Chapter One — Back From the Dead
I woke up drowning in sweat. Sheets clung to me like they wanted answers I didn't have. My chest heaved, my mind racing, heart hammering like I had just sprinted a mile — except I hadn't run anywhere.
I had been murdered.
The last thing I remembered was standing in a dark alley, surrounded by shadows that weren't monsters but men. My own guild — the same people I'd bled hours for, the same ones I'd fed intel to like I was their personal NSA. They smiled while the knife slid in. Betrayal cuts deeper when it comes from "allies."
So why the hell was I in my old bed?
I sat up, the familiar peeling paint of my ceiling staring back at me. The broken fan still hung crooked, spinning lazy circles of dust. I froze, fear crawling down my spine. This wasn't right.
Shaking, I reached for my phone on the nightstand. My thumb unlocked the screen without me thinking — and then my mouth went dry.
June 14, 2020.
My heart stopped.
That was ten years ago. A full decade before my betrayal. A full week before The Symposium: Arc of Legends even released.
I blinked at the date, once, twice, a dozen times. My lips moved, whispering like I was trying to summon the answer:
"How… how is this possible?"
I stumbled out of bed, pacing. My legs felt heavier than they should, like they carried two lifetimes at once. Every memory of the last ten years poured through me — the raids, the guild, the secrets, the betrayal, my death.
And now here I was, back in my old room, the smell of cheap detergent in the air, my phone buzzing with the same broken group chat that used to ignore me.
I stopped. Took a breath. Put the phone down.
Only one thought cut through the storm in my head:
I've been reborn.
Reborn ten years in the past. Reborn with every scrap of knowledge from the future carved into my skull.
And more than that — I was reborn exactly one week before the world's most important game launched. The game that would change everything. The game that, in my first life, destroyed me.
The Symposium: Arc of Legends.
I sat back down on the bed, palms pressed to my knees, sweat still dripping down my face. For a full minute I just breathed, the silence broken only by my pounding heart.
This time, I swore, it would be different.
This time, I wasn't gonna be some disposable swordsman.
This time, I wasn't gonna be the guild's snitch, their intel boy, their pawn.
This time, I was gonna use my knowledge of the future to carve a throne out of shadows.
And when the day came, the ones who killed me before… they'd kneel. Or they'd burn.
The phone buzzed again. My reflection stared back at me in the cracked screen — husky frame, tired eyes, a man no one had ever taken seriously.
I smiled, slow and cold.
"Alright then," I whispered. "Game on."