Blood. Screams. Blades clashing.  

Raka stumbled forward, his left arm hanging limp as a sack of stones. A serrated gash on his shoulder pulsed with every heartbeat, the metallic tang of his own blood mixing with the stench of charred earth.

Around him, the battlefield was a writhing hellscape. Soldiers in shattered armor fought back-to-back against hulking beasts with obsidian scales. Their roars drowning out the dying moans of fallen comrades. A wyvern’s shadow blotted out the sun as it dive-bombed a cluster of archers, reducing them to ash.

This isn’t a war. It’s a slaughter.

“Fall back!” someone screamed. A red-haired mage dragging a wounded knight by the collar. But the command was futile. The frontlines had dissolved into panicked clusters. Their formations devoured by the encroaching tide of fangs and claws.

Raka’s sword trembled in his grip. Its edge chipped from parrying a monster’s tusks moments earlier. His vision swam, the edges darkening as blood loss gnawed at his consciousness.  

A serpentine creature lunged at him, its six milky eyes unblinking. Raka swung on instinct. The blade glanced off its armored neck.  

Too slow.  

Acidic saliva sprayed his face as the beast’s maw yawned wide.

A spear of crimson flame erupted beside him, punching through the monster’s skull. It collapsed, twitching, as Zareth, a Flame Guild mage with a bloodied cheek and singed robes, grabbed Raka’s arm. “You’re dead if you stay! The eastern flank’s gone!”  

Raka shook his head, teeth gritted. “If we break, they’ll reach the valley villages by nightfall.”  

“You think this” Zareth gestured at the carnage, “is holding anything back? Look around! We’re carrion!”  

A thunderous crash split the air as a siege tower toppled, crushing a dozen soldiers. Raka’s knees buckled. His body had crossed its limits hours ago. Every muscle screamed, every scar from past battles burned like fresh brands. Yet he straightened, hefting his sword. “Then we die as shields, not cowards.”  

Zareth cursed but raised his staff, its gemstone crackling. “Stubborn bastard. Fine. Let’s buy them a few more breaths.”  

They fought side by side, blade and flame carving a fleeting pocket of resistance. But Raka’s movements grew sluggish. When the claw came, a blurred strike from his blind spot. He barely registered the pain. Only the cold as it pierced his ribs, lifting him off the ground.  

So this is it.  

He stared at the smoke-choked sky as his body hit the mud. Distantly, he heard Zareth’s roar, felt the earth shake... Then, a sensation like falling through ice, cold slicing his soul before a sudden, searing warmth bloomed in his chest.

Light flickered at the edges of his vision, faint and golden, like sunlight through closed eyelids. Voices murmured, not Zareth’s, not the battlefield’s, but distant, echoing as if underwater. A woman’s voice: “Arlen? Arlen, wake up.”

Warmth.

Raka gasped, bolting upright. His hands, slim, unmarked, clutched a woolen blanket. The room was small, lit by a single oil lamp. Clay pots lined shelves, their herbal reeks stinging his nose.

A mirror hung crookedly on the wall, reflecting a gaunt face he didn’t recognize. A boy of seventeen with shadowed eyes and a crescent scar on his jaw.  

No. No, no, no.

He scrambled to the mirror, fingers probing the unfamiliar angles of his cheeks, the softness of untrained arms. Fragmented memories surfaced. A cramped attic, a bottle shattering against a tavern wall, a knife pressed to his own wrist.

Arlen Veyr. That’s the name.

The door creaked open. An elderly woman entered, her hands cradling a steaming bowl. “You’ve been out three days,” she said, setting the broth on a stool. Her voice was gentle but strained, as if each word cost her. “The fever finally broke. Can you speak?”

Raka’s throat tightened. She thinks I’m him. A boy who… gave up. “I… yes.”

Mira. Her name surfaced like a half-remembered dream. She studied him. “You look different. Less… hollow.”

He flinched. Arlen’s memories crystallized, a funeral pyre for his parents, villagers whispering cursed, nights spent clawing at his own skin to feel something. Mira had taken him in when even the orphanage turned him away.  

“I died,” Raka whispered, more to himself.  

Mira stiffened. “What?”  

“Nothing.” He forced a sip of broth. It scalded his tongue, grounding him. “Thank you. For… this.”  

She lingered, her gaze piercing. “The scars on your neck. They’ve faded.”  

Raka touched his throat. Arlen had tried to hang himself a year ago. The rope marks were now faint silvery lines. This body is healing. Or… being rewritten?  

—  

Over the next week, Raka probed the limits of his stolen form. Arlen’s body was frail, yes, but beneath the surface hummed a flicker of magic. Wild and untapped, like a buried stream. In the forest behind Mira’s cottage, Raka practiced channeling it, clawing at memories of his past life’s training.  

Focus. Draw the mana upward.  

A spark ignited in his palm, then fizzled. Sweat dripped down his brow. Without the muscle memory of spellwork, even basic conjuring was agony.  

“What’re you doing?”  

Raka whirled. A girl stood at the tree line, Kara, the blacksmith’s daughter. At fifteen, she had her father’s broad shoulders and a permanent scowl.  

“Practicing,” Raka said curtly.  

She snorted. “Since when does Arlen Veyr practice anything but wallowing?”  

He stiffened. The disdain in her voice mirrored the village’s view of Arlen. A burden, a ghost. “People change.”

“Not you.” Her boot scuffed dirt. A pause. The pebble rolled toward his foot. “Thom needs hands. Yours look… less useless today.”

Raka’s fist clenched. This body’s resentment isn’t mine. Let it go. But the words spilled out: “Why do you care? You’ve never spoken three words to me before.”  

“Because you’re weird.” She crossed her arms. “Always hiding. Jumping at shadows. Now you’re out here muttering to yourself like a hedge witch. People are talking.”  

“Let them.” He turned away.  

“Wait.” She hesitated. “If you’re really… different now… Thom needs help repairing the mill wheel. Pays two coppers a day.”

Raka blinked. A peace offering? “Why?”  

“Because Mira’s too old to keep feeding you for free.” Kara shrugged, already walking off. “Be there at dawn. Don’t faint.”  

That night, Mira found him sharpening a stolen kitchen knife. “You’ll need better steel if you’re heading into the wilds,” she said quietly.  

Raka froze. “How did you?”  

“I’ve buried three sons.” She placed a leather pack by his feet. Inside, dried meat, a tinderbox, and a bone-handled dagger. “The living don’t sharpen blades in the dark.”  

He met her gaze. “You know I’m not him.”  

“I know the boy I loved died in that alley.” Her voice cracked. “But whatever you are… don’t let his death be meaningless.”

“I won’t. Because I don’t want to die either.”

The next morning brought rain, a cold, persistent drizzle that slicked the packed earth of Darkan village and turned the world grey. The scent of damp soil and woodsmoke hung heavy in the air.

Raka worked alongside Thom, the rhythm of the axe a stark contrast to the life he’d known before… before Arlen, before the fall, before everything had shattered.

Thom, bearded and weathered like an old oak, remained silent, his presence a quiet weight. He offered only a grunt when Raka’s swing was clumsy, but a brief, almost imperceptible nod when the axe bit true, splitting the log cleanly.

The body ached. Arlen Veyr, whoever he truly had been beyond a weary villager hiding from something, possessed muscles unused to this kind of sustained labor. 

Arlen’s arms trembled. Raka’s will meant nothing. This body was kindling, not steel. Each lift strained a back that felt brittle. But Raka pushed through the burning fatigue. 

There was a strange solace in the repetitive motion, a physical anchor in the swirling chaos of his thoughts. Swing. Split. Stack. Think. The rhythm carved out space in his mind. Plan.

He couldn't stay. That much was brutally clear.

Mothers herded children indoors. Men fingered knife hilts. The village held its breath when he passed.

He was an anomaly, wearing a dead man's face, inhabiting a life that wasn't his. He saw it in the way mothers pulled their children closer when he passed, the way men stopped talking, their eyes narrowed.

Arlen had been accepted, perhaps pitied, but Raka, the presence looking out through Arlen's eyes, was an unknown quantity. An infection in the quiet fabric of their lives. He needed to leave, before their unease festered into something uglier. Before he became the problem they decided to solve.

That night, the small cottage felt both stifling and fragile against the sighing wind and rain. Raka sat by the hearth, turning Arlen’s damp, patched tunic over and over, letting the meager heat kiss the worn fabric. Mira watched him, her expression unreadable in the flickering firelight. She’d been quiet since sharing her meager meal with him, a stew thick with root vegetables.

Finally, she spoke, her voice soft but clear. “You’re going to leave soon, aren’t you?”

Raka stopped turning the tunic, meeting her gaze across the small space. He didn’t bother with pretense. “You knew?”

She nodded, a simple, sad affirmation. “It’s in your eyes. The way you look at the road. Arlen looked resigned. You… you look like you’re calculating escape velocity.”

She traced a pattern on the rough wooden floor with her finger. “Just… promise me something.”

“What?” The word felt rough in Arlen's throat.

“Don’t die in silence.”

Raka blinked, startled by the intensity in her voice, the sudden focus in her eyes. “That’s… a strange thing to ask.”

Mira looked back into the fire, her profile etched in orange light and shadow. “People like Arlen... the ones who carry too much weight alone... they don’t scream when the world breaks them. They don’t cry out. They just endure until they can’t anymore, and then they simply… vanish. Into the forest, into the night, into the earth. Gone. Don’t be like that. If the end comes, let the world hear you rage against it.”

A chill, unrelated to the damp clothes, traced its way down Raka’s spine. He thought of his own first death, the suddenness, the surprise, the lack of any defiance. He thought of the void. He stood, the movement stiff in Arlen's body.

“I’ll try not to.”

And the strange thing was, standing there in a dead man’s clothes, in a life borrowed for mere days, he meant it. He owed that much, perhaps not to Mira, but to the flickering ember of self that remained.

Before the first hint of dawn painted the bruised sky, Raka moved with quiet purpose. He packed the handful of dried meat and the half-loaf of dense bread Mira had given him into a roughspun cloth bag. He donned Arlen’s patched cloak, its wool scratchy but blessedly thick. On the rough-hewn table, he left a small, smooth stone he’d found by the river. A silent acknowledgement, perhaps better than words beside a hastily scribbled note on a piece of salvaged parchment.

Thank you.

He stepped out not into dawn, but into a thick, clinging fog that swallowed the village whole. The road leading away from Darkan was less a path, more a suggestion swallowed by mist. Visibility was barely ten paces. The air was cold, biting at his exposed cheeks.

Taking a deep breath that tasted of wet earth and silence, Raka turned his back on the only sanctuary he'd known since his abrupt arrival in this world. He whispered the words into the concealing grey, a promise to the soul trapped within.

“This is your second chance. Don’t waste it.”

The world beyond Darkan proved his whisper tragically naive. It was not merely unwelcoming. it felt actively hostile.

For three days, Raka walked. The fog eventually burned off, revealing a landscape carved by hardship. The road, little more than twin ruts in the mud, wound through dense, ancient forests where sunlight struggled to pierce the canopy, and across bleak, rocky outcroppings where the wind howled like a hungry wolf.

He saw no travelers, no merchant wagons, no farmers heading to market. Only the skeletal trees, the indifferent stones, and the oppressive silence broken occasionally by the cry of an unseen bird or the rustle of something small and fearful in the undergrowth.

Arlen’s vague memories offered little comfort. Flashes of this road, perhaps, but distorted, dreamlike. A sense of weary travel, but no specific landmarks, no warnings of dangers.

He was navigating blind, fueled by stale bread and dwindling hope. The isolation gnawed at him. It wasn’t the quiet itself, he’d known profound silence in the void, but the unknown nature of it. 

Every looming shadow seemed to writhe with potential threats. Every snapped twig echoed like a prelude to attack. Was it bandits? Wild beasts? Or something worse, something native to this harsh land he didn't even have a name for?

He hated the vulnerability, the gnawing tension that tightened his shoulders and quickened his breath. Still, he kept moving. One foot in front of the other. South. Arlen's fragmented memories suggested something lay south.

On the fourth day, the silence was broken. Not by a bird, but by the unmistakable, gut-wrenching scent of death and burnt wood carried on the wind. He rounded a bend choked with thorny bushes, and the road opened onto a scene of utter devastation.

A caravan, or what was left of it. Two sturdy carts lay splintered, their wheels shattered, axles snapped. Crates and barrels were smashed open, their contents, grains, textiles, perhaps traded goods, strewn across the muddy track like entrails. Dead horses lay twisted at unnatural angles, their eyes glassy, hides ripped. Flies buzzed lazily in the still air. The attack had been brutal, overwhelming, and recent.

Raka’s breath hitched. He crept forward, hand instinctively reaching for a weapon he didn’t possess. He knelt beside one of the bodies, a young guard, barely older than Arlen looked, maybe twenty. His throat was slashed wide, a grotesque grin exposing teeth and torn muscle. His hand was frozen in a death grip around the hilt of a simple steel sword, its blade stained dark.

Too late, the thought echoed, cold and hollow. Too late to save anyone. He hesitated, then pried the sword from the dead man’s fingers. The leather-wrapped hilt felt solid, real, a desperate comfort.

“Hello?” A weak voice croaked from beneath the wreckage of the nearest cart. “Is… is someone there?”

Raka froze, sword held defensively. He scanned the carnage. A hand, smeared with mud and blood, waved feebly from under a pile of canvas and splintered wood.

“Help us… please…”

“Hello?”

“Help us… please…”

Cautiously, Raka approached. He pulled away the heavy canvas. Huddled beneath were two figures, an older man, likely a merchant judging by his torn, once-fine clothes, clutching a bleeding wound on his leg, his face pale with shock and pain. Beside him, a boy, no older than twelve, eyes wide with terror, trembling uncontrollably.

“It came… from the trees,” the merchant gasped, wincing as Raka knelt beside him. “So fast… gods, the screams…”

Before Raka could ask what ‘it’ was, he heard it.

Click-clack-skitter.

Like oversized claws tapping rhythmically on stone, but faster, more menacing. The sound echoed strangely, seeming to come from the trees bordering the road.

Raka’s head snapped up. The boy whimpered, burying his face in the merchant’s side. The merchant’s eyes widened further in abject terror. “It’s back…”

Blood pounded in Raka’s ears. He rose. Sword raised. A dead man’s steel, still warm from stiff fingers.  

The trees shivered.  

Then, a click. A skitter. Like knives on bone.  

A Slitfang.

It shouldered through the canopy. Branches snapped. Sap oozed where chitin scraped bark. Eight feet of glossy black carapace, legs tapered to spearpoints. Its mouth split vertically. Rows of teeth dripping saliva that hissed where it struck dirt.  

Arlen’s memories offered nothing. Raka’s gut twisted. Not memory. Instinct.  

The beast cocked its head. Multifaceted eyes reflected Raka’s face twelve times. Then the boy’s whimper.  

A shriek. Not sound. A nail dragged down the spine.

It charged.  

Raka’s muscles screamed. Too slow. Too weak. The sword trembled—not fear, but Arlen’s wasted arms failing him.  

First rule of battle: When outmatched, cheat.

He kicked the merchant’s spilled satchel. Coins fountained, glittering. The Slitfang flinched. For half a heartbeat, its eyes tracked gold instead of flesh.  

Raka ran.

He bolted, not back down the road, but sideways, into the relative cover of the forest. Branches whipped at his face, thorns tore at Arlen's cloak. Mud sucked at his boots, threatening to pull him down. His lungs burned.

Behind him, he heard the Siltfang’s heavy tread. The splintering crash as it likely demolished the remains of the cart, followed by a choked scream that was cut off abruptly. Gods, the boy… He couldn’t think about it.

The clicking pursuit was relentless, terrifyingly close. Faster than anything that size had a right to be. He risked a glance back – the creature was gaining, its horrible mouth gaping. Panic surged. 

He saw a slight dip in the terrain, a narrow game trail leading down towards the sound of running water. He veered onto it, stumbling, sliding more than running down a short, steep slope overgrown with roots.

He tripped. A root snagged his ankle, sending him sprawling. He rolled, momentum carrying him down the last few feet, and crashed hard into the icy water of a shallow, fast-flowing river. The shock stole his breath.

Scrambling, gasping, he tried to get his feet under him in the knee-deep water. But it was too late. A huge shadow fell over him. The Siltfang stood on the bank above, then leaped.

Instinct, pure and desperate, took over. With a ragged cry, Raka twisted in the water, raising the dead guard’s sword. A flimsy toothpick against such a beast and thrust upward with all the strength in Arlen’s failing body.

There was a grating scrape as the sword tip skittered off the creature’s impossibly tough underbelly carapace. It didn’t penetrate. Not even close.

And then the Siltfang landed.

Not on him, but through him. One of its massive, pointed legs, driven by the force of its leap, punched straight through his gut.

Pain. White-hot. Blinding. It obliterated thought, sound, everything. He felt a horrific internal rending. Air punched from his lungs in a wet gasp. He tasted blood, thick and metallic, flooding his mouth. His vision swam, the world dissolving into fractured colours and grey light.

The creature shrieked again, a sound of surprise or perhaps frustration, pulling its leg back slightly, sensing something fundamentally wrong with its prey. Raka felt a hideous sucking sensation as the limb withdrew partway.

He started to laugh.

A strange, choking, wet sound bubbling up with the blood.

“Dying… again, huh?” he gasped, the words barely audible over the rush of the river and the ringing in his ears.

“Third time’s the charm… or not…” He stared up past the monstrous shape of the Siltfang at the indifferent canopy of leaves far above. He didn’t even try to move, didn't try to fight the impossible. What was the point?

The world turned grey, then faded entirely.

And as his soul, this tenacious, cursed spark of awareness, slipped free from the ruined body of Arlen Veyr…

…it felt the familiar, sickening lurch. The pull into the infinite, silent void.

Darkness. Absolute and consuming. A brief suspension, timeless, thoughtless.

Then light. Harsh. Unforgiving.

Then, pain. Again. Always again.

Raka sucked in a ragged breath. His lungs burning as if they hadn’t tasted air in minutes, or perhaps years. Cold, rough stone pressed against his back and limbs.

The clink of metal. Heavy shackles chafed his wrists, biting into raw skin. His head throbbed with a deep, percussive rhythm, each beat sending waves of nausea through him.

This wasn't a forest. This wasn't the aftermath of a monster attack.

It was a cell. Small. Damp. Reeking of stale sweat, fear, and mildew.

He was chained to the wall. The heavy iron cuffs linked by a short, thick chain.

And this body, this new temporary vessel felt ravaged. Broken before he'd even arrived. He could feel it instantly.

The lungs wheezed with every shallow breath. Bones deep within him seemed to ache with a profound weariness, some perhaps cracked or broken. A steady, sluggish trickle of warmth oozed from a wound on his side, blood. Someone had beaten this body. Recently. Thoroughly.

Where...? Who...? The questions barely formed before heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor outside thick iron bars set into a stone archway. The clang of boots on stone grew louder.

A figure appeared, silhouetted against the dim torchlight from the corridor. A man. Tall, broad-shouldered, clad in utilitarian black leather armor, scuffed and worn. His face, as he stepped closer, was cruel, marked by a jagged scar across one cheek, his eyes small and hard. He stopped before the bars, peering in.

“Still alive, traitor?” the man sneered, his voice rough like grinding stones. He delivered a sharp kick to the iron bars, making them rattle violently, sending fresh waves of agony through Raka’s borrowed body. “Impressive. Most rats like you are whimpering for their mothers by now.”

Raka didn’t respond. Couldn’t. His throat felt like sandpaper; his tongue thick and unresponsive.

The guard chuckled darkly. “Doesn’t matter. Execution’s scheduled for dawn tomorrow. Gives you a few more hours to contemplate your miserable life. Pray you don’t soil yourself before the headsman swings his axe.”

He spat contemptuously onto the stone floor just outside the bars, the globule glistening wetly in the torchlight. He lingered a moment, seeming to relish the sight of the broken form chained within, then turned and walked away, his laughter echoing back down the corridor until it faded.

Traitor? Execution? Tomorrow?

Raka sagged against the chains, the cold metal biting into his skin. He looked down at the hands shackled before him. Calloused, scarred, but possessing a strength that was currently negated by injury and chains. He didn't know who this man had been.

A rebel fighting a losing cause? A common thief whose luck ran out? A political prisoner caught on the wrong side of a power struggle?

It didn't matter. The 'why' was irrelevant. What mattered was the reality: this body was already doomed. Caught, condemned, and awaiting imminent death. And Raka, trapped within it, could do absolutely nothing to stop it. Not this time.

There was no forest to run into, no lucky sword thrust (not that it helped last time). He had no Ki, no mana. Remnants of whatever his original self might have possessed felt impossibly distant, like legends from another life. 

This body lacked even the basic strength to properly test the chains, let alone break them or overpower a guard.

His soul had landed in a dead-end. Literally.

“Damn it…” The whisper was dry, rasping, barely audible even to himself.

He started to laugh again. Not the choking sound from the riverbank, but a low, bitter chuckle that shook the abused frame.

It was absurd. The universe had a sick sense of humor. Resolve not to waste a chance, immediately get eaten. Try not to die in silence, immediately land in a body unable to even shout before its scheduled termination.

Mira’s words echoed faintly, Don’t die in silence.

He tried to inhale deeper, to gather strength for a yell, a curse, anything. But the effort sent sharp spikes of pain through his ribs and side, ending in a weak, wheezing cough. Silence it would have to be.

He wouldn’t be here long. He closed his eyes, not in resignation, perhaps, but in weariness. A weariness that went soul-deep.

The cold stone leeched warmth. The distant sounds of the prison, dripping water, shuffling feet, a muffled shout, faded into a monotonous drone. He drifted, not sleeping, but existing in a grey limbo of pain and futility.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed. Hours, maybe. Enough for the throbbing in his head to settle into a dull, constant ache, enough for the bleeding in his side to slow to a sticky seepage.

Then came the sounds. Heavy boots approaching again. The jangle of keys. The grating screech of the cell door being unlocked and swung open. Rough hands grabbed him, hauling him upright. 

Pain flared anew, making him cry out weakly. They didn’t care. They half-dragged, half-carried his barely responsive body out of the cell, down the dim corridor, and into a larger chamber where more guards waited.

Stronger chains were fastened, binding his arms tightly behind him. They pushed him forward, out into a cold, grey pre-dawn light that stung his eyes. A courtyard.

Soldiers lined the perimeter, their faces impassive. A small crowd of onlookers, other prisoners perhaps, or staff, watched with morbid curiosity. Jeers and insults floated on the damp air, but Raka barely registered them.

They forced him to his knees before a crude wooden block, stained dark with history. He could feel the rough grain of the wood against his cheek. He saw the headsman approach a large, hooded figure, testing the edge of a massive, gleaming axe.

There was no trial, no last words offered or asked for. Just the cold inevitability. He thought, fleetingly, of Mira, of the Siltfang, of Arlen's weary face. He thought of the sheer, impossible absurdity of it all.

Third death in... how many days?

The axe swung high.

For a fraction of a second, light glinted on the polished steel. And when the blade came down, swift and brutally efficient, he barely even felt it. Just a sudden pressure, a disconnect, and the familiar, terrifying rush of being pulled away once more.

Into the dark. Again.