Lila always walked a little ahead of me whenever we went to the market. She held my hand loosely, swinging it as if she were the one guiding me. We were supposed to buy vegetables and a bit of flour. The morning was simple and warm, and she kept telling me stories about school and how she wanted to make her own clothes someday. Her hair ribbon smelled faintly of lemon because she washed it every night, even when the water was cold.
I remember thinking how normal the day felt. The market noise, the smell of baked bread, her small hand gripping mine. It was the kind of morning that slips by without notice, until the last moment changes everything.
We were walking through an alley shortcut when a man stepped out from behind a crate. He looked ordinary at first, just another face in the city. But then he stared at me with a strange intensity, as if he had been waiting for me.
"You have his face," he said quietly. "I won't let you walk away."
I pushed Lila behind me. I did not understand what he meant, and I had no time to ask. The man lunged, and something inside me reacted on instinct. I struck him hard and he fell. For one second, I thought it was over.
Then pain bloomed across my side. The knife had cut deep. I grabbed the wound and felt warmth spill through my fingers. My legs weakened. Lila screamed my name and tried to push her hands against the wound with all her strength.
"Stay with me," she cried. "Please stay with me."
Her voice grew distant. My vision dimmed and brightened in uneven waves. I tried to stand but my legs no longer belonged to me. Lila's face blurred. The sky blurred. The ground felt soft and far away. The world narrowed until it was only her voice and the cold stone under my palm.
Then everything faded.
There was no pain when I opened my eyes again. There was no ground either. There was nothing.
The void was not darkness in the way shadows are dark. It was existence without shape or edge. It felt like standing inside an endless empty room that stretched forever in every direction. There was no up or down. No near or far. If the world we lived in was a painted picture, the void felt like the blank canvas beneath it.
Time did not move normally there. I could not tell if one second passed or a hundred. My thoughts felt slow, as if each one had to travel a long distance before reaching me.
A presence became clear in the emptiness. It was not a person or a creature. It felt more like a thought that had grown large enough to fill the void. When it spoke, I did not hear a voice. The meaning simply appeared inside my mind.
"You arrived earlier than expected."
I tried to speak but I had no mouth here. The presence sensed my confusion.
"This is the place between endings and beginnings," it said. "Most arrive only once. You will arrive many times."
The emptiness around me shifted. Thin glowing lines appeared, floating in the space like threads pulled from invisible cloth. Some were bright and strong. Others were weak and trembling. They stretched far into the infinity of the void without touching anything.
"These are the paths of lives," the presence explained. "Each thread belongs to a world. Each world holds a version of you."
One of the threads drew close to me. It glowed faintly. Something sharp and bright formed at its center, like a piece of broken glass made of light. It hovered near my chest.
"This shard is your anchor," the presence said. "You will carry it. When your life ends, it will pull you into another. You will continue until your thread reaches a shape none of us can predict."
I thought of Lila. I thought of her scream, her hands covered in blood. The shard pulsed softly as if it recognized her.
"You will not return to the same world," the presence continued. "Your path moves forward. Each death opens another door."
The void around me brightened. The threads stretched farther, then vanished. The presence faded like a thought drifting away.
"Go," it said. "Begin again."
The emptiness cracked open like glass struck by a hammer.
The ground beneath me felt real again. Sounds rose and blended together: people talking, wheels turning, footsteps crossing the street. I pushed myself up slowly and blinked against the sunlight.
I was standing near a market road in a town I had never seen before. Children ran past carrying small baskets. A woman shouted prices from a stall. A man hurried by with tools in his arms. Everything looked ordinary at first, yet unfamiliar in every detail.
My clothes were rough and patched. My hands were thinner than I remembered. When I touched my face, the shape felt wrong. I moved to the nearest water barrel and leaned over it.
A stranger looked back at me from the reflection.Black hair, messy and uneven.Dark brown eyes that carried exhaustion.A thin frame wearing worn-out street clothes.
This was not my body.But this was my life now.
Someone behind me called out casually. "Nev, you're up late again. Rolen will scold you if he catches you wandering."
The name hit me with surprising force.They knew me.Or rather, they knew the version of me who lived here before I arrived.
I stepped away from the barrel and looked around. Faces moved past, each belonging to people who assumed I belonged here. I did not know their routines or their rules, but I could not let that stop me. My chest tightened when I touched the lemon-scented ribbon still in my pocket.
If this world had another Nev, then it must have another Lila somewhere. Maybe older or younger or different in every way that mattered, but alive.
The thought steadied me.
I took a breath, straightened my clothes the best I could, and stepped into the street. I needed to understand this place. I needed to learn how people lived, who they were, and what dangers existed here.
Most of all, I needed to find her.
The town opened before me, filled with unfamiliar sounds and faces, and I walked forward into my new beginning, ready to learn everything this world would show me.