Elias woke to sunlight streaming through a window he'd forgotten existed.
For several heartbeats, he just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Wrong ceiling. Not the cracked plaster of his final apartment, not the water-stained tiles above the alley where he'd died. This ceiling was smooth, painted academy-standard beige, with a small crack in the upper left corner that he remembered tracing with his eyes seven years ago when he couldn't sleep the night before orientation.
Seven years ago.
Yesterday.
Both.
The memories slammed into him all at once.
Twenty-three years of life compressed into a sixteen-year-old brain felt like drowning and surfacing simultaneously. Death in the alley the wolf's claws, blood on cobblestones, that final desperate wish. The void. The Administrator's voice explaining everything. The choice. The acceptance. And then falling, falling, falling through time itself until
This.
His hands.
Elias held them up, watching morning light filter through fingers that were wrong. Too smooth. No scars from the enchantment accident in his third apprenticeship. No calluses from hauling crates at the warehouse. No permanent stain on his left thumb from that terrible alchemy job. Just... young hands. Sixteen-year-old hands.
His hands from before everything went wrong.
A sound escaped his throat, something between a laugh and a sob. He sat up too quickly, and the room spun. Not from dizziness from memory overload. The dorm room was exactly as he remembered it being the first time, and simultaneously nothing like it because he was experiencing it with seven years of additional context.
Small. Spartan. Single bed with academy-blue sheets that felt scratchy and new. Desk by the window with his younger him, first timeline him textbooks stacked neatly because he'd been so eager, so hopeful. Wardrobe containing exactly three sets of academy robes, because that's all his mother could afford but she'd saved for months to buy them anyway.
His mother.
The thought hit him like a punch. She was alive. Not crying over his unmarked grave. Not receiving news that her son had died alone and unmourned. She was alive, probably at home right now, probably thinking about her boy starting his first day at the academy she'd sacrificed so much to send him to.
Elias pressed his palms against his eyes. Don't cry. Don't fall apart. You have work to do.
But tears came anyway, hot and overwhelming. Relief. Joy. Terror. Gratitude. All of it crashing through him at once because he was here, he was alive, he'd been given the impossible and now had to figure out how not to waste it again.
"Get it together," he whispered to himself. The voice came out higher than he remembered. Sixteen-year-old vocal cords. Right. He was sixteen. Again. For the second first time.
The disorientation was crushing.
Elias forced himself to breathe slowly, methodically. Ground yourself. Physical reality. What do you know for certain?
He knew this room. Knew that if he looked in the wardrobe's bottom drawer he'd find the letter from his mother, the one she'd tucked in with his belongings without telling him. Knew that the desk's left leg was slightly uneven and wobbled when he wrote. Knew that if he looked out the window he'd see the central quad with the fountain that supposedly granted wishes if you threw in a copper coin at midnight.
He knew all of this because he'd lived it before.
And he knew what was coming because he'd survived it the first time, barely, before dying in an alley seven years later.
The System.
As if summoned by the thought, a familiar blue interface flickered to life in his vision. Not physically there he could still see the room perfectly well but overlaid somehow, visible only to him.
[GOOD MORNING, ELIAS THORNE]
[REGRESSION SUCCESSFUL]
[CURRENT AGE: 16 YEARS, 0 DAYS]
[LOCATION: ASTRALHEIM MAGIC ACADEMY - FRESHMAN DORMITORY]
[DATE: FIRST DAY OF ORIENTATION]
[TIME: 6:47 AM]
[MEMORY INTEGRATION: COMPLETE]
[SYSTEM STATUS: FULLY OPERATIONAL]
[CATASTROPHIC EVENT #1: 47 DAYS]
[WARNING: FESTIVAL DISASTER APPROACHING]
Forty-seven days. In forty-seven days, the Founding Festival would happen. The stage would collapse. Twelve students would die. Lyra would break her arm. And Elias would stand there frozen and useless while others saved lives.
Not this time.
This time he knew. This time he could prepare. This time he'd make sure that stage never collapsed in the first place.
But first, he had to survive today.
Elias swung his legs out of bed, and the simple motion felt strange. His body was lighter, smaller, not yet carrying the weight of four years of physical labor. His muscles hadn't developed the wiry strength that came from hauling cargo. He'd forgotten what it felt like to move in this younger body, more energy but less endurance, awkward in ways he'd trained out over years.
Everything was familiar yet alien. Every sensation doubled the memory of experiencing it the first time overlapping with experiencing it now with full awareness.
A knock at the door made him jump.
"Thorne! You up?" A voice he recognized but couldn't quite place. "Orientation starts in an hour!"
Right. Orientation. He'd have to face other students. Face professors. Face all the people he remembered and who didn't remember him at all because from their perspective, they were meeting for the first time.
"Yeah!" Elias called back, voice cracking slightly. "Thanks!"
Footsteps retreated down the hall. Elias sat on the edge of his bed, hands gripping the mattress, trying to process everything.
He was really here. Really back. This wasn't some dying hallucination or elaborate afterlife fantasy. The System was real. The regression had worked. He had seven years of foreknowledge and a mission to prevent catastrophes.
The weight of it pressed down on him like physical force.
Forty-seven days to prevent the Festival disaster. One hundred thirty-four days to deal with the Dungeon Collapse. And beyond that, more catastrophes he didn't even know about yet because the System had locked that information away.
Timeline stability to maintain. Costs to pay. Consequences to manage.
Other regressors possibly existing somewhere in other timelines.
Administrators watching his every move.
"Make it count," the Administrator had said in the void. "We'll be watching."
Elias looked down at his young hands again. Hands that would have to alter fate. That would have to save people who didn't know they needed saving. That would have to change events without revealing how he knew they needed changing.
This was his second chance. His only chance.
No pressure.
He laughed, slightly hysterical. Then stopped himself. Getting his act together. He had less than an hour before orientation, and showing up as a complete mess would draw exactly the wrong kind of attention.
Routine. He needed routine. Something normal to anchor himself.
Elias stood, steadier now, and moved to the small attached bathroom. Another detail he'd forgotten freshman year, he'd had a private bathroom instead of the shared facilities he'd expected. Lucky dorm assignment. Or was it? Had the System arranged this somehow?
He looked in the mirror and froze.
His face.
Sixteen years old. No stubble because he couldn't grow decent facial hair yet. No scar on his chin from that bar fight he'd gotten into at twenty-one. Eyes clear and bright instead of tired and resigned. His hair was longer than he'd worn it later, dark and slightly messy from sleep.
This was his face, but not. The face from his memories, but experiencing it in real-time now felt surreal.
"Hi," he said to his reflection. The word came out awkward. "I'm Elias Thorne. I'm sixteen years old. Today is my first day at Astralheim Magic Academy."
The same words he'd said the first time, nervous and excited and completely unprepared for what was coming.
"And I know how this story ends," he continued, voice steadier. "I know I'm supposed to fail. Rank ninety-fourth. Bottom tier. Expelled by sophomore year. Dead by twenty-three."
His reflection stared back, young and alive and impossible.
"But that's not happening this time." The determination in his voice surprised him. "This time I save the Festival victims. I prevent the Dungeon Collapse. I change everything."
Even if it costs me. Even if the balance demands payment. Even if I suffer for it.
Elias turned away from the mirror and began getting ready with methodical focus. Shower. Cold water because the hot took forever to heat up and he didn't have time. Getting dressed in academy robes that felt stiff and new because they were stiff and new, because this was the first day and he'd been so careful with them, so proud to wear them.
The robes fit differently than he remembered. Or rather, they fit the same, but his perspective had changed. Seven years of memories in a sixteen-year-old body created constant cognitive dissonance.
He checked the desk drawer. There his mother's letter, exactly where he remembered. He didn't read it. Couldn't. Not yet. Seeing her handwriting would break something inside him that he needed intact for today.
Instead, Elias focused on the System interface, willing it to expand.
[SYSTEM MENU]
QUESTS (1 Available)
STATS
SKILLS
INVENTORY (Empty)
WARNINGS
He focused on QUESTS, and the interface shifted.
[ACTIVE QUEST: FIRST STEPS]
Objective: Attend orientation without drawing suspicion
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: +1 to all stats
Failure: No penalty, but reduced System confidence
Details: You possess seven years of foreknowledge. Academy staff and students will find unusual behavior suspicious. Act naturally. Blend in. Establish baseline personality for this timeline.
Recommendation: Be yourself, but the version of yourself that existed at this age. Nervous, hopeful, eager to learn. Not the jaded, broken version from your death. And certainly not someone who knows the future.
Elias closed the interface with a thought. The System was right. He needed to be careful. Professor Aldric was perceptive he'd notice if Elias acted too differently. Lyra was brilliant, Damien was suspicious by nature, and others would pick up on irregularities.
He had to act like a normal freshman. Had to recreate his original personality while subtly positioning himself for future changes.
Method acting. Playing a role. The role of "Elias Thorne, age sixteen, first day at magic academy, nervous but hopeful."
He could do this.
Had to do this.
Elias gathered his orientation materials schedule, campus map, academy handbook and headed for the door. His hand on the doorknob, he paused. Through that door was the hallway. Beyond the hallway was the quad. And in the quad would be everyone.
Lyra, brilliant and beautiful and not yet broken by the struggles he remembered her facing.
Damien, driven and intense and not yet the captain who'd earned his loyalty.
Marcus, the bully who'd make his life hell before getting expelled.
Finn, shy and nervous and not yet his closest friend.
Seraphine, politically ambitious and not yet the complicated ally she'd become.
Professor Aldric, who knew more than he ever let on.
All of them alive. All of them unaware. All of them living a first day that Elias had already survived once and was now experiencing again with the weight of the future on his shoulders.
"Okay," he whispered. "Second chance. Don't waste it."
Elias opened the door and stepped into his new old life.
The hallway was chaos. Other freshmen emerging from rooms, excited and nervous, chattering about orientations and class assignments and the adventure ahead. Elias recognized faces some he'd befriended briefly before failing out, others he'd never spoken to, all of them young and hopeful and unaware that within two years, twelve of them would be dead.
Not anymore. Not if he could help it.
He joined the flow of students heading toward the central quad, letting conversation wash over him. Someone asked his name. He answered. Someone else asked where he was from. He answered that too. Small talk, meaningless but necessary, establishing himself as just another freshman.
But inside, his mind was racing. Forty-seven days. Fourteen hundred and eight hours. Eighty-four thousand four hundred and eighty minutes until the Festival disaster.
He had work to do. Plans to make. People to save.
And a promise to keep to a dead man in an alley who'd wished for one more chance and somehow, impossibly, received it.
Elias Thorne walked into the morning sunlight, sixteen years old again, and smiled despite everything.
This time, he'd make it count.
[QUEST UPDATE: FIRST STEPS]
[PROGRESS: INITIATED]
[SYSTEM NOTE: GOOD LUCK, SUBJECT. YOUR SECOND CHANCE BEGINS NOW.]