The system interface materialized before him—not helpful guidance, but stark lists of information that felt like reading his own autopsy report.
[STATUS OVERVIEW]
[HOST: KAEL THORNWICK]
[CONDITION: CRITICAL]
[STRENGTH: 2/100]
[SOUL INTEGRITY: 87%]
[AVAILABLE SKILLS: NONE]
[BLOODLINE: LOCKED]
Pages of data scrolled past. Cultivation methods that required resources he didn't have. Skill trees grayed out behind requirements he couldn't meet. A shop interface displaying items that cost currency he'd never heard of.
No "press here to escape." No "do this to survive." Just information, clinical and useless, while his borrowed body slowly died in the dark.
Ronn tried to follow the cultivation instructions anyway. Circulate aura through meridians Kael's malnourished body barely had. Focus on his core when he didn't know what that meant. The fang grew warm against his chest, but nothing else happened.
Hours passed. The warmth faded.
When the guards' boots echoed down the corridor in the pre-dawn darkness, Ronn knew what they meant. Kael's memories supplied the answer with bitter certainty: execution day came without warning. No final meals. No goodbyes.
They didn't speak as they unlocked his cell. Didn't need to.
The executioner's platform was built from the same oak as Church pews.
Ronn noticed that detail with the strange clarity that came with absolute terror. Twenty steps from dungeon to scaffold, and he'd counted every one. His—Kael's—legs barely held him upright. Three years of starvation had left this body fragile as kindling.
The crowd pressed close, held back by guards in Church silver. Hundreds of faces, twisted with righteous hatred for crimes Ronn didn't commit. Crimes Kael had committed out of desperation, stealing medicine for a sister who'd died anyway.
He knew that now. Kael's memories were part of him, whether he wanted them or not.
"Kael Thornwick," the priest intoned, voice carrying over the square. "You stand condemned for theft of sacred Church property, assault of holy servants, and heresy most foul. The sentence is death by hanging, your body to be burned, your name struck from all records."
No one will remember I existed, Ronn thought with Kael's bitter acceptance. Just like my family. Like we never mattered at all.
The noose was rough hemp, scratching against his neck as they fitted it. His hands were bound behind his back—professional knots that bit into scarred wrists. The executioner smelled of onions and old sweat.
"Any last words?" the priest asked, though his tone suggested he didn't care for an answer.
Ronn opened his mouth. Three different voices fought to speak—the farm boy's, the thief's, his own confusion. What came out was a choked sob.
The crowd laughed.
The platform's trapdoor was new wood. It smelled of pine sap.
"By the Church's mercy, may your soul find judgment," the priest concluded.
There was no mercy in the mechanism that opened beneath his feet.
The drop wasn't long enough to break his neck.
Ronn had time to understand that as the noose pulled taut, crushing his windpipe closed. His body convulsed, legs kicking empty air while the crowd roared. No air. Couldn't breathe. His lungs burned, chest heaving uselessly against the rope's embrace.
Not again not again not again—
But it was. Death came slower this time, measured in the thundering heartbeats that grew fainter as blood was choked from his brain. His vision tunneled. The crowd's noise became distant roaring. Kael's memories screamed alongside his own, both of them dying together in a body that had already suffered too much.
The fang burned against his chest, hot as a brand.
Then darkness. Then nothing.
Then—
---
Air rushed into lungs that worked.
Ronn gasped, body arching off soft linen that smelled of lavender and sleep. His hands clutched at his throat, feeling for the rope that wasn't there, finding only smooth skin over a pulse that beat too strong, too healthy.
Wrong body. Wrong wrong wrong—
"Darin!" A woman's voice, frightened. Hands on his shoulders, trying to steady him. "Darin, what's wrong? You're scaring me!"
The memories hit before he could process her words.
Thomir Darin. Carpenter. Married eight months to Elise, the baker's daughter. Good hands for shaping wood. Patient teacher. Lost parents to winter fever five years back. Loves his wife. Loves—
Ronn screamed.
Not because the memories hurt—though they did, a third set of lived experiences crashing into a mind already fractured. Not because he was in a stranger's body again—though the wrongness made his skin crawl.
He screamed because he could still feel the rope. Still felt his neck breaking. Still tasted copper and suffocation. And beneath that, older—the searing agony of holy power burning through his first body, his real body, his mother's scream cutting short—
"Darin!" Elise shook him, voice cracking. "Please, please talk to me! What's happening?"
But Ronn couldn't talk. Couldn't think past the cascade of deaths, of memories that weren't his, of bodies that felt like wearing someone else's skin because that's exactly what they were.
He was fifteen. He was Kael at twenty-three. He was Darin at twenty-seven. He was dead. He was alive. He was—
His stomach heaved. Ronn twisted away from her, vomiting onto clean wooden floors that Darin's hands had helped lay. Nothing came up but bile and the phantom taste of blood.
"Gods, you're burning up—" Elise pressed a hand to his forehead, then recoiled. "No, you're ice cold. Darin, please, say something!"
He tried. His mouth opened. Three different names tried to emerge—Ronn, Kael, Darin—tangling in his throat until only a choked whimper escaped.
The look on her face—terror for someone she loved, helplessness—broke something else inside him.
"I'll get the physician," she said, voice steadying with decision. "Just hold on. Please hold on."
Ronn curled onto his side on the floor, Darin's body shaking with sobs that had no voice, and stared at nothing.
I killed him. I killed this man by existing. Just like I killed Kael. Just like the Church killed—
The room tilted. Ronn's vision grayed at the edges, breath coming too fast, not fast enough. Panic attack, some distant part of him recognized. But which him? Which body's trauma response?
He couldn't tell anymore.
Elise fled the room, her footsteps frantic on the stairs. Calling for help. For a priest.
Ronn curled onto his side on the floor, Darin's body shaking with sobs that had no voice, and stared at nothing.
---
Time became meaningless.
Sometimes there was daylight through the window. Sometimes darkness. Sometimes Elise's face hovered over him, tear-streaked and terrified, trying to get him to drink water. Sometimes an older man—the priest, wearing simple brown robes without Church insignia—spoke in measured tones about curses and possession.
"His soul is still there," the priest said once, voice filtering through the fog. "I can sense it. But something... something has wounded it deeply."
Three deaths, Ronn didn't say. Couldn't say. Three lives. Can't separate them. Can't breathe through the memories.
They moved him back to the bed. He stared at the ceiling beams—oak, properly joined, Darin's pride at their straightness echoing through his fractured mind. Someone spooned broth into his mouth. He swallowed reflexively, tasting nothing.
His mother used to make soup. Elise made bread. Kael had eaten rats in the dungeon.
Which memory was his?
Days passed. Maybe a week. He grew thinner, felt himself sliding toward death again with something like relief. At least death was simple. Clean. Final.
Except it wasn't. The fang around his neck—Darin's neck—his neck—pulsed warmth at irregular intervals. Reminder. Anchor. Curse.
Elise stopped crying around day four. Started looking at him with hollow acceptance instead. Grief for a husband who was gone even though his body still breathed.
I'm sorry, Ronn tried to tell her. I didn't want this. Didn't choose this.
But his lips didn't move.
On day twelve—he thought it was twelve, time had become soup—the priest told Elise gently that she should prepare herself. That sometimes the body lingered after the soul had fled. That it would be a mercy when the end came.
She held Darin's hand and wept silently.
Ronn felt the pressure of her fingers and nothing else.
That night, the system finally spoke again.
---
[CRITICAL WARNING]
The text materialized in his vision, crimson and sharp against the darkness. Ronn's eyes focused on it with the first clarity he'd had in weeks.
[SOUL DEGRADATION IMMINENT]
More words scrolled past, clinical and cold.
[ANALYSIS: HOST CONSCIOUSNESS FRAGMENTATION]
[CAUSE: INSUFFICIENT MEMORY INTEGRATION]
[THREE SOUL ECHOES DETECTED - INCOMPATIBLE OVERLAY]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: FORCED MEMORY REORGANIZATION]
[WARNING: PROCESS WILL CAUSE SIGNIFICANT PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS]
[REFUSING TREATMENT WILL RESULT IN SOUL DISSOLUTION]
[DO YOU CONSENT?]
No, Ronn thought weakly. Let me die. Let this end.
[CONSENT NOT REQUIRED FOR EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS]
[INITIATING MEMORY REORGANIZATION]
[STANDBY]
The world dissolved.
---
He was standing in his family's farmhouse.
The details were perfect—too perfect. The way afternoon light slanted through the kitchen window, illuminating dust motes like falling stars. The smell of his mother's herb garden drifting through the open door. The worn groove in the floorboard where his father always stood to take off his boots.
"Mama!" Ronn shouted, running toward the sound of her scream.
Too late. Always too late. The Inquisitor's holy power caught him square in the chest, and he died watching his mother's corpse burn.
The world reset.
He was standing in his family's farmhouse, afternoon light slanting through the kitchen window.
"No," Ronn whispered. "No, not again—"
But his body moved anyway, running toward his mother's scream. This time he tried to tackle the Inquisitor. She sidestepped effortlessly, holy power erupting from her palm. He died screaming.
Reset.
The farmhouse. The light. The herbs. His mother's scream.
"Please," Ronn begged the empty air. "Please stop—"
He tried to grab his mother, pull her away. She slipped through his fingers like smoke. The Inquisitor smiled. "Once dragons bled fire. Now they bleed like men."
Death.
Reset.
He tried blocking the door. Barring the windows. Warning his father. Fighting the soldiers. Hiding in the cellar. Running into the fields. Each time the outcome never changed. Each time his family died, and he died with them, and the world pulled him back to that perfect afternoon to watch it happen again.
Ten times. Twenty. Fifty. He lost count.
His mother's scream became a metronome marking each loop. The Inquisitor's words lost meaning through repetition. The smell of smoke filled every breath until he couldn't remember air without it.
"STOP!" Ronn finally shrieked, collapsing in the farmhouse kitchen while his mother burned in the next room. "I CAN'T SAVE THEM! I CAN'T—I CAN'T—"
The world froze.
[MEMORY INTEGRATION: ACKNOWLEDGED]
The Inquisitor stood motionless mid-step. Flames hung suspended like amber. His mother's scream cut off mid-note.
[PRIMARY IDENTITY: RONN ASHWOOD]
[AGE: 15]
[STATUS: DECEASED - SOUL TRANSFERRED]
[SECONDARY IDENTITIES: ARCHIVED]
[KAEL THORNWICK - MEMORIES ACCESSIBLE BUT SUBORDINATE]
[DARIN THOMIR - MEMORIES ACCESSIBLE BUT SUBORDINATE]
The frozen scene began to fade, colors bleeding away like watercolor in rain.
[???]
[YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE PAST]
[YOU CAN ONLY MOVE FORWARD]
[WILL YOU SURVIVE, RONN ASHWOOD?]
The farmhouse dissolved entirely, leaving him in darkness punctured by crimson text.
Ronn—Ronn, not Kael, not Darin, himself—drew a shuddering breath.
"Yes," he whispered. "I'll survive."
[MEMORY REORGANIZATION COMPLETE]
[RESUMING CONSCIOUSNESS]
---
Ronn gasped awake in Darin's body, lungs heaving like a drowning man surfacing. The ceiling beams came into focus—oak, properly joined—and this time the knowledge felt distant. A fact he knew rather than a memory that consumed him.
His throat was raw. His body weak. But his mind...
His mind was his own again.
"Water," he croaked, the first word he'd spoken in twelve days.
Elise jerked awake in the chair beside the bed, eyes wide with shock. "Darin?"
"Water," Ronn repeated, voice stronger. "Please."
She stared at him for a long moment, fear and hope warring in her expression. Then she reached for the cup on the bedside table with shaking hands.
Ronn—wearing a dead man's face, carrying a dead man's memories, speaking with a dead man's voice—drank like he'd been drowning.
And somewhere deep in his chest, the dragon's fang pulsed warmth like a heartbeat.