The wine was sweet.
After 107 years of life, Darian Ashford had learned to appreciate small pleasures. The weight of a well balanced axe. The crackle of a campfire after a long day. The way morning light caught the edge of a blade.
And sweet wine. Always the sweet wine.
Funny, he thought, as warmth spread through his chest. I don't remember pouring this.
The tavern around him swayed. No, he swayed. His hand slipped from the table. His vision blurred at the edges.
Not drunk. Not tired. Something else.
"Sera?"
Her name came out wrong. Thick. Slurred.
She appeared above him, and even through the haze, he noticed she wasn't worried. She was watching. Calm. Patient. Like someone waiting for a pot to boil.
"Sera, I"
"Oh, my love." She knelt beside him, and her hand, warm and soft, the hand that had held his for twenty five years, cupped his cheek. "You were always so trusting."
Twenty five years.
They'd met when he was seventy eight, already past his prime, already resigned to being average. She was fifty three then, young and hungry and brilliant. He couldn't believe she'd looked twice at him.
But she had. And she'd stayed. For decades.
Twenty five years.
"Rik?" Darian's eyes struggled to move. Found his friend, his best friend, standing behind him. Rik's face was stone. Unreadable. But his hands were on Darian's shoulders, holding him steady in the chair.
Holding him down.
"Rik?"
No answer. Just those hands, firm and unyielding.
"Lysa?"
Across the room, leaning against the wall, the assassin picked at her nails with a smaller blade. She glanced up, bored, and looked away.
They'd all been together for twenty five years. Fought together. Bled together. Celebrated together.
Twenty five years.
Sera's hand left his cheek. Reached for his neck. Cold fingers touched the amulet he'd worn for sixty five years, the Heartstone, found in a forgotten dungeon when he was young and reckless and still believed in destiny.
She pulled. The leather cord snapped.
"The amulet," she murmured, holding it to the firelight. The gem pulsed once, soft and warm. "Do you have any idea what this is worth?"
He didn't. He never did. That was the problem, wasn't it? He found things, stumbled into opportunities, but never understood their value. Never knew what he had until it was gone.
Average. Always average.
The poison burned colder now. His chest ached. His fingers tingled.
"Sera... why?"
She looked at him then. Really looked. And for just a moment, something flickered in her eyes. Not guilt. Not sorrow. Something closer to pity.
"Because I want more than this, Darian. More than a lifetime of grinding for scraps. More than being the wife of a man who'll never break past level 400."
Level 312 at 107 years old. Pathetic. Most geniuses hit 400 by eighty. Some hit five hundred.
He'd spent a lifetime being ordinary.
Sera leaned down and kissed his forehead. Her lips were warm. Gentle. Almost loving.
"Don't worry," she whispered. "I'll spend it well."
The dagger slid between his ribs.
It didn't hurt as much as he'd expected. Or maybe the poison had already numbed him. He felt pressure, a strange intimate push, and then warmth spreading through his chest that had nothing to do with wine.
Twenty five years.
Rik's hands finally left his shoulders. Lysa straightened from the wall, stretching like a cat. Sera tucked the amulet into her pouch and stood, already turning away.
None of them looked back.
Darian's head dropped. His vision darkened from the edges inward. The last thing he saw was her back. Sera's back, walking away, not a single backward glance.
Twenty five years.
Darkness.
But not emptiness.
In the darkness, something stirred. Something ancient. Something that had waited millennia in a forgotten dungeon and then latched onto a mediocre adventurer who didn't understand what he'd found.
Sixty five years ago.
Darian had been forty two, young enough to be reckless, old enough to know better. The dungeon wasn't famous. Wasn't even properly mapped. Just a forgotten ruin in a forgotten corner of the world.
At the deepest chamber, surrounded by dust and bones, he'd found the amulet.
And something else.
A presence. Ancient. Fading. It had been waiting in that darkness for longer than civilizations had existed. When Darian took the amulet, that presence latched onto him. Not with malice, but with desperation. A dying ember seeking any warmth.
He'd felt it. A shiver. A whisper at the edge of his mind. A moment of wrongness that passed as quickly as it came.
Then he'd left, amulet around his neck, and forgotten.
Sixty five years.
Now, in the darkness between death and whatever came next, that presence stirred again.
"Not yet," it whispered. "We're not done."
Darian's soul, frayed and fading, worn down by 107 years of being ordinary, clung to that whisper.
"You were never meant to be average," the voice said. "You were meant to find me. Meant to carry me. It just took time."
Time. He had time now. All the time in the world.
"Sleep," the voice murmured. "When you wake, everything will be different."
Darian slept.
---
Year 1 of the New Age
Somewhere in Veridian Prime
The baby screamed.
It was a good scream. Healthy, loud, indignant. The kind of scream that said I did not ask for this in a language older than words.
The midwife laughed. "A strong boy, mistress. Strong lungs."
The mother, exhausted and weeping and radiant with joy, reached for her son. He was placed in her arms, still slick with birth, still screaming, still furious at the indignity of being born.
She kissed his forehead.
"Hello, little one," she whispered. "Welcome to the world."
The baby's screams hitched. Stopped. His eyes, new and unfocused and barely seeing, locked onto her face with an intensity that made her catch her breath.
For a moment, she could have sworn he recognized her.
Then he yawned, small and perfect, and fell asleep.
Deep within the infant's mind, a lifetime of memories stirred.
A woman's smile. A dagger. Wine, sweet on his tongue.
Twenty five years of trust, betrayed in a single moment.
A century of being average, of being ordinary, of being left behind.
And a whisper, ancient and patient: "Not yet. We're not done."
Darian Ashford, once a man, now a baby, slept.
And dreamed of revenge.