Grimhaven wasn't a special city.
It wasn't the romantic, cobblestone European town people imagined when they heard the name. It was more... average. Steel-gray buildings, a few old churches squeezed between apartment blocks, too many cafés, and a permanent smell of rain mixed with car exhaust. People lived fast, worked too much, and complained about the weather year-round.
And among them was Elias Crowell — a boy who felt like he had mentally checked out of life at age twelve and simply kept going because the human body refused to stop on its own.
Elias was eighteen now, but he carried the vibe of a very tired old man trapped in a teenager's body. He wasn't depressed, at least not in the dramatic, poetic way movies portrayed it. He was just... bored. Deeply. Profoundly. Terminally bored.
School felt pointless. Friends felt unnecessary. The world felt like someone had accidentally left the "color" setting on grayscale.
But there was one thing — the only thing — that ever stirred even a faint spark in him:
Magic.
Not stage tricks. Not card shuffling.
Real magic. Other worlds. Portals, reincarnation, ancient grimoires, anything that wasn't this monotonous planet.
He devoured fantasy novels like they were lifelines. Webnovels, obscure myth books, conspiracy forums at 3 a.m., even those sketchy PDF scans that probably installed viruses. He didn't care. Every story about magic felt like a rope dangling down to him from some place above reality.
Except... the rope was imaginary.
And reality?
Reality was just gravity.
A Day Like Any Other — Until It Wasn't
It was raining again. Grimhaven always rained. Elias lay on his bed, staring at his ceiling with the expression of someone trying very hard to die of boredom alone.
His parents were downstairs arguing about something stupid — groceries, bills, maybe the washing machine. He didn't bother listening.
With a sigh, he sat up. His room was the usual chaos of novels, half-empty water bottles, and notebooks filled with rambling theories on how magic should work if the world wasn't so determined to be normal.
He rubbed his eyes. "Man... if magic isn't real, life is actually the biggest scam."
He stood, stretched, and wandered out to find a snack. On the way, something caught his eye — his father's office door.
Unlocked.
Normally, it was shut like the Vault of Secrets. His dad was overly cautious about everything.
Elias paused.
"...Should I?"
He already knew the answer.
"Yes," he muttered, opening the door.
The office smelled like printer paper and coffee someone forgot about days ago. And there it was — the drawer that was always locked. Except now, it wasn't.
Inside lay a small handgun.
Elias blinked.
"Well damn. You really are paranoid, old man."
He picked it up, more curious than anything. It felt heavier than he expected. Solid. Cold.
He sat on the floor, spinning it loosely in his hand.
"You know..." he said to nobody, "if this was a webnovel, this would be the moment the protagonist dies and reincarnates into a magical world."
He chuckled. "But I'm not doing that. That's stupid."
He lifted the gun toward his head — casually, almost lazily — just to "understand what it felt like."
"Yep. This is definitely the stupidest thing I've ever done."
He lowered it.
"Okay, enough. I'm not actually killing myself."
He let go.
The gun slipped from his fingers, hit the floor, and—
BANG.
Elias screamed, flinching so hard he smacked into the desk chair behind him.
The bullet ricocheted off the metal leg of the desk.
Ping.
It rebounded upward.
Ping.
It struck the ceiling light.
The light fixture — a cheap, circular plastic dome — snapped free instantly.
"...Oh no."
The plastic dome fell.
Directly.
Onto Elias's skull.
BONK.
A surprisingly loud bonk.
Then silence.
He blinked once.
Then twice.
"...No way—"
He collapsed.
And died.
Not dramatically.
Not poetically.
Not heroically.
He died because he dropped a gun, the bullet bounced around like a confused bee, and a cheap ceiling light killed him.
The Void Between Breaths
There was no tunnel of light. No choir. No floating above his body thinking profound thoughts.
There was just... nothing.
Cold, quiet, blank nothing.
For the first time in his life, Elias felt... calm. No boredom. No frustration. No noise.
Just an endless, empty peace.
But then a faint whisper slipped through the stillness, like a breeze brushing past his ear:
"Not yet."
The darkness cracked.
Light seeped in.
Warmth wrapped around him.
And suddenly—
he felt tiny.
Very tiny.
Rebirth
When he opened his eyes — or rather, when they opened on their own — he was surrounded by blurry shapes and muffled voices. Everything smelled weird. Too clean. Too raw.
His limbs felt weak. His body felt unfamiliar.
He tried to speak, but all that came out was a helpless newborn cry.
People around him cooed and reacted with joy.
Elias Crowell, eighteen-year-old boredom victim of Grimhaven...
...had been reborn.
A new world.
A new life.
A new beginning.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know why he was here.
But somewhere deep inside that tiny newborn mind, one thought rose above all others:
"If this world has magic... I'm never letting go."
End of Chapter 1