The morning sun filtered through floor-to-ceiling windows, painting geometric patterns across imported marble floors. Levin's alarm hadn't gone off. It never did. His mother entered precisely at 6:47 AM, as she had every morning for twenty-four years, drawing back curtains with mechanical efficiency.
"Up. Your father wants you in the study by seven-thirty."
No good morning. No warmth. Just instructions.
Levin stared at the ceiling, counting the recessed lights. Twelve. Same as yesterday. Same as tomorrow. The thought made his chest tight.
"Levin." Her voice sharpened. "Don't make me repeat myself."
He sat up, joints protesting. The prescribed workout routine his father demanded left him perpetually sore. Not strong, just exhausted. Everything they wanted him to be felt like wearing a suit tailored for someone else.
The shower ran cold then scalding, never the temperature he wanted. Even the water in this house refused to compromise.
Downstairs, breakfast waited on bone china. Poached eggs, wheat toast, precisely measured portions approved by the nutritionist his parents kept on retainer. Levin hadn't chosen his own meal in years.
His father sat at the head of the table, newspaper crisp in his hands, eyes scanning stock reports. The patriarch of the Cortez Empire. Builder of dynasties. Consumer of sons.
"We have the meeting with the Ashford family tonight," his father said without looking up. "Wear the charcoal suit. Second drawer."
Levin's fork paused halfway to his mouth. "What meeting?"
"Don't play stupid. With their daughter. Sophia. Lovely girl, excellent pedigree, studied at Oxford. Her father and I have already discussed the arrangement."
The eggs turned to paste in his mouth.
"Arrangement."
"Yes. You'll court her properly for six months, engagement by spring, wedding next fall. We've scheduled it between the Singapore expansion and the Tokyo merger. It fits perfectly."
His mother added cream to her coffee with practiced precision. "She's quite beautiful, Levin. You should be grateful. Some men never find suitable matches."
"Suitable." The word tasted like poison.
"Is there a problem?" His father's eyes finally lifted from the paper. Cold. Calculating. The same eyes that evaluated quarterly reports and failing investments.
Levin wanted to scream. Wanted to flip the table, shatter the china, burn the newspaper, destroy every perfectly ordered thing in this suffocating tomb of a house. Instead, he set down his fork.
"No, sir."
"Good. Seven PM. Don't be late."
The study session with his father lasted three hours. Projections. Market analysis. The systematic dissection of everything Levin would inherit and manage and optimize. His father spoke of the future like Levin was already dead, just a placeholder for the next generation of Cortez control.
"You'll need to think about children early," his father said, adjusting his reading glasses. "Three, preferably. Two sons minimum to ensure succession. Your mother and I have already consulted with specialists. If Sophia proves... unsuitable for childbearing, we have contingencies."
Something cracked inside Levin's chest. A sound like ice breaking over deep water.
"How many children."
"Three. Perhaps four if the first is a daughter. The genetic counselor suggested..."
The words faded into static. Levin stared at his father's mouth moving, shaping words about heirs and bloodlines and legacy, planning out the lives of children who didn't exist, wouldn't exist, couldn't exist because Levin could barely breathe in his own skin, let alone pass this curse to another generation.
They had his entire life mapped. Birth to death. Every milestone. Every choice. Every breath regulated and optimized and controlled.
He stood abruptly, chair scraping against hardwood.
"Levin, we're not finished."
But he was. Levin was so desperately finished.
He walked. Out of the study. Through the foyer. Past the portraits of dead Cortez ancestors who'd probably been just as miserable. Past his mother arranging flowers with obsessive precision. Past everything.
"Where are you going?" she called. "You have your etiquette review in twenty minutes!"
He didn't answer. His legs moved on autopilot, carrying him through the front door, down the circular driveway, onto the manicured sidewalk that led toward the city center. He wore house slippers. Didn't care.
The sun climbed higher, indifferent to his unraveling. People passed him on the street, their lives full of chaos and choice and beautiful uncertainty. Things he'd never have.
His phone buzzed. Ignored.
Buzzed again. Ignored.
Seventeen missed calls by the time he reached the bridge.
The Riverside Crossing stretched over the Meridian, a churning expanse of gray water that flowed from the northern mountains down to the sea. Beautiful, people said. Majestic. Levin just saw escape.
He climbed onto the pedestrian walkway, legs shaking. Not from fear. From relief. From the first real choice he'd made in twenty-four years.
His phone rang again. He pulled it out, saw his father's name, and threw it into the water below. Watched it disappear into the current.
Thud. Splash.
Freedom sounded like breaking glass.
People were starting to notice now. A woman with a stroller stopped, hand over mouth. A jogger slowed, recognition flickering across his face. That's him. The Cortez heir. What's he doing?
Levin climbed onto the railing. Metal bit into his palms. The wind tugged at his clothes, whispering promises of weightlessness.
"Hey! Stop!"
Footsteps pounded behind him. Someone shouting for police. A small crowd forming like spectators at an execution. His execution. Finally, an event he'd planned himself.
He looked down at the water. Fifty feet, maybe sixty. Enough. More than enough.
His chest filled with something that might have been peace or might have been the absence of everything else. Either way, it felt better than another day in that house.
"Son, please! Just talk to us!"
But there was nothing to say. No words could untangle twenty-four years of suffocation. No explanation would satisfy people who thought control was love.
Levin spread his arms.
For the first time in his life, he smiled.
And jumped.
The fall lasted forever and no time at all. Wind screamed past his ears, the world a blur of gray sky and darker water. People's shouts faded into nothing. Gravity embraced him like an old friend.
Impact.
The water hit like concrete. Cold punched through his body, crushing the air from his lungs. The current seized him immediately, dragging him under with hungry fingers. Down. Down into murky depths where sunlight couldn't reach.
He could swim. Champion swimmer, actually. Three years on the varsity team because his father said it built character and looked good on applications. Levin could slice through water like a blade, powerful and precise.
He let himself sink instead.
His lungs began to burn. Old instincts screamed at him to kick, to surface, to survive. He ignored them. This was his choice. His decision. The first thing in his entire existence that belonged only to him.
The water grew darker. Colder. His body begged for air, every cell rioting against his decision. But Levin held firm. Held still. Let the current take him deeper into the Meridian's embrace.
His vision started to tunnel. Black creeping in from the edges. Strange how peaceful it felt. How quiet. No voices telling him what to do, who to be, how to live.
Just silence.
His mouth opened involuntarily. Water rushed in. Filled his lungs. The burning intensified for one horrible moment, then faded.
Everything faded.
The darkness swallowed him completely.
And then...
Nothing.
Absence.
A void without thought or sensation or time.
Until...
Warmth.
Distant. Growing closer.
Light bleeding through the darkness like dawn through heavy curtains.
Sensation returning in fragments. Softness beneath him. Weight on his chest. The feeling of lungs that worked, a heart that beat, a body that breathed.
Levin's eyes opened.
Unfamiliar ceiling. Vaulted and grand, painted with celestial murals of stars and constellations he didn't recognize. Intricate moldings traced the edges where wall met ceiling, gilded and gleaming. Silk curtains the color of deep sapphire framed towering windows, their fabric catching light like water.
He sat up slowly, head spinning. The bed beneath him was enormous, canopied with carved posts that spiraled toward the ceiling like frozen flames. Sheets softer than anything he'd ever touched, embroidered with symbols that seemed to shimmer when he looked directly at them.
He looked down at hands that weren't his. Smaller. Younger. Calloused in different places. Scarred.
The room sprawled around him like a palace chamber. Polished floors reflected the light from those impossible windows. Furniture carved from dark wood, inlaid with mother of pearl. Tapestries depicting battles and ceremonies hung on stone walls that spoke of age and power.
Through the windows, an alien sky. A single moon hung visible even in daylight, pale and luminous against blue that seemed deeper than any he'd known. Impossible.
This wasn't the Meridian. Wasn't the afterlife. Wasn't Earth.
Confusion gave way to a single, crystal clear realization.
He had died.
And somehow, impossibly, he lived again.
This is the story of the Renegade Star.