"Have you ever lost a game, Ken?"
Ken swirled the century-old wine in his glass. They were at the most exclusive country club in New York, a place where entry wasn't bought merely with money, but with power.
"You know, people always ask what I'd do if I didn't win," Ken replied, leaning back with a shark-like grin. "I guess we'll never know."
That was Ken's life. He was twenty-seven, and the sole heir to a multi-billion dollar empire, and he had never seen a No he couldn't turn into a Yes.
Ken was 6'4", chiseled like a Renaissance statue, and so famous he couldn't walk down Wall Street without a security detail.
He was at the peak. And from where he stood, the clouds were the only things beneath him.
As Ken walked to his silver Bugatti Centodieci after their meeting, his phone buzzed. It was a message from an unknown number:
[ENJOY IT WHILE YOU CAN, PEAKS DON'T LAST FOREVER].
Jealousy was familiar to him; he'd inspired it far more than he'd ever felt.
"What a loser." He mused as he got into the passenger seat with practiced grace, his chauffeur already positioned.
He always took precautionary methods when driving around the city, one of which was surrounding his car with three armored escort jeeps.
He looked out as the city streamed by in bands of glass and steel, with towering buildings that exhibited luxury and ambition.
He must have drifted too far in thought when.
CRRASSHHH!!!!
The sound tore through the world, glass shattering inwards as metal crashed against metal, the impact flung him out of the vehicle, his body hitting the asphalt road with bone-rattling force, forcing a guttural noise out of him.
He lay there, vision blurring, warm blood pooling beneath him, spilling out of the sides of his mouth, much quicker than he wanted to acknowledge.
"FUCKK!!" he exclaimed with his arm weakly outstretched, "So this is how I die."
The earlier message replayed over and over in his head.
Peaks don't last forever.
And then, darkness.
Silence reigned, then a murmur brushed his ears, so faint he thought he imagined it. Silence returned, heavier this time.
He opened his eyes slowly, enough to realize he wasn't in his master bedroom, the frame beneath him so hard he sat up hurriedly.
'Where am I?' he thought to himself as he continuously scanned every crevice of the small space. It was dusty, smelled faintly of alcohol, and was illuminated by a single light bulb in the center of the ceiling.
He raised both his hands up, they were leaner than they'd usually been, calloused in the wrong places.
He staggered to his feet, glancing down at his frame, smaller, weaker, nothing like the body he had once owned.
"This isn't my body," he said, his voice no longer the bass tone he recognized; it was thinner, younger.
His mind was going a mile a minute now. He had died, and now he was awake; there was only one possible explanation.
'What the fuck... Did I... Reincarnate?'
He laughed nervously. Throughout his life, he had only believed in hard work and results, not in fantasies. This realization sat very wrong with him.
He paced around the room in short strides for a few minutes, mind racing rapidly. He spotted an open door on the right and slowly opened it; it was the bathroom.
"Okay, now let me see what I look like," he stepped in front of the mirror, gazing back was a young boy no more than 17, he was frail, standing at 5'8, all lean muscle missing, all the presence drained, his damp black hair fell all the way to his shoulders, the front covered his forehead.
"Damn." He looked up at the cracked ceiling, squeezing his eyes shut for a few moments. Then...
HAHAHAHHAHAHA!
He burst out laughing, maniacally, tears running down both sides of his face as his hands gripped the sink.
"This is…" he started, "Pathetic."
The name came first.
Eron.
Surfacing in his mind without warning, he stiffened.
"Eron?" He muttered, the word rolling off his tongue easily.
His head was throbbing insistently now, images flashing in his mind, one after the other, overlapping.
He held his head in his hands, groaning as he stumbled onto the floor.
The memory came rushing in, settling deep in his consciousness.
Visions of the hardship, toil, and pain that this body had endured all scrambled in his mind.
Eron Ashfall.
The name surfaced again, fully now.
"So that's your name," he said, staggering to his feet weakly.
Eron had never stood out; in fact, he was just another obscurity in a long and pathetic bloodline of nonentities born into a land scarred by centuries of war — Khalarnis.
Three hundred years ago, violent tears in the continuum began to appear without warning; these ruptures were known as rifts.
Out of these rifts emerged savage beasts that raked the land and terrorized the populace for fifty years.
But humanity didn't break; they adapted, giving rise to a Society known as The Apex. Hunters sanctioned by the state, warriors revered and feared in equal measure.
Survival depended on an Awakening, a terrifying, mandatory process for every sixteen-year-old that determines one's class and seals their fate.
In this new world, your class is your power, your status, your lifeline.
Eron had already undergone his awakening and was tragically deemed classless, a fate worse than death itself.
He had spent the better part of the year relentlessly ridiculed and cast aside, even by his own family.
One night, he gathered every hard-earned scrap of worth, a small pouch containing five gold coins.
He went to a local store and spent it all at once, not on food, not on warmth.
But on an ending. A vial of Poison.
His lips twitched as the realization settled in.
"So you just gave up?" He said, pressing his fingers against his throbbing temple as the last of Eron's despair bled into his soul.
"What a waste."
He straightened himself up slowly, the sharpness of his eyes unaffected by the weakness in his limbs.
He looked up once again at the ceiling.
"Out of all the bodies you could've sent me to, you chose this one?" He muttered, his mouth curling, not with pity, but with contempt.
"I stood at the top of the world in my old life; I refuse to be a lowlife bottom feeder in this one."
With that, he turned his gaze away from the mirror and made his way out.
A determined look plastered across his face.