"Fuck."
The word tore out of him as pain burned through his chest. His lungs filled with liquid fire, and his vision swam. Sirens screamed somewhere in the distance, but they were far too late.
"I should've called backup..."
He'd been chasing a lead on a triple homicide. He thought he was too clever, too cunning for criminals to realise what was happening. Instead, the mob had cornered him. A gunshot cracked the dark alleyway, followed by a couple more.
Before he realised what was going on, his body collapsed to the wet pavement, and the darkness swallowed him whole.
His senses disappeared one by one, replaced by complete emptiness.
His mind floated, detached from everything.
A single thought echoed endlessly in his head.
"Is this what death is like?"
But then—something changed.
Warmth crept into the void, brushing against him like sunlight filtering through heavy curtains.
A faint noise hummed in the distance, growing clearer with each passing moment until it became a soft chirping of birds.
His eyes flew open.
A pale blue sky stretched above, streaked with wandering clouds. Light pierced his vision, so bright it stabbed behind his eyes. He gasped and blinked against the glare, disoriented by the sudden brightness of it all. The wind brushed against his hair—longer than he remembered, dark brown strands tickling his pale forehead.
He forced his gaze downward, revealing a pool of crimson.
"…Huh?"
His breath hitched.
A puddle of blood spread beneath him, dark and glistening. It soaked into the grass and muddy earth.
He scrambled upright, patting his chest. There were no bullet wounds. No shattered ribs. His body appeared perfectly intact.
"I'm… alive?"
That was when the memories hit him.
They came suddenly, striking him like a thunderbolt.
In them, he was an eighteen-year-old orphan. A brief glimpse of his daily struggle, and a name that whispered through each memory on repeat—Edward Aywin.
The pain began to subside, but the confusion remained.
He clutched his forehead, still disoriented from all the fragmented memories.
"Who's… Edward?"
He lingered for a moment, then turned back to the blood. Thick and still radiating warmth, it confirmed what instinct already suggested.
His confusion gave way to focus as his detective training kicked in.
"Fresh," he said under his breath.
Crouching low, he scanned the ground with careful precision. The stains weren't random smears—they bore pattern and structure, a narrative written in crimson. Elongated droplets traced graceful arcs, their tapered tails pointing away from the point of origin.
"Medium-velocity spatter," he murmured, tracing the trajectory with his finger. "Blade wound, not blunt force. Right-handed strike, horizontal swing."
He followed the trail, noting cast-off patterns several feet from the source—linear repetitions of smaller droplets indicating repeated swings.
"Multiple strikes. Three at least. Deliberate, controlled. This wasn't accidental," he added, his voice low and analytical. Each mark told the story of intent, force, and motion, and his hazel eyes read it like a map.
Closer to the wound, fine linear stains radiated outward in a fan-like pattern, each line exhibiting the subtle rhythm of a heartbeat.
"Arterial spurting," he muttered, scanning the pattern.
"Neck wound—likely the carotid or jugular. The victim was upright at the time of injury. Elevated blood pressure, tachycardic. The force and pulsation of the spray correspond to systolic peaks. Most of the droplets are medium-sized, around 1 to 5 millimeters, with some larger drops arcing onto nearby surfaces."
He exhaled, his gaze narrowing. The boy whose body he now wore hadn't died cleanly. He'd been butchered.
He stepped to the side, noting a patch of grass that remained conspicuously clean amid the surrounding arterial stains—a clear void pattern, where an object or person had obstructed the spray.
"Something blocked it," he murmured. "The attacker must have been close. Point-of-origin analysis aligns with a body facing Edward. This was a deliberate, targeted attack."
Footprints were impressed in the soft soil, uneven and partially smudged, interspersed with darker streaks where blood had flowed rather than projected.
"He struggled," he observed, tracing the marks. "Tried to flee, then collapsed here." His fingers brushed the damp earth. "Still moist—estimated time of injury, less than an hour."
He stood slowly, staring down at the crime scene.
He had died once, shot by the mob in a dark alleyway. Now he had been reborn into the body of a young orphan… only to discover the boy had been killed moments before.
"What are the odds?" he muttered under his breath.
It wasn't fear or despair that stirred in him.
Instead, something else crept in, familiar and insistent—curiosity.
The same drive that had pulled him through countless crime scenes back home. The hunger to uncover the puzzle, the lure of the mystery behind the murder.
He crouched again, eyes carefully tracing every stain, every scuff, and every detail.
"Why you, Edward?" he whispered. "You were just an orphan boy. No family, no wealth. What reason did someone have to kill you?"
He tried to summon memories of the boy's last moments, but they remained fractured, slipping just out of reach.
The wind carried his words away.
His gaze dropped to his blood-soaked hands, then wandered to the surroundings.
Trees loomed overhead, and in the near distance, small wooden buildings formed a village—or maybe a small town. Their shapes were unfamiliar, unlike anything found in modern architecture.
His thoughts drifted back to the murder weapon.
The blood patterns suggested a long blade… perhaps a sword.
"Why would anyone use a sword…?" The question hung in his mind, quickly joined by a more pressing one.
"…Where the hell am I?"