When James Adler opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the ceiling. Not his ceiling. It was mottled beige with a crack shaped like a question mark, and a flickering light bulb dangled from the center like it was trying to hypnotize him into accepting a lie.
His head hurt. His body felt wrong—too light, too small.
Then the memories hit him.
He wasn't in his small room in Camden anymore.
He sat up sharply, heart pounding in a body far too weak for panic. His hands were tiny. Child's hands.
"What the hell," he whispered in a voice that cracked like glass. He scrambled to a dirty mirror nailed to the wall.
A 10-year-old boy stared back at him, with unruly dark hair and frightened hazel eyes. Definitely not James Adler—at least not the 16-year-old pc nerd who fell asleep reading a novel at 2 a.m.
Before he could spiral further, something clicked in his mind—like a notification going off silently inside his skull.
And then he saw it.
Not with his eyes, but with his mind.
A book.
A glowing, ancient tome floated in the space behind his thoughts. Bound in dark green leather, its pages shimmered like heat waves. On the spine were gold letters that read:
"The Book of Lived Time"
With a mix of fear and wonder, James touched it mentally. The cover creaked open, and the first page read:
Welcome, Reader.
You have reincarnated to live a new life.
You may alter it—but only in ways that do not contradict your own memory since arriving in this world.
You remember someone dying? They must still die as you remembered.
You remember someone succeeding? They still must succeed.
This is the price of consistency. This is the law of Lived Time.
James blinked, stunned. He tried flipping to the next page.
Tools Available:
— Temporal Nudging (Subtle Influence)
— Anchored Event Tracking
— Self-Modification
Note: All changes must preserve causality. You cannot change what you know to be true in this world.
As if on cue, a sudden knock came at the door. A matron's voice barked through:
"Jonathan! Breakfast!"
He paused. Jonathan?
He looked around. On the bed next to his was a tattered name tag from a church donation box.
Jonathan Doyle
Age: 10
Resident since: 1988
No known family.
So this was him now. Jonathan Doyle in 1990 London.
Jonathan—sat down slowly.
This wasn't just a second chance. It was a structured one. A game with rules. A time-travel puzzle bound by memory and paradox.
And he could make something big coming. He knew it. His hands trembled with the weight of it.
After all… wasn't 1990 the year before Harry Potter went to Hogwarts in a fantasy book he was familiar with? Could he make it real?