The first time I died, I was weak enough to hate myself for it.
That was the first thought that came to me, even after everything else disappeared. Not the pain, not the blood, not the monster standing over me like it owned the world. Just that bitter realization sitting inside my chest like a stone, because no matter how much I trained, no matter how hard I fought, I still could not change the ending.
The city was already ruined by then.
Smoke filled the streets. Fire burned through broken buildings. The air smelled like ash and blood. Hunters who had once been called humanity's strongest defenders lay scattered across the rubble, their bodies twisted in ways I would never be able to forget. People screamed somewhere in the distance, but the sound was fading fast. Everything was fading fast. The battle had already been lost before I even understood it.
I was lying on the ground, my body broken beyond repair.
My right arm was useless. My ribs felt crushed. Every breath was a struggle, sharp and painful, like I was trying to inhale through shards of glass. Blood soaked my clothes and spread beneath me into the cracked street. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I still forced myself to look up.
A monster stood in front of me.
It was huge, larger than a truck, with black armor covering its body like bone. Six eyes watched me without emotion. Its mouth was full of jagged teeth, and every time it moved, the ground seemed to tremble beneath its weight. It looked at me the way a person might look at an insect that had stopped moving.
I remember trying to lift my sword.
My hand shook too much.
The blade slipped from my fingers and fell into the rubble beside me with a sound that felt far too loud in the silence.
I remember laughing weakly after that.
Not because anything was funny, but because I had no strength left to even feel angry.
So this was it.
This was how I died.
Not as a hero. Not as a legend. Not as someone who changed the world. Just as Eren Vale, the weak Hunter who had always been one step too late and never strong enough when it mattered.
The monster turned toward me.
I remember how cold my body felt in that moment, even with the heat of the burning city all around me. I remember knowing, with complete certainty, that if I moved again, I would only make the death worse. So I closed my eyes.
I didn't want to watch.
I didn't want to hear it.
And then the voice came.
It was not loud. It did not shake the sky or echo through the battlefield like some divine announcement. It simply existed, cold and ancient and impossible, as if it had spoken from somewhere deeper than the world itself.
[You have failed.]
My eyes snapped open.
For a moment, I could not understand what I had heard. The monster was still there. The city was still burning. The dead were still lying all around me. But something felt wrong. The air had changed. The world seemed silent in a way that wasn't natural, like sound itself had been pulled away from me.
Then the voice spoke again.
[Your life has ended.]
[Regression has been initiated.]
Regression.
I didn't know what it meant.
Not yet.
I only knew that the words hit me with such force that my pain vanished for one brief instant. Then the world shattered into white light, and I felt myself being pulled apart and dragged somewhere I could not follow.
The last thing I remember before everything disappeared was the realization that I was really dying.
Then I opened my eyes again.
I was alive.
I sat up so fast that dizziness slammed into my head, and for a few seconds I could only stare at the ceiling above me. My breathing was uneven. My heart was pounding so violently it almost hurt. I touched my chest, then my arms, then my face, expecting to find blood or pain or broken bones.
There was nothing.
No wounds. No smoke. No battlefield.
Only silence.
I turned my head slowly and looked around.
The room was familiar.
Too familiar.
My old room.
The desk near the wall. The chair with one uneven leg. The shelf stacked with old notebooks and training books. The black jacket hanging beside the door. The cracked mirror on the wall. Everything looked exactly as it had before the first disaster, before the world changed forever.
My throat tightened.
I got out of bed and stood there for a moment, unsteady, staring at my hands as if they belonged to someone else. They were whole. Young. Clean. No scars. No blood. No injuries. My body felt normal, which somehow made the situation more frightening instead of less.
This had to be a dream.
That was the first thing I thought.
But the cold floor under my feet felt too real. The air in my lungs felt too real. The room around me did not blur or fade no matter how hard I stared. Dream or not, it felt solid enough to crush me.
I walked to the mirror.
A younger version of myself stared back.
For several seconds, I couldn't move.
This was me from three years ago. Before the first Gate incident. Before the years of struggle. Before the war. Before the pain had worn me down into someone older than his age. The exhaustion that had lived in my eyes for so long was gone. The scars were gone. The hard look I had developed after surviving too much was gone too.
I looked like someone who had not yet been broken.
My eyes moved to the calendar hanging on the wall beside the desk.
I froze.
I stared at it once.
Then again.
The date was exact.
My body went cold.
It was the day before the first Gate incident.
The day before everything began.
I stepped closer and looked again, just to make sure my mind wasn't lying to me. It wasn't. The day, month, and year were all correct. This was the past. Not a similar day. Not an approximation. The real past.
My breathing turned shallow.
"No way…"
My voice sounded strange to me, too quiet for the shock I was feeling.
I pressed one hand against the desk to steady myself and lowered my head.
This couldn't be real.
It had to be some kind of hallucination, or a final trick my dying mind had created to comfort itself. But the more I thought about it, the more impossible that seemed. The pain I had felt before was still fresh in my memory. The monster. The ruins. The death. None of that had felt like a dream.
Then a soft blue light appeared in front of me.
I jerked back so hard I nearly fell.
A translucent window hovered in the air, glowing faintly with cold light. It was not attached to anything. It wasn't a screen, not really. It just floated there in front of me as if it had every right to exist in my room.
My mouth went dry.
[STATUS WINDOW ACTIVATED]
I stared at the words, frozen.
Another line appeared.
[Name: Eren Vale]
[Age: 19]
[Rank: F]
[Authority: Dormant]
Rank F.
That part made sense. I had been weak back then. Not useless, but close enough. I had awakened with little talent, little power, and no real future in anyone else's eyes. I had trained hard to make up for it, but even that had only carried me so far.
The window shimmered again.
[System Condition: Unstable]
[Core Fragment Detected]
[Authority Awakening Process: Incomplete]
I frowned.
Core fragment.
Authority.
Incomplete.
The words felt important, but they didn't fit neatly into anything I knew. Before I could think too deeply about them, another line appeared, and the air around me seemed to grow a little colder.
[You have inherited the Authority of the Fallen King.]
I stared.
"A king?"
The room stayed silent.
The next line appeared immediately.
[Authority Name: King's Crown]
[Type: Domination]
[Effect: Absorb, suppress, and overwrite enemy power through direct conflict]
I read that line over and over.
Absorb.
Suppress.
Overwrite.
It looked simple enough written in a system window, but I knew enough to understand how absurd it really was. This was not a normal ability. This was not a basic enhancement or a combat skill. This was power that sounded like it existed to rule over other powers.
A warning flashed beneath the description.
[Warning: Authority is sealed.]
[Unlock conditions unknown.]
I let out a slow breath and rubbed my face with one hand.
A sealed king's authority.
A regression into the past.
Knowledge of the future.
I still didn't know who or what had done this to me, but one thing was already clear.
I had been given a second chance.
And this time, I would not waste it.
I turned away from the mirror and walked to my desk. An old notebook was still lying there, just as it had always been. I picked it up and opened the pages. At first, they were just old training notes, rough calculations, and scratched-out thoughts from the life I had lived before. Nothing special. Nothing magical. Nothing that had somehow carried the future with it.
Of course it hadn't.
Only I had come back.
Not the notebook. Not the world. Not a single object.
Just me.
My fingers tightened around the paper as I stared at the blank pages near the back of the notebook. Then I picked up a pen and began to write.
If nothing came with me, then I would write it all again.
I started with the first thing I remembered clearly.
Central District — First Gate — Tomorrow.
My hand paused for only a second before I continued.
The dates.
The locations.
The major disasters.
The names of the Hunters who would rise later.
The hidden groups that would eventually move in the shadows.
The things I had learned too late in my first life.
I wrote them all down as fast as I could remember them.
Every word made the future feel more real.
Every line reminded me how much was coming.
Outside, the city looked peaceful.
Too peaceful.
From the window, I could see people walking through the streets below. Cars moved through traffic. Shops were opening. A child was laughing somewhere in the distance. Morning sunlight covered everything in a soft glow that made the city look ordinary, almost safe.
None of them knew what was about to happen.
None of them knew that this was the last peaceful day they would get before the world began to break.
And none of them knew that I had come back.
I stood by the window for a long time, watching the streets below, and something cold and sharp began to settle inside my chest.
This time, I would not die weak.
This time, I would not arrive too late.
This time, I would be the one standing when the world tried to crush me.
A knock came at the door.
I turned immediately.
"Eren, are you awake?" came a woman's voice from outside.
I recognized it right away. Mrs. Han, my neighbor. A kind woman who always brought me food whenever she thought I was skipping meals. In my first life, she had died during the chaos after the Gate incident. The memory hit me quickly, but I forced it down and opened the door.
She stood there smiling, holding a small food container in both hands.
"I made too much breakfast," she said. "I thought I'd bring some over."
For a moment, I just looked at her.
Alive.
Healthy.
Completely unaware that the world was about to change.
My silence must have seemed strange, because her smile softened a little. "You look tired," she said. "Did you stay up too late again?"
"I didn't sleep well," I answered after a brief pause.
She nodded like that was enough. "Then eat properly. Don't make the same mistake young people always make and collapse later."
I accepted the food with both hands. "Thank you."
She patted my shoulder lightly and walked back to her apartment.
I watched her go before closing the door.
For a moment, I just stood there holding the container, listening to the small, ordinary sounds of the building. A television somewhere down the hall. Footsteps upstairs. Someone laughing faintly in another room. Life going on as if nothing was wrong.
I set the food down on the table.
Then the system window appeared again.
[New Quest Available]
[Survive the First Disaster]
[Reward: Authority Sync +1%]
[Failure Penalty: Death]
I stared at the message, then let out a quiet breath through my nose.
Of course.
No rest. No hesitation. No time to pretend this was simple. The world was giving me a test, and I already knew exactly how cruel that test was going to be.
I grabbed my jacket, checked the plain sword leaning against the wall, and fastened it to my side.
It wasn't a special weapon.
It didn't need to be.
Then I left the apartment and headed toward the training grounds on the edge of the city.
By the time I arrived, the sun had already begun to sink lower in the sky, painting long shadows across the cracked dirt and the old wooden practice dummies standing in the yard. The place was nearly empty, which was perfect. I stepped into the center of the grounds, drew my sword, and opened the status window once more.
[Status Window]
[Name: Eren Vale]
[Rank: F]
[Level: 1]
[HP: 100 / 100]
[MP: 40 / 40]
[Strength: 8]
[Agility: 7]
[Endurance: 8]
[Mana: 10]
[Skills: Basic Swordsmanship (Lv.1)]
[Authority: Sealed]
My stats were low.
But they weren't useless.
More importantly, I knew how to use them.
I inhaled slowly, adjusted my stance, and began to swing.
The first slash cut through the air with a sharp hiss. The second followed immediately. The third flowed naturally from the second as my footwork shifted. I repeated the movement again and again, letting memory guide my body. My arms burned. Sweat gathered at my temples. My shoulders grew heavy. But I kept going.
In my first life, I had spent years learning how to survive.
Now I had to compress everything I knew into a single day.
I had to sharpen myself before the world forced me to bleed.
At some point, something changed.
My stance steadied. My movement became smoother. The sword felt less like an object and more like a part of my body. Then the system flashed again.
[Basic Swordsmanship has reached Lv.2]
I stopped in place.
A warm pressure spread through my chest, and before I could even catch my breath, another message appeared.
[Authority Fragment Resonance Detected]
I felt it.
Deep inside me, something stirred.
Not loudly. Not violently. Just enough to remind me that there was something sleeping in my soul, something vast and dangerous and waiting. The air around me seemed to grow heavier for a brief moment. A dark blue flicker passed across my vision, and I understood with complete certainty that the authority inside me was real.
Then the system changed again.
[Authority Sealed Condition Reduced]
[Progress: 0.1%]
I looked at the message and smiled.
Barely anything.
Just a tiny step.
But it was enough to prove that the power was there.
It could grow.
It could awaken.
It could become something terrifying.
My phone suddenly buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out and looked at the screen.
[Unusual Mana Disturbance Detected in Central District]
My expression hardened instantly.
So it had already started.
I lifted my head toward the city skyline.
The clouds above the buildings had changed. They were gathering in unnatural layers, darkening in a way that did not belong to normal weather. Then I saw it, a thin line of pale light cutting across the sky like a wound opening in reality. The pressure in the air shifted violently. People in the distance began looking up, confused, not yet understanding what they were seeing.
The crack widened.
And then a voice echoed out from within it, low and cold, carrying a sound like laughter buried under stone.
"Humans…"
I tightened my grip on the sword and stared up at the opening in the sky.
The first Gate had opened.
The first disaster was here.
And I was finally standing at the beginning of the second life I had been given.
This time, I would not die weak.
This time, I would not be late.
This time, I would take the crown.