The graveyard lay silent beneath a curtain of rain. Mud clung to boots as mourners in black stood in rows, their umbrellas bending under the weight of the storm.
The iron gates creaked in the wind, and the old stone crosses leaned like weary men.
drip… drip… drip…
A coffin sank into the earth. No one spoke. Only the dull toll of the bell echoed across the gray sky.
dong… dong… dong…
In the crowd, a man in his early twenties staggered.
His vision blurred, the shapes of black-clad figures dissolving into shadow. Darkness swallowed the world.
whooosh…
...
When his eyes opened again, the air felt thinner, harsher. He looked down and saw smaller hands—child's hands, trembling.
The body was frail, only eleven to twelve years old.
The boy had been clutching a thin, weather-worn book, its pages soaked with half-faded ink, diagrams of souls scrawled in uneven lines.
Yet the boy's breath was gone, his own soul already torn away.
The man had no memory of this place. No knowledge of its laws, its dangers, its norm.
Only the hollow echo of rain, and the strange truth that he now lived inside the body of a dead child.
thud… thud… thud…
His chest rose and fell unevenly as he sat there, rain dripping through the cracks of the roof above.
His fingers clutched the damp book tighter, as if it might vanish if he let go.
'This isn't a dream. I can feel the weight of the air, the cold seeping into my bones.'
He pressed his small hands together, staring at the lines of his palms as though they could give him answers.
'These hands aren't mine. I was taller… older. Now I'm trapped in the body of a boy. Eleven years old, maybe. ...The body feels weak, brittle even, as if it might collapse at any moment. Did this child die while reading? Was the book the cause ...or just a coincidence?'
He looked again at the ruined pages, the ink bleeding into the paper. Strange diagrams of circles and runes twisted across the sheets.
'Souls. This boy was studying souls. Did he discover something forbidden? Or was he simply curious and careless? Either way, I'm here now, in his place. But why me? Why this body? If his soul is gone, then mine has replaced it… but that means there's no one else left inside.'
His breath came sharper, his heart racing, but he forced himself to slow down.
'Calm. Panicking won't change the reality. First, I need to observe. This world... I know nothing about it. If there are rules, powers, dangers, I'll only survive by understanding them. That means patience, caution, and above all—silence. No one must know that the boy who died has awakened with a different soul.'
He shut the book and held it against his chest, staring at the dripping ceiling.
'Still… if souls are real here, then this book is the only clue I have. Maybe it's the reason he died... and maybe it's the reason I lived.'
drip… drip… drip…
The sound of rain echoed like a clock ticking, pressing his thoughts forward into the unknown.
The candle sputtered, its thin flame bending with every draft that slipped through the cracks of the wooden walls.
Shadows clung to the corners of the room, stretching long and uneasy.
He ran his eyes across the space. The room was almost bare... an uneven bed frame without blankets, a single table with the candle, and stacks of books piled haphazardly on the floor.
The smell of wax and damp wood filled the air.
'Strange. No furniture, no decoration, nothing that shows comfort. Whoever lived here only cared about these books. And books…'
He narrowed his eyes at the stacks. The bindings were worn, but the pages seemed intact. Dozens of them.
'In my world, in history at least, books were luxuries in medieval times. Paper wasn't cheap, and literacy wasn't common. If this kid had so many, then he wasn't some beggar. Was he from a wealthy family? Or connected to something else... something dangerous?'
He leaned closer to the candle, watching the flame quiver.
Beyond the window, darkness pressed heavy, no light of torches or lanterns from the outside streets.
Just the chorus of crickets and the far-off patter of rain.
'So it's night. Judging from the architecture, the way this room is built, and the lack of anything modern… I can almost be certain. This place is closer to a medieval world. Wooden walls, iron hinges, wax candles, no glass windows. And if that's true… then I'm in an age where power belongs to whoever holds steel, wealth, or knowledge.'
His gaze dropped again to the book in his hands, its faded symbols flickering in the candlelight.
'Knowledge, then. This boy might have had it. Enough to get himself killed.'
crackle…
The wick hissed, wax dripping down the candlestick, as his thoughts spiraled deeper.
The candlelight wavered as he lifted the book closer, squinting at the letters etched into the cover. His brow furrowed.
'This… this isn't English. It isn't any alphabet I've seen before... no Latin roots, no Cyrillic, not even anything close to Arabic or Chinese scripts. The lines are sharp, fragmented, filled with dots and strokes that twist in unnatural angles. Hardly any curves or circles compared to Earth's alphabets. If I hadn't woken up in a child's body, this alone would've convinced me... I'm not on Earth anymore.'
The strange markings shifted in the candle's glow, yet as his eyes traced them, understanding trickled into his mind, as if the meaning had been waiting for him all along.
"Source of Life," he whispered, tasting the words carefully. "By… Ro'shin."
'What kind of name is that? No last name? On Earth, every author I know had one—unless they wanted to hide, or lived in a culture where family names didn't matter. Ro'shin… doesn't sound human, at least not to my ears. But then again, who knows what's normal here?'
He flipped open the cover, the parchment heavy and uneven beneath his fingertips.
Skimming across the lines, the words bled into meaning as though his mind had been rewired to understand them.
'Souls… this book is all about souls. Their nature, their strength, their shapes. Not superstition—this reads like research, almost like a manual. And this energy… Ael.'
The word pulsed in his mind, foreign yet familiar, like an echo stirring inside his chest.
'Ael fuels life, power, existence itself… if this is true, then this world runs on something beyond physics. Something closer to what people on Earth would call mana in fictions. Only, it's not mana. It's Ael. That distinction… feels important.'
His eyes paused on a passage near the beginning, where the world itself was named.
"Zimyar…" he whispered, as though the walls might listen.
'So that's what this place is called. Zimyar. A peculiar name, heavy on the tongue. Is it Zimyar in every language here, or only in this script? Do different people call it something else? On Earth, we had so many names for the same lands. Maybe it's the same here.'
He closed the book softly, holding it in his lap.
'Source of Life. Souls. Ael. Zimyar. Whoever this boy was, he died chasing truths far beyond his years. And now… I've inherited both his body and his unfinished questions.'
flutter…
The candle flame bent low, shadows of the books around him swaying.
He shut the book with a soft thump and pushed it away, his fingers trembling.
'No. Not now. The boy died reading this. Whatever killed him, I won't repeat the mistake. I need to breathe, to think. This body isn't mine, and every movement feels foreign—like wearing clothes that don't fit. I can't afford to get lost in a book that might lead me to the same fate.'
He steadied his breathing, gripping the candlestick as if its small flame could ward off the unease crawling through the room. Shadows shifted across the uneven walls as he stood, holding the light higher, searching for… something. Anything that explained why he was here.
A corner of parchment caught his eye, half-hidden beneath the leg of the table. He crouched and pulled it free. The texture was rough, not paper—pigskin, stretched and treated. He raised it closer to the candle.
The words scrawled across it weren't neat, but sharp, written with urgency:
"Many people are being kidnapped. I went into hiding here, but I'm trapped. There is no way out."
His breath caught.
'Kidnapped? So this child... or someone else was hiding here from pursuers. That means there are people hunting others down… but for what reason? Slavery? Experiments? Or something worse?'
He flipped the sheet over, expecting more explanation. Instead, only a single line, carved deep into the surface as though written with rage.
"I'm going to kill them all."
The candle flickered violently in his grip. A cold shiver ran through his spine.