The first sensation was cold.
Bone-deep, penetrating cold that seemed to seep through skin and settle in the marrow. The second was the smell—putrid decay, human waste, and the sweet-sick scent of death that hung in the air like a physical presence.
Consciousness returned slowly, reluctantly, like a drowning man being dragged back to a surface he had been content to leave behind. There was pain everywhere—sharp, aching reminders of a body pushed far beyond its limits. But underneath the physical agony was something else, something wrong with the very fabric of awareness itself.
Where am I?
The thought formed with startling clarity, carrying with it the weight of adult consciousness, sophisticated reasoning, and memories that had no business existing in... wherever this was.
I was in my apartment. The presentation. The termination. The comet.
Images flashed through his mind—a sterile conference room, a supervisor's cold smile, the betrayal of corporate masters who had used his brilliance and discarded him like a broken tool. Then the night sky, a falling star, and a desperate wish for freedom from systems designed to exploit and control.
But this wasn't his apartment. This wasn't his body.
With tremendous effort, he forced his eyes open and immediately wished he hadn't.
He was lying in a pit. No—not just a pit, but a mass grave filled with emaciated bodies in various stages of decomposition. Arms and legs tangled together in grotesque arrangements, faces frozen in expressions of starvation and despair. Some still wore the iron collars of slavery, rusted chains extending into the darkness.
And he was among them.
Panic seized him as he struggled to sit up, his hands—small, scarred hands that weren't his own—scrabbling for purchase against the corpses beneath him. A chain rattled as he moved, and he looked down to see an iron collar around his neck, connected to a length of metal that disappeared into the pile of bodies.
This isn't real. This can't be real.
But the sensations were too vivid, too immediate to be a dream or hallucination. The weight of the collar, the sharp edges of bones pressing against his back, the overwhelming stench that made his stomach lurch—all of it was brutally, undeniably real.
He forced himself to examine his situation more carefully, drawing on the analytical mind that had served him so well in his previous life. Whatever had happened to him, whatever impossible circumstances had brought him to this place, he needed to understand his situation before he could begin to change it.
His body was that of a child, perhaps eight or nine years old, though malnutrition had left him smaller and more fragile than he should have been. Every visible inch of skin bore the marks of abuse—whip scars across his back, burn marks on his arms, and the deep indentations left by chains worn too long and pulled too tight.
But it was his hands that told the most horrifying story. The fingertips were worn raw and bloody, nails torn down to the quick from clawing at stone. A slave's hands. A digger's hands. Someone who had spent years scratching at rock and dirt until flesh gave way to bone.
How long has this body been alive? How long has it suffered?
Memory began to surface—not his memories from his previous life, but fragments that belonged to this small, broken form. Images of darkness, endless tunnels carved from living rock, the crack of whips and the screams of other children. A mining operation where slaves were worked until they dropped, then thrown into pits when they could no longer serve.
The original owner of this body—Aeon, as the slavers had mockingly named him after finding the pendant—had finally succumbed to starvation and exhaustion. Cast into this mass grave to rot with the other discarded human tools.
But somehow, in the moment between death and decay, another soul had taken residence.
Transmigration. Reincarnation. Whatever you want to call it.
The impossible had become reality. He had died in his apartment, making a desperate wish to a falling star, and awakened in the body of a child slave in what appeared to be a fantasy world where death was cheap and suffering was currency.
The irony was bitter beyond words. He had wished for freedom from exploitation, for escape from systems that treated human beings as disposable resources. Instead, he had been delivered into circumstances that made his corporate slavery look like paradise in comparison.
Above him, weak light filtered down through iron grating that covered the pit. Voices drifted from somewhere beyond—guards, perhaps, or overseers checking to ensure that the discarded slaves were properly dead.
"Any movement down there?"
"Nothing. Just the rats. Toss some lime down later to keep the smell manageable."
"What about that new batch from the southern raids?"
"Already in the tunnels. Give them a week before they start dropping too."
The voices faded, leaving him alone with the dead and the crushing realization of his situation.
He was trapped in the body of a child slave, surrounded by corpses, in a world where his life had less value than the tools he had once been forced to use. Everything he had learned about systems and exploitation in his previous life suggested that his current circumstances were designed to be inescapable.
But he was no longer just a broken child abandoned to die.
He was a soul that had experienced modern education, corporate warfare, and systematic oppression. A mind that understood how systems of control operated, how they maintained themselves, and—most importantly—how they could be broken.
I wished for freedom from exploitation. Fine. If this world wants to treat me as a disposable tool, I'll show them exactly how dangerous a discarded instrument can become when it decides to cut back.
The first step was survival. Then escape. Then...
Then he would ensure that no system, no master, no authority figure would ever have the power to treat him—or anyone else—as less than human again.
But first, he had to get out of this pit of corpses.
Carefully, quietly, Aeon began to move among the dead, searching for tools, weapons, or anything that might help him climb toward the light filtering down from above.
In death, his fellow slaves would provide him with the means to live.
It seemed appropriate somehow.