Chapter I
An Ordinary Death, A Bored Goddess
The pain didn't come as a blow, but as a slow tide.
Alejandro knew it before the doctor spoke. The silence in the room was too careful, too intentional, as if someone had tried to sweep the word cancer under the hospital bed. He was twenty-eight years old, with too many unread history books, too many unfinished games of Age of Empires, and a past that had always felt like a poorly healed wound.
When he finally died, there was no tunnel of light, no voices of relatives calling him.
There was boredom.
"Hmm… so this is the end," he thought. "Pretty simple."
Then he opened his eyes.
He wasn't in a bed. He wasn't in any recognizable place.
He was floating.
The space around him seemed an impossible mix of sky and water: a deep blue, with no sun or stars, as if the world were contained within an infinite breath. Floating in front of him, lying on her back, was a woman.
No, not a woman.
A goddess, perhaps.
Her skin was the color of polished jade and her long, dark hair fanned out like ink in the void. She wore clothes that obeyed no era: light fabrics adorned with symbols that Alejandro recognized with a start—"Mesoamerican grecas, feathered serpents, broken suns." She was chewing something invisible, with a completely carefree expression.
"Ah… you're awake," she said, without even looking at him. "I thought you'd take longer."
"Am I dead?" asked Alejandro.
"Yep."
"And you are…"
The goddess barely turned her head, just enough to observe him with one lazy eye.
"A goddess. Don't ask which one. Names are tiring."
Alejandro blinked and looked around before asking.
"Heaven?"
"No."
"Hell?"
"That either."
"So what's next then? Reincarnation?" He eyed what looked like an isekai manga on the goddess's arm.
She smiled.
"Ah, you do consume good content."
She stretched like a cosmic cat and floated on her back once more.
"You see, Alejandro," she continued. "Your life was… correct. Quite gray. But your mind was interesting. So much historical frustration. So much pent-up rage. So many 'what ifs'."
Alejandro clenched his fists.
"Exactly."
The goddess snapped her fingers.
An image appeared before them: stone cities, temples burning, men in armor, crosses raised over destroyed pyramids.
"Your world, but not exactly," she said. "I'm going to send you to another one."
"Another world? I thought—"
"A more entertaining one," she interrupted with brutal honesty. "Same historical events… but with magic. Because, let's be honest, without magic I've seen this too many times."
Alejandro swallowed hard.
"What era?"
The goddess smiled with genuine amusement.
"Early Viceroyalty. After the conquest. Spaniards ruling, native peoples broken… but not extinguished."
"Toltecs?" he asked, almost without thinking.
"Their heirs," she corrected. "Memory doesn't die so easily."
Alejandro's heart beat hard.
"And who will I be?"
The goddess now observed him with real attention.
"You will be born a mestizo."
A casual gesture, as if talking about the weather.
"Son of a Spaniard who married a native woman. Not for love, not for power… just because."
"A traitor?"
"A human," she replied. "Like everyone."
The space trembled slightly.
"You will have the full memory of your past life. You will have access to a 'system'," she added. "One that's… unpredictable. Chaotic. Sometimes unfair. Like history."
"And the goal?"
The goddess closed her eyes.
"Live," she said. "Survive. Have fun."
Then she opened one eye and smiled mischievously.
"If you change history… all the better."
The world shattered.
The blue vanished.
The pain returned.
But this time it wasn't the pain of death.
It was the pain of being born.
Shouts. Blood. Copal smoke.
"It's a boy!"
Alejandro cried out, without words, without language.
Deep within his mind, a voice echoed:
Anáhuac System of Historical Reboot: Activated
And so, between two bloodlines and two worlds, began the history that never should have existed.
End of Chapter I