***Lucian's POV***
I woke up to the taste of iron in my mouth.
It was faint, but it was there—metallic, bitter, like blood that had dried hours ago. My ribs ached, my spine felt like it had been twisted by a god with a grudge, and the side of my face was buried in moss and dirt. For a second, I didn't move. I let the silence hold me.
Then I remembered the howl.
And I remembered that I'd died.
Not metaphorically. Not some dream-state hallucination. I remembered the knife. I remembered choking on my own blood. And I remembered the sphere—glowing, pulsing like a heart that didn't belong in this world. The sphere I bought with a coin purse full of lies and desperation.
Shit.
I slowly turned onto my back, wincing as something in my side popped. Above me, crooked tree branches clawed at the gray sky like they were trying to escape. Crows circled somewhere far off, their caws hollow and amused.
"Back in the land of the miserable," I muttered, voice dry.
I didn't know how long I'd been unconscious. Could've been hours. Days. Hell, maybe I'd been buried and the world had just forgotten to finish the job. Typical.
I sat up and pulled my coat tighter, realizing it wasn't the one I died in. This wasn't the alley behind my shop. This wasn't even the city. Everything around me was... wrong. Older. Wilder. Too still. I caught a whiff of rot and ash beneath the pine-sap air. That wasn't comforting.
And my body? Different.
Not in the "Oh, my shoulders are sore" kind of way—but in the "Why do I feel taller, stronger, and strangely... right?" way. There was something beneath my skin now. A heat. A hum. Ki?
No. Couldn't be. I'd spent half my miserable life chasing that phantom. The soul trait I'd awakened back in the slums: Ki Manipulation. A cruel joke in a world that had no Ki. It was like owning a map to a sunken treasure in a desert.
Yet now... something pulsed inside me. Alive. Real.
I laughed quietly, the sound strained.
"Of course. Die once and suddenly your trait works. Screw you too, universe."
The forest around me whispered. Or maybe it was just the wind.
I shook off the dizziness and stood up. My legs wobbled, knees popping like they hadn't been used in a while. I took a step, then another. Pain bloomed behind my eyes, and a flicker of memory hit me like a brick.
The job.
Gods, that job.
It was supposed to be simple.
A clean deal in a dirty world.
Back in my old life, I ran a small shop in the underworld. Not the cool, dagger-under-your-cloak kind of underworld. I mean the real one. The kind where people trade stolen relics for fake identities, where poisons were weighed like spices, and where you had to bribe someone just to get stabbed politely.
I didn't belong to any gang or noble house. I was a freelancer. An alley rat with a reputation for two things: never asking questions, and always getting things done.
Then came him—the customer with the silver gloves and the smile that didn't reach his eyes. He walked into my shop just before dusk, carrying the sphere like it was a rotten fruit he couldn't wait to get rid of.
Said it "whispered" to him.
Said it kept calling him by names that weren't his.
Creepy? Sure.
But it was glowing with an inner light I'd never seen before, and my instincts screamed that this wasn't junk. I gave him half the market price, and he practically ran out.
Later that night, I studied it under candlelight. It didn't match any artifact from my black-market ledgers. No maker's mark. No core crystal. Just that gentle, rhythmic pulse.
I should've left it alone.
Instead, I touched it.
And it burned.
Next thing I knew, the air twisted around me. Every part of me felt like it was being unraveled—cell by cell, thought by thought. No pain. Just light. Endless, blinding light.
Then—darkness.
And then... here.
I leaned against a tree, breath shallow. My fingers curled, testing the weight of unfamiliar bones and skin. The clothes were high-quality—torn now, but once regal. Faint sigils stitched into the lining, faded by time and blood. Pale scars ran along my arms—marks that didn't belong to me.
This wasn't my body.
And judging by the flickers in my head—echoes of swords, screaming, and cold stone halls—I had stepped into someone else's unfinished story.
Which meant two things.
One: I wasn't supposed to be alive.
Two: whoever owned this body had enemies.
Lots of them.
Another howl ripped through the air. Closer. Too close.
I started walking—forcing one foot after the other, teeth clenched against the cold. My breath fogged with every exhale.
"This is fine," I muttered. "Just another bad deal."
But thinking would get me killed.
And then—it came.
The thing.
A twisted monstrosity in the shape of a man, its body half-rotted and wrapped in armor. Not ancient—just unfamiliar. Alien in design. Worn like it had seen a thousand wars.
And in that moment, part of me believed it was over.
That this was punishment. A fitting end for the sins I carried.
****
The monstrosity lumbered forward.
It wasn't fast—but it didn't need to be. Its every movement was wrong. Not awkward, not sluggish. Just off. Like it remembered how to move, but not what for. Armor scraped and groaned with each step. Not rusted, but dried by time. That metal had once gleamed under a sun that probably didn't shine anymore.
And its face—
I didn't look long.
I turned and ran.
Not because I thought I could outrun it, but because something deeper than fear was screaming at me to move. My boots—well, the dead man's boots—were made for ceremony, not survival, and I nearly tripped over a tree root. I bit my tongue to stay silent. No heavy breaths. No gasps. Just forward.
Move or die, rat. Come on. You've done worse in tighter alleys.
The terrain was unfamiliar, but instincts honed in alleys and ruined backstreets kicked in. I ducked low, slipped behind a rotting tree stump, then into a shallow ditch thick with moss and old bones. I didn't dare think too hard about the latter.
My fingers brushed against something cold in the leaves.
A small, rusted blade. Half a dagger. Useless.
I took it anyway.
The sound of armor shifted, closer now—too close. I could hear the wet breath behind the helm, hear the groan of metal tightening.
I needed a distraction.
My eyes scanned the trees.
Then—there. A brittle, dangling branch above a ridge of stone. Just unstable enough.
I picked up a rock the size of my fist and flung it, hard, not at the monster—but at the ridge.
Crack.
The sound tore through the woods like lightning.
The branch gave way, the ridge split, and a cascade of brittle roots and dirt crashed down the slope. The monster turned its head toward the noise, slow and deliberate.
I took the opening.
Slipped behind a cluster of thorns. Slid down a shallow decline. Didn't think, just moved.
Every heartbeat felt like a countdown.
Go. Go. Go.
A low growl echoed behind me, followed by the crunch of something breaking underfoot. But I didn't stop. I forced my way deeper into the forest, into the dark. Branches clawed at my face. Blood trickled down my cheek. Good. It meant I was still alive.
Minutes blurred.
And then—I didn't hear it anymore.
The sound of metal, the smell of rot. Gone.
I collapsed near a stream, face-down in wet soil, breathing in gasps.
"…Alive," I muttered. "I'm actually alive."
The moonlight above shimmered through twisted trees. The water ran red—not with blood, but with rust or minerals or something else entirely. I didn't care.
I was alive.
But for how long?
That thing… it wasn't natural. And if it was the first thing I met, then this world wasn't just cruel.
It was cursed.
And I had just stolen a dead man's seat in it.
.