I don't know why I walked in.
I don't know why my feet moved, or why I didn't run for the guards, or why my voice refused to come out when I saw the scene in front of me.
But I stepped inside.
I didn't feel anything.
The pale glow I'd seen from the street came from a figure hunched over the table.
My mother was there, slumped, trembling, while a man loomed above her, his face half-hidden beneath a tattered hood.
And the sound, gods, the sound, metal punching into flesh, over and over. It was the worst thing I've ever heard.
I wouldn't wish that sound on my worst enemy.
"Mother?" My voice cracked.
This can't be happening. Please, someone, come save me
I thought to myself. Not screaming for help, however. Just standing there. I watched the scene unfold in front of me.
The man didn't stop. His shoulders shook, but not from effort, from laughter. It was a dry, broken laugh, the kind that didn't belong to a sane person.
He looked at me.
Smiled.
And continued.
Over and over and over. It didn't stop. It felt like it was never-ending.
He turned his head just enough for me to see his mouth, split in a grin too wide, teeth catching the pale light like knives.
"Welcome back, sweetie," he said, voice ragged. "Dinner is next, and you're the entrée."
I froze. My breath came shallow, cold. My mother's eyes found mine for just a moment, wide and wet. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
The man ripped his blade free, and she fell forward onto the table.
Something inside me broke.
I could feel one emotion.
Rage.
YOU FUCKING BITCH
"You—!" My voice cracked into a roar, my palm igniting in a shaky burst of orange light. Heat swirled at my fingertips, clumsy and unfocused. I threw it at him, an ember, no more threatening than a candle spark.
He didn't even flinch. The flame struck his chest and fizzled out.
He was already moving.
The world became nothing but his footsteps pounding against the wood, his shadow growing larger, his blade glinting.
I threw another burst of flame, this one stronger, but my hands were shaking so badly it shot wide, striking the wall instead.
He was on me.
I couldn't speak. I could only think.
GET OFF ME YOU PRICK
I barely got my arms up before he slammed into me, knocking me to the ground.
The air left my lungs in a painful rush.
The wind is being blown out of me.
My fingers burned with desperate heat as I grabbed at him, trying to force my flames into his skin, but it was like shoving against a wall of iron.
"You think that's power?" he snarled.
Steel flashed. Pain bloomed, sharp and sudden, just beneath my ribs. My vision swam.
I held my gut and then found my blood covering my palms. I held tightly as I tried to control my breathing from the fear.
I have to survive. For mother.
I coughed, tasting copper.
Every instinct screamed at me to fight, but my body was heavy, my limbs sluggish. I tried to summon more fire, but it guttered and died, like I'd already used everything I had.
This can't be the end.
I held my stomach and ran to the door. Hoping for an escape. I had to survive.
He appeared behind me. Slashing at the back of my knees.
The man's grin widened. "Pathetic."
And then… it happened.
It was painless but quick.
A slash right through my heart.
I'm sorry for being so weak, Mother.
A white flash burst in the room. Sudden, soundless, perfect. For a heartbeat, the man vanished into it.
For a heartbeat, a false light had appeared in the room.
For a split second, I thought it was my power finally waking up. But it wasn't. The light was too clean, too pure. It didn't belong to me.
It vanished as quickly as it came.
All that remained was the ordinary, ugly room, and the ordinary, ugly silence, and the pain that rushed back in a flood. Blinding, crushing.
The world tilted sideways, the floor rising to meet me. The last thing I saw was my mother's still form on the table, the faint smell of bread and flour clinging to the air, ruined by the metallic tang that would never wash out of these walls.
As I took my final breath, I looked at her one last time.
I regret everything. I regret being a piece of shit.
Darkness took me.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in my house.
I wasn't anywhere I recognized.
The ground beneath me wasn't solid—just an endless sheet of shimmering mist that shifted like smoke when I moved. Above me stretched a black sky without stars, yet it wasn't dark.
Am I dead? Is this the afterlife? Or was all of this a dream?
Please god, make it a dream.
I stood, though I didn't remember deciding to. My movements felt… floaty, detached.
Then I saw her.
An angel. No, a goddess.
She's beautiful
She stood not far away, barefoot on the mist, her hair long and silver, her eyes glinting like molten gold.
She wore a smile, not mocking, not warm, but knowing.
"So, you're finally here," she said as her voice carried through the space.
My mouth was dry. "Where… where am I?"
She tilted her head. "Some call it the Between. Not alive, not dead. Just… in between."
"But I call it. The velvet."
I shook my head in confusion.
"The velvet is a space existing beyond your world."
I was still confused. So I decided to ask the deciding question.
"Am I dead?"
"That depends." Her smile widened slightly. "Do you want to be?"
My chest tightened. "What the hell is this? Who are you?"
She took a single step closer.
The mist rippled under her foot. "I am the Master of the Trickster."
I stared at her. "…The what?"
Okay, I must be going insane now. Did I accidentally take something illegal?
"The one who guides those who walk the path no one else dares to tread. And you, Kael Draven, are mine now."
My skin prickled. "…Why?"
Her eyes narrowed with amusement. "Because you made mistakes. And I hate wasted potential."
I felt heat rise in my throat. "What mistakes?"
Her gaze pierced me like a blade. "You wasted the gift you were born with. You ignored it, ran from it, let yourself rot in mediocrity. And because of that…"
She gestured vaguely, but I didn't need her to finish. I could still see it.
"You lost everything."
Flashes of the scene stirred through my brain. That horrible, dreadful scene.
My mother's eyes met mine in that last moment.
I swallowed hard, my fists trembling. "…She's gone."
"She's gone because you were too weak to stop it," the woman said simply. Not cruel. Just true.
The words cut deeper than the killer's blade.
It felt like a thousand cuts had appeared on my body. It wasn't her words that affected me. But my previous actions.
I wanted to shout at her, to tell her she didn't know anything.
But she did. She knew everything.
"You will return," she said, stepping closer until she was directly in front of me.
"Same world. Same body. A second chance to undo your mistakes. Do not squander it."
Is she being for real? I'm getting a second chance? Me? The pathetic nobody. The person nobody looks for when they need help. The person who only their mother had loved. The person who wasn't able to protect the only thing they were living for?
"Why me?" I asked.
Her lips curved into something sharper. "Because I like broken things. They make the most interesting weapons."
Before I could respond, the mist beneath my feet dissolved, and I was falling.
I woke with a start.
The ceiling above me was white—too white. The smell of antiseptic burned my nose. A faint beeping came from somewhere to my right.
A hospital?
I sat up fast, only to realize I was in a bed, covered in thin white sheets. My hands—
I froze.
They weren't the same.
The fingers were longer, the veins more defined. My forearms were corded with lean muscle that hadn't been there before.
My chest felt broader, heavier with strength.
Was I secretly this strong all this time?
"What…?" I muttered, pressing my palm to my face. Even my voice felt deeper.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, and that's when it appeared.
A faint chime echoed in the air, and then a screen. Floating in front of me, translucent but solid enough to block the wall behind it.
[Hello, Trickster.]
The words pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
I stumbled back. "What the hell—"
More text appeared beneath it.
[You have been chosen to walk the Trickster's Path.][Mistakes will be undone.][This is your second and final chance.]
My pulse thundered in my ears.
The woman's voice echoed in my mind. Do not squander it.
I clenched my fists, and with it came a rush of memory—the killer's grin, the sound of his laughter, the flash of white light. My mother's still form.
I felt something burn in my chest. Not heat from my Emberflame. Something sharper.
"I'll find him," I whispered, the words tasting like iron. "And I'll kill him."
The screen pulsed again.
[Acknowledged.]
[Welcome Trickster]
A new line formed at the bottom, tiny and bright:
[Initialization: 1% …]
I watched the numbers begin to climb, and for the first time in my life, the fire inside me didn't feel like a joke.
It felt like a promise.