Minutes Earlier; At first, Aaron Aserion thought he was dreaming.
Then he realized he had no body.
No lungs to breathe with. No heartbeat to count time. Only a drifting awareness—weightless, unmoored, torn loose from the gravity of flesh. He floated in a void that felt too large to comprehend, a fathomless expanse where light and shadow mingled like oil and water. Stars flickered in the distance, dying and being born in the same breath.
He reached out—or thought he did. His movements made no ripple, no sound, no consequence. He had no hands. No arms. No shape.
Just a soul.
And then—
A voice brushed against him.
"Aaron Aserion," it murmured, soft as a sigh, vast as creation. "You have arrived."
The void brightened.
A figure formed from the light—tall, graceful, radiant. Not with the harsh brilliance of a sun, but with the gentle, cool shimmer of moonlit water. As she stepped forward, galaxies spiraled at the hem of her robes. Every shift of her form sent constellations drifting like dust.
Aaron's awareness contracted, focusing on her with instinctive reverence.
"Who..." His thought stumbled, disjointed without breath to shape it. "Who are you?"
"I am She who called you," the goddess replied. "The First Star. The Weaver of Paths. The one you once prayed to unknowingly in your darkest hours."
Her voice was neither kind nor cruel—merely true, with a clarity that cut through him like polished glass.
"You have died," she said. "But your end is not an end."
Aaron tried to gather himself, to steady his dissolving sense of self. Memories flashed in chaotic fragments—gleaming towers stretching into artificial skies, transit pods humming through crystalline networks, the Neural Link interface flickering in his peripheral vision, the endless hum of a Type 2 civilization that had conquered stars but not loneliness.
The 32nd century. Galactic Earth. A world where death was supposed to be optional, where consciousness could be backed up, where immortality was a subscription service.
Yet here he was. Dead anyway.
"I remember..." he whispered. "The accident. The station breach. The decompression."
He'd been on an orbital platform above Neptune's moon, Triton. A supply run. Routine. Until the hull cracked and the void rushed in.
"Good," the goddess said gently. "Memory is the seed of identity. And you must carry yours into what is to come."
"What is to come?" he asked, his voice trembling across the void.
The goddess lifted her hand.
Light unfurled from her palm—forming a tapestry of worlds, swirling like ink in water. One world glowed brighter than the rest. A world torn, bleeding, struggling under shadows he didn't yet know.
"Olon," she said.
The word resonated like an echo of thunder.
A world. A kingdom. A destiny.
Aaron felt pulled toward it, as if it called specifically to him. It looked primitive compared to what he knew—no orbital rings, no planetary shields, no star-spanning networks. Just a single planet, green and blue and wounded.
"There is a vacancy in fate," the goddess continued. "A thread cut too early. A story that should not yet be finished."
Aaron felt something tighten in the void, as if gravity suddenly recognized him again.
"A soul in Olon is dying," the goddess whispered. "A prince. A brother. A protector."
Across the void, Aaron glimpsed it—like a lantern flickering in storm wind. A soul struggling, dimming, breaking under weight he could not yet understand.
"He is passing beyond reach," the goddess said. "But his purpose is not complete."
Aaron felt a chill ripple through the formlessness of his being.
"Why me?" he asked. "Why pull me from my world? From my time? You're a goddess—surely you have heroes from that world. Warriors. People who belong there."
The goddess tilted her head, eyes shimmering with something ancient and unreadable.
"Because you were already falling," she said softly. "Your death untethered you. Your soul drifted, unclaimed, unresolved. The neural backup failed. The consciousness upload never completed. You fell through the cracks of your civilization's attempts to defeat death."
Aaron's thoughts twisted—pain, guilt, the ache of wasted time, the tremor of fear he'd felt as the oxygen left his lungs.
"You longed for meaning," the goddess said. "A chance to do more than endure. A chance to matter beyond efficiency ratings and productivity metrics."
Her words struck too close.
He'd spent thirty-two years in a world where everyone lived forever but nothing felt real. Where relationships were simulated, where passion was regulated, where even death was sanitized into data streams and memory files.
"You will have that chance now," the goddess said.
Aaron recoiled.
"No—wait. I don't understand. I'm not a warrior. I'm not a hero. I'm a logistics coordinator. I managed supply routes. I optimized distribution algorithms. I'm just—"
"Alive," she whispered. "And willing."
She stepped closer, and the constellations in her wake pulsed like living things.
"Olon needs a soul who knows loss. Who knows love. Who knows the ache of wanting to do more than fate allows." She paused. "But it also needs a mind that understands systems. Strategy. The long view. Your world taught you to see patterns across vast scales. To plan. To adapt. To solve problems no one else sees coming."
Aaron felt pressure building around him, like invisible hands urging him forward.
"There is a truth in that world," the goddess said. "A cosmic truth woven long before you were born. Something ancient. Something unfinished. Forces move in shadow that threaten not just kingdoms, but the fabric of existence itself."
"And you think I can stop it?" His disbelief rippled through the void. "I can't even fight. Where I come from, physical combat is obsolete. We have drones. AIs. Automated defense systems."
"Where you come from," the goddess said gently, "does not define where you are going. You will learn. You will adapt. Just as you always have."
"Why me?" he repeated, fear threading through the question.
The goddess smiled faintly.
"Because conquest does not always begin with a sword. Sometimes it begins with a heart that refuses to yield. Sometimes it begins with a mind that sees what others cannot."
Aaron felt the other soul—the dying prince—flicker again. A warmth called to him, familiar and strange all at once. He could sense the boy's desperation, his love, his terror for his sister.
"You will inherit a name," the goddess said. "A body. A burden. Blood not your own, but whose rhythm will become yours."
Aaron trembled.
"You will inherit his sister," she continued. "His life. His pain. His enemies."
Images flashed before him—fire, forests, collapsing beams, arrows slicing through air, a girl's scream echoing in the dark. A mother's severed head drifting in a river.
The brutality of it shocked him. Where he came from, violence was sanitized, controlled, regulated. This was raw. Visceral. Real in a way his world had forgotten.
"And with time," the goddess whispered, "you will inherit his destiny. But you will shape it with knowledge he never possessed. With perspectives from a civilization that spans stars. With understanding of systems and power structures that this medieval world cannot yet imagine."
Aaron felt his essence pulled downward—toward the river, toward the broken body awaiting him, toward a world he had never seen.
"What if I fail?" he asked, the question barely a whisper. "What if I can't protect her? What if I don't know how to be what they need?"
"Then you will learn," the goddess said simply. "Just as you learned everything else. Failure is not the end. It is merely information."
Aaron felt something shift inside him—not quite acceptance, but recognition. He'd spent his whole life optimizing systems, solving problems, finding efficiency in chaos. This was just another problem. Larger. More personal. More real.
But still solvable.
"You will shape Olon," the goddess said as her form dissolved into starlight. "For good or ill. For peace or conquest. The choice will be yours, but the consequences will echo across ages."
The void cracked with light.
"Aaron Aserion," she called, her voice fading into infinity. "Go forth. The torn soul must mend. The world must shift. The truth must awaken."
"Wait—" he called out. "What truth? What am I supposed to find?"
But the goddess was already fading.
Her final words echoed as he fell into darkness:
"The gods did not abandon Olon. They were imprisoned. And the locks are beginning to break."
The revelation hit him like a shockwave.
"What does that mean?" he shouted into the void. "What happens when they break free?"
The goddess's voice came one last time, distant as dying stars:
"Destiny chooses the willing—and you have already chosen."
And then—
The river.
The body.
The pain.
Aaron Aserion fell through dimensions he couldn't name, through barriers that separated one reality from another. His consciousness compressed, folded, reshaped itself to fit a vessel that was broken, dying, riddled with arrows.
The transfer began.
Pain slammed into him like a physical wall. The abstract void vanished, replaced by immediate, visceral agony. Arrows jutting from his back and chest. Lungs full of water. Ribs cracked. Blood loss severe.
His eyes—no, the body's eyes—snapped open underwater.
The river churned around him. The current dragged him forward. Beside him floated a small girl, unconscious, barely breathing.
Neria.
The name came with the body, along with a flood of memories not his own. The carriage. The arrows. The mother crushed under wreckage. The desperate flight.
Aaron's new heart—the prince's heart—clenched with love and terror for the child beside him.
He reached for her with arms that barely responded, pulling her close as the river carried them both downstream.
"I've got you," he gasped, voice raw and unfamiliar. "I've got you, little star."
The words felt right. Natural. As if he'd said them a thousand times before.
Because in a way, he had. The memories were bleeding into him, merging with his own consciousness. Two lives. Two worlds. One soul.
He kicked weakly, fighting the current, searching for shore. His body screamed in protest. Every movement tore at the arrow wounds. Every breath sent fire through his lungs.
But he held her.
He wouldn't let go.
Behind them, somewhere in the darkness, assassins searched the riverbanks. Ahead, the unknown waited—villages, forests, enemies he didn't yet understand.
But Aaron Aserion—former logistics coordinator from the 32nd century, now inhabiting the broken body of a dying medieval prince—had one advantage.
He'd spent his entire life solving impossible problems.
And he wasn't about to stop now.
The river carried them forward into the night, away from death, toward whatever fate the goddess had woven for them.
The real question was: could a mind from the stars save a world still learning to forge steel?
Only time would tell.