"Do you ever wonder where you came from?" I asked Mira one night.
The candlelight flickered between us, shadows dancing across the low attic ceiling. We sat cross-legged on the dusty wooden floor, a half-burned candle between us. My fingers were curled around an old book she'd stolen from the temple library. Mira didn't even blink when I asked it, just kept her violet eyes on mine.
"I know where I came from," she said softly. "A slum outside Renshima. My mother died of fever. My father sold me to a caravan to pay off a gambling debt."
She said it like it was just… a fact. No anger. No tears. Like she'd filed it away long ago.
I nodded slowly. "Sorry."
"Don't be," she said, then tilted her head. "What about you?"
I sighed and looked down at the flickering flame.
"I don't know. No one knows. I just… showed up."
It was the truth. Yana said I was found one winter morning on the orphanage steps, bundled in a strange cloth, an old, broken ID band made of dull metal looped around my wrist. My name, Derek Warren, was carved into it.
They called the writing "Ancient Human." Some of the older beastkin scholars could guess at it, but it was mostly lost to time. The humans that still lived in this world, if there were any, didn't speak it anymore.
It was like I didn't come from anywhere at all. The first time I saw my reflection in the soul mirror, I knew I was different.
Not just because of the race line, Human, standing alone in a sea of mixed bloodlines and beast traits. It was the way the mirror hesitated. Like it wasn't sure what to show me. Like it was trying to remember something long buried.
Name: Derek Warren
Race: Human
Age: 7
Class: —
Mana: 3
Traits: —
Title: Orphan
No matter how many times I looked into it, nothing changed. No new traits. No hidden messages.
Just me. But the older I got, the more I started to notice the little things.
The way magic felt strange when I used it, like I was borrowing something that wasn't mine. The way some villagers looked at me when they thought I wasn't watching. The rare traveling scholar or priest who would pause, eyes narrowing, like they saw something they couldn't explain. Even Mira noticed.
"You're not just a human," she said once, curled beside me on the orphanage roof as we stared at the stars. "You feel… old."
I raised an eyebrow. "Old?"
"Not in a boring way," she added quickly, cheeks flushing. "Just… like you don't belong to this timeline. Like a story that forgot how it started."
I didn't know what that meant. Not really. But I didn't disagree.
One day, when I was nine, an old traveler passed through the village. He wasn't like the usual merchants or mages. He wore a tattered robe covered in stitched symbols, and his eyes were completely white, milky and blind, yet somehow still piercing.
He stopped me in the street.
"You," he rasped, voice like dry leaves. "Your scent… it's from the Before."
I blinked. "The before… what?"
He smiled, slow and cracked. "Before this. Before the Collapse. Before the bonds were broken."
I stared at him.
"Do you know where I came from?"
He only shook his head, chuckling as he walked away.
I never saw him again. It got worse after that. The dreams, I mean.
I'd always had strange ones, ever since I was a kid. Dreams of glass towers reaching into the clouds. Of carriages without horses, racing on black rivers. Of metal birds with wings that screamed.
And sometimes, I dreamed of fire. Not the magical kind. The kind that came with explosions. Bombs. Red lights flashing in white rooms. People in masks. Hospitals. Earth.
I never told anyone. Not even Mira. Not until the night I woke up shaking, gasping for air, cold sweat soaking my sheets. I ran to the roof. Needed to breathe.
She was already there, sitting on the edge with a blanket around her shoulders.
"You felt it too," she said quietly.
I sat beside her, heart still hammering. "What?"
"The pull. The echo."
She looked at me with eyes that glowed faintly in the moonlight. Her ears twitched once, then stilled.
"I don't think this world is your first one," she said.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't feel crazy for thinking the same thing. As we got older, the bond between us only deepened.
We still slept in separate beds, still argued over dumb things like whose turn it was to clean the courtyard or who got the last honey roll. But there were moments, quiet ones, where the air between us shifted.
The way her hand would linger on mine when passing a book. The way my eyes always found her in a crowded room. The way she laughed when she thought no one was listening. I didn't have the words for it back then. But I knew. When I turned ten, I started asking Yana questions.
"Do you remember anything about the day I was found?" I asked as I helped her clean the lanterns in the temple hall.
She gave me a long look.
"Why now?"
"I need to know who I am."
She sighed, wiping dust from a brass chain. "All I know is this, you were warm. In the middle of a snowstorm. Wrapped in a cloth that didn't belong to any tailor I've ever met. And your name tag… it glowed when we first touched it."
"Glowed?"
She nodded. "Faintly. Like moonlight."
"Do you still have it?"
She hesitated. Then pointed to the storage room beneath the shrine.
"It's in the relic box. Third shelf. Behind the herb jars." I didn't wait. I ran.
The band was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe my hands were just bigger now. It was dull silver, covered in scratches and strange lettering that curled and looped in ways this world didn't use. My name was etched into it in blocky script, DEREK WARREN, and beneath it, was, Patient ID# 271 – COVID-19 Recovery Ward.
My breath caught. COVID. The word hit me like a punch to the chest. I hadn't seen it in years. Not since… Earth. That's when I knew. I hadn't just been abandoned here. I'd been sent. Or pulled. Or reborn. Whatever the mechanism, the truth sat cold and heavy in my palms. I wasn't from this world. I told Mira first.
We sat together by the creek behind the garden, feet dangling in the cold water, the old band between us.
"This was from my world," I said. "I was sick. I died. Then I woke up here."
She stared at the band, ears lowered slightly. "And now?"
I met her eyes. "I think I was given a second chance."
She didn't speak for a long time. Just reached over and took my hand.
"You're still you," she said finally. "I don't care where you came from. You're Derek. The one who brought me bread when no one else would. The one who tries to light a candle every night just to prove the world wrong."
She leaned against my shoulder, and for a while, we just listened to the stream whisper.
I don't know what fate had in store for me when it tossed me into this strange new world. I didn't know what I was supposed to become, or why my status screen stayed so empty.
But I knew this, I wasn't alone. And as long as Mira was by my side, I'd figure it out. One spark at a time.