Aiden's eyes opened slowly.
At first, all he saw was light—soft and golden, like morning sun filtered through leaves. It was warm. Not the biting cold of Greyhill's streets, but real warmth, like an embrace he had never known. He blinked again. The light shifted, forming shapes. Trees. Sky. A meadow that stretched endlessly, its grass swaying in a breeze that smelled of honey and flowers.
He sat up.
No pain. No soaked clothes. No alley walls pressing in.
Just silence. Peaceful, unnatural silence.
He looked down at himself. His clothes were different—clean, white linen tunic and soft brown pants. No shoes, but the grass beneath his feet felt like silk. He touched his arms. The bruises… gone. The cuts, the burns from the broken pipes, the old scars—they had all vanished.
"Where… am I?" he whispered.
His voice felt strange. Not weak. Not cracked. Like it belonged to someone else—someone whole.
Suddenly, a sound.
A soft chime in the air. Not mechanical. Not wind. It was like… singing. But not human.
He turned.
Floating above the meadow, just a few steps away, was a figure wrapped in flowing blue cloth, hovering without wings. She had no face, but the light around her shimmered like a star underwater. When she spoke, it wasn't with words—it was inside his mind.
> "You have been chosen, Aiden."
He froze. "Chosen? For what?"
> "To begin again."
Aiden's hands clenched. "Why me? I'm nothing. I'm nobody."
> "Even stars begin as dust."
He didn't know what to say. The figure raised one hand, and a symbol lit up in the air—three curved lines surrounding a glowing core. It hovered before him, then drifted forward and sank into his chest.
Aiden gasped.
The world spun. Images flashed before his eyes. Forests of glass, cities built in the sky, creatures of fire and shadow, names in languages he had never heard. And power. Deep, ancient, and vast.
Then it stopped.
The figure was gone.
But the world remained.
And so did something inside him—like a heartbeat that didn't belong to his body.
Aiden stood, his eyes reflecting the sky above. He didn't understand this world. He didn't know the rules. But for the first time in years…
He felt something.
Not fear. Not despair.
But the first flicker of purpose.
> "Even stars begin as dust..."
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