The stench of blood never left the air. No matter how many times Atlas washed his hands, no matter how many bandages he replaced, the copper tang clung to him like a curse. Inside the makeshift medical tent, the smell mixed with the sickly sweetness of antiseptic, the sweat of fevered bodies, and the acrid sting of gunpowder drifting in from the frontlines.
Atlas pressed his palm down on the wound of the soldier before him, the pressure making the young man's back arch in agony. "Stay with me," Atlas said, his voice hoarse. "Just stay with me a little longer."
The soldier's breaths came in ragged gasps, his eyes wild with panic. Shrapnel had torn through his abdomen, and the blood would not stop. Atlas's hands moved with desperate speed, sliding gauze into the wound, searching for the artery. His gloves were slick, and he had already gone through three pairs in the past hour. Supplies were dwindling; they always were.
"You'll make it," Atlas said, forcing steadiness into his tone, though his jaw trembled. He told every soldier the same thing, whether it was true or not. Sometimes they survived. More often, they didn't.
His heart pounded in his chest, each beat an aching reminder that he had volunteered for this. He hadn't been drafted. No one had forced him to the front. Atlas had been a doctor in a gleaming hospital, one of the few places left in the city untouched by bombardments. But when the alien offensive grew, and more soldiers returned broken than there were doctors to mend them, he couldn't sit behind sterile walls anymore.
He had sworn an oath, after all. Do no harm. Save who you can.
And so here he was, in a tattered tent, stitching together torn flesh by lantern light while the world outside burned.
The ground trembled beneath his knees, a distant thundering that rattled the cots around him. The groans of the wounded rose, panic setting in. The faint shouts outside, usually an indistinct hum, sharpened into clarity.
"Contact! They've breached the camp!"
"They're breaching the camp perimeter!"
"Fall back! Get the medics out!"
Atlas froze, needle poised in his hand. His patient whimpered, blood bubbling at his lips. Atlas gritted his teeth, leaning back over him.
"Not now," Atlas whispered. "Not when I'm this close."
The tent flap burst open. A medic stumbled in, clutching his arm where a burn seared through the fabric of his uniform. His face was pale, his eyes wild with terror.
"They're here!" he gasped. "They're—"
The rest of his words drowned in the sudden roar of alien weapons. Blue-white flashes streaked through the camp outside, searing through canvas and steel alike. Atlas caught a glimpse through the tent opening: shadows, tall and terrible, moving with inhuman precision.
Humanoid aliens. That was what the governments called them, as if the label could make them less terrifying. They walked on two legs, bore faces disturbingly human-like but twisted in ways that set every instinct screaming wrong. And their weapons—Atlas had never seen anything like them in medical journals or science articles. Plasma rifles that burned holes through walls, drones that hovered silently overhead, and grenades that pulsed with a deadly hum.
The soldiers outside shouted, firing their rifles, but Atlas knew—he had seen enough battles to understand. Humans were fighting centuries of technology with mere scraps of advancement. Resolve could only carry them so far.
Atlas turned back to his patient, forcing his hands to stay steady. If I can just stop the bleeding…
The soldier groaned weakly, eyelids fluttering. "Please…go doc"
The word hit Atlas like a knife. He pressed harder, whispering, "Stay with me. Please."
Then the world stopped.
A metallic clink echoed as something rolled across the dirt floor, bumping against Atlas's knee.
He glanced down.
A grenade. Not the crude, round ones he had trained for in emergency drills, but a sleek device, alien in design. Lines of glowing circuitry crawled across its surface, pulsing in rhythm like a heartbeat.
Atlas's breath caught in his throat. His eyes widened.
Time slowed.
The wounded soldier before him, bloodied and fading.
The medic at the flap, frozen in horror.
The shouts outside, the screams of comrades, the smell of burning flesh seeping in.
And then—his own life.
Images crashed over him in a torrent. His mother's laugh when he was a boy, her hand ruffling his hair. His father's stern smile, the pride in his eyes when Atlas graduated. Late nights studying medicine, bleary-eyed but determined. The first patient he ever saved on his own, the feeling of triumph when a fragile life clung on because of him. The friends he had lost along the way. The mistakes he carried. The vow he had sworn: to save, always save, no matter the cost.
And here he was, not in a hospital but a battlefield. Not in sterile peace but in chaos.
Atlas exhaled once, shuddering.
The grenade pulsed, a blinding light flooding the tent.
So this is it… this is where I die.
The heat consumed him. His body screamed for a second—then silence. Darkness swallowed everything.
Nothing.
No sound. No weight. No pain.
And then—breath.
His own breath.
Atlas's eyes fluttered open. He gasped, the sound small and fragile, as if dragged through water. His vision blurred, the world around him swimming in muted colors. His chest rose and fell rapidly, lungs aching for air, but… he was alive.
Alive.
Confusion swept through him. The tent was gone. The gunfire, the screams, the smell of blood—all gone. Instead, a soft glow surrounded him, flickering like firelight. Stone walls loomed faintly above, rough and uneven, nothing like the sterile metal barracks.
He tried to sit up, but his limbs refused him. His arms twitched feebly, his legs barely moved. His body felt wrong—too small, too weak. Panic surged as he turned his head—or rather, as it lolled awkwardly to the side. His vision sharpened just enough to show woven cloth around him, the coarse weave of a basket, and shadows dancing on the walls.
Then realization struck like lightning.
His hands. Tiny. His legs. Barely more than stubs. His voice, when it escaped in a helpless cry, was shrill and high-pitched.
Atlas's mind reeled. No… no, this isn't possible…
He was a baby.
Somehow, impossibly, his life had not ended. The grenade had consumed him—he remembered the heat, the light, the silence—and yet, here he was. Not a doctor. Not even a man. An infant, helpless and reborn in a place he did not know.
His chest heaved. Panic clawed at his mind, but there was nothing he could do but cry, his tiny lungs wailing against the void.
Footsteps echoed against stone. Slow. Measured.
A figure emerged from the shadows. A woman, middle-aged, draped in crimson and black robes. Her face bore lines of age, but her eyes—sharp and predatory—gleamed with something far colder than compassion.
She stepped closer, the firelight glinting off her features. Her lips curled in the faintest smile as she gazed down at him.
"Well, well," she murmured in a language Atlas didn't know, yet somehow understood. Her tone was gentle, almost soothing, yet carried a venom beneath the surface. "What a precious gift the gods have left in my path."
Her hands reached down, cold yet careful, lifting him from the basket. Atlas squirmed, his body betraying him, his voice reduced to pitiful cries. He could do nothing but look into her eyes.
Eyes that promised possession. Control.
She studied him in silence for a long moment before pulling the cloth tighter around his small body.
"You will grow strong," she whispered. "And you will serve."
The firelight caught her features fully then, and Atlas's heart—or what was left of it—lurched. He didn't know her name yet, but the cruelty etched in her gaze imprinted itself into his new soul.
She was Chrysis.
A high-ranking member of the Cult of Kosmos.
And she had found him.
Atlas, once a doctor sworn to heal, once a man of science and compassion, now lay helpless in the arms of someone who saw him as nothing but a tool.
Fate had torn him from one dying world only to cast him into another—a world of shadows, blades, and gods.
His old life was gone.
And a new one had begun.
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