Chapter 1 – The Day Before the End
The alarm clock blinked to life at 6:37 a.m., but the man lying in the bed was already awake.
Kieran Vale stared at the ceiling as the mechanical beep repeated, hollow and distant. A ceiling he hadn't seen in years. A ceiling that shouldn't exist anymore. Cracks in the plaster, a damp water stain in the left corner, and the peeling sticker of a crescent moon his younger self had put up and forgotten.
He reached out slowly and turned the alarm off.
Then silence.
Not the kind he'd grown used to. Not the blood-choked silence of after-battles. Not the eerie quiet that preceded a Gate's opening, when the world held its breath.
This was normal silence. The hush of a tired apartment at dawn. Cars murmuring in the distance. A dog barking three blocks away. Somewhere downstairs, Mrs. Kwon's radio murmured a song from two decades ago.
The ordinary had become the unfamiliar.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat for a long time. Staring at his hands. Younger. Slimmer. No callouses. No scar across his palm. No faint golden etching of the soulbrand, pulsing with power just beneath the skin.
He pressed his fingers to his temples.
It worked.
His heart beat faster.
Kieran stood and stumbled to the mirror. The bathroom door creaked open on rusted hinges. He flicked the light on.
There he was.
Nineteen. Maybe twenty. Shaggy black hair, the same storm-gray eyes. No lines in his face. No weight of a thousand deaths pressing down on his shoulders. His breath fogged the mirror, but he couldn't look away.
He splashed water on his face. Cold. Real. Anchoring.
It wasn't a dream.
He'd come back.
The calendar confirmed it: June 3rd. Seven days before the first Gate opened. The day humanity's illusion of safety was torn away, replaced with a world of cards, monsters, and impossible choices.
Seven days before the city turned into a graveyard.
Seven days before Kieran drew his first card… and died.
In the first timeline, he hadn't lasted long. Just another no-name caught in the storm. Chosen by a system he didn't understand. Used. Broken. Forgotten.
But he hadn't stayed dead.
He remembered everything. The descent into the Towers. The Trials. The gods behind the cards. The game that wasn't a game. The others who had clawed their way to the top—only to fall in the end.
And the pact he'd made.
At the end of the world, when even time collapsed, the last thing he did was look backward.
And something—someone—looked back.
Now he was here.
He dried his face and looked around the apartment. Same cracked tiles. Same secondhand furniture. Same flickering kitchen light. It was like walking through a photograph. A version of his life that had stopped mattering long ago.
His phone buzzed. He picked it up.
Carl: "Yo, you up?"
Kieran stared at the message. Carl Ashbourne. Roommate. Friend. One of the first to die.
He almost dropped the phone.
More texts came in. News articles. Rumors. Nothing about the Game yet. Nothing supernatural. But it was starting. The threads were unraveling. The first aberrant anomaly would be reported tomorrow—some kid in Argentina whose shadow moved on its own. Then a village in Siberia that blinked out of existence. Then the sky would fracture.
He had days.
No. He had time.
And he had knowledge. That changed everything.
He opened the closet and pulled out the duffel bag he knew he'd hidden years ago. Gym clothes. Gloves. A pocketknife he used to carry for self-defense. He remembered thinking it made him feel safer.
Now, it felt like a toy.
He needed real gear. Real resources. And most importantly—he needed to reach the right people before the wrong ones did.
In the first life, there had been factions. Collectors. Cults. Armies. Corporations that turned awakening into profit. Monsters in human skin who bent the system to their will.
This time, he would move first.
His phone buzzed again.
Carl: "Coffee and regrets?"
Kieran hesitated.
Then typed: "Give me 30 minutes."
He needed to see Carl. To confirm this wasn't just some hallucination playing out in a dying brain. He needed to remember what it felt like to care about someone before the world taught him not to.
But first, he had to check one thing.
He knelt beside the bed and lifted the floorboard. It gave with a sharp creak. The same spot he'd hidden things back then—cash, old notebooks, useless junk. And beneath them all, a faded tarot card.
The Fool.
It wasn't supposed to be here yet.
His hand trembled as he picked it up.
The back shimmered. Gold filigree. A strange texture. Warm, almost breathing.
Then the card whispered.
Not in words.
In possibility.
A flicker of something just beyond comprehension, brushing his mind like a claw through silk.
You remember.
His breath caught in his throat.
He wasn't the only one who came back.
Something had followed.