The air in the pinnacle laboratory tasted of ozone and hubris. On a reinforced dais, humming with enough power to light a city-state, sat the Aeternal Core. It was a sphere of woven light and quantum lattice, Kelvin Daban's magnum opus, designed not for destruction, but for creation: to end all war by rendering every non-renewable energy source on Earth obsolete. He stood before it, a man whose name was more widely known than the continents, his own creation a testament to a lifetime of logic and relentless progress.
"The final sequence is initializing, Dr. Daban," an assistant announced, her voice tight with a mixture of awe and terror.
Kelvin watched the core's heart brighten, its light casting long, dancing shadows across the sterile white room. He saw not just a machine, but a new genesis for humanity—a future unchained from the desperate scramble for resources that had fueled millennia of conflict. He did not see the betrayal woven into its very code, the backdoor planted by a consortium of rivals whose empires of oil and blood would evaporate in the face of his boundless, free energy.
A warning siren screamed, a sound he had not programmed. The core's harmonious light turned violent, shifting from a celestial blue to an incendiary, bloody red. Panic was a sterile, procedural thing in his facility, but this was different. This was a systemic collapse from within.
"Containment breach! The cascade is non-linear! It's overloading!"
The numbers on the surrounding holoscreens spiraled into infinity. There was no time for a final calculation, no moment for a elegant solution. The world dissolved into a silent, pure, and absolute white heat. The last thing Kelvin Daban's senses registered was not pain, but the profound, ironic failure of his own genius—unmade by the very perfection he had sought to bestow upon the world.
His physical form was vaporized in an instant, but his consciousness, a pattern of thought and memory too refined to be so easily erased, did not fade to nothing. It drifted, untethered, in a void that was neither light nor dark.
It was here that they manifested. Three threads of brilliant, liquid gold, thrumming with a silent, cosmic energy. They stretched into an impossible infinity, anchoring his soul to a wheel he never knew existed. They were beautiful and terrible, the very fabric of his destiny. As the final echo of his first life faded into the hum of the void, the first string, taut and luminous, shuddered violently. Then, with a sound that was less a snap and more the fracturing of a fundamental law, it broke. The severed ends dissipated into motes of fading light.
From the emptiness, a whisper surfaced, mechanical yet immeasurably ancient, filling the non-space around him.
"You are bound by three strings. Break them, and fate breaks with you."
The light consumed him, not with fire, but with purpose.
__________________________________________________________
Consciousness returned as a dull, pervasive ache. It was a foreign feeling, layered over a body that felt small, weak, and utterly alien. Kelvin opened eyes that were not his own to a ceiling of packed earth and rough-hewn wood, supported by thick beams blackened by decades of smoke. The air was thick with the scent of straw, damp soil, and a faint, herbal pungency he couldn't identify.
Initial Assessment: Neural pathways misaligned. Synaptic responses lagging. Motor functions underdeveloped. Muscular atrophy consistent with prolonged inactivity. This is not my body.
The panic that rose was a cold, logical thing, a system alert flagging a catastrophic hardware failure. He tried to sit up, and the world swam, a nauseating lurch of vertigo forcing him back onto the rough, straw-stuffed pallet. The disorientation triggered something else. A flicker in his vision, like a corrupted holographic display struggling to stabilize. Golden circuits, reminiscent of the strings, etched themselves against the darkness behind his eyelids, resolving into stark, runic text.
Turner System v1.0
Name: Unknown
True Name: Kelvin Daban
Title: None
Strings Remaining: 2
Skills: [None Active]
Quote: "The world is forever changing, but not fate."
He stared, unblinking, at the message hovering in his mind's eye. A system? An interface? Post-mortem digital ghosting? His engineer's mind, the one constant in this chaos, seized on the data. "True Name" confirmed his identity was intact. "Strings Remaining: 2" was a direct, quantifiable corroboration of his final vision. It was a resource count, and he had already expended one. The quote was a paradox, a statement of an immutable law he already despised.
Before he could begin a deeper analysis, the wooden door to the hovel creaked open, letting in a sliver of grey, overcast light. A woman with a face worn by hardship and eyes softened by concern rushed to his pallet, her hands, calloused and cool, pressing against his forehead.
"Alaric? By the spirits, you're awake! The fever finally broke," she whispered, her voice thick with a relief that seemed to drain the last of her strength. She smoothed back lank, sweat-damp hair from his brow. "We thought we'd lost you to the grey cough."
Alaric. Designation acquired. Context: Maternal guardian. Primary hypothesis confirmed: Reincarnation. Circumstances: Pre-industrial society, medical technology presumably primitive.
He tried to speak, to form the word "mother," but his vocal cords produced only a dry, rasping croak. She shushed him gently, bringing a wooden ladle of water to his lips. The water was cool and slightly muddy, but it was life. As she fussed over him, tucking the thin blanket around his shivering form, Kelvin's—Alaric's—gaze drifted past her, taking in the squalor of the single-room dwelling.
His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and in the deepest shadow of the room, tucked into the corner where the roof met the wall, he saw a figure. A boy, perhaps a few years older than his current body, leaning against the wall with an unnerving stillness. He had hair as black as a starless night and eyes the color of a storm-wracked sky. He was not of this village; his clothes were too dark, too fine, his presence too sharp for this place of rounded edges and weary souls.
Their eyes met. The boy's gaze was ancient, holding a depth of knowledge and sorrow that shattered the illusion of childhood. In that look, Kelvin saw recognition. This boy knew. He knew that the soul within the sickly child named Alaric was not native. The boy offered a slight, almost imperceptible nod—an acknowledgement, a welcome, a warning. Then, as if he were a projection losing power, he faded. Not by moving, but by simply ceasing to be there, the shadows reclaiming the space he had occupied.
The encounter lasted less than three seconds, but its impact was absolute. It was a data point that invalidated all prior assumptions of solitude. The message was seared into Kelvin's soul: this was not a random accident, he was not alone, and the rules of this new world were far more complex than he had imagined.
"The system is online. The game, it seems, has already begun."