After a few moments of heavy darkness, Dan opened his eyes, but he wasn't in his bloodied body on the restaurant floor. He was somewhere else, standing in a daze before his own corpse. He looked at himself in confusion, as if the world had suddenly turned upside down. He stammered in a trembling voice, "Am I... have I become a ghost?"
He reached for the glass of juice he hadn't consumed, but he couldn't touch it. His hand slipped through the glass as if it were air. He tried to slap one of the savages who had killed him, but his hand penetrated their bodies without them even noticing. He was just a helpless ghost.
He found no other choice but to flee. He left the restaurant, walking unsteadily down the street leading to his home. To his surprise, passersby began to turn towards him, their eyes following him. Then he stopped in front of a small child and asked him in a low voice, "Do... do you see me?"
"Yes... I see you," the child replied, surprised.
Dan was shocked. He ran with all his might toward his home. At the door, he bent down and fished the key out from under the rug, as he always did, then entered. His heart was pounding, his mind not wondering how he had come back to life or how he had found himself in another body, but screaming out one name: my family.
"Mother! lyra!"
The father ran down, but he didn't look at him like his son. Instead, he grabbed a wooden stick and shouted sharply, "Who are you? How did you get in here?"
Dan was confused and said, "What do you mean? I..."
The mother and sister were torn apart, terrified, behind the father. Dan noticed their looks: a look of fear. A look devoid of trust or love.
Dan realized that he was no longer the same, and that nothing would ever be the same again.
But before he could finish, the father raised his stick threateningly: "Get out immediately or I'll call the authorities!"
Dan took a step closer, and the blow fell on him, but—with an instinct he had never known before—he dodged the stick with a swift and agile movement he hadn't imagined he was capable of. Then his eyes fell on a mirror hanging in the entrance of the house.
It wasn't his features. He didn't see his face. What was reflected before him wasn't Dan Flair, but another man, with a strange face and body.
His heart trembled, he took a step back, then rushed out of the house. He ran through the narrow, dark alleys of the city until he fell, sitting against one of its damp, musty walls.
He raised his head to the cloud-filled sky and said, in a voice filled with confusion, "How did I come back to life?" "And who owns this body?" "And what is the secret of this strange speed in my reactions?" "And how... how will I continue my life from now on?"