My last memory was of cold steel and my sister's scream.
I died a hero, they probably said. Aarion Vale, who threw himself in front of a demonic blade to save his little sister, Lyra. My final breath wasn't a prayer or a curse. It was a promise, whispered into her hair as the light faded from my eyes.
"I'll protect you."
Then… nothing. A silence so deep and long it felt like eternity.
Until now.
The first sensation was the ache. A deep, bone-weary pain that had nothing to do with a blade in my chest. The second was the smell. Damp earth, old wood, and the cloying sweetness of funeral lilies.
My eyes flew open.
Darkness. A complete, suffocating blackness that pressed in on me from all sides. I tried to gasp, but my lungs hit a wall. The air was thick, stale, and burning hot. I was lying down, my back against a hard, unyielding surface. My hands scrambled at the space around me. My knuckles scraped against rough, splintered wood just inches from my face.
Panic, cold and sharp, stabbed through the fog in my mind.
Where am I?
I pushed against the wood above me. It didn't budge. I pushed harder, my muscles screaming in protest. A dull, rhythmic thump answered from the other side. Muffled voices.
"…a shame, truly…"
"…the Von Crest name, tarnished…"
"…just a boy…"
The voices were wrong. The names were wrong. My name was Aarion. My sister was Lyra. I lived in a small village on the edge of the Whispering Woods. I was a guardsman.
But another set of memories, sharp and broken like glass, cut through my own.
A grand mansion. A cold father's glare. The name "Elian." A deep, bottomless sadness. A vial of clear liquid. A final, bitter drink.
Elian Von Crest. The son of a disgraced noble family. He had given up. He had swallowed poison.
And I… I was in his coffin.
At his funeral.
The reality of it crashed down on me, stealing what little air remained. I was buried alive, trapped in a stranger's body, at a stranger's funeral. The two sets of memories warred in my skull, a screaming chaos of two lives, two deaths. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The darkness was swallowing me whole.
This is it, I thought, a hysterical laugh bubbling in my chest. I survived a demon, only to suffocate in a box.
Just as the edges of my vision began to spark with static, a voice cut through the chaos. It wasn't from outside. It was inside my mind. A whisper, soft as silk and ancient as stone, yet filled with a warmth that pushed back the cold.
"Breathe, my king."
The voice was calm. Certain.
I sucked in a desperate, ragged breath. And with that breath, something… shifted.
A strange energy, cold and sharp, ignited in my chest. It felt like a shard of ice and a sliver of lightning all at once. It spread down my arm, to my right hand. My fingers curled instinctively, and I felt a weight—solid, real, and comforting—form in my palm.
I looked down, though I could see nothing. I didn't need to. I could feel it. A hilt, perfectly fitted to my grip. A blade, no longer than my forearm, humming with a gentle, sorrowful power.
The panic receded, replaced by a single, focused purpose.
I tightened my grip on the dagger that had formed from nothing—from my own soul, my own grief. With a cry that was part terror, part fury, and part hope, I drove the blade upward.
There was a sound of splintering wood, then a shriek of tearing metal. A sliver of blinding, beautiful light pierced the darkness.
I stabbed again. And again.
Dirt rained down on my face. The muffled voices outside turned into screams of shock and horror. With a final, mighty heave, I shattered the coffin lid and pushed through the loose soil, bursting from the ground like a monster from a grave.
I collapsed onto fresh grass, gasping, my lungs burning with clean, cold air. I was covered in dirt and splinters, dressed in a fine, black burial suit that wasn't mine. In my hand, gleaming in the afternoon sun, was a dagger of pure, shimmering silver. It pulsed with a soft light, and for a moment, I could have sworn I felt a familiar, protective warmth radiating from it.
All around me, a crowd of mourners in fine clothes stared, their faces masks of utter terror. They saw a dead boy climbing out of his own grave.
But I wasn't a boy. I wasn't Elian Von Crest.
I was Aarion Vale. I had died once, and I refused to do it again.
Clutching the soul-forged dagger, my only tether to this strange new life, I looked at the terrified faces and knew one thing for certain.
My promise wasn't finished. And this time, I had the blade to keep it.