'd heard about so much at school. Still a plain face, but older, more battered.

"Apparently even reincarnating comes with a downgrade in looks. Lucky me," he mocked inwardly, trying to use sarcasm as a lifebuoy in a sea that didn't make sense.

Before he could digest any of it, the world decided it wasn't going to wait.

An explosion burst a few meters away, throwing concrete and metal into the air. The ground shook. Lian instinctively curled, covering his head. Stone splinters smacked his vest; one grazed his cheek.

— RID! — a brutal, hoarse voice cut through the chaos. — Damn it, Corporal, answer!

A hand clamped on his collar and shook him hard enough to rattle thoughts.

The man in front of him was in his forties, unshaven, eyes red with exhaustion. His helmet sat crooked; a stripe of dried blood crossed his forehead. Same uniform, same vest… but more insignias on his chest.

His look was someone who'd seen hell, spit in it, and gone back to work.

— Get up, damn it! — he snarled. — We don't have time for you taking a nap in a bombardment zone!

— I… — Lian blinked, voice coming out rough. — Where am I?

The man stared for a second, eyes narrowing.

— Are you messing with me, Rid? — the tone wobbled between rage and disbelief. — This is Kaelar. Third front. Eastern line. You hit your head?

"Kaelar… never heard of this crap on TV," he thought, mind scrambling for any reference that didn't exist.

— I shouldn't be here — he muttered without thinking.

— Nobody should — the man shot back. — But we are. So get up. That's an order, Corporal.

Lian opened his mouth to say "I died," but the other man's face screamed that time was worth more than any metaphysical explanation.

"Fine. Priorities. Analyze later, don't die now," he decided, swallowing the explanation halfway down.

He braced on his knee and let the man yank him upright.

The whole world turned the volume back on. Screams, shots, barked orders, the crack of structures giving way. The stench was toxic: gunpowder, smoke, sweat, iron.

They threw themselves behind what was left of a wall.

— Listen to me, Rid — the man fired off, planting his rifle on the edge, ready to peek. — Squad Three got shredded. You vanished in the middle of the fallback, you idiot. They're trying to shove our line into the sewer. If we break here, Kaelar's done.

— I… vanished? — Lian repeated, trying to process it, feeling the word land strangely in his own head.

"So the 'owner' of this body was here minutes ago and I just took his place…? What the hell is this?" he concluded, a cold knot forming in his stomach.

— Did you knock that quail-egg head of yours? — the superior hissed. — Concussion? What's your full name, Corporal?

Lian's brain spun.

An answer came out before he was sure where it came from.

— Lian Rid.

The man blinked.

— Lian? Since when do you use your first name on duty, you bastard? — he snapped, but there was genuine relief behind the insult. — Corporal Rid of Kaelar. Third Battalion. Squad Two. Focus. We're regrouping with the rest of the unit… if you don't stand still like a target.

"Rid of Kaelar. This guy's mom had zero creativity too," he thought, with a nearly physical urge to laugh in the face of his situation.

Another impact shook the block. A dust cloud swallowed the street. A scream turned into a wet gargle inside the smoke. Someone yelled for a medic.

Lian swallowed hard.

"Okay. Recap. I died in an alley. Fell into a void. Got dragged here. New body, war… but why the hell did this body have my last name?" he thought, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from saying it out loud.

— What's your name? — Lian asked, almost whispering.

— Sergeant Halvern — he replied, irritated. — You've been listening to me yell that in your ear for three years, so your memory better come back fast. Now move!

Three years.

Lian had zero memory of those three years. But deep down, something pulsed. A stab of—familiarity? As if his brain had two layers: the old one, the screwed-up kid from Earth, and a second one full of reflexes and instincts that weren't his.

"So part of Rid is still in here," he thought, a chill crawling up his spine. "Am I some kind of parasite, then?"

He knew, for example, that the weapon on his back was an X-92 automatic rifle, such caliber, with heavy recoil on the right shoulder. He had no idea where that knowledge came from. But it was there, clean as a note scribbled in the margin of a notebook.

"So I've got part of this body's memory. Wonderful…", he grumbled internally.

No time for more.

Halvern grabbed Lian by the vest, and they started running crouched between chunks of buildings and flipped cars. Shots came from the corner. A round ricocheted a few centimeters from Lian's head, spitting sparks off a metal bar beside him.

They crossed a street, dove behind a burning truck. A soldier lay there, hands pressed into his belly, trying to hold his guts in.

— S-sergeant… — he gasped, voice wet. — I… I can…?

Halvern didn't hesitate.

— No — he said, firm, not cruel. — Stay there. Med team's two blocks back. If you try to stand, you die before I do.

The kid's eyes shook. He laughed—short, desperate.

— O-okay then…

Halvern tapped his shoulder lightly and moved on.

Lian felt his stomach twist.

"This isn't a game. There's no load-checkpoint button," he thought as his boots dragged him forward.

Even so, his legs kept moving. Partly because Halvern was pulling him, partly because the instinct to survive had finally crawled awake from the pit where he'd buried it.

♦

They reached a wrecked square where broken pedestals and headless statues served as cover. About ten soldiers clustered there, panting hard, some reloading, others just shaking.

— Sergeant! — a woman with a shaved head lifted her gaze when she saw them. — Thought you'd turned into charcoal.

— It'll take more than that to erase me — Halvern shot back. — Squad Two still whole?

— Missing three — she said, her look darkening. — Tharun, Meka, and… the Nine-Block Lunatic.

Her eyes dropped to Lian, assessing him.

— And Rid — she added. — He's got the face of someone who ate a flash grenade.

— Concussion — Halvern summed up, not explaining, not asking. — But he walks. Shoots. Cusses. So—operational.

A few tired grumbles rippled through the group. In another life, Lian would've shrunk. Here, he just took a breath.

"Rid was 'the Nine-Block Lunatic.' Great. I stole the lunatic's body," he thought, feeling a bitter urge to laugh.

— New order from command — Halvern went on. — Fall back to the east gate. We set the last line there. If it gives… Kaelar falls. And then, my darlings, we pray to get buried with it, because what comes after will be worse.

Some laughed—black humor, no strength behind it. Others just nodded, hollow-eyed.

Lian stayed quiet, watching.

In under ten minutes he had enough to sketch that world's bones in his head:

Kaelar was a fortress-city.

They were on "Third Front." Meaning this wasn't the start of the war.

The enemy had been pushing them long enough for everyone here to be exhausted.

"Congrats, universe, God, or whatever the hell did this. You took a guy who'd given up on life and dropped him into an almost-lost war. What a sick joke," he thought, irritation and irony mixing.

Even so, something inside him moved differently than in his first death. Maybe adrenaline. Maybe the fact that here he had a body that knew how to move, inherited training, a loaded weapon.

On Earth, he'd been a punching bag in a crooked life that never offered a door out.

Here… he was technically still a punching bag. But at least he could punch back.

"If you're going to kill me again, world… then at least it's going to hurt you too," he decided, feeling heat build in his chest.

♦

The next hours blurred into retreat, fire, explosions, dust, and shouted orders layered over shouted orders.

Lian realized fast that Corporal Rid's body moved almost on its own. His finger found the trigger with confidence. His shoulder adjusted to recoil. His eyes identified targets with chilling calm. There was muscle memory, sharpened instinct, reflexes that had nothing to do with the scrawny student who got beaten behind the school wall.

Between corners, he cheated death by centimeters. A bullet crossed where his head had been half a second earlier. A slab of concrete crashed a meter from his boots. A missile hit the building behind him and threw him forward.

Each near-death came with a dry thought:

"Not this one," he thought, throwing the body sideways.

"Not now," he snarled inwardly, forcing his legs to keep going.

"Not like this," he insisted even when his lungs burned.

Once, between firefights, Halvern ducked with him behind a flipped car, breathing like his lungs were on fire.

— You know, Rid… — the sergeant started, voice too hoarse. — You always said if you were gonna die, you wanted it to be somewhere decent. Bed, booze, someone pretty beside you. Look around. Happy?

— It can always get worse — Lian answered, and only when he heard his own voice did he notice how natural it sounded. Almost… sarcastic.

"Look at that. Even the humor survived," he thought, unable to stop it.

Halvern laughed—a short, broken sound.

— Yeah. It can. — He checked the street. — But today we just try to… not die. Deal?

"Excellent plan," Lian thought, settling the rifle better.

There wasn't "much time" in that world. But there was enough.

Enough for him to notice Halvern's footwork rhythm. Enough to understand the shaved-head woman complained nonstop but always shook when she passed a child's body on the ground. Enough to see that two other soldiers refused to look at certain buildings, like family lived in them.

Enough for him to realize that even in a new hell there were people holding the ceiling up with bare hands.

"This world stinks too. But at least there are people who try," he thought, pressing his back to a chunk of wall between two bursts of fire.

When the sun began to sink behind thick smoke, the order crackled through the radio:

— All units, this is East Command. Containment line collapsed on Front One. Enemy moving in mass. You have to hold Kaelar until civilian evacuation is complete. Repeating: hold at all costs.

"At all costs," he repeated inside his head. In that language, it meant: die standing.

Lian felt his stomach go cold.

He wasn't surprised.

Kaelar's east gates were a huge reinforced metal arch, already warped in places. Blown-out vehicles formed extra barricades. Sandbags, steel plates, anything that could be a shield had been stacked there.

Across the open stretch of street, the enemy came.

Lian didn't know who they were. Humans from another country? Another species? Another world? Didn't matter. He only saw armed silhouettes advancing through rubble—some in formation, some scattered—backed by vehicles like compact tanks with short, thick barrels.

— POSITIONS! — Halvern roared. — RID, COVER MID-RIGHT SECTOR! IF YOU EAT A BULLET LIKE AN IDIOT, I'LL KILL YOU PERSONALLY!

Lian's answer came unfiltered:

— I'd like to see you try!

"If I'm dying, at least I'm being annoying to the very end," he thought, feeling something close to a smile tug his mouth.

A few around him laughed, nervous.

He braced on a low wall, rifle up, the cold metal familiar against his palm. The world narrowed: sightline, target, breath. The noise of gunfire became background.

One target advanced too far, trusting cover. Lian squeezed the trigger. Recoil shoved his shoulder; the man toppled. Another tried to raise a heavy weapon; Lian drilled his chest before he could aim.

Bodies dropped, but the tide didn't thin.

One of the compact tanks fired. The shell hit the defenses, ripping a whole chunk of wall away and throwing three soldiers to the ground.

— TOO BIG FOR US! — someone screamed. — WHERE'S HEAVY SUPPORT?!

— BUSY NOT DYING SOMEWHERE ELSE! — another voice snapped.

At some point, the radio hissed with interference, then went dead. No more coordination. Just them. Kaelar, and a handful of shredded people holding the door.

"I'm going to die here. Again." The thought landed clean and blunt. No panic.

On Earth, he'd begged for the gun to fire. Here, he had too many regrets to waste.

"I didn't ask to be reborn. I just wanted to rest in peace… I didn't ask to wake up in the middle of some war. But…", he started, and didn't finish even to himself.

A shout ripped his line of thought apart.

— RIGHT SECTOR BROKE! — the shaved-head soldier yelled. — THEY'RE GOING TO FLANK US!

Lian looked. An entire flank had been pushed back. Soldiers were stumbling in retreat. The enemy was opening an arc to shoot into their backs.

If that move closed, the gates became a death trap.

He saw it in a blink. And he saw something else: nobody there had the mobility to reach that point in time. Halvern held the middle. The left side was already wrestling a heavy push.

"If nobody goes…", he thought, feeling the conclusion weigh in before it appeared.

If nobody went, everyone died anyway. Slower. Worse.

The decision clicked into place with an annoying clarity.

"Fine. Let's go, universe. If that's what you want, then here's round two," he decided, legs moving before his mind finished voting.

— I'VE GOT THE RIGHT! — Lian yelled, standing from cover without giving too much attention to the survival instinct screaming in his skull.

— RID, DON'T DO SOMETHING STUPID! — Halvern roared behind him.

Too late.

Lian sprinted toward the broken flank, boots slipping on concrete husks and dark stains he refused to name. The screams turned to noise. He fired on the move, rifle steady, trying to force back the enemies pushing in.

One appeared out of nowhere a few meters away, raising his weapon. Lian pivoted and fired. The man fell. Another vaulted from behind a car. Lian hit his shoulder, then finished with a shot to the neck.

For a few seconds, it worked.

He made the enemy hesitate, step back, giving Kaelar's line a gap to reorganize.

"I'm not that useless with this body after all," he thought, a thread of bitter satisfaction.

That's when he saw him.

Through smoke and wreckage, a man in a different uniform—darker, heavier—advanced slowly. Bigger build. More reinforced vest. A rocket launcher rested on his shoulder, still smoking. The face was ordinary, but the corner-smile carried cold satisfaction.

Their eyes met.

"That's the guy who cleans up everyone's mess," he thought, skin prickling.

Lian raised the rifle, already knowing that was the target that mattered.

The gun clicked.

That dry, empty chamber sound rang louder than any explosion.

No ammo.

— No… — the word tore out of his throat.

"Not now, not like this," he thought, yanking the trigger again as if that could rewrite reality.

The enemy saw it, understood instantly. He dropped the rocket launcher, pulled a rifle off his back. The way he moved said it clearly: he'd done this a thousand times.

— There's a live one up front! — he shouted to his people, voice clean over the chaos. — Recycle this meat!

Shots came in a precise burst.

The first took Lian's shoulder, almost ripping it out. Pain detonated straight to his spine. The second found the side of his chest, punching through flesh, vest, rib. Air left in a wet gush. The third hit his flank, making his leg fail.

He dropped to his knees.

The world went wobbly, lines trembling, horizon tilting. Still, he tried to reach the pistol strapped to his thigh.

His hand only shook. No strength.

The enemy walked closer, unhurried, stepping around bodies. Stopped less than two meters away. His eyes were empty—no hate, no joy. Just efficiency.

He crouched, rummaged through Lian's vest, took ammo, a knife, a radio. Automatic work.

Lian tried to say something. An insult, a joke, anything. Nothing came out but a wet noise.

"I wish it would at least hurt you, you son of a bi—" he thought, rage boiling helpless inside a body that no longer answered.

The man finished looting him, stood, and spat in Lian's face.

— Trash — he said simply.

He aimed at Lian's chest. No speech. No theatrics.

The last shot went straight through the heart.

This time death had no drama. No slow-motion fall, no lights dimming bit by bit. It was like someone yanked the power cord.

Everything shut off.

Again.

Darkness.

Silence.

The void received him like it had never been interrupted—as if the war, the smoke, the blood smell were just a bad dream shoved into the middle of the code.

He waited for the nothing to wrap around him for good.

It didn't.

Instead, he felt threads.

This time it wasn't just one. There were three.

One smelled like rain on hot pavement, dirty alley, flickering streetlight. The old life. The village. Bia. Vani. The revolver.

Another smelled like gunpowder, broken concrete, burned metal. Kaelar, Halvern's shouting, the east gate, iron in his mouth.

The third…

The third was different.

It smelled like wet earth and pine, like a hearth burning real wood, not bad wiring. A cold, clean wind cut through that scent. There was something in it that made the skin he no longer had bristle.

It was like dipping a hand into a dark lake and feeling, deep down, a current unlike anything he'd ever known. Dense. Ancient. Bright.

"That's not gunpowder. That's not factory smoke. That… what the hell is that?" he thought, trying to grab the sensation.

All three threads tightened at once. The alley-thread trembled thin, almost snapping. The Kaelar-thread burned, still hot. The unknown one glowed, a blade of light cutting the dark.

There was a moment—one single instant—when Lian felt the strange sense that he could choose.

Go back to nothing.

Get dragged into war again.

Or…

"Third try, huh, universe. What is this—God? Gods? Time-space gremlins? Who knows…", he thought, dry and exhausted. "Whatever it is, it's got a weird obsession with me."

No answer came.

The luminous thread yanked hard.

And for the third time, Lian Rid was ripped out of the void.