Chapter 1: The Edge of Ordinary
Aiden Raikos always assumed he would die quietly someday, somewhere, without anyone noticing. Maybe it would happen in his sleep, alone in his tiny apartment, or at his desk, hunched over a spreadsheet nobody wanted.
He did not expect it to happen on a Tuesday morning on a subway platform, holding a cup of lukewarm coffee with stale cinnamon clinging to his tongue.
The station hummed with the exhausted rhythm of the city. Screens flickered with delay notices while a street musician outside the turnstiles strummed a guitar missing a string. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a pale glow as people pressed near the yellow line on instinct, as if standing closer might make the train arrive sooner.
Aiden stood a little farther back. There was always space around him, the kind that formed naturally when people glanced at someone and never looked twice. He did not mind it. Being overlooked meant fewer conversations and fewer reasons to engage.
He sipped his coffee, grimaced, and checked the time on his cracked phone. It read 7:41 a.m. If the train was on time, which it rarely was, he would slide into work with four minutes to spare. That would be enough to avoid being late and enough to pretend he had not stayed up gaming until two in the morning again.
Rubbing the heel of his palm against his tired eyes, he muttered that he should not have started a new save.
It had been a survival RPG filled with crafting loops, monster hunting, and cooking buffs. He liked the repetition. Chopping wood, hunting beasts, cooking meat, enhancing gear. Numbers climbed in clean menus, and effort always turned into progress. In that world, outcomes made sense.
Real life did not offer the same satisfaction.
Here, nothing really changed. The same job waited every morning. The same cramped apartment waited every night. The same monthly stress followed him everywhere. The blinking red message light on his answering machine never stopped, and he never checked it. Still, he had a roof over his head, reliable internet, and his games. That had always been enough.
A shrill laugh cut through his thoughts.
A small boy stood too close to the edge of the platform, bouncing a battered soccer ball between his hands while humming off-key. His jacket looked too thin for the cold, his cheeks flushed red, and no parent stood nearby. Aiden frowned as he watched him.
He murmured a question about where the boy's parents were, though he did not expect an answer.
Train lights bloomed in the tunnel, a white smear growing brighter by the second. The announcement chime crackled overhead and delivered the familiar warning to stand behind the line. The boy stepped closer instead.
Aiden felt his chest tighten.
He set his coffee down near his foot, his attention fixed on the child. No one else seemed to notice. People were absorbed in their phones, their conversations, and their schedules. The world continued as if nothing were wrong.
Then the ball slipped.
The moment unraveled absurdly fast. One second the boy was smiling at his reflection in the metal rail. The next, his shoe slid on a dark patch of spilled drink. The ball bounced off the platform edge and clattered onto the tracks as his arms flailed in a desperate attempt to recover. His body followed.
Someone screamed. A woman dropped her coffee, the cup bursting across the floor. The approaching train's screech sharpened into a metallic howl.
Aiden moved.
His body reacted before thought could intervene. Years of navigating crowded platforms and split-second decisions condensed into instinct. He lunged past two commuters, knocking shoulders aside. His foot clipped his abandoned cup and sent it spinning, but he did not slow.
The boy's fingers scraped at the platform edge, eyes wide with terror. Aiden dove forward and grabbed the boy's wrist with both hands.
He told the child he had him, the words steady even as momentum pulled them both toward the tracks.
His knees slammed into the concrete lip, pain flaring up his legs as he pulled with everything he had. The child cleared the edge and flew upward. A stranger behind Aiden gasped and grabbed the boy, hauling him fully to safety. The child collapsed into the stranger's arms, sobbing.
For a brief moment, Aiden felt weightless.
Then gravity returned.
His balance tipped forward, the edge of the platform sliding against his thighs. There was nothing beneath him but open air and screaming rails. He had no time to think, curse, or feel fear.
He saw the boy's tear-streaked face staring back at him.
Aiden gave him a small, quiet smile.
The train struck.
Sound dulled and then vanished. Pain never arrived. There was no drawn-out impact, only a flash of metal and light before everything went still.
Darkness swallowed the station, the screams, and the lingering smell of coffee and oil. Aiden drifted without sensation, unable to feel limbs, breath, or heartbeat. For a moment, he wondered if this was shock and if this was simply what dying felt like.
Then he realized there was no body left to feel anything with.
A low, resonant hum rolled through the void, deep and distant like thunder beneath the ground. It vibrated through his awareness, ancient and unhurried. In front of him, a translucent system screen formed, its pale blue text hovering in the darkness.
The display stated that the subject had been terminated.
Aiden stared at the words. They resembled system notifications from a game, except there was no monitor and no interface beyond the floating screen itself.
He whispered the word subject, followed by terminated, his voice swallowed by the void.
The text shifted. A new line appeared as the hum deepened, indicating that his soul was being analyzed.
The sensation that followed was not physical or emotional, but precise and clinical. It felt as though something unseen examined him from every possible angle. His memories surfaced under that scrutiny. Late nights spent gaming. Silent mornings. Forgotten birthdays. Long stretches of repetition. Quiet wishes that life might become something more.
Then came the boy. The fall. The grip on his wrist. The moment fear stopped mattering.
The system screen refreshed.
It identified his soul type as unremarkable human.
Aiden would have laughed if he still had a throat. He muttered that it sounded about right.
More text appeared, listing low ambition and high empathy as primary values. The display lingered on the last word before fading slightly, as if something considered it.
A voice emerged, layered and calm, neither human nor mechanical. It stated that he had died for a life that was not his own. It explained that most souls clung to their final breath, filled with regret or anger.
He had not.
Aiden replied that he simply had not wanted the boy to die.
Silence followed, heavy and deliberate, before the voice continued. It said that most souls were ordinary and asked whether he truly was.
Aiden had spent his life feeling like a background character, easily overlooked and easily replaced. He answered that if he were ordinary, the boy would be dead.
The system screen dissolved and reformed.
It revised his ordinary rating and began a compatibility check. Symbols and images flashed too quickly to follow. Beast shapes, fractured worlds, glowing eyes, and threads of lightning collapsed into a single result. Compatibility registered at ninety-seven percent.
Aiden asked what he was compatible with.
The system displayed a single designation before fading again. Beastbinder System.
Recognition struck like a familiar echo of menus and progression paths. The voice stated that he understood systems.
Aiden replied that he played games and that it was not the same thing.
The voice answered that it was sufficient.
The system resumed its evaluation, searching for a successor and reviewing prior candidates. The result was displayed plainly. All had failed.
Aiden asked how many had failed.
The system did not answer. Instead, it marked him as a new candidate.
He asked why.
The voice explained that he had acted without hesitation and expected no reward. It stated that he might proceed.
Aiden asked what he would be proceeding to.
The answer was simple. What followed.
The system screen condensed into a single point of light and began rebinding his soul core. Energy surged through the void, pulling at his existence and reshaping it. Aiden demanded to know where he was being sent.
The voice replied that one question remained.
The light intensified, and the system asked whether he wished to continue.
Aiden thought of the boy's face, the fear, and the relief that followed. He did not know what waited on the other side, but he knew he was not ready to disappear.
He answered yes.
The system accepted the response. Light tore through the void, memories scattering as the universe folded inward. As everything dissolved into brightness, the system began initializing.
White swallowed everything.