The air in the hospital was too white. Too still.
Aston Cavill could smell the sterile tang of disinfectant as it clung to his skin. The faint hum of machines echoed in rhythm with his heartbeat — slow, weak, mechanical.
He had spent six years in this room, staring at the same ceiling tiles, tracing cracks that only he could see. His body, once strong, was now nothing more than skin stretched over bones, his veins carrying more chemicals than blood.
"Mr. Cavill…" The doctor's voice was gentle, "You can rest now."
Rest..... Such a beautiful lie.
He had fought until there was nothing left to fight with — through the pain, the isolation, the meaningless optimism people whispered to dying men. He could barely lift his hand anymore, but he forced his fingers to twitch, reaching for something — anything.
Aston had once loved the idea of destiny. He believed life had meaning if one searched hard enough. But lying there, bones thin as glass, he realized fate was not some grand design — it was an executioner that waited for the body to stop fighting back.
Tonight, the air felt colder than usual.
He could sense it — the way a drowning man senses the deep pulling him under.
His breath came shallow, slower, softer.
A weak smile crossed his lips. "So this is it," he thought.
If there's another life… please, let it be one where I can stand again.
A single tear slid down his cheek, disappearing into the pillow. His vision blurred. The beeping slowed.
He expected fear, but what came instead was peace — a strange, weightless calm that dulled even the pain. For the first time in years, his mind was clear.
The line between heartbeat and silence began to blur. The machine stuttered once, twice—then a flat tone filled the room.
Beep. Beep. Be—
Silence.
Then came darkness....
Darkness that consumed everything — the cold, the sound, even the weight of his own body. For a fleeting instant, there was only stillness. Then, from that void, a spark flared — faint, distant, like the birth of a new star.
And with it came breath.....
Aston gasped, his lungs filling violently with air. His chest heaved, and the taste of iron flooded his mouth. Beneath him, something cold and damp pressed against his skin — not sheets, not sterile air — but stone, dirt, and rain.
He woke choking.
His body convulsed, muscles screaming in agony as if he'd been set ablaze from the inside. He rolled over onto rough, uneven stone, coughing up thick, black fluid that tasted of rust and bile.
He blinked rapidly, gasping, eyes stinging from a heavy stench that filled his nose — rot, smoke, sewage.
"What…" His voice was ragged...
He pushed himself up with trembling arms. The movement sent a wave of agony through his chest and back, but he ignored it, gasping for air like a man clawing out of the grave. When his vision finally steadied, He saw he was in a narrow alleyway, walls of cracked stone pressing in on either side, water dripping from pipes overhead. The ground was littered with trash, shattered glass, and dark stains that looked far too much like blood. In the distance, faint orange light from lanterns flickered, barely touching the gloom.
He blinked, confused. Where… am I?
He stared down at his hands — not pale and wasted, but lean and scarred, with calloused palms and blood-streaked knuckles. His chest rose and fell with uneven breaths. Pain rippled through every nerve.
Aston looked around.
For a moment, he simply stared at the rising steam of his own breath in the cold air. The sensation was intoxicating — the rhythm of life returning to a body that wasn't supposed to exist anymore
He gritted his teeth. "Where… am I?"
Then, it hit him.
Memories that weren't his tore through his mind — a flood of images and sensations, too real to be imagined. Faces he didn't know. Streets that curved in alien ways. Towers made of black stone, lined with glowing veins of blue.
He clutched his head and fell to his knees as the avalanche continued. Pain stabbed through his skull, and his vision blurred between two lives — one ending in a hospital bed, one dying in this very alley.
When the storm finally passed, his breath came out ragged.
He wasn't just Aston Cavill anymore.
The boy whose body he now inhabited had the same name — Aston.
A seventeen-year-old student from the Outer District Martial School, in the city of Malta, a border city in the Kingdom of Valen --- a place where the kingdom's forgotten were left to rot. His parents, wanderers from the frontier, had died ten years ago when a beast tide swept through their village. He had survived by scavenging metal scraps, cleaning shoes, anything that bought a crust of bread.
He crawled toward the nearest wall and dragged himself upright, leaning against the wet stone for balance.
Gaya — that was the name of this world. A planet vast beyond reason, divided across six continents; (Northern, Southern, Eastern...), each a land of struggle and survival.
From the boy's memories, Gaya was a world twenty times larger than Earth, but humanity barely held onto a quarter of it. The rest was claimed by chaos — vast wilderness, corrupted zones, ruins, and creatures that had descended two millennia ago during what history called The First Infestation. - Era of Descent.
Aston forced himself to process the information buried in his new mind.
He was in the Southern Continent, where the Kingdom of Valen lay.
Malta city itself was divided 3 districts.
The Inner District — shining towers of steel and marble where nobles and card-bearers lived.
The Middle District — merchants, guilds, scholars, and craftsmen.
And the Outer District — where dreams came to die. A labyrinth of narrow streets and collapsing buildings. The graveyard of the unwanted.
That was where Aston had lived.
.....
Aston exhaled slowly. The fragments of memory painted a brutal picture.
In this world, strength wasn't a luxury; it was oxygen. The strong lived as nobles and hunters. The weak were sold, forgotten, or killed.
Humanity here wasn't alone.
There were other species — alien in both form and purpose.
Most of them had come to Gaya during the Era of Descent, two thousand years ago, when rifts tore open the heavens and spilled gods and monsters alike upon the world.
The gods had not come as saviors. They had come as conquerors.
Some offered humanity fragments of their power — blessings, in exchange for worship and sacrifice. Others demanded tribute, shaping cults that ruled in their name.
From that chaos was born the System of Awakening — humanity's fragile answer to divine cruelty.
Every person, upon reaching eighteen, underwent the Awakening Ceremony. Before a sacred crystal, their soul was weighed, measured, and, if worthy, connected to a Card Space — a pocket of existence bound to their very essence.
Within that space, they could manifest cards — each representing a power, a weapon, or a blessing drawn from the divine realms.
There were seven known card ranks: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Mythical, and Divine.
The rank of one's first card decided everything — class, status, and often, lifespan.
Only one person in known history had ever awakened a Mythical Card — the Immortal Sage, who still lived after nine centuries. As for a Divine Card… none had ever appeared.
Aston could feel the memory of his former yearning — to awaken, to escape the slums, to prove he was more than the mud he was born in.
But that dream had ended here, in this alley.
He closed his eyes, letting the final fragments surface.
....
Two nights ago, he had stumbled upon something — a strange blue stone glowing faintly beneath rubble in the dump outside the city walls. At first, he'd thought it a trinket, some noble's discarded jewelry.
He didn't know he was holding an Awakening Stone.
He didn't understand what he'd found — but others did... worth over two billion Union Coins. Enough to buy a noble's life ten times over.
In Gaya, one in ten people could awaken naturally.
An Awakening Stone---Was an artifact capable of amplifying a person's chance of awakening by 50%. Priceless. Rare enough that wars had been fought over them.
He'd taken it to a pawnshop in the Outer District, hoping for a handful of coins.
The shopkeeper — a greasy man named Kellan — had taken one look at the glowing stone and recognized it instantly. He'd smiled, offered Aston tea, and sent word to his masters — a powerful martial family from the Middle District.
When Aston turned to leave, a knife found his ribs.
He saw it through the boy's fading memory — the shock, the warmth spreading across his chest, the light fading from the world. His body had been dumped like garbage in this very alley.
And now, Aston's soul had opened its eyes inside it.
He leaned back against the cold wall, breathing heavily.
So that's how it happened.
He could almost taste the metallic scent of the boy's death still clinging to the air.
He stared up at the dark sky. The stars of Gaya shimmered faintly, scattered across a horizon choked by violet clouds. The air itself seemed heavier than Earth's — thicker with something unseen, humming faintly like a pulse beneath reality.
Aston sat there in silence, piecing together the boy's Last important memories. The boy had been three days away from his Awakening Ceremony — the day every human at eighteen touched the crystal altar and prayed to be chosen...