Elias Hart died on a quiet Wednesday at nineteen.
No heroics. No slow fade. A snapped moment—rubber, metal, light. He remembered the sky reflected in the truck's windshield more vividly than the impact itself. A perfect blue fractured into teeth of shattering glass.
Then nothing.
Then cold.
Then breath.
The scent struck first—woodsmoke, manure, baking rye—and then a woman's exhausted voice murmuring, "He's breathing. Gods be thanked."
Elias tried to speak, but all that came out was the broken-soft wail of a newborn.
Not a hospital. A cottage. Straw-prickled air. Rough wool. The walls were timber, not drywall. Someone was crying with relief. A man's voice replied, humble, worn: "A strong lad. The harvest will be kinder now."
A chime rang in his mind.
Not a sound. A presence.
> SYSTEM INITIALIZED — NEW HOST AWAKENED
Status: Infant / Peasant Class / No Titles
Talent: Hidden (Locked)
Training → points
Points → Rewards
A flood of understanding that wasn't words—train body, gain points, spend points to grow stronger.
He was swaddled, passed into callused arms. The man holding him—his father, Elias somehow knew—smelled of soil and iron.
He was alive again.
Not Elias Hart, failed almost-adult of a metal and glass world.
But someone unnamed, newborn, in a world of smoke and gods and systems.
A second chance — bound not by fate, but by effort.
And somewhere distant, beyond the thatched roof and creaking beams, something vast was already watching him.