The rain tasted like ash.
Lumen lay still on the gravel, staring up at a sky that didn't belong to Earth. Clouds churned unnaturally above him — stitched like torn cloth, pulsing with violet veins. Every breath burned. Smoke leaked from his chest like his lungs had caught fire.
"…This isn't a dream, is it?"
The pain in his ribs said no. The blood on his knuckles said no.
And somewhere, far off — a laugh.
High-pitched. Playful. Wrong.
It was the laugh he heard just before he died.
Not a heroic death. No final words. No saving a busload of orphans. Just a street corner. Earbuds. A flash of red and white. A clown across the road, smiling. Pointing.
Then darkness.
Now… here.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere stitched.
He sat up. His coat was gone. His shoes were wrong. The gravel beneath him shimmered faintly like thread soaked in oil. Wind moved through the grass in slow, deliberate patterns, as if afraid to be loud.
A System window blinked open:
🛠️ [System Initialization]
[Entity Class: Unknown / External Anomaly]
➤ Sigil Tier: Common Assigned — Threadbinder (🪡)
➤ Cognitive Integrity: Unstable
➤ Observation Level: Passive
🛠️ [You are being watched.]
His breath caught.
Then, another line:
"He's stitched wrong, but let him walk awhile. Let's see what unravels."
And just as quickly as it appeared — the window vanished.
Lumen didn't understand. But deep in his spine, something pulled taut.
He wasn't alone.
He stood, wincing, scanning the charred black field around him. Dead grass. Twisted trees. A crooked road made of bones and gravel stretched ahead.
So he walked.
Because if something was watching, he wouldn't sit still for it.
And maybe — just maybe — if this was a second life, he'd earn a better ending than the first.
🪡 Goal seeded: Find out why you were brought here. Before they unravel you.
He wandered for hours. The sky didn't change. There was no sun, just dim light, like the world had a memory of daytime but forgot how to do it right.
His legs gave out beneath a dying tree. He didn't feel the fall.
That's when he heard a voice.
"Um… hello?"
Lumen forced his eyes open.
A girl was standing nearby — small, with long brown braids and scraped knees. She looked about twelve, maybe thirteen. A simple linen dress, a basket of roots over one arm. Her wide hazel eyes watched him like he might bite.
"You're not from the village," she said quietly. "Are you okay?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but only a hoarse wheeze came out.
"You look hurt," she murmured. "Wait—here. My mum always says food helps."
She rummaged in her basket, pulled out a flat hunk of bread, and walked it over with hesitant steps. Lumen blinked at it. His stomach twisted with hunger.
He took it slowly. Nodded.
The girl took a cautious step back.
"I'm going to get help," she said. "Don't move too much, alright?"
She turned and ran — her braid bouncing behind her, sandals slapping against the dry dirt.
Lumen didn't know her name.
But he remembered the warmth of the bread.
The villagers came not long after. A tired man with a pipe, two boys with spears, and a broad-shouldered woman who looked like she'd wrestled a bear that morning. They found him half-conscious, dust-covered, nibbling the last of the bread.
He didn't fight. Just sat there, dazed.
"You want to eat, boy?" the village chief said later, squinting down at him. "Earn it. Go scare the birds off the south fields."
The woman from before tossed him a half-worn cloak. "And check the west fence while you're there. Damn thing keeps leaning like it wants to fall over."
And so Lumen, the boy once from Earth, now from nowhere, stood in a field dressed in patched rags and a sack mask to block the wind. He spread his arms, balanced on a wooden pole for fun, and scared crows by yelling things like, "Boo!" and "Taxes are due!"
The children started calling him the Scarecrow.
He laughed. So did the crows. But he did his job.
At night, when the wind quieted and the stars flickered like dying fireflies, he stared at his sigil and whispered, "What am I supposed to be?"
The sigil never answered.
But one night, something else did.
He saw it near the woods.
A creature, hunched and steaming, dragging its limbs through the dirt like they didn't belong to it. Its eyes glowed blue like furnace glass. It wasn't just wrong. It was broken. As if stitched together by mistake.
Lumen froze.
The creature stopped.
Then charged.
He ran. It followed.
He tripped over roots, his sack mask falling. He turned, out of breath, thinking he'd die a second time.
But his sigil burned.
Threads. Real ones. Shot out from his fingers like needles, coiling around branches and dragging him out of reach. The creature slammed into a tree behind him and exploded in sparks.
It was a machine. A monster. A message.
His first fight — survived by accident, by instinct, by thread.
When the villagers found the smashed remains the next morning, someone whispered:
"The Scarecrow did it."
And just like that, a name began to form.
He sat alone that night under the stars, chewing stale bread.
The wind rustled the fields. Somewhere, a crow cawed.
He chuckled.
"Scarecrow, huh?" he said, holding up his hand, watching the sigil pulse like a heartbeat. "Guess I'm stuck with it."
But the stars didn't laugh.
They watched.
And so did something else, far beyond the sky, smiling.
Waiting.
Would you like me to tweak Chapter 2 slightly to better reflect this version of the girl (less "again" confusion, and maybe give her a name there)?