You know that thing people always say?That when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes.
Yeah, sure. Total bullshit.
You didn't see it before you died.You saw it when you were already dead.And only because there was literally nothing else to look at.
What nobody told you was that death—above all—was insultingly boring.
It looked nothing like the paintings. No lights. No bearded old man tallying up your sins. Not even that damn tunnel everyone yapped about. It was more like someone flipped a switch. Click. Done. Over.
What came after? Yeah. Nobody nailed that part.
No loved ones waiting. No Heaven. No Hell. No purgatory. No warmth, no cold. No body. No hunger. No thirst. Not even the urge to take a shit. There was nothing.
Just this infinite void of crap. Absolute darkness. And me, suspended in the middle, clinging to fractured thoughts because they were the only thing left.
I think, therefore I am.
I'd always thought Descartes was full of it.I preferred Machiavelli. The pragmatists. Do whatever it takes to reach your goal.
But the French bastard had been right.
There—without a body, without a world, without anything—thinking was the only proof I still existed.Or that I had existed, and hadn't yet dissolved into that cursed nothing.
Maybe that would've been better.
Because the problem with thinking when you couldn't do anything else… was that you thought too much. And when memories were the only thing you had, you realized not all of them weighed the same.
The good ones were smoke. You could almost grab them. They comforted you for a second… then vanished.
The bad ones stayed. They stuck to you. They bit from the inside. They wedged in like splinters under the skin of your soul.
And there it was again.The same damn memory.
Headquarters. My headquarters. My fucking throne. That oak table where you decided who lived and who didn't.
Marcus stood across from me, wearing that crooked grin I should've smashed years earlier. The bastard I'd pulled from the mud when he was twelve. I gave him everything—respect, power, my damn trust.
He paid me back with lead.
The bullet tore through me before I could even move. The pain was… Jesus… like my shoulder got ripped clean off. I dropped to my knees, my blood spilling over contracts worth millions.
And then Tommy showed up.
My cousin. My own damn blood.
Cold barrel to the back of my head.Bang.
"Nothing personal, boss."
Nothing personal.
I repeated it now, floating in this endless dark. Like betrayal could ever be "nothing personal." Like spending your entire life building something from scratch—drugs, guns, territory, power—could end without it being personal.
I'd gone from pickpocketing in Brixton to owning half of London. From sleeping in cardboard boxes to having politicians licking my boots.
And in the end, the one thing I couldn't buy was loyalty.
I should've seen it coming. Of course I should've.But I got comfortable. I thought I could trust them.
Idiot.
The fucked-up part was, I'd never been just the monster. I had cracks. Small ones, hidden ones—but they were there. When my mum bailed and my stepdad turned me into his punching bag every time he got drunk, I had somewhere to escape.
It wasn't the streets.It wasn't the fights.
It was a dusty library in Southwark.And a book about a boy with a lightning-bolt scar.
Yeah. Harry Potter.
Ridiculous, I know. London's most feared crime boss reading about kids with wands. Not just the books either. Fanfic too. Thousands of them. Stories where Harry was darker. Smarter. Where he rewrote his own fate.
Like I wanted to rewrite mine.
I never told a soul. Picture it: me, behind my iron mask, reading about Hogwarts at three in the morning in my bulletproof office.
They would've killed me.Or worse—they would've laughed.
But those stories saved me more times than I ever saved my own hide. When the world got too gray, too broken, I escaped to that damn castle. A place where magic had rules. Where even an orphan could change everything. Where betrayal got punished with something more than a bullet to the back of the head.
What was my name?
Shit. I couldn't remember.
It got lost in the nothing. Like everything else. My face. My body. My empire of lies and blood.
But if there was something after this… if there could be a second chance, reincarnation, whatever—I wanted it to be there.
In that world of castles and prophecies. Where a kid with nothing could become a legend. Where magic was real and second chances weren't just self-help-book motivational crap.
Because this time I'd do it different.
I wouldn't trust anyone.I wouldn't drop my guard.I wouldn't make the same stupid mistakes.
This time—
But there was no "this time," right?
Just silence. Heavy. Absolute. Eternal.
I let myself sink again. Floating. Weightless. Bodiless. Destineless. Certain there was no "after."
And still… I kept thinking.Kept remembering.
Because it was all I had left.
And because something inside me—some stubborn fragment that survived the bullet, the betrayal, the death—refused to quit.
I think, therefore I am.
What a sick joke.
The pressure hit without warning.
"What the hell…?"
Something crushed my chest. Like a fist squeezing from the inside. Did I even have a chest? Did I have anything?
It spread fast. I couldn't move, but I felt everything: the choking, something warm and wet pressing in, the total lack of control.
And then came the yank.
Something hauled me upward. Fast. Violent. Like I was getting ripped out of the guts of the world. The suffocating heat vanished and got replaced by freezing air that punched me in the face. It forced its way into my lungs, blowing them open brutally.
And then I screamed.
It wasn't a choice. The sound tore out of me—sharp, desperate, completely out of control.
"Shit. Shit. What the fuck is happening?"
Everything was blurry. Yellowish lights floating above. Shapes moving without clean edges. Muffled sounds, like my head was underwater.
I blinked.Once.Twice.Three times.
The shapes started making sense.
A high ceiling. Stained. Cracks branching like veins.
Huge hands holding me. Cold. Slick with something slippery.
I had been reborn.
The thought hit like a gunshot.
I'd been reborn. Holy shit. I'D BEEN REBORN.
Not a metaphor. Not a dream. I was in a body. Small. Useless. Wailing like a damn baby because I was a damn baby.
I asked for a chance. And the universe—sadistic bastard that it was—actually gave it to me.
I wanted to laugh, to scream, to tell it all to go to hell. But the only thing that came out was that high, piercing cry I couldn't control.
Slowly, my vision sharpened.
A man in a white coat with thick-framed glasses held me up. His surgical cap sat crooked, sweat running down his temples. Behind him, a wall clock read 12:02 a.m.
Real hands. Real ticking.
Who the hell still used those?
I looked around while they cleaned me off. No touchscreens. No modern monitors. Just boxy machines with green numbers blinking. Thick cables like boat ropes. Yellowish fluorescent lights buzzing like dying flies.
Everything looked… old. Antique. Like an eighties hospital set.
Where the hell am I?
"He's healthy," the doctor said. "Spontaneous breathing. Good weight for gestational age."
"Gesta—what the hell?"
No time to process.
They wrapped me in a rough blanket that stank of cheap industrial detergent. Then I felt different arms. Softer. Shaking.
A woman pressed me to her chest.
The smell hit me. Plain soap. Air-dried clothes. Sweat from effort. And something deeper.
Exhaustion. Relief mixed with fear.
"Shh, it's okay," she murmured, her voice cracking. "Mum's here."
Mum.
The word sounded strange. Distant. Like it belonged to another life.
I forced my eyes to focus on her. Young—maybe twenty-three, twenty-four. Messy black hair, half tied with a rushed ponytail. Green eyes, bright, but ringed with deep shadows.
She looked wrecked. Scared. Like all of this was bigger than she could carry.
This isn't the first time she's done this, I thought suddenly.
And then I saw it.
Another baby. Already there, tucked against her other side. Tiny. Eyes closed. Breathing softly.
Something twisted inside me. Not pain. Something else.
Recognition.
Like part of me already knew that little bundle mattered. That it was tied to me in a way I didn't understand yet.
My brother.
I didn't know how I knew.But I knew.
The woman looked at both of us and her eyes filled with tears.
"Two," she whispered. "Two babies. Oh God."
Someone else stepped closer. A man. Tall. Thin. Scruffy beard. Wrinkled clothes. Dark circles as deep as hers.
"Are they okay?" he asked, hoarse.
"They're perfect," the doctor said, peeling off his gloves. "Healthy twins. Long labor, but everything went well."
The man let out a long breath like he'd been holding it for hours. He leaned in and kissed the woman's forehead carefully, like she might break.
"You did it," he said. "You did it, Elora."
She nodded, but she didn't take her eyes off us. Not me, not my brother. Like she still couldn't believe we were real.
I stayed there in her arms, feeling the heat of her body, listening to the irregular thud of her heart.
And through all of it, one question drilled into my skull.
Where the hell am I?
Because this didn't feel like London.It didn't feel like my world.
And something about the way that man glanced around before stepping in—something in the tension both of them carried like an invisible weight…
Something was wrong. Or different. Or both.
Fine, I thought, as my brother shifted beside me… I guess I'd find out soon enough.