Silence.
It was the first thing he felt—so deep that even his heartbeat hesitated to exist within it. The void pressed against him from all directions, heavy yet weightless, infinite yet intimate.
Then came warmth.
A faint glow brushed against his skin, pulsing like a newborn star.
He opened his eyes.
The light was blinding. For a moment he thought he was still adrift in the cosmic sea, where broken fragments of worlds circled endlessly around him. But no—the light here was colder, sterile. Artificial.
He blinked several times, his vision sharpening to reveal a white ceiling streaked with transparent lines of circuitry. Faint blue holographic numbers hovered in the air, adjusting themselves every few seconds. The scent of metal and antiseptic filled his lungs.
He was lying on a bed. A soft hum of machinery vibrated through his spine.
He slowly sat up, his movements unsteady.
His hands caught his attention first—small, pale, trembling. They didn't belong to him. His claws, once large enough to tear through stone and starlight alike, were gone. In their place were fragile fingers with faint silver-blue veins glowing beneath the skin.
"This… isn't my body," he whispered.
The sound of his own voice startled him. It was lighter, softer—human.
For a long while, he simply stared at his reflection on the glass panel beside the bed. The surface wasn't clear, but enough for him to see a young face staring back: silver hair disheveled, skin too fair, eyes dull yet threaded with faint golden light.
That light shouldn't exist.
Not in this form.
His chest ached. The memories came like shards of broken glass—flashes of battle, galaxies collapsing, the burning cries of his kind, and Lyra's final smile before she turned into dust and stars.
He gritted his teeth, clutching the bedsheet until his knuckles whitened.
He remembered his end.
The sealing ritual. The howl that split the heavens. The moment his body burned away, leaving only essence scattered across the void.
So why… why was he here?
A faint chime interrupted his thoughts.
From the wall, a floating orb of light emerged, its smooth metallic surface gleaming faintly. It hovered before his face, scanning him with a vertical blue line.
"Welcome back, Ren," a soft synthetic voice said. "You have been unconscious for forty-seven hours. Your vitals are stable. However, your neural readings show unusual resonance. Shall I alert the medical staff?"
Ren.
The name echoed in his mind like an unfamiliar melody.
He didn't know that name, yet something inside him responded. Memories not his own flickered: a small apartment filled with scattered books, an academy ID, the sound of laughter, a woman's voice calling "Ren, wake up, you'll miss class!"
The images twisted painfully with his real past—flames, claws, the scent of blood and ozone. Two lives overlapped until he could no longer tell which belonged to him.
He pressed his hand to his forehead. "No… stop… I am Rian. I am—"
His breath hitched.
Even his name sounded foreign here, swallowed by the sterile silence.
"Ren," the orb said again, its voice softer now. "You are exhibiting distress. Would you like me to administer a calming sequence?"
"No," he said sharply. "Just… be quiet."
The orb dimmed, hovering obediently at his side.
Rian—or Ren, as this world called him—lowered his hand and took a deep breath. He needed to think.
The energy here was strange. Faint but structured, almost mechanical. It hummed beneath the floor, running through cables that pulsed with faint spiritual energy. This place wasn't the world he once knew.
He extended his senses instinctively, attempting to touch the ether around him—but pain shot through his mind like a spear.
He gasped and collapsed back onto the bed.
No response from the stars.
No echo of the cosmic beasts.
Only silence.
"I've fallen too far…" he murmured.
He lay there for a while, eyes fixed on the ceiling's pale glow. He could still feel the faint beat within his chest—the fragment of his core that had survived. Small, unstable, but alive.
He clenched his fist. "Then there's still time."
The door to the room slid open with a soft hiss.
A woman in a white coat entered, her expression calm but distant. Her eyes were a soft amber, framed by transparent lenses that reflected faint blue symbols.
"You're awake," she said. Her tone was clinical, but there was a trace of curiosity. "You should have stayed under observation. Your brain activity spiked far beyond the acceptable limit during stasis recovery."
He said nothing. His mind was still a storm of questions.
She tapped a small device on her wrist, and a holographic panel appeared above her palm. "You're lucky, Ren. Most patients with a neural overload like yours don't wake up intact. Did you feel anything strange while unconscious?"
He hesitated. "Dreams," he said finally. "And… light."
Her eyes flicked up from the panel. "Light?"
He nodded. "Like… stars."
For a heartbeat, something unreadable crossed her face. Then she smiled politely. "Residual optical hallucinations from neural recalibration. It will fade soon."
She shut off the panel and stepped closer. "Do you remember who you are?"
He froze.
Part of him wanted to say no, to pretend ignorance. But the part that still remembered the roar of galaxies refused to let go.
"I'm… Ren," he said slowly. "Ren Arclight."
The words came out too easily, as if they had always been his.
"Good." The woman's smile softened. "I'm Doctor Selene Voss, chief neurologist of AstraTech Medical Division. You were transferred here after an incident at the Nexus Academy. A spirit-energy malfunction. Do you recall anything?"
He frowned. "Nexus… Academy?"
Her brow creased slightly. "You really don't remember. Perhaps it's better that way. Rest for now. Your system is still stabilizing."
As she turned to leave, he asked quietly, "Doctor. What year is it?"
She paused at the doorway. "Cycle 4721 of the Star Calendar. Why?"
The number struck him like thunder.
In his world's reckoning, the last recorded age had ended at 2810.
He had been gone for over nineteen centuries.
When she left, the silence returned—but this time, it felt heavier.
Rian lay back, staring at the faint constellation projections rotating above him.
Cycle 4721.
Almost two thousand years since his fall.
The world had changed. The beasts, the heavens, everything he once ruled—gone or transformed into things he barely recognized.
And yet… beneath all that change, the faint echo of his power pulsed quietly, as if waiting for him to rise again.
He closed his eyes and whispered to the void, "Lyra… if your soul still lingers, guide me once more."
Somewhere deep within the machinery of the city, a faint resonance answered—like the sigh of a star breathing in its sleep.
He did not know it yet, but that single whisper had already awakened something buried within the networked heart of this world.
Rian—no, Ren—sat in silence long after Doctor Selene had gone.
The steady rhythm of machines filled the room, a mechanical heartbeat that felt alien yet oddly comforting.
He let his gaze wander toward the panoramic glass wall on his right. Beyond it, the city unfolded like a dream painted in neon. Silver towers rose into the clouds, their sides streaked with flowing light that shifted like liquid starlight. Airships glided between them, their trails shimmering with energy.
He could feel the faint hum beneath it all—the pulse of spiritual circuitry running through the city's veins.
A network built not only from machines, but from something older. Something alive.
He placed his palm against the glass.
The world vibrated faintly in response.
"Spirit energy," he murmured. "Condensed… refined… and controlled by humans."
His voice carried both awe and sorrow. In his time, such a thing would have been blasphemy. Spirit energy was sacred—the lifeblood of the beasts, the soul of the world.
And now, it was being harvested, caged, and named technology.
He clenched his jaw. "How far have we fallen?"
The orb beside him flickered back to life.
"Ren, your vitals are rising. Would you like to initiate a relaxation program?"
"Show me where I am instead," he replied.
A small holographic map projected above the orb. It displayed a floating city—massive platforms connected by luminous bridges, suspended above an ocean of glowing mist. In the center stood a spire that reached beyond the clouds: The Nexus Core.
"Location: AstraTech District, Orbital City of Halcyon. You are currently within the Nexus Medical Complex."
"Nexus…" The word itself pulsed through him like a memory trying to awaken.
He didn't know why, but that name stirred something deep—like an echo of the chains that once bound him beneath the stars.
Before he could question further, the door slid open again.
A young woman entered, her steps hesitant but familiar. She had shoulder-length brown hair streaked with silver strands, and her eyes—deep blue with faint circuitry patterns—widened when she saw him awake.
"Ren?" Her voice trembled between relief and disbelief.
He froze.
Fragments of Ren's memories stirred again—laughter, shared meals, studying late at night, promises whispered under rain.
Her name surfaced like a whisper. "Mira…"
Tears welled in her eyes as she rushed to his side. "You're awake. I thought—everyone thought—you wouldn't make it."
She reached for his hand, and instinct made him pull back.
Her expression faltered, confusion replacing joy. "Ren? What's wrong?"
He opened his mouth but no words came. The emotions swirling inside him weren't his, yet they burned too vividly to deny. The bond between Ren and this girl was real, written into the body he now inhabited.
"I… just need time," he said quietly.
Mira bit her lip, then nodded slowly. "Of course. The accident must've been traumatic. The Academy's investigation team said the reactor surge nearly erased your neural link. It's a miracle you're even conscious."
"Reactor surge?"
She hesitated. "You really don't remember anything, do you?"
He shook his head.
Mira sighed and pulled out a small tablet, projecting a holographic replay.
A massive arena filled the image—students wearing uniforms lined with glowing sigils, manipulating energy beasts shaped from pure spirit-light.
"This is Nexus Academy," she explained softly. "The government trains Linkers here—people who can merge their consciousness with spirit constructs. The day it happened… your beast core overloaded."
On the screen, Ren saw himself—or the boy whose body he now possessed—standing in the arena, summoning a wolf-shaped spirit.
The beast's outline shimmered violently before exploding in a flash of starlight.
The blast consumed the arena.
Dozens were injured.
And at the center of it all, Ren collapsed—lifeless.
Rian's heart thudded painfully. The image of the wolf lingered in his mind. Its shape, its eyes… even its aura were unmistakable.
"That beast," he whispered. "Where did it come from?"
Mira blinked. "Your construct? You designed it yourself, remember? You said it came to you in a dream. A wolf made of stars."
A chill spread down his spine.
That wasn't Ren's creation. That was him. A fragment of his soul that had surfaced through the boy's link.
It was that resonance—his essence rejecting mortality—that caused the explosion.
"I see," he murmured, hiding the turmoil beneath a calm tone. "And the others? Were they hurt badly?"
"Mostly shock and minor injuries. You were the only one who didn't wake up."
He nodded faintly. "Then it's fine."
Mira studied him for a moment. "You've changed," she said softly. "Your eyes… they used to be gray. Now they're gold."
He turned away, pretending not to notice the faint shimmer that flickered when emotion stirred within him.
After a pause, she smiled weakly. "Rest for now, Ren. I'll come back tomorrow. The Academy will probably call you for a debrief."
When she left, the room fell silent again.
He sat still, his thoughts swirling.
The truth was clear now—he hadn't simply reincarnated. His soul had fused with Ren's, drawn by resonance from the boy's beast-link experiment.
It was fate. Or punishment.
Either way, he was here.
The orb's gentle hum returned.
"Ren, incoming transmission from the Nexus Network. Do you wish to receive?"
He hesitated. "From who?"
"Unregistered signal. Origin unknown. The encryption pattern matches no existing data."
He frowned. "Accept it."
The air shimmered before him. Lines of light twisted together until they formed a silhouette—a woman made of starlight and static. Her voice was faint, distorted, yet unmistakable.
"Rian…"
His breath caught. The sound was soft, fragile, and filled with the same warmth that once carried him through countless battles.
"Lyra?" he whispered.
The figure flickered violently. "You should not have awakened. The chains have shifted. The stars… are not what they were."
"Where are you?"
Her outline trembled, breaking apart into fragments of light. "They've bound the constellations into code. The Nexus Core… it feeds on what we once were. You must—"
The signal cut out.
The orb emitted a warning tone.
"Unauthorized spiritual transmission detected. Security protocols engaged."
"Cancel it!" he snapped.
"Denied. System override in progress."
The walls glowed red as symbols formed across the ceiling, locking into geometric patterns. A containment field.
Rian closed his eyes and reached inward, touching the fragment of his old power within his chest. It responded faintly—just enough.
With a whispered command in the ancient tongue of the Star Beasts, he released a pulse.
The lights flickered.
The security grid shorted out, plunging the room into darkness.
When the emergency lights came back, the orb had fallen silent.
Only static lingered in the air, faint but real—the residue of Lyra's echo.
He pressed his palm to the cold metal wall. "You're still alive… somewhere inside their network."
He exhaled slowly, steadying his heart.
So this was the new world—a place where spirit and machine intertwined, where souls became data and the divine was rewritten into science.
He would learn its rules.
He would find the Nexus Core.
And he would uncover who had stolen the stars.
Outside, the first dawn of Halcyon City broke over the horizon. The rising sun glowed pale silver, filtered through towers of glass and mist.
To everyone else, it was just another morning.
To Rian, it was the first sunrise he had seen in two thousand years.
He whispered to the light, his golden eyes reflecting the new world before him.
"This time, I won't just watch the stars fall."
His voice grew colder, steadier.
"I'll make them remember who they belonged to."