The night of Sirius Blake's death was ordinary in every sense.
He had come home late, shoes heavy with the damp pavement of a city that never truly slept. Rain clung to his jacket in faint streaks, the neon glow of passing signs catching in the water before dripping into the cracks of the sidewalk. His head throbbed with fatigue, the kind of dull ache born from long days that blurred together, work and routine stitched with little more than stubborn endurance.
The apartment door groaned on its hinges as he pushed it open. Inside, the place was as it had always been—quiet, cluttered, and lonely. A desk sagged under the weight of aging peripherals, a rack of weights leaned against the wall, and a television screen froze mid-frame on a martial arts tutorial. Swordsmanship videos filled his history, each one paused, rewound, and studied until the movements burned themselves into his mind.
There had never been a teacher. No master with calloused hands, no sparring partner to correct his footing. Just Sirius, the glow of a screen, and his reflection in the darkened window. He copied swings until his muscles burned, drilling until sweat slicked the floor. He was clumsy. He was awkward. But he endured, always chasing the dream that if he practiced long enough, some truth of the blade would bleed into his body.
His parents had died years before in an accident that still haunted the quiet hours. They had left him this apartment, a modest inheritance, and the endless duty of survival. He made ends meet by streaming games, his face and voice filling the void between clicks, comments, and pixelated battles. The irony had never been lost on him—his soul yearned for a life of steel and grit, yet he lived by commentary and digital shadows.
That night, Sirius fell asleep on the couch. The television hummed softly, a documentary about ancient sword forms muttering through the speakers. He never saw the faint coil of smoke rising from the frayed outlet near the floor. He never noticed the spark leap into the rug, feeding greedily on threads until flame licked upward in silent hunger. The smoke alarm screamed itself into silence, its battery long dead.
He stirred once, choking faintly as smoke rolled into the room. Then heat swallowed him. Air thickened into suffocating weight, every breath burning. He coughed, staggered, tried to rise—but the flames had already claimed the walls. His lungs refused him. His vision blurred. His final thoughts were not of panic, but of strange bitterness—
So this is how it ends? Alone, without a blade in hand?
And then—nothing.
---
Darkness.
But not silence.
Sirius drifted, suspended in a void deeper than sleep. His body was gone, stripped away, yet something of him remained—a spark, unmoored. Around him, shapes moved. Colossal. Indistinct. Ancient.
He felt their gazes before he heard their voices.
"A soul foreign to Eos," one rumbled, deep as shifting mountains. Bahamut's will pressed on him like iron across his spine, crushing, immovable.
"Yet bound now to the weave," another answered, cool as rushing water. Shiva's frost curled across his chest, sinking into his breath until his ribs ached.
"He is anomaly," came a whisper, sharp as slicing wind. "A ripple in the river of fate." Ramuh's chuckle followed, like thunder rolling in the distance.
They circled him, unseen titans whose very presence pressed into his being. The Astrals. The gods of this world he had only known through pixels and lore.
Bahamut's weight bore down heavier. Not words, but command: This spirit does not belong. Yet it is here. We must not intervene, lest balance be undone.
Shiva's voice softened, but the frost within it lingered: Then we will watch. The boy will walk, and in his path, light or ruin may take root.
Ramuh's thunder crackled faintly: Mortals shape themselves in struggle. Even anomalies must bleed and falter if they wish to stand. Let him be tested.
The void trembled with their judgment. Then, silence. A silence filled with decision, though not resolution. The Astrals turned away, leaving Sirius drifting in the dark.
---
When he opened his eyes, he was five years old.
The ceiling above him was not cracked plaster, but carved stone, veined with sigils that glowed faintly like threads of crystal. A crystal lamp floated in the corner, its light steady and pure, unbound by flame. He sat upright in a bed too ornate for anything he had ever owned. His hands—small, pale, trembling—clutched at the sheets.
He stumbled toward a mirror. And froze.
White hair spilled across his brow. Crimson eyes stared back, sharp and strange. A face he did not know, yet felt written into his very blood.
Memories surged unbidden: Dominic Blake, a Crownsguard sworn to the king. Lyla Leonis, his mother, her hair already white though still young. Cor Leonis—the Immortal himself—his uncle, unyielding as steel.
Sirius clutched the mirror's edge, his small chest rising and falling in shallow gasps. He remembered both lives at once: the fire that ended one, the stone chamber that began another.
And recognition struck.
"This… this is Eos," he whispered, voice trembling, too high and childlike. "Final Fantasy XV. The world I played. Streamed…"
His knees buckled. He staggered back, eyes wide, breath ragged. He knew this skyline, this fate. Insomnia's barrier. The Citadel. Niflheim's armies. He knew of Noctis, Lunafreya, Ardyn Izunia. He knew of the fall of the kingdom, of the ten years of night, of the prince who walked to his own death.
And now he was inside it. Born into bloodlines woven at the story's heart.
That night, beneath covers too heavy for his frame, Sirius whispered into the dark:
"Why me?"
---
Something stirred in answer.
Not a god. Not an oracle. Not a voice.
The system.
It pulsed beneath thought, faint but insistent. When he closed his eyes, he glimpsed fragments:
Status
Name: Sirius Blake
HP: 98% ■■■■■■■■■■
MP: 52% ■■■■■■■■
EXP: — Pending Update —
Gil: 0
For a moment, a faint icon flickered at the corner—an empty grid, like shelves waiting to be filled. It vanished before he could focus.
He gasped. The panel dissolved like smoke, leaving only the echo of its glow. No quests. No guidance. Just numbers without meaning, a shadow stitched into him.
His body ached faintly, the way muscles did after drills. Somewhere inside him, the echoes of clumsy swings and awkward stances from his past life hummed, waiting to be carved into reality.
Beyond the window, Insomnia glittered. Towers of glass and steel pulsed with neon veins of magic. Magitek trams whispered down the avenues. The Citadel loomed above them all, a mountain of light and duty.
The world did not know him. It did not care. But he was here. An anomaly. And he already knew too much.
From the heavens, unseen by mortal eyes, Bahamut's gaze lingered a moment longer before finally withdrawing.