Cato Rehm knew about seeing stars. He’d had enough bad scrapes, beatings, and concussions in his short life to be very familiar with the faintness that accompanies a head injury.

But these stars shone above him in an ethereal firmament more beautiful than he had ever imagined.

They swirled dense and bright across the sky like a rolling wave. Each one twinkled brilliantly and seemed to say ‘I am in my rightful place, and I exist only to shine for you in this moment.’

Even stranger, Cato’s head didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. It was the first time in his eighteen years he could remember that nothing hurt; no twisted ankle or bruised rib to ache as he drifted asleep, no piercing stab in his lungs.

He drifted for a time, enveloped in that peaceful sensation. Eventually, he came to notice he was drifting. The stars were ever fixed in place, but the dark clouds flowed across the sky, and soon blanketed it entirely.

He was moving, bobbing gently backwards. His mind began to correlate these sensations.

He wasn’t dead. Why wasn’t he dead? He had expected to see stars, just for a moment, before… what?

This peace wasn’t just an absence of pain. It was an absence of any bodily sensation at all.

But he wasn’t dead yet. His mind was just out of sync with his body. It felt like he was in a deprivation tank, disconnected from all but his sight.

Out in the darkness, something familiar beckoned. Without thinking, he reached out toward it.

Pain.

Yes, it was pain, that familiar companion from his earliest memories.

Bodily sensation flooded over him. He wasn’t dead, but not for a lack of trying. He was drenched and almost frozen, almost completely numb.

But there was a spot of bright, hot pain in his lower abdomen. It centered him. Reminded him he wasn’t dead.

Why was he supposed to be dead?

Searing headlights. A car horn from hell.

With one vast impulse Cato burst from the water. Everything, from the numbness suffusing his body to the fiery agony in his midsection was transformed into an irresistible will to live.

With the dumb, desperate motion of frozen limbs he scrambled and caught a stray rock in senseless hands. But he could see, and with monumental effort he could command those hands to close on the rock. Just a few more brute heaves lifted him out of the water and onto the rough, sharp sanctuary.

But even that exertion exhausted him. Not only did his body refuse to move, he felt hazy, empty. It was like he had a second stomach, and it was screaming to be fed.

He felt regular hunger as well. He was wet, cold, and tired. His thoughts danced with desires he couldn’t recognize: foods he had never tasted, scents without object, impossible music. He longed for the luxurious feeling of a snow tiger fur coat against his bare skin on a wintry day. He remembered a sweet voice and a warm touch… whose?

These thoughts closed in around him like rising water. But this was a comfort. He just wanted to submerge himself beneath them…

Stop

His eyelids wavered.

Wake up

Cato bolted upright and-

PAIN!

He cried out and reached blindly. It was hard to tell in the dark, but there was something sticking out of his side, and the more he moved the more he screamed. Even touching it lightly sent a cold twinge through his whole body.

Breathe

He breathed.

Cato didn’t bother wondering where this voice was coming from. It wasn’t the warm and musical tone from his strange memories. It was bright and clear, like a flash of insight, like spring water on a hot day.

It, too, was strangely familiar, like an old friend hiding behind a mask. He felt that, if that mask slipped, he would say ‘so it was you all along’.

But for now he just breathed.

The pain pulsed and receded. By the time he came fully to his senses, Cato was breathing in a strange pattern.

No, that wasn’t quite right. His breathing was perfectly normal, in and out at regular intervals. It was as if the air he breathed in danced within his body, guided by the same invisible will that awoke him.

By slow degrees, the second hunger in his body was fed. It wasn’t sated, not by a long shot, but it wouldn’t gnaw at him anymore. Strength returned to his limbs, and the river’s chill abated. All that remained was the object in his side.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Under the waning starlight, he could now see that it was a dagger, long and slender, buried at least four inches deep in his left side. It had probably sliced right through his intestines, maybe his kidney as well.

Cato had survived enough accidents to know exactly what kinds of injuries the human body could survive. Without urgent medical care, this was not one of them.

But against all logic, his will to live was strong. Though that bright presence was no longer beside him, he kept breathing in the same way. Gritting his teeth through the pain, he took the dagger in hand and tugged.

It was stuck fast, but he persisted. One breath after another, applying steady pressure, it began to slide out. And though a fierce agony followed, a feeling of overwhelming vigor filled the void and soothed it.

When it pulled loose with a spurt of blood, Cato smiled through the pain. Despite everything he knew, he didn’t fear bleeding out, and after a few more minutes of breathing, the flow stopped. Half an hour later, the wound was totally closed.

When dawn broke, Cato sat up on the rock and saw there wasn’t even a scar.

It was the most beautiful and surreal sunrise of his life. A bright white sun climbed over the horizon, turning the world below into a pale and snowy dream. A golden sun followed, then crimson, and finally a cerulean one, each larger than the last, which bathed the land in gentle radiances. Psychedelic colors danced in the sky, and illuminated the wide river around him and the rolling verdant hills beyond the shore.

And then the suns faded behind the clouds. Free of both pain and numbness, Cato looked around for the first time.

They were not clouds, but a great blanket of smoke rolling in. The smoke rose from a light on the horizon, and he realized that it was a flame. It took him a few moments longer to realize the river flowed from that flame, and sourceless knowledge welled up in his mind.

The Holy City.

The Holy City was burning.

And there was a twinge of… satisfaction? That didn’t seem right. It wasn’t a feeling Cato Rehm would have ever felt at such a sight.

He flopped onto his side and stared down into the flowing water. It was clear and glassy, and his reflection wavered on the surface.

He was not, by this point, the least surprised that he was not looking at the face of Cato Rehm, and instead counted with a calm curiosity all the ways they were different.

This face was older, in his late twenties he guessed, but finer and unblemished. The auburn hair that cascaded from the crown of his head reached his shoulders in a chaotic tangle, and what had been a well-groomed beard and mustache in an earlier age was knotted and matted with all manner of filth.

The rest of his body was much the same. It was well-built, and under other circumstances it would have been enviable, but now it was haggard and bone-thin, with shrunken muscles and a half-starved look.

Even his clothing was fine, better than anything he would have dreamed of wearing, but torn, burned and sliced.

That brought his attention back to the dagger.

In the waning half light of the smoke-clouded suns, he examined the weapon which had nearly claimed his life. It was a work of art all its own, gently tapering to an elegant point, the shining blade neither dented nor blemished by the abuse he had just put it through.

It was sharp enough to scratch the stone beneath him and so sturdy it wasn’t so much as scratched. Upon the hilt, it bore a coat of arms shaped into the dark metal: twin lions rampant, snarling at the viewer, and inscribed on the blade was a name in unfamiliar letting which Cato nevertheless read with ease.

“Gulphay”

He supposed that was a name, but he could hardly guess anything more.

Amid the rising warmth and light, Cato took stock of what he knew.

He, an unfortunate and accident-prone boy from the flat center of America, had been swiftly crushed by an oncoming truck at night. Given how his life had gone up to that point, it was hardly an unexpected end.

Yet instead of dying, he had awoken in the body of this fellow, who was quite possibly less fortunate than himself, floating downriver from a burning city with a very fancy knife sticking out of him.

Whoever this body belonged to, he was doubtless rich, but it hadn’t saved him from a gruesome end. He was sure that the Holy City was wealthy and powerful beyond measure, and this man may well have been a native, but someone had seen fit to murder him even as the city itself was burning. Whatever his identity was, chances are it would be more of a liability than an asset.

So, as he tore off his ripped clothes and sunned himself on the wet rock, a simple goal formed.

Survive.

Get away from this damn place, with all its fire, blood and death, learn more about this strange world, and-

It was odd. He hadn’t the least idea of what to do beyond merely surviving. In his old life, he’d been focused on much the same, living every day in dread, just trying to keep afloat.

Now he was thrust into a much more dangerous situation, but no longer had a fragile body that broke under the slightest pressure. As best as he could tell, his old clumsiness and tendency towards accidents was gone as well.

If he could survive the next few days and weeks, he might well have a chance at a better life, the sort that most people took for granted. He could live from day to day without the fear of pain and injury hanging over his head, free to walk down the street with confidence, able to look others in the eye without contempt.

He could be normal.

He could be more than normal. He could be excellent. With this second chance, he could become who he was destined to be, and surpass everyone who mocked him!

… what a strange thought. It welled up from the same depths that gave him an incredible will to live. It saved his life, but it also filled his mind with dreams and temptations. For a boy who could only ever strive for normalcy, to be extraordinary was just a fantasy.

But now he could do it. He was sure. More than he ever dreamed was within his grasp, if only he could reach out and take it.

Then once again he felt that bright, cold hand at his side, thin as a whisper. Last time, it pulled him out of his fantasizing by force, but now it was just a gentle reminder.

Cato fixed his eyes on the horizon. He had to do more than just survive. He had to learn what these strange influences were, why in the world he came to be reborn in this body, and how he knew memories and desires not his own.

Grumble

But first he had to eat. Looking down at his torn finery, he mentally added clothing to the list. The smoke gradually covering the sky turned his thoughts to shelter and light.

Chasing the last of the chill from his body and gathering up the remains of his clothing under his arm, he leapt into the water and swam to the river shore. At once he delighted in the strength of his body, which despite its haggard appearance moved swiftly and surely, with power behind every motion, and didn’t threaten to break apart with exertion.

Curious eyes watched him over the hills.