Rael didn't die a hero.
There were no people shouting his name. No family crying beside him. No dramatic last words. Just a sharp pain in his ribs, a growing pool of blood on cracked pavement, and the sound of his own breath slowing, each gasp fainter than the last.
He was alone.
Rain hit the ground around him, cold and steady. The alley was dim, lit only by the broken flicker of a streetlamp overhead. One bulb buzzed weakly, casting pale yellow light across rusted dumpsters and waterlogged cardboard. This was the kind of place people only passed through when they were desperate or didn't want to be seen.
Rael had just been trying to get home.
He remembered the scream. A kid, maybe twelve years old, cornered by two men in soaked jackets. One had a knife. It wasn't some noble decision. He didn't pause to think. His body just moved.
A shove. A blur. A flash of silver. Then heat. Then ice.
And now, he was lying on his side, watching the shadows tremble as the light above flickered once, then died.
He blinked slowly. His body was heavy, like it had turned to stone. He thought of no one in particular. He felt no sense of pride. No fear. No satisfaction.
Just a dull, quiet thought at the edge of fading awareness.
"What a waste."
Then everything stopped. No motion. No warmth. Even thought seemed to slow, like it was being pulled into the void.
No pain. No breath. No heartbeat.
Only silence.
But it wasn't peaceful, and it wasn't frightening. It was the silence of something missing. Like a machine that had suddenly lost power. The kind that made it feel like the universe had just… paused.
Then came the text.
Not a voice. Not a presence. Just blinking letters, glowing red in the darkness, each one sharp and cold as glass.
[System Notice: New Soul Detected]
[Searching for Reincarnation Queue…]
[ERROR_000X: Subject Not Found]
[Initiating Manual Override...]
[Divine Management System: Offline]
[Deploying Autonomous Rebirth Protocol]
[Class Assigned: Undefined]
[System Administrator: NULL]
Rael drifted in that endless dark. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he had no shape anymore. Just thoughts, detached from everything.
He stared at the messages.
"…What is this?" he muttered. Or maybe just imagined. "Some kind of... afterlife operating system?"
More lines scrolled into view like a machine struggling to follow its own rules.
[Caution: Stabilizer Role Incomplete]
[Subject incompatible with Hero, Villain, or Oracle designations]
[Routing to fallback shard: Eldara]
[Reincarnation commencing...]
Rael gave a breathless laugh.
Even in death, he was just a mistake waiting to be corrected.
Then air punched into his lungs.
He gasped, convulsing violently. Pain bloomed in his chest and limbs. His body jerked like a puppet pulled by tangled strings. Everything felt raw and unfamiliar.
He hit the ground hard.
Ash rose up in clouds around him. Cold earth beneath his back. The sky above him was cracked—literally. Red fractures cut through the clouds like bleeding scars. They pulsed faintly, spreading outward like shattered glass across a canvas of dusk.
Rael coughed and rolled to his side.
[System Online.]
[Welcome, User.]
Class: Undefined
Role: Stabilizer Candidate (Experimental)
Authority Level: 0
System Integrity: 37%
Core Path: Unlinked
Status: Unregistered
He sat up slowly, hands sinking into dirt mixed with crushed stone and strange glowing dust.
His voice came out low and raspy.
"Still broken..."
He looked down at his hands. They were longer, leaner, stronger. His body was taller than he remembered. Muscles felt new, not grown through life but pressed into shape by something artificial.
He didn't feel like himself.
The landscape around him was eerie and quiet. Twisted trees lined the edge of a field of ruins. Blackened stone buildings stood like skeletons, half-sunken into the cracked ground. Faint glows came from places that felt wrong—shards of something magical but unstable, half-buried in ash.
A strange breeze blew through the trees. It carried the smell of burnt ozone and something faintly metallic.
Rael scanned the area, alert and tense. Every sound made his skin prickle. This place wasn't just foreign—it was wounded.
"Is this... Eldara?"
Another screen blinked to life in his vision.
[Would you like to begin observation?]
He paused.
"No guide. No welcome message. Just dropped in like trash. Classic."
He selected 'Yes'.
✦ System Ability Activated: ThreadSight (Lv 1)
Everything changed.
Lines of light appeared around him. Thin threads of blue stretched out from every object, living or not. Some threads glowed softly. Others pulsed brightly like nerves carrying energy.
He turned toward a deer-like creature near a scorched tree. Its thread was splitting. One branch ended peacefully in a nearby stream. The other ended in a broken neck just seconds ahead.
He looked toward a cracked obelisk. Beneath it, a glowing shard pulsed with faint magic. Its thread was tangled, the outcomes uncertain.
Then he looked at his own thread.
It was chaos. A knot of infinite branches. No center. No clear direction. It split in too many ways, none of them steady.
No destiny. No chosen path.
Just open possibility.
He exhaled and shook his head, a small smile tugging at his lips.
"At least I'm not part of someone's story this time."
A growl cut through the silence.
Rael snapped his head around.
A corrupted knight emerged from the nearby dungeon gate. It dragged a massive sword behind it. Its armor was blackened and cracked, one glowing eye peering out from beneath a dented helmet. Hissing steam leaked from its joints, and odd symbols flickered across its chest.
[Aberrant Entity Detected: Fallen Sentinel]
[Level: 12]
[System Corruption: 82%]
Rael blinked. His own level read as 0. No weapon. No class. Not even a skill tree.
The knight raised its sword with a low, grinding noise.
Rael muttered, "Seriously?"
Then it charged.
It moved faster than it should have. Its massive sword came down with enough force to split the ground. Rael leapt aside at the last second, a shockwave of mana blasting through where he'd just stood.
His legs burned. Muscles still adjusting. Reflexes off by half a second.
The knight turned with unnatural speed and swung again.
Rael rolled under the blade and dove behind a ruined wall, panting hard.
"I don't even have a health bar," he thought. "If I get hit once, I'm dead."
Another blow smashed the stone near him, sending debris flying. Rael tumbled backward, dirt and ash in his eyes.
Then another window.
[Skill Available: Echo Rewrite (Lv 1)]
- Rewind the last action taken within 10 seconds.
- Use: 1 remaining.
His pulse quickened.
A flash of light caught his eye. Near the broken obelisk, a mana crystal pulsed. Cracked, glowing blue, buried in dust. ThreadSight highlighted it again.
Its thread sparked violently. Two possible outcomes. One led to collapse. The other... to a flash of raw power.
Rael narrowed his eyes.
"Unstable. Dangerous. That'll work better than nothing. It might kill me, but standing still will definitely get me killed."
The knight roared and lifted its sword again.
Rael stayed where he was.
This time, he waited.
The blade came down.
He tapped the skill.
[Echo Rewrite: Activated]
The world stuttered. Nothing else changed, but Rael's body jumped backward in time. Ten seconds earlier. He felt the pull of gravity as the moment rewound.
And now, with the memory still fresh, he ran.
The knight was still moving, unaware of the shift.
Rael sprinted toward the shard, scooped it up, and hurled it with every ounce of strength at the knight's chest, right at the flickering glyph on its armor.
CRACK.
A blinding flash lit the field. The mana crystal exploded in a burst of raw power. Fire and light tore through the knight's chestplate. The air pulsed violently. The monster staggered, its sword flickering in and out like a broken weapon model. Its eye dimmed.
Rael didn't wait to celebrate.
He turned and ran.
The dead forest rushed past him. Ash flew in the wind. His heart pounded hard, every step echoing in the unstable ground.
When he finally stopped, he was far from the gate, standing on a ridge high above a broken valley.
Below, the world stretched endlessly.
Crumbling towers, glowing pillars, floating runes drifting like fireflies. Strange symbols danced in the sky. Faint pulses of light from places where magic still clung to existence. Civilization, or what remained of it, scattered and fractured.
A notification blinked into view.
[System Status: 39% Synced]
[Core Class: Undefined]
[No Faction Detected]
[Thread Anchor: Not Found]
[You are not bound to the World Path.]
Rael read it twice.
He had no class. No quest. No alliance.
He was not part of the system.
Not chosen.
Not cursed.
Just... something else.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air that tasted like smoke and strange minerals, feeling the weight of this second life settle over him.
The sky pulsed faintly overhead, red cracks humming softly in the distance. This world was broken. But so was he.
And maybe that was the only thing that made sense.
"I didn't belong in my old world," he said quietly.
He pulled the cloak tighter around his shoulders and took his first step toward the unknown.
"Here, I decide who I become."