The morning light crept into the reed-thatched hut in pale ribbons, warming the air with the faint scent of river mist. Aaron woke to the soft murmur of voices outside, the rustle of nets being repaired, the laughter of children chasing one another between the stilts of the raised homes. Riverbend was beginning its day.
By contrast, his body felt like it had been poured out of an hourglass and reassembled with uneven sand. Every breath tugged at his stitched wounds. Every shift of weight sent pain rippling across ribs that were still learning how to be his.
Neria slept beside him, curled into herself, one hand tucked beneath her chin. Her lashes fluttered occasionally—dreaming, perhaps—but she made no sound. The splint on her broken arm was secured more firmly than last night, fresh strips of linen wrapped with careful precision. Someone had checked on them while he slept.
Aaron wasn't sure how long he stared at her before the door creaked open again.
Elder Torim stepped inside with slow, deliberate movements, balancing a tray between one hand and the crook of his cane. Steam drifted from a small iron pot, carrying the scent of crushed mint and something sharper—an herb he didn't recognize.
The old man shut the door with his foot, then released a quiet sigh as he set the tray down on a low wooden table beside Aaron's bed.
"You woke earlier than I expected," Torim said, pouring the tea into two wooden cups. "Good. Healing likes company, not sloth."
Aaron managed a faint smile. "I'm not sure my body agrees."
"Your body can lodge formal complaints with the heavens," Torim replied, settling down onto the stool with a grunt. "They rarely answer, but it does wonders for morale."
Aaron almost laughed—and then sharply didn't, because laughing hurt more than anything he'd endured in years.
Torim noticed. "Drink. Slowly—unless you wish to die choking on hospitality."
Aaron raised the cup with trembling hands. The tea's warmth seeped into his palms. He took a cautious sip. Mint, willow bark, and a faint bitterness that reminded him of synthetic sedatives used back home, though this was purely organic. Primitive, yes—but somehow more comforting than any lab-perfected concoction.
"Better?" Torim asked.
"A little," Aaron admitted. "Thank you."
"Good. Now drink more. It will steady you for what I must tell you."
Aaron stiffened. "Is it about the men who were searching the river?"
"In part," Torim said. "But mostly…it is what you asked last night, yet were too tired to hear the fuller truth of."
The old man adjusted his cane, ensuring it was perfectly aligned beside him before continuing. It was a habit of someone who valued order amid chaos.
"You asked how you were found," he began. "And why the river did not take you."
Aaron swallowed, the tea cooling on his tongue. He had asked, yes—but exhaustion had stolen enough clarity that he barely remembered the question.
Torim took a long, slow sip of his own tea before speaking again.
"Two fishermen—old Roen and his nephew Darrin—were running their nets at dawn by the eastern bend. A quiet morning, they said. Mist thick enough to drink. The river slow as a sleepy ox. And then…" He tapped a finger against the cup, voice lowering. "They heard what they thought was an animal's cry. A wounded fawn. A fox cub. Something struggling."
He paused as if replaying the story in his mind.
"But when they brought their boat nearer, the cry came again. Human. Barely audible, but enough to chill them."
Aaron felt a twinge in his chest that wasn't physical pain.
He remembered flashes—the water crushing in, the current pulling him, the girl's hand floating limp beside him. The sensation of drowning not once, but twice. The prince's last desperate instinct clinging to Neria even after death.
Torim continued quietly, "Roen leaned over the side of the boat and saw a pale shape caught against a half-sunken log. At first he thought it was a corpse, tangled in riverweed. Then the shape moved. Weak, but alive."
"Aaron," Aaron murmured, though he wasn't sure who he was speaking to. "That must've been me."
"Yes," Torim said. "Your face was pressed into the current. Blood from your wounds had drawn a trail downstream. Roen said he nearly dropped his oar when you suddenly convulsed. Thought the river was trying to reclaim you."
Aaron's breath hitched. He pictured it as clearly as if he'd been there in full awareness: two fishermen, one old and weathered like driftwood, another young and terrified, fighting to pull a half-dead boy from a river that wanted to drag him under again and again.
"And Neria?" he whispered.
Torim nodded gravely. "They saw her next. Further out. Floating on her back, hair spread like a drowned halo. The splashing from your struggle nudged her toward the boat. By some cruel mercy, the current kept your bodies close."
Aaron closed his eyes. Relief warred with grief inside him.
"We pulled her from the water first," Torim said. "She was cold as riverstone. Her heart fluttered like a caged bird. The break in her arm was clear even at a glance. But she breathed. Faint, faint, but steady."
Aaron forced himself to meet the elder's eyes. "What about me?"
Here, Torim hesitated—a quiet, weighty pause.
"You," the elder said slowly, "were not breathing at all."
The tea cup trembled slightly in Aaron's hand. "You said that yesterday."
"I gave you the short version yesterday. Today you will hear the truth." Torim's gaze sharpened. "Roen swore you were dead. Darrin placed two fingers to your throat. No pulse. Your lips were blue. The water in your lungs was so heavy it poured out onto the planks of their boat. You were gone."
Aaron's heartbeat quickened. He felt himself sinking into the bedding, the weight of two lives bearing down on him.
"I was…" He swallowed hard. "I was dead."
"Yes," Torim said simply. "And then you weren't."
Aaron waited, but Torim didn't elaborate. He just watched with the patience of stone, as though gauging how much Aaron could accept in one breath.
"Tell me everything," Aaron said at last, his voice barely above a whisper. "I need to hear it."
Torim set his cup down—carefully, with intention, as though placing a final stone in a cairn.
"Roen and Darrin debated tossing you back into the river." He held up a hand to stop Aaron's protest. "Not out of cruelty. Out of practicality. This village has no healer with the skill to mend arrow wounds. A dead boy brings grief, not comfort."
Aaron felt cold. The idea that he'd come so close to oblivion again made the room feel tighter, the air thinner.
"But then," Torim continued, "the girl stirred. Just barely. And her hand reached—tiny, trembling—and touched your sleeve."
Aaron felt the world tilt.
"She touched me?"
"She did," Torim said. "Roen said when her fingers brushed your arm, your body spasmed. He dropped you in fright."
Despite the seriousness, Aaron let out a short, pained breath that was almost a laugh. Torim allowed himself a faint smile.
"Her touch started you breathing again," Torim said softly. "You coughed. Choked. Vomited river water across the boards. Then your chest began to rise and fall."
Aaron stared at the elder, the tea forgotten in his hands.
He remembered nothing of that moment. But the prince… the emotion echoing in the body lurked just beneath Aaron's ribs, deep and aching. A bond stronger than the world's cruelty.
"She saved me," he whispered.
"Or something saved both of you," Torim replied. "I have seen miracles in my long years, and tragedies mistaken for curses. But never a dead boy waking because a girl touched him."
Silence settled between them—thick, heavy, shaped by truths too fragile to speak.
Torim broke it with a sigh. "When they brought you here, I believed you would die by nightfall. Even after the stitches. Even after the poultices. But your body fights to live with a stubbornness I've seen only in mothers during childbirth."
Aaron shifted, pain flaring yet manageable.
"I… don't know how to respond to that," he murmured.
"You need not. Some truths are meant to sit in the heart until the mind can bear them."
Torim lifted the pot and poured more tea for both of them.
Aaron stared into the steaming cup, watching the ripples tremble with his unsteady grip.
"You're wondering what you are now," Torim said gently. "Who you are."
The words struck him like an arrow.
Aaron didn't look up. He didn't need to. The truth was already unraveling inside him, thread by thread.
"I'm not the prince," he said. It came out raw. "Not really. But I'm not… myself either."
"Both truths may stand," Torim replied. "Two wills can share a single journey, even if one has passed beyond its turning."
Aaron pressed a hand to his chest. He could feel the echo of another heartbeat woven with his own. Memory fragments—not his—wrapped around him like vines.
"He loved her," Aaron whispered, voice shaking. "Neria. More than anything."
"And now you carry that love," Torim said. "That responsibility."
Aaron's throat tightened. Neria's quiet breathing filled the space between them like the ticking of a fragile clock.
He had taken this life. Or been given it. Or fallen into it by some cosmic accident engineered by a goddess whose motives he still barely understood.
But the consequence was the same.
He had inherited not just a name and a body—but a promise. A dying boy's final vow.
"I don't know how to be him," Aaron confessed. "I don't know how to protect her the way he did."
Torim's eyes softened, the hard edges of his age gentling for a moment.
"You don't need to be him," the elder said. "Be someone who tries. A child with effort outmatches a king with apathy."
Aaron let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
Torim leaned back, stretching his old spine. "When you're strong enough to walk, you must leave. I said eight days last night, but seeing your wounds… you will need at least five to move without collapsing, six if the gods are kind."
"They aren't kind," Aaron said quietly.
Torim snorted. "Of course not. That's why mortals must be kind in their stead."
Silence settled again—softer this time, like a blanket laid over a wound.
Outside, fishermen shouted instructions. Nets slapped water. The scent of river mud drifted in through the cracks in the wall.
Torim poured the last of the tea into his own cup and swallowed it with a satisfied sigh.
"Roen and Darrin will keep your secret," he said. "They believe the river spared you for a reason. They'd sooner cut out their tongues than betray you."
Aaron nodded, gratitude swelling inside him.
"And this village…" Torim continued, gesturing broadly. "We have no interest in royal politics. We are small. Quiet. Forgotten. Just the way we like it. You are safe here—for a short while."
Aaron met the elder's gaze. "You're risking everything for us."
"Bah." Torim waved a dismissive hand. "My life is nearly at its twilight. If sheltering two children invites trouble, then so be it. Better that my last years have purpose."
Aaron swallowed hard. "I don't know how to repay you."
"You will," Torim said calmly. "Not today. Not tomorrow. Perhaps not for many years. But kindness, like the river, returns to its source. Always."
Aaron looked down at Neria, at her small hand curled gently beside her face. Fragile. Precious. Alive because strangers had pulled them from the water. Alive because an old man had chosen compassion over safety.
His new life was not temporary.
His responsibility was not optional.
"You said something last night," Aaron said finally. "That the queen's tyranny grows worse each year."
Torim's expression hardened. "Yes. And it will grow worse still. Her hunger for power is a wildfire without rain."
"Why kill the prince?" Aaron asked.
Torim sighed. "Because you were in her way."
Aaron felt his pulse quicken. "I was third in line. Not even close to the throne."
Torim's gaze bore into him. "The queen fears what she cannot control. Unruly lords. Independent regions. And children with royal blood she did not birth."
Aaron's stomach twisted. "So she's hunting us until we're gone."
"Until no one exists who can challenge her," Torim corrected.
Aaron stared at his own shaking hands.
In his old world, power was subtle—corporate, economic, algorithmic. Here, it was brutal, sharp, and unrestrained.
He wasn't ready.
But he had to be.
Torim rose, leaning heavily on his cane. "Rest, Aaron Agustsa. Your body must mend before your mind can bear the burdens ahead."
Aaron watched him move toward the door, his silhouette outlined by the sunlit mist outside.
Just before stepping out, Torim paused.
"There is something different about you," he said quietly. "Your eyes hold storms I have never seen in a boy. If the gods had a hand in your survival… then perhaps they are not as silent as we feared."
Aaron didn't respond. He couldn't.
Torim nodded once, as though receiving an answer he expected, and stepped out of the hut, closing the door behind him.
Aaron sat alone with his thoughts, the tea cooling in his hands. He looked again at Neria, sleeping peacefully beside him, unaware of the horrors chasing them or the cosmic threads intertwining their fates.
He had fallen through dimensions. Died twice. Been reborn once. And now…
Now he was responsible for the life of a child who had already lost everything.
This was real. Permanent. Irrevocable.
Aaron exhaled slowly.
"I'll protect you," he murmured, more certain than he'd ever been. "I promise."