Rei's mind churned as Mira's cheerful voice faded down the stairs, swallowed by the comforting sounds of breakfast being prepared, the sizzle of eggs, the clink of dishes, his mother's soft humming of an old lullaby.
The warmth of their modest apartment wrapped around him like a blanket, but it felt wrong. Too perfect. Too fragile. A soap bubble floating over razor wire, beautiful and doomed.
He sat on the edge of his bed, hands gripping the mattress hard enough to make his knuckles white, and forced himself to think through the memories that still felt more real than the present.
The crippled body. The knife sliding between my ribs. The shadowed agents moving through smoke. The city burning like a funeral pyre. Mira's scream cutting off mid-sound,
He slammed his fist into his thigh, using the pain to anchor himself in the now.
Every second counts. Every detail matters.
By mid-morning, he'd confirmed what his gut already knew.
The newspaper on his desk, yellowed, smelling faintly of cheap ink and morning coffee, was dated June 15, Sunday 447 A.R.
Exactly one month before the Awakenings would begin. One month before the world would fracture into those with power and those without. One month before the Eternal Order would begin its stranglehold on humanity's throat.
The clunky analog clock on his wall ticked steadily (9:47:23, 9:47:24, 9:47:25) each second a reminder of time slipping away. The dated holographic displays flickering in the shop windows outside belonged to an age that thought itself safe.
Rei knew better.
He'd lived what came next.
Standing, he swept his gaze across his childhood room with new eyes. What had once been the cluttered domain of a lonely, anxious teenager now looked like a scavenger's paradise waiting to be exploited.
Discarded scraps of metal littered the shelves, gifts from his father's engineering workshops at the school. Loose copper wire coiled in forgotten corners like sleeping snakes. Broken tech components gathered dust like abandoned dreams: a burnt-out servo motor from a cleaning drone, ceramic insulators from some long-dead appliance, circuit boards his father had brought home for "learning purposes" that Rei had been too afraid to touch.
In his previous life, Rei had learned to transform garbage into survival.
Today, he would do the same.
His hands moved with practiced efficiency, muscle memory from a future that hadn't happened yet guiding his movements. Old servomotors that still had some kick, two of them, small but functional. Copper coils stripped from a defunct power converter his father had been meaning to fix for three years. A dented alloy hilt he'd bought on a whim from an Ironvale smith during a school trip, thinking he'd use it for... something. He'd been too embarrassed to admit he'd wanted to learn swordplay back then.
Funny how regrets pile up when you know how the story ends.
Brittle ceramic insulators salvaged from who-knows-what. A handful of screws and bolts in various sizes. Everything went into his worn leather satchel, the same one Mira would tease him about, calling it his "treasure hunter bag."
He paused at the doorway, listening to the sounds downstairs. His mother laughing at something. Mira complaining about homework. His father's low voice correcting her gently.
Normal. Safe. Temporary.
Rei's jaw tightened. He slipped out before anyone could ask where he was going.
Velbrax Market sprawled across Cindralith's industrial underbelly like an infection, equal parts bazaar and black market, where the desperate sold to the dangerous and questions died in dark corners before they could be asked.
Neon signs buzzed and flickered overhead, casting sickly colors across oil-slicked cobblestones: acid green, neon pink, electric blue, all reflecting in puddles that never quite dried. The air reeked of burned circuitry, questionable meat sizzling on corner grills, and the particular stink of illegal deals being made in broad daylight.
Rei kept his hood low, an old gray hoodie that made him look like every other scavenger haunting the market, and his steps quick, moving through the crowd with the confidence of someone who knew exactly where the exits were.
He'd died in this city once.
He wouldn't make the same mistakes twice.
His target was tucked between Garret's Arms & Augments, a weapons dealer with a reputation for not asking questions, and Nyx's Data Den, a broker who sold information to anyone with enough coin and a death wish.
Kael Venrik's stall.
The merchant spotted him immediately, those amber eyes locking on like a predator identifying prey. His practiced smile spread across his fox-like features like oil on water, all charm and hidden teeth.
"Ah, young master! Back again so soon?" Kael's hands, adorned with rings on every finger, gestured toward his wares with theatrical flair. "Interested in something special today?"
Behind a pane of smoked polymer sat exactly what Rei needed: a crystalline shard no larger than his thumb, humming with barely-contained energy, worth more than most people in Velbrax saw in a year.
In his previous life, in the future, Rei had scraped together everything he had to buy a similar crystal from Kael, only to have it swapped for a worthless fake during the transaction. He'd been too ashamed, too anxious to confront the merchant, just accepted his loss and went hungry for two weeks.
Kael had laughed about it with other vendors for months.
Not. This. Time.
"Just browsing," Rei said casually, letting his hand hover over the display. His eyes tracked Kael's movements, the way the merchant's left hand drifted toward a cheap trinket while his right edged toward the polymer case's hidden switch.
There. The tell. A slight tensing of the forearm muscles half a second before the swap.
Kael moved. Rei moved faster.
His hand flicked out with precision born from future experience, intercepting the real crystal mid-swap and pocketing it before Kael's fingers could close around empty air. The fake, a clever fake, Rei had to admit, dropped into the display case instead.
The merchant's smile froze. His amber eyes widened just slightly, thrown off-balance by a youth who should have been an easy mark.
Rei allowed himself a cold, tight smile, the kind that didn't reach his eyes. "I'll take this one."
He dropped the exact amount on the counter in small, untraceable bills. Not a coin more. Not one less.
Kael's expression flickered through several emotions in rapid succession: surprise, calculation, grudging respect, and finally cautious wariness.
"You've got quick hands, boy," the merchant said slowly, adjusting one of his rings. "Don't think I've seen you work before."
"I don't work here," Rei replied evenly. "Just passing through."
He turned to leave before Kael could recover enough to ask questions.
Knowledge of the future is a weapon all its own. And I'm just getting started.
Rei didn't stop at the crystal.
The next two hours were a carefully orchestrated scavenging run through Velbrax's underbelly:
Orvin's Docks – The old dock master barely glanced up from his tobacco chewing as Rei picked through the refuse pile behind the warehouse. A broken delivery drone yielded a gyroscopic core still spinning smoothly when activated. Orvin grunted something that might have been approval or dismissal, with him, it was hard to tell.
"Thanks, Orvin," Rei called out.
Another grunt. But Rei noticed the old man didn't chase him off like he did other scavengers.
He and Dad served together. Maybe he remembers me.
Dr. Vex's Prosthetics Shop (Back Alley) – The dumpster behind the clinic held a goldmine: a discarded medical prosthetic with micro-servos still intact. The arm itself was useless, fried by electrical feedback, but the servo motors were military-grade. Expensive.
Someone's loss is my gain.
The Scrapyard – An old woman named Marta Cross ran the place, her wrinkled face permanently creased into a scowl. But she had a soft spot for young tinkerers.
"Whatcha building, boy?" she rasped, eyeing his satchel.
"A mistake, probably," Rei answered honestly.
She cackled at that, showing three missing teeth. "Best way to learn. Take what you need from the electrical section. Five copper pieces."
He left with superconducting wire salvaged from a shelved mag-rail drive, field capacitors pulled from discarded drone cores, and harmonizer wafers that made Marta raise an eyebrow but ask no questions.
By the time the sun reached its apex, Rei's satchel was stuffed with everything he needed for the emitter matrix and containment ring.
And he'd spent less than fifteen copper pieces total.
In the future, I was too honest. Too afraid. Now I know how to play the game.
The afternoon sun slanted through his window as Rei spread the components across his desk like a surgeon preparing for a delicate, dangerous operation.
The crystalline power cell took center stage, cradled in vibration-dampening mounts he'd cobbled together from old rubber strips and carefully carved wood. soft pine, easy to shape, dense enough to absorb shock.
His hands moved with the muscle memory of a life spent surviving on ingenuity and desperation.
Buffer capacitors – wired in parallel to smooth out the power fluctuations from the crystal. One mistake here and the whole thing would explode like a miniature star.
Emitter nozzle – rigged from a plasma cutter's discarded tip, filed down and reshaped to narrow the beam focus. Attached to the alloy hilt with makeshift clamps and prayer.
Magnetic containment coils – wrapped with painstaking precision around the emitter assembly, each loop exactly 2.3 millimeters apart. Too close and they'd interfere with each other. Too far and the plasma would escape containment.
The harmonizer wafers sat between coil and crystal, waiting for the exact alignment that would make this work, turn unstable death into controlled weapon.
Hours blurred together. Solder smoke stung his eyes until they watered. His fingers cramped around tools too small for the work, developing blisters that burst and bled. But slowly, impossibly, the device took shape.
It was ugly. Asymmetric. Held together with wire and hope.
It was beautiful.
When the sun began its descent toward evening, Rei stepped back from his desk and stared at what he'd created.
A prototype plasma blade. The first of its kind in this timeline.
His hands trembled as he lifted it. The weight felt wrong, heavier than expected, poorly balanced. The hilt was too thick for his grip. But it was real.
Moment of truth.
He flipped the power switch.
Nothing.