The fire danced around me. The city was burning, and I was burning with it. Every breath was agony, every inhalation pumped ash and smoke into my lungs, every movement was a mockery of my continued struggle, even though I knew it was the end. My armor was shattered, my sword slipped in my bloodied hand, and in my chest, I felt the cold steel and the warm blood flowing out.
I fell to my knees. The ground was hard, sticky with blood—mine and that of others. "Is this how I end?" flashed through my mind as my vision slowly faded.
Then the sky cracked. As if someone had torn the blue sheet over the world. From the tear poured numbers, lights, messages.
[A SOUL'S ECHO: JOURNEY'S END]
[Time Weaved: 27 years, 4 months, 11 days]
I laughed. This is what death looks like? Numbers and letters? No flashbacks? It's… sad.
The numbers flickered. At the point where the end was supposed to happen, something broke.
[THE TAPESTRY FRAYS… THREADS MISALIGNED.]
[An attempt to mend the weave.]
[FAILURE.]
The digits flickered as if the very foundation of reality couldn't decide whether to collapse or rebuild itself. Lines of code tore into shreds, scattered into darkness, only to coalesce back into chaotic phrases a moment later.
[A WARNING: The soul's vessel is breached. Its essence spills.]
I felt something grab me from within, as if hands woven from light plunged into my chest, pulling my soul from the ash and blood. Suddenly, the burning city dissolved, and I was falling through a void filled with streams of zeros and ones.
The space around was an absolute emptiness, and yet I felt I was falling at a dizzying speed. There was no up or down, no direction. Only swirling, flickering streams of data that coiled around me like cosmic serpents. Sometimes they formed into understandable words, only to break apart into meaningless strings of characters a moment later.
[ATTEMPTING TO RE-KNIT THE SOUL…]
[FAILURE: The Lifespark is dim. No ember remains to rekindle.]
[SEEKING AN ANCHOR… A HAVEN FOR THE LOST…]
[A GRAVE WARNING: Soul integrity wanes. Coherence: 43%]
I felt my memories becoming fleeting, like sand slipping between fingers. My mother's face. The smell of the forest after rain. The weight of my first sword. The images appeared and immediately blurred, swallowed by the digital abyss. I was like a book from which pages were being torn, only to be hastily rewritten with random words. Suddenly, the falling stopped. I hung in place, and before my eyes, a single, bright message flared.
[FOUND: A BINDING COVENANT. SOUL-FORGE ENGAGED.]
The message didn't flicker like the previous ones. It burned with a steady, cold, bluish light.
A cold fire surged into me, not through the wound in my chest, but through the very core of my being. It didn't hurt. This feeling was beyond pain, beyond any physical sensation I had ever known. It was a reset. A formatting.
My scattered memories, those last grains of sand, suddenly froze in flight. They stopped escaping. Instead, every fragment—mother, forest, sword—was enveloped in that same bluish glow, cataloged, sealed, and... preserved. Not as a fleeting impression, but as an immutable, perfect record.
[THE COVENANT IS SEALED.]
[THE CAUSE: A soul adrift, called by a father's grief.]
[THE SOLUTION: A soul-transference. A second dawn.]
[THE WEAVING COMMENCES.]
I felt movement again, but not falling. It was a pulling sensation. Being drawn upwards, along beams of light that now arranged themselves into orderly, geometric patterns. The swirling serpents of digits and numbers calmed down, forming perfect, pulsating circuits. I was part of them. I flowed through them.
[SOUL-FORGING COMPLETE. VESSEL PREPARED.]
[SPIRIT INCUBATION: STABLE.]
[SOUL'S WHOLENESS: 100%]
I awoke. Or perhaps it wasn't waking up in any sense I knew. I didn't open my eyes because I had no eyes to open. I didn't take a first breath because I had no lungs to fill.
I was.
I simply existed. Suspended in a half-light that was neither light nor darkness, but something in between, a constant, soft, bluish glow. I felt no body. I felt no pain. I felt nothing.
Before me, or perhaps within me, hovered a single, solitary message. It didn't flicker. It didn't vanish. It was as constant and real as I now was.
[THE SOUL-FORGE: Spirit status: QUIESCENT]
[THE REALM: A memory-chamber - MANIFEST]
[THE CATALYST: Ephemera of a life lived. Preparing for embodiment.]
The message before me pulsed softly, streams of subprocesses flowing from its edges, spectral execution threads that wrapped around my bodiless consciousness.
[INITIATING THE SOUL-WALK. DESTINATION: THE VESSEL.]
[IMPARTING THE BIO-CANVAS: "Aiden. Seven winters, three moons, ten days."]
[ALIGNING THE SPIRIT TO FLESH…]
[SOUL-INTEGRATION: 48% (The threshold of being lowered)]
[THE MORPHIC FIELD: ACTIVE. WEAVING GRAVITY, PRESSURE, TEMPERATURE…]
Suddenly I felt... a foundation. Something beneath feet I hadn't possessed a second ago. A cool, smooth surface. In my nose, which had now formed, the smell of ozone and sterile air spread. In my ears, a quiet, omnipresent hum of a cooling system rang out.
The bluish glow receded, blurred, and in its place, shapes and colors flowed in. Clear, sharp, too sharp. I saw every shape of the surroundings. I was standing in a long, white corridor, lit by harsh light. The walls were smooth, devoid of any visible flaws, shining like porcelain.
[THE SOUL-FORGE: The vessel acclimates. Binding to somatic senses…]
I looked down. My body was small, scrawny. I was wearing simple cotton clothing. In my hands, which were now small and delicate, instead of a sword, I was clutching a transparent cube, inside of which golden, luminous particles swirled.
[THE CATALYST: The river of memory. Manifest.]
The corridor swirled. The geometry of the place broke apart for a moment into a cloud of vertex points, only to immediately reassemble. The whiteness and sterility vanished.
I opened my mouth to take a first breath that was no longer agony, but something pure, almost sweet. The smell of waxed floor mixed with the aroma of roasted meat and green apples. It was a scent that something in me recognized, though I couldn't assign it to any specific memory. It was like an echo, reflected off the walls of my new, reclaimed form.
I was standing in a bright, cozy living room. In front of me was a low wooden table, with colorful blocks and a few drawings sketched by a careless, childish hand. Outside the window, dusk was falling, painting the sky in shades of violet and orange.
I raised my hand – small, with smooth fingers devoid of any scars – and looked at the transparent cube I still held. The golden particles inside swirled slower, as if calmed, arranging themselves into a slow, hypnotic dance. I felt its smoothness and perfect edges. It was real. I was real.
"Son? Dinner's almost ready!" – a woman's voice came from the next room. It was warm and full.
The sound triggered an immediate, physical reaction in me. Something tightened inside, a longing I didn't understand. It wasn't a memory, but rather a memory of the body, recorded in every nerve of this new form.
I looked down at my childish clothes, at the small feet in soft socks. I was no longer a warrior. I was someone else. Someone who was expected here.
"Yes, Mom!" I choked out, and my voice was high-pitched, thin, and foreign. It sounded natural, as if it belonged here.
Footsteps from the kitchen grew louder. A woman with gentle features and tired but kind eyes stood in the doorway. She was wearing an apron. She smiled at me.
"What are doing there? Playing with your crystal again?" – she approached and stroked my head. Her touch was warm and real. "Put it down and come wash your hands. Dad will be home soon."
I nodded, unable to speak. Her presence was overwhelming. So real. And I felt like an intruder who had stolen someone's life, donned someone else's body.
The woman turned and left, saying something about potatoes. I was left alone, looking at my reflection in the smooth surface of the cube. I saw eyes, large, bright, full not of my fear, but of a child's curiosity. It wasn't my face, and yet the system claimed integrity was one hundred percent.