Chapter 1: Dead Twice
The last thing Ethan Ashcroft wrote before he died was a sentence he never finished.
"And when the hero opened his eyes, he saw—"
The cursor blinked.
2:47 a.m.
A tiny studio apartment that smelled like instant noodles and bad decisions. Forty-three thousand words sat on his laptop. Forty-three thousand words nobody would ever read, saved on a device that would probably be sold for thirty bucks because no one bothered checking the files.Didn't matter.
The novel sucked. Ethan knew it sucked. Twelve drafts over eight years, and somehow every version was worse than the last. At this point it felt almost intentional.
He stepped outside to clear his head.
The truck came from the left.
His last thought wasn't poetic or meaningful.
I didn't even finish the chapter dam-
Then I felt nothing for while.
Then a sudden heat.
"Hey—HEY! Get up!"
Ethan gasped.
Smoke. Thick, burning smoke slammed into his lungs as he sucked in air. Heat pressed in from all sides. Someone was shouting. No—lots of people were shouting.
He was on the floor.
Stone floor.
That was wrong.
He tried to push himself up and immediately felt someone grab his arm and haul him upright.
"Move!" the man barked. "Unless you want to die here!"
"Ow—wait—what?" Ethan coughed. His shoulder screamed in protest. "Where the hell am I?"
The man dragging him didn't slow down.
He was wearing armor. Real armor. Blackened, cracked, barely holding together. Blood ran down the side of his face, drying in dark streaks.
"The east tower's gone," the soldier said, voice hoarse. "We're falling back."
"Gone?" Ethan wheezed. "Gone how?"
"Collapsed. Burned. Doesn't matter." The soldier yanked him around a corner. "Your brothers escaped through the lower passages. We just need to reach the—"
Something above them cracked.
"Shit—MOVE!"
The soldier shoved Ethan hard.
A beam slammed down between them with a thunderous crash. Stone shattered. Embers flew everywhere. Heat washed over Ethan's face like opening a furnace.
He hit the wall and slid down, barely staying on his feet.
"Hey—hey!" the soldier yelled. "You still breathing?"
Ethan nodded numbly and looked down at his hands.
They weren't his.
They were thinner. Smaller. Younger. Scarless. Calloused in the wrong places.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no…"
"What?" the soldier snapped, already reaching for him again. "You hit your head?"
Ethan stared at those hands like they might rearrange themselves if he focused hard enough.
These aren't my hands.
"Your Highness," the soldier said sharply. "Focus."
Highness?
"What did you just call me?"
The soldier blinked. "We don't have time for this."
Something stirred in Ethan's head. Not a thought—more like a memory shoved in sideways.
Fourth Prince.
Kingdom of Valdris.
Name: Ethan.
Same name.
That didn't help. That made it worse.
"I—I'm good," Ethan said automatically. His voice sounded wrong too. Higher. Younger. "I'm moving."
They ran.
Stone corridors flashed past. Fire licked the walls. His body moved like it knew exactly where it was going, even though his brain was completely lost.
"This is insane," Ethan muttered between breaths. "This is actually insane."
They burst out onto a balcony.
Cool night air hit his face, barely cutting through the smoke. Ethan bent over, coughing, trying not to throw up.
When he finally looked up—
"Oh," he said quietly.
The city below was burning.
Not chaotically. Not randomly.
It burned in patterns. Streets lit up in long lines of fire. Buildings collapsed in sequence, like something was following instructions.
But the city wasn't the worst part.
The sky was broken.
Stars were still there, but between them ran massive cracks, like shattered glass.
And behind those cracks—
Nothing.
Not darkness.
Nothing.
"The west gate's still holding," the soldier said, gripping Ethan's shoulder. "If we can get you there, maybe—"
His hand disappeared.
Ethan flinched.
"What—?"
The pressure on his shoulder was gone.
The soldier was gone.
Not falling. Not burning. Just… not there.
Ethan spun around.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Hey—where'd you go?!"
Nothing.
No scorch marks. No blood. No sound. The stone where the man had stood was clean.
Below them, the battle continued. Soldiers ran. People screamed.
No one reacted.
Ethan's heart started pounding.
"That's not…" He swallowed. "That's not normal."
Something felt wrong. Deeply wrong. Like reality had skipped a step.
Movement caught his eye.
A woman sprinted through the courtyard below. Simple clothes. No armor. A bundle clutched to her chest.
A baby.
"Don't," Ethan whispered.
The air around her shimmered, almost imperceptibly.
"Hey!" Ethan yelled, voice cracking. "RUN—JUST RUN!"
She couldn't hear him.
She reached the gate—
—and vanished.
The woman. The baby. Gone.
Ethan stared.
No one screamed. No one stopped. The gate stood empty, and the world acted like nothing had happened.
A man.
A woman.
A child.
Erased.
Ethan gripped the railing until his fingers hurt.
"Okay," he muttered. "Okay… think."
Patterns. That was his thing. Even when everything else fell apart.
The soldier vanished mid-sentence.
The woman vanished right before safety.
High-tension moments.
Critical beats.
Like scenes being deleted.
"That's messed up," he whispered. "That's really messed up."
The sky cracked again.
Wider this time.
For just a second, something appeared in the void.
Letters.
Huge. Faint. Written into nothing itself.
Two words.
Ethan read them.
His breath caught.
"…You've gotta be kidding me."
The letters vanished. The sky sealed itself. The world kept burning.
But Ethan remembered
And now he knew.
End of Chapter 1