The blackness was absolute. It was a deep, perfect, silent void. The end of all things. The final, damning period at the end of a failed life.
One second, there was that utter, complete nothingness.
The next… there was cold.
It was not a sensation, not at first. It was a state. A replacement. The void had been hollow, and this new reality was solid. He was a block of ice. His consciousness, a small, dim, and flickering ember of who he was, was trapped, frozen solid within a glacier of profound, penetrating chill.
It was a cold that did not live on his skin, but in his bones. It was a deep, permanent, tomb-like frost that had seeped into his marrow, his muscles, his very thoughts, rendering them sluggish and impossibly heavy.
He had no body. He was just… this. This frozen, aware, and useless thing.
'Is this it?'
His thoughts were not thoughts. They were slow, thick, and syrupy, moving like cold tar through his mind.
'Is this... death?'
It made a certain, terrible kind of sense. The train. The light. The blinding, all-consuming roar. And then... her smile. The ecstatic, triumphant, maniacal grin as he fell.
'Lilith. She... she did it.'
She had killed him. She had finally, truly, won. And this... this was the afterlife. Not fire, not judgment. Just... cold. An endless, lonely, paralysing cold.
'I'm... so... drowsy.'
He could feel his mind, that last spark, beginning to fade. The cold was a comfort, a heavy blanket urging him to just... stop. To let go. To finally sleep. He had been so tired, for so long. Maybe this was a mercy.
'Just... let... go.'
But the body he was trapped in, the prison of ice, had other ideas.
The mental fog, the heavy, drowsy comfort of the cold, did not lift. It shattered. It was ripped away by a new sensation, something far more oppressive. Something primal.
It was a feeling from deep within the ice—a building, agonising, physical need.
His lungs.
They were full. They were heavy. They were wrong.
It felt... compressed. As if a great, impossible weight was sitting on his chest, squeezing the non-existent air from a body he couldn't even feel. An instinct, older and more powerful than his own weary consciousness, began to fight.
It was a feeling as if he needed to cough. To empty his lungs. To expel the heavy, cold, liquid thing that was filling him, suffocating him from the inside out.
The urge was a physical agony, a mounting, biological panic that his numb, frozen mind could not override.
Cough.
He tried. Nothing.
COUGH.
The body, this new, strange, frozen vessel, convulsed.
A disgusting, violent, retching sound ripped through the silence. It was a sound he felt rather than heard, a deep, wet, tearing spasm that originated from a chest he couldn't control.
His entire torso, a thing he had not been aware of, arched with impossible, spastic force.
A gush of water—cold, heavy, and tasting of stone and black, metallic ice—erupted from his mouth. It wasn't a trickle. It was a column, a solid, choking torrent that splashed, loud and wet, onto a hard surface somewhere near his head.
The convulsion was followed by another. And another.
His body was a machine, fighting for its own life, and his mind was just a terrified, confused passenger.
'What... what the hell?'
The fog was gone, burned away by a white-hot, singular, and impossible confusion.
'I... I was dead. The train. I saw it.'
His mind raced, desperate for a framework, for any data that made sense.
'Lilith pushed me. I died. I was... on the tracks. But...'
He had just coughed up water. A lot of water.
'Was I... drowning? How? How can I be dead... but also be drowning?'
The contradiction was absolute. It was an impossibility that his mind could not process. He was hit by a train, but he drowned? He was dead, but he was choking?
His body answered the question for him.
The violent spasms subsided, leaving his lungs... empty. Aching. Raw. And... needing.
His next breath was not a choice. It was an involuntary, desperate, ragged gasp.
A blade of frigid, clean air cut into his throat. It was a sharp, biting, stinging shock, a pain so intense it was almost white. His lungs, raw and abused from the water, burned as if they'd been scoured with ice and sand.
Breathing hurt. This new... whatever this was... it hurt.
With the pain came sight.
The deep, absolute blackness, the void of his cold, frozen death, finally seemed to lift. His eyelids, heavy, gritty, and raw, as if they'd been glued shut, fluttered.
Once. Twice.
They opened.
The world that swam into view was not the train station. It was not the blinding white light.
It was... grey.
He was on his back, his cheek pressed against a hard, painfully cold, and uneven surface. He was staring up. The sky was a bruised, lightless, uniform shade of purple-grey, a ceiling of unwept tears.
Looming, cutting into that dead sky, were shapes.
Vast, dark, monolithic shapes. They were buildings, but... wrong. They were impossibly tall, their walls sheer and black, not with grime, but with the colour of the stone itself. They were brutal, functional, and ancient.
There were no lights. No glass. Just... stone. And shadows.
The air was still, save for a high, thin, keening wind that he could hear, but not feel, whipping around the distant, unseen peaks of the stone fortress.
'Where... where am I?'
His mind, reeling but still functioning, tried to file the data. This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't the city. The architecture... it was pre-industrial. It was... medieval.
'The afterlife?'
The thought was logical, in its own insane, terrifying way. He died. He had been judged. And this... this was his reward.
'A cold, stone-and-ice version of hell.'
It seemed fitting. A new, special, quiet place of torment, probably designed and approved by her.
His gaze, which had been lost in the impossible, brutalist sky, lowered. His head was too heavy to move, his body still a useless, paralysed block of ice, but his eyes... his eyes could move.
They scanned his new prison.
And he saw it.
It was a girl.
She was kneeling, just a few feet away, on the same slick, icy stones. She was staring at him, her entire body rigid. Her face, a pale, round smudge in the pre-dawn gloom, was a mask of pure, unadulterated, wide-eyed terror.
She was afraid. She was terrified.
And she was looking right at him.
His mind, the forensic psychologist, the profiler, kicked in. It was a reflex, an anchor of a life that was now, apparently, over.
Analyze.
The girl. Plain, round face. Early-teens, maybe fifteen. Mousy brown hair, escaping from a simple, dirty, linen cap.
Her hands. They were clasped at her chest, as if in prayer or panic. They were red, chapped, raw.
Her clothing. This was the detail that broke his mind.
It was a costume. It had to be. A coarse, heavy, ankle-length dress of thick, greyish wool. It was scratchy, uncomfortable, and looked... real. It was worn at the elbows and stained near the hem. This wasn't a costume from a party. This was the functional, grim, daily garment of... of...
'A servant?'
This was not a historical reenactment. This was not a set. The fear in her eyes was not a performance. The cold in his bones was not a special effect.
This... was real.
This new, cold, stone-and-ice world... it was real.
The girl, the terrified, plain, servant girl... she moved.
Her mouth opened, and a small, white plume of breath, a ghost, escaped.
She spoke.
"Young Master!"
Her voice was a trembling, high-pitched, urgent sound. It was filled with that same, raw terror, but also... relief?
"Don't move! Please… stay still!"
She scrambled forward, on her hands and knees, her rough-spun dress scraping loudly on the icy stones.
"You... you're going to be okay! Help... help is coming!"
The words registered, cutting through the fog of his pain and confusion.
'Young Master?'
The title was absurd. It was a phrase from a storybook. It made no sense. Why would she call him that?
Then a new, sharper thread of confusion cut through.
He had understood her.
The meaning was instantaneous, but the sounds... the sounds had been wrong. They were guttural, the cadence sharp. It was not English, not any language he had ever heard.
'How... how do I know what she's saying?'
The knowledge was just... there. It hadn't been translated. It had been received.
The girl, her face still a mask of white-hot panic, shuffled closer on her hands and knees. Her chapped, raw, red hands hovered over his chest, trembling violently.
'Help me...' he tried to think, trying to will his body to move, but the thought was a distant, useless echo.
The girl leaned in, her small, sturdy body blocking what little light had finally started to come through from the bruised, grey sky. Her face, pale and round, was just inches from his. He could smell... something—a faint, dusty scent, like old straw, and a hint of soot.
Her pale, blue, terrified eyes stared directly into his.
They were wide, shining with a film of moisture... and they were reflective.
In the slick, wet surface of her pupils, he saw a warped, miniature image of the scene. He saw the dark, looming stone walls behind him. He saw the grey, dead sky.
And he saw... a face.
A face that was looking up at her.
It was not his.
His mind screamed in protest, a silent, internal, sanity-shattering howl.
'Wrong. Wrong. WRONG.'
The face in her eyes, the face that was his, was a stranger's.
It was a child.
A boy, no older than ten. His features were plain, sturdy. But the hair... the hair was plastered, wet, to his forehead. And it was red. A deep, unsettling, reddish-brown.
Auburn.
Lilith…
Her final, ecstatic, triumphant smile from the platform flashed in his mind. Her voice, sharp and clear, cutting through the roar of the oncoming train.
"...you need to be... honest. In this life... you're not. You've lied to yourself too well, so we'll have to try again."
'Try again...'
A new, deeper, and infinitely colder horror, one that surpassed even the train, even the ice, settled into the core of his soul.
She hadn't just killed him. That would have been a mercy. That would have been the end.
This... this was a continuation. A sequel. She had pushed him... and sent him. She had murdered him and, in the same, perfect, exquisitely cruel motion... transmigrated his soul.
His consciousness. His torment.
She had put him in the body of this... this boy.
'Where... where am I?'
This wasn't Earth. It couldn't be. This was some other world. A brutal, primitive, frozen world.
He had to speak. He had to ask.
He put all his will, all his desperate, frantic energy, into forming a single word.
"Where...?"
A sound came out. It was a wet, pathetic, gurgling croak. A child's sound. It died instantly in the frigid air.
The girl flinched violently, as if he had screamed. Her terror spiked.
"No! Stop!" she pleaded, her voice cracking, tears now freezing on her pale cheeks. "Please, Young Master, just... just rest. Don't try to move. Please..."
He stopped. He had no choice.
The paralysis was absolute. This small, frail child's body was completely, utterly spent. It was a waterlogged, frozen, and useless thing. He was trapped. This wasn't a nightmare. This wasn't a delusion.
This was real. This was his new hell.
The girl, her panic clearly overriding her fear, seemed to make a decision. She sniffled, wiping her raw, red nose on her sleeve. She grabbed him, hooking her arms under his armpits.
"I... I have to... get you inside..."
With a desperate, heaving grunt, she pulled.
He was a dead, sodden weight. She hauled him up, his head lolling bonelessly, his wet hair scraping across the icy stones.
She made it two steps—a small, panicked, slipping sprint.
Her worn, soft-soled shoe slid out from under her on the treacherous, dark ice. She cried out, a short, sharp yelp and collapsed, sprawling onto the cobblestones, the breath knocked out of her in a painful-sounding whoof.
The girl sobbed, a sound of pure, hopeless frustration.
Heavy, pounding footsteps echoed from a high, dark archway, impossibly loud in the pre-dawn silence.
"We heard a scream!" A new voice, a man's, deep and authoritative, cut through the dark. "Is everything...?"
The voice stopped abruptly. Two men. They were running toward them.
Even in his dazed, pain-filled state, his mind knew these two men were not servants. They were tall, broad, and built of muscle and leather. One was slightly leaner, moving with a quick, fluid grace, his hand already on the hilt of a longsword at his hip.
The other was stockier, a wall of muscle, his face set in a grim, serious line. Both wore thick, boiled leather armour over chainmail and heavy, fur-lined cloaks.
'They're... fast.'
It was a fleeting, strange thought. They were moving too quickly. Too easily. The sheer weight of that mail and leather... it should have slowed them down, made their steps heavy and pounding on the ice.
But they moved with a lightness that didn't match their bulk.
The girl, his only point of reference, looked up, and her terrified face crumpled in a wave of profound, desperate relief.
"Kael! Garret! Help!" she cried, her voice cracking. "It's... it's the Young Master! He... he was in the well! I... I don't know... he's not... please, hurry!"
The two men didn't hesitate.
"Shit," the leaner one, Kael, swore, his eyes wide as he took in the scene. He ran past them, while the stocky one, Garret, reached them in two bounds.
"It's... it's alright, Elara," Kael called back, his voice surprisingly gentle. "Calm down. We have him."
'Elara.'
The name registered.
A small, concrete, useless piece of data. He felt a strange, distant pang of... pity. For her. This terrified girl. He had, somehow, in his first five minutes of this new, impossible life, already ruined her day.
The thought was lost as he was lifted.
It wasn't a drag. It was a scoop. The stocky guard, Garret, slid one massive, mail-clad arm under his back and another under his knees, lifting him from the ground as if he were nothing.
He was cradled, effortlessly, against the man's broad, leather-clad chest. The world spun, a nauseating, grey blur. He was moving. Fast. The guard was running, his heavy, booted steps thudding on the stone, carrying him away from the well, away from Elara, and deeper into the dark, stone fortress.
He was too weak to lift his head, too weak to fight. His small body was a wet, frozen, useless thing, jostled against the rugged leather and mail of the guard's chest.
The world spun, a nauseating, grey blur of stone and motion.
He just lay there, a captive audience to his own impossible, new reality.
One final, weary thought echoed in the cold, empty prison of his new mind.
'How long...'
'How long will this new nightmare go on?'