Reboot Complete!
....
Fire was the first thing I felt.
Not its heat.
But its weight.
Like the world had decided to lie on top of me. I felt Pressed, I felt smothered. It dug into my skin before I even remembered I had skin.
I opened my eyes.
Or maybe they opened on their own.
The world came back in violent fragments—blurred orange, smoke, cracking wood. A ceiling collapsing in slow motion above me.
A burning house.
I was lying on the floor, half-buried under debris, my breath ragged, my chest refusing to rise properly. Every inhale scraped through my lungs like sandpaper.
Something else cut through the crackling flames.
Clang!
Steel slamming against steel.
Screams.
It was a battle. No—a massacre. I could hear the rhythm in it. Desperation, chaos, people running for their lives, not fighting to win.
I blinked again, as my vision sharpened through the haze.
Voices shouted outside the burning walls, their words sharp and guttural, a language I couldn't make sense of. Nothing familiar. Nothing I'd ever heard.
My head pounded.
I tried to move—just a twitch, a stretch, anything—but my body wouldn't obey. My fingers felt like stone. My legs weren't even legs, just weight attached to me. I was trapped in this body.
"How the hell…" I whispered, or thought I did. My throat hurt too much for any sound to escape.
The last thing I remembered…
A face.
Red hair. Flowing. Beautiful in a way that made my stomach twist, as I felt a strange rage towards that face.
I didn't know why?
I wished I did.
But my memory just feels hazy.
Then,
Everything crashed into me at once.
A tidal wave of sensation, suffocating, overwhelming, real, as my memory surged, shattering the haze.
A light. Not just a light, as it was a contained glow, smooth glass and bright icons, a tool. I knew what it was called.
Phone.
It was my Phone.
Then, the sensations sharpened, as a fleeting image solidified: a young girl, small hands held out, laughing—a brilliant, innocent smile directed at me. The warmth of that sight triggered another domino: words on a screen, endless scrolling paragraphs of adventure and romance.
A webnovel.
Then the recognition, cold and precise, dropped into the center of my being.
A name.
Arthur.
Not just a name, but an identity. A life lived. The phone, the girl, the novel, the fire, the weight... the truth of the world I'd left and the world I was now in.
I remembered everything.
I died.
I was executed.
Cut clean in half.
Light swallowing me whole.
The void swallowing what was left.
"How long…?" My mind tried to piece it together through the ringing in my head. "Five years? Eight? Ten? Twenty?"
There was no answer.
Only the flames snapping closer.
My new body—if this was new—felt wrong. Unused. Numb. As if I had been molded into it seconds ago and the soul hadn't finished setting.
How does someone walk after being bodiless for so long?
But if I was here…
If I was breathing again…
Then someone, something, actually gave me the second chance I begged for.
BASH!!
Then,
A door was kicked open.
A woman screamed somewhere in the house. Then another scream—smaller, higher—
It was a baby.
I couldn't be mistaken.
The sound cut straight through the smoke, raw and terrified. My heartbeat lurched, reacting before my mind did.
I forced my head up, lifting it inch by agonizing inch toward the burning doorway.
And I saw them.
Men clad in silver armor storming through the collapsing hall. Their swords flashed red with firelight each time they swung. People ran—women clutching infants, old men dragging children, but the soldiers cut them down without hesitation.
Bodies fell like broken branches.
Every single one of them… had white hair.
Long. Short. Braided. Loose. Didn't matter.
White-haired?
So the soldiers weren't fighting a war.
They were cleaning something out.
An extermination.
"What… the hell…" The words felt thick on my tongue.
A body toppled in front of the doorway, blood spraying across the burning wood. A woman collapsed beside it, still holding her child even as her strength gave out. The silver soldiers didn't stop. Their blades struck without mercy.
The baby's crying became a piercing scream—
And then—
My skull split open.
It felt like a spike had been hammered into the center of my brain. My vision tore itself into static. The world tilted sideways.
The pain—
It didn't feel human.
It felt like something old, something buried deep in me, had been yanked awake all at once.
"AA—AHHHHHHHHH!"
I screamed.
Not because I wanted to.
Because my body had no choice.
My head felt like it would burst open. Memories slammed into me—faces I didn't know, people I'd never met, a name whispered by an old woman under a tree, the echo of another life clawing its way up my throat.
The fire flickered.
The screams outside faded.
And all I could do—
Was scream louder.
But that wasn't something I should've done.
It only made things worse. My screams echoed through the burning room, and the soldiers turned toward me. One after another, they advanced with the same killing intent they'd shown while butchering those white-haired people outside.
Then,
My gaze caught something.
White hair lay against my cheek.
Long strands, singed at the tips, stuck to the sweat on my temple.
I touched it with trembling fingers and felt it—coarse and real.
Fuck.
It could only mean one thing.
I was one of them.
I was a target.
I wasn't just in any stranger's body, I was in the body of one of them.
White hair.
Marked for slaughter.
And death faced me again.
Again.
Fate.
Was that all I was meant for? Death on repeat?
I would not die like this.
I would not be the thing the story expected.
Then, I dug my nails into the charred floor and pushed, as pain screamed up my arms, hot and bright. Something inside me clenched and refused to let go.
Move.
One inch. Two.
It was awful, slow, like forcing movement through something that was meant to be very slow.
A soldier's shadow fell over the doorway, then another, then more.
They spread out, as they scanned the room.
My breath came in shallow, ragged bursts, as I spat blood and smoke.
"You there," one of them said.
.
.
Fate.
I wasn't going to let it win. Not again.
But I guess I was all talk in the end.
I shut my eyes.
And this time, I did what I regretted before.
I accepted it.
Was my second chance already gone?
Think again.
Clang!
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[A/N:] My fellow readers, trust me on this, I'm cooking something in here. (｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝ ♨