It had been several months since the suffering began.
I was just thirteen years old when I watched my village get raided by slave traders. Fellow humans. That was the worst part. They looked like us. Spoke like us. But inside, they were more rotten than any of the other races I had heard about in stories.
I have seen things that a normal young boy should not see. Things that burned themselves into my mind. And each time I close my eyes, the images return.
My mother's face. Tortured. Then dragged into that room by several of them. Her cries for help. Her screams. The sounds she made when the screaming stopped.
Each time this scene repeats inside my head, my helplessness reaches its peak. I try to move forward in the memory. Try to do something. Anything. But my body refuses to obey. Frozen. Useless. While they do those things to her.
It was torturous to see. The faces of villagers who tried to resist. Dragged away. Killed. Hanged over poles as warnings to the rest of us.
I could not sleep properly after that. The trauma sat inside my chest like a stone. Heavy. Cold. Crushing.
But with time, I felt something new growing in the darkness. Something worse than the memories. A darkness like I had never known before. It whispered to me. Made me feel like I was going crazy. And I was barely holding it off.
The darkness wanted me to let go. To stop fighting. To just disappear into it.
And in that darkness, in my dreams, I started seeing other things. Fragments. Pieces of memories that did not belong to me. Or did they?
Memories of two other lives I had supposedly lived before.
At first, I thought I was going insane. The trauma breaking my mind. Creating false memories to escape the real ones.
But then the fever came.
---
Fire consumed my body from the inside out.
Every breath felt like inhaling molten glass. My skin burned with fever so intense that even the rough wooden floor of the cage felt like ice against my cheek. Somewhere in the delirium, I heard voices. Distant and distorted, as if speaking through water.
This one is done for. Waste of medicine.
Check him anyway. Captain does not like losing inventory.
Inventory. The word drifted through my consciousness like smoke. That is what I was now. Not a person. Not even a slave. Just inventory, tracked and counted like grain sacks or livestock.
Then I felt hands on me. Rough and calloused. My eyes cracked open to a nightmare.
An old man's face loomed inches from mine. So close I could see every crack in his sun weathered skin, every yellowed tooth in his mouth. He was chewing something, his jaw working methodically, and as he chewed, his saliva turned a sickly green color. The liquid pooled at the corner of his cracked lips.
My fevered brain screamed at me to move. To push him away. But my body refused to obey.
Just like before. Just like with mother. Helpless. Again.
The old man leaned closer. Then he spat the green mixture into his gnarled palm.
No... The protest came out as barely a whisper, lost in the sound of my own labored breathing.
He ignored me. His fingers, stained with decades of dirt and work, smeared the green paste across my forehead. The smell hit me immediately. Bitter. Organic. Putrid. My stomach heaved, but there was nothing in it to expel. I had not been given food for two days, maybe three. Time had lost meaning in the fever.
Old man, hurry! Another voice hissed from somewhere behind him. The guards are doing their sweep. If they catch you wasting medicine on dead weight, they will take it out of all our rations.
He is not dead yet. The old man's voice was low, almost gentle, as he worked the paste into my skin. His fingers moved across my bare chest, spreading the mixture with surprising care. If his fever does not break by morning, then he is gone. But this one... he is stronger than he looks.
The paste began working almost immediately. The cool sensation spread from where he had applied it, seeping into my inflamed skin.
But I barely noticed. Because the fever was dragging me down. Deeper. Into that darkness I had been fighting for months.
And this time, I could not hold it off.
The world went dark. I fell into a void where dreams and memories twisted together into something I could not distinguish from reality.
---
I was traveling. Not with my body. With my mind. Through memories that should not exist.
The fever left me in a dream-like state. Consciousness fragmenting. Scattering across impossibilities.
One moment I was somewhere else. Somewhere with a single moon in the sky. A world called... Earth? The word felt familiar and foreign at once.
I saw a city. Massive towers of metal and glass. Strange carriages without horses moving along paved roads. Lights everywhere. So many lights.
And I was inside a building. A room with walls of glass overlooking the city. Men in strange clothes sat around a table. Their faces sharp. Calculating.
They were listening to someone speak. Listening to me.
Words came from my mouth. Words I half understood and half did not. Next innovation. Pharmaceutical. Quarterly projections. Patent acquisitions.
The language was familiar. The concepts danced just beyond my grasp. Like trying to remember a dream after waking.
Who was I in this memory? A man named... the name slipped away before I could grasp it. Someone important. Someone these men feared and respected.
New Jersey. The words surfaced from nowhere. CEO. Pharmaceutical company. Next Innovation.
The fragments would not connect. Would not stay still long enough to understand.
Then the scene shattered.
---
New images flooded in. Overlapping. Chaotic.
I stood in a different place now. A laboratory. But not like any workshop I had ever seen. The equipment gleamed with impossible sophistication. Surfaces so smooth they reflected like water. Devices that hummed with power I could not name.
Through windows, I saw a sky with three moons. Three moons. That was wrong. But also right somehow.
This was not Earth. This was somewhere else. Somewhen else.
A world called Nova. The name resonated through my fragmenting consciousness. Capital planet of something called the Ramus Civilization.
And I was... who? Dr. Surya Raman. Lead researcher in something I could not quite grasp. Quantum biological systems. The words meant something. Stirred recognition. But the meaning slipped away like smoke.
Voices echoed around me. People in strange uniforms speaking with deference.
Dr. Raman, the results are conclusive.
My mouth moved. Speaking words I did not choose. Excellent. Prepare the next phase. We are going to change everything.
But I did not understand what I was saying. Did not understand what any of it meant.
The laboratory. The equipment. The three moons. All of it felt real and unreal at once.
Had I lived this? Or was the fever making me insane?
---
More fragments crashed in. Faster now. Too fast to process.
Boardrooms and laboratories. Streets I had never walked. Faces I knew and did not know. Lives I had lived and never lived.
Earth and Nova. Two different worlds. Two different lives. Both mine. Neither mine.
Knowledge poured into me like water through a cracked vessel. Most of it spilling out immediately. But some remained. Settling into gaps in my fevered mind.
Compounds. Systems. Strategies. Principles.
None of it made sense. All of it felt true.
Then the memories twisted. The fever dreams mixed with real trauma.
My mother's face. Then it shifted. Became someone else. Another woman. Older. Different features. Speaking a different language. But the same love in her eyes.
Who was she? Had I known her in one of these other lives?
The memories would not stay still. Earth and Nova and my village. All bleeding together. All fragmenting further with each heartbeat.
I was losing myself. Dissolving. The fever consuming me. The darkness growing.
And beneath it all, an intense headache. Not physical. Deeper. As if my mind was being torn apart and reassembled wrong.
The fragmentation continued. Pieces of different lives scattering across my burning consciousness like shattered glass.
I could not tell which memories were real. Which were fever dreams. Which were madness.
Was I Surya, the thirteen year old slave? Was I someone from Earth? Someone from Nova? All three? None of them?
The darkness whispered again. Louder now. More insistent.
Let go. Stop fighting. It will be easier.
But that stubborn core of self refused. Clinging to existence even when existence was agony.
No. Not yet.
---
Time lost meaning. The fever raged. The fragmented memories continued their chaotic dance.
Then, slowly, the darkness began to recede.
The fever's grip loosened. Just slightly. Just enough.
I became aware of the old man's face again. Still close. Still rubbing that green paste across my body. His expression focused. Concerned.
The paste smelled terrible. Felt terrible. But it was working. Drawing the fever out somehow.
I tried to speak. To ask what was happening. But my throat was too raw. My voice too weak.
The old man seemed to sense I was conscious again. His weathered face softened slightly.
Rest, boy. The fever will break. You are strong. Stronger than you know.
But I did not feel strong. I felt shattered. Broken into pieces that no longer fit together properly.
The memories from Earth and Nova still swirled in my mind. Mixing with my real memories. With the trauma of my mother. With the horror of the village raid.
I did not understand any of it. Could not make sense of the fragments.
But one thing was clear. One terrible truth that cut through the confusion.
I was still alive. Still trapped in this cage. Still heading toward Moon Night City where Rakshasa nobles waited to feast on young flesh.
And whether those other memories were real or fever dreams or madness did not matter right now.
Because survival came first. Understanding could come later.
If I lived long enough for later to matter.
---
When I finally woke again, everything had changed.
The fever had broken, leaving me weak and hollow but clear headed for the first time in days. My hands were bound with rough rope, the fibers cutting into my wrists. Someone had propped me up against the wooden bars of a cage. I could see my surroundings properly now.
The cage was packed with bodies. Two dozen young men and women, maybe more, crammed into a space meant for half that number. Some were chained. Others, like me, were bound with rope. Their clothes were rags, barely covering skeletal frames marked with bruises and scars. The kind of despair that settled into bones and refused to leave.
A girl sat across from me. Could not have been more than sixteen. Fresh burn marks spiraled up both her arms in deliberate patterns. Someone had done that to her slowly. Carefully. Taking their time to create art from her agony.
The sight should have made me sick. Instead, I felt rage. Hot and visceral, burning in my chest with an intensity that felt foreign. Wrong. As if the emotion belonged to someone else.
But it was mine. I was Surya. A thirteen year old boy captured by slave traders three months ago. Torn from his village. From his mother's arms. From everything he had ever known.
Except... that was not quite right, was it?
The fever memories pressed against my consciousness. Demanding attention. Two lifetimes that should not exist. Earth and Nova. Pharmaceutical companies and quantum research. Knowledge I had never learned. Experiences from worlds I had never visited.
Were they real? Hallucinations? Some kind of awakening brought on by trauma and fever?
I did not know. The memories were too fragmented. Too mixed with dreams and delirium. Too impossible to be true.
But they felt real. As real as the rope cutting into my wrists.
I pushed the confusion aside. Survival first. Understanding could come later.
The cage wagon lurched into motion. Wheels creaking and groaning beneath the weight of human cargo. We moved along what must have been a forest road, though I could see little through the bars. Just glimpses of dense trees and filtered sunlight.
Then real memories surfaced. Not fever dreams. Actual events from this body, from this life.
Three days ago, I had been awake in the darkness of the cage. Pretending to be asleep while the guards talked nearby. They had thought the fever had claimed me already. That I was too far gone to understand their words. They had been careless.
Moon Night City flesh traders are paying premium this season, one had said. His voice casual, discussing our lives like commodity prices. Some Rakshasa noble is hosting a coming of age banquet. Wants young stock. Fresh and tender.
What do Rakshasa eat at coming of age banquets? the other had asked.
There had been a pause. Then laughter. Dark and cruel. What do you think? Why else would they want them young and scared? Fear makes the meat sweeter, or so I have heard.
I had felt my whole body start to shiver then. Understanding exactly what awaited us. The terror had been so complete, so overwhelming, that my mind had retreated to the only safe place it knew. Memories of my mother. Her gentle voice calling my name. Surya, my little sun. Her hands stroking my hair. Her smile that made everything seem bearable.
The memory had broken something inside me. I had started to sob. Quietly at first, then louder as the grief consumed me.
The guards had heard.
The tall one, all muscle and meanness, had walked over to my cage. Wide smile showing too many teeth. Kid needs some reminding to stay quiet.
I had only seen his fist coming toward my face. Then darkness.
Now, remembering it all, I felt that rage again. But beneath it, something colder. More calculating. A voice in my head that sounded like me but also did not. Speaking with the experience of lifetimes I should not possess.
They think you are weak. They think you are prey. Use that. Let them underestimate you. Gather information. Wait for opportunity. Strike when they least expect it.
The thoughts were so clear, so strategic, that they frightened me almost as much as the memories of other lives.
The wagon lurched again. Harder this time, hitting a rut in the road. I was thrown forward, off balance, heading for the wooden floor face first.
A hand caught me.
The young man beside me steadied me without a word. Early twenties with sharp features and kind eyes. He set me back against the bars gently, then turned away as if nothing had happened. As if helping another prisoner was so natural it required no acknowledgment.
I wanted to thank him, but the words stuck in my throat. In this place, even kindness felt dangerous. Drawing attention to it might make the guards take it away.
The wagon continued for hours. The sun crawled across the sky, visible only in brief flashes through the gaps in the cage covering. My throat was parched. My stomach hollow with hunger. But I had learned to ignore both. Everyone in this cage had learned to ignore their body's demands. It was that or go mad.
Though I suspected I might already be mad. The fragments of Earth and Nova still swirled in my mind. Mixing with present horror until I could not tell what was memory and what was dream and what was simply the darkness eating away at my sanity.
Finally, as the sun began to sink toward the horizon, the wagon ground to a halt.
Disembark! a guard's voice rang out, sharp as a whip crack. Set up camp! We are staying here tonight!
The cage door was wrenched open with a shriek of rusted hinges. One by one, guards hauled us out into the fading light. My legs nearly gave out when my feet hit solid ground. Three days of fever had stolen whatever strength I had left.
The cool evening air bit through my rags. I started shivering immediately. My weakened body unable to generate enough heat. But even through the cold and exhaustion, I forced myself to observe. To catalog every detail.
We were in a forest clearing. Surrounded by ancient trees that loomed like silent watchers. The canopy was so thick overhead that only scattered beams of light penetrated to the forest floor. The air smelled of earth and decay. Of things growing and dying in the endless cycle of nature.
Guards moved through our group with practiced efficiency. Unlocking chains. Cutting ropes. My wrists were freed, and I rubbed at the raw skin where the rope had cut deep grooves.
Gather firewood, one guard commanded, gesturing toward the treeline. He was younger than the others. Probably new to this work. But his hand rested on his sword with easy confidence. Stay within sight of the clearing. Anyone who tries to run... He smiled, and it was worse than any threat. Well. You all know what happens to runners.
We did know. We had all seen it.
In the first week of my captivity, a young man had tried to flee during a wood gathering detail. Maybe seventeen. Fast, lean and desperate. He had made it nearly fifty meters into the forest before the guard had moved.
I had never seen anything like it. One moment the guard was standing still. The next, he was behind the runner. Sword already drawn. The blade had passed through the young man's torso so smoothly it seemed almost gentle. The body had fallen in two pieces, blood pooling in the dirt while the guard cleaned his sword with casual indifference.
Practitioners, someone had whispered beside me that day. They have awakened their Blood Rings. They are not human anymore. Not really.
The memory kept me rooted in place as the guards herded us toward the forest edge. Whatever these practitioners were, whatever power they wielded, it was so far beyond normal human capability that escape was suicide.
I shuffled forward with the others. Keeping my head down. My movements slow and unthreatening. The young man who had caught me earlier appeared at my side, his arms already full of fallen branches.
Do not wander far, he said quietly, barely moving his lips. And do not look them in the eye. I have noticed they pay special attention to the ones who show too much spirit.
I nodded, absorbing the advice. This man had survived long enough to learn the patterns. To understand the unspoken rules. That made his knowledge valuable.
As I bent to gather deadfall branches, my mind continued working. Analyzing. The guards rotated their watch in four hour shifts. There were twelve total, from what I had counted. Captain and two vice captains, all clearly higher ranked practitioners based on the deference the others showed them. The remaining nine were lower ranked. Though still impossibly dangerous by normal standards.
The old man's medicine had saved me. But why? Not out of kindness. He had said it himself. Loss of inventory means less food for all of us. We were incentivized to keep each other alive. To maintain our value as merchandise.
The thought made me want to scream. Or laugh. Or both.
Instead, I gathered wood. My hands working while my mind raced through fragments of impossible memories and very real present danger.
Somewhere in the confusion of those fever dreams, in the impossible knowledge of Earth and Nova, there had to be something useful. Some advantage I could leverage.
If those memories were even real. If I was not simply going insane.
But that was a problem for later. Right now, I needed to survive. To recover my strength. To wait.
Night fell quickly in the forest. Guards retreated to their canvas tents once we were secured back in the wagon. Leaving only a rotating patrol to watch us. In the relative darkness, some of my fellow captives dared to whisper.
Three more days to Moon Night City, I heard.
My sister was sold there last year. Never heard from her again.
Rakshasa prefer them young. Tender.
The whispers spread despair like a plague. I tuned them out. Focusing instead on the simple act of breathing. Of existing. Of refusing to break.
Surya.
I turned toward the voice. The young man who had caught me, who had warned me in the forest, was looking at me with concern.
Are you alright? he asked quietly. You have been staring at nothing for an hour.
I am... I paused, unsure how to answer. Was I alright? I had fever dreams of impossible lives. Knowledge that should not exist in my head. A burning determination that felt too old for my thirteen year old body. I am fine, Brother Richard.
His name had come to me from memories I had absorbed during the fever. Richard. One of the few in this hell who still acted human.
I thought you would not make it, he admitted. His voice tight. When the fever took you, I thought... He clenched his fist, knuckles turning white. I am glad you are still here, little brother. We are going to escape from this place. Somehow. I promise.
The conviction in his voice was painful to hear. He actually believed it.
From his ragged pocket, he pulled out a small loaf of bread. Our daily ration. Saved at who knew what cost to his own empty stomach.
Eat this, he said, pressing it into my hands. You need energy to recover.
I stared at the bread, then at him. Brother, you have not eaten today.
I am stronger. You need it more.
We argued in fierce whispers until finally compromising. I broke the loaf in half with trembling fingers. We shared it in silence. The bread was stale and hard, scraping down my throat with difficulty. But I forced myself to chew slowly. Methodically. This body needed calories. Needed strength.
As I swallowed the last piece, Richard squeezed my shoulder once. Then settled against the wagon floor to sleep.
Around us, quiet sobs mixed with whispered prayers. The soundtrack of despair that filled every night in this mobile prison.
But I did not pray. And I did not cry.
Instead, I closed my eyes and let my mind drift through the impossible fragments. Earth and Nova. Pharmaceutical knowledge and quantum research. Two lifetimes that might be real or might be madness.
The pieces did not fit together yet. But they would. I would make them fit.
Because I had realized something crucial as the fever broke and clarity returned.
Real or not, those memories gave me something the others did not have. Knowledge. Perspective. A different way of thinking.
And in a world where strength was the only currency that mattered, any advantage could mean the difference between life and death.
The slave traders thought they owned me. The Rakshasa nobles thought they would be dining on my flesh in three days. This world thought I was weak. Thought I was prey.
They were all wrong.
I would survive this. And when I did, when I escaped and gained my freedom, I would make sure this world understood exactly what happened when you underestimated someone who might have already died twice.
The guards would learn. The nobles would learn. This entire rotten system would learn.
But first, I needed to live through the next three days.
First, I needed to survive.
---
End of Chapter 1