A gasp.
Not the ragged, shallow gasp of a dying old man, but a sharp, clean intake of air into lungs that felt… new. They burned with the vigor of youth, full and strong.
Kael's eyes snapped open.
He wasn't in the quarry. The air didn't taste of ash and brimstone. It was crisp, clean, and carried the scent of pine and damp earth. Above him, a canopy of colossal green leaves blotted out the sun, dappling the forest floor in an emerald twilight. A gentle hum filled the air, a thrumming, vibrant energy that felt alien and overwhelming.
He sat up, his movements shockingly fluid. He looked down at his hands. Gone were the liver spots, the gnarled knuckles, the quilt of scars. They were the hands of a boy—strong, unblemished, and utterly unfamiliar. Panic, cold and sharp, pierced the veil of his confusion. He scrambled to his feet, his body light, his balance perfect. He felt a surge of energy, a vitality he hadn't known in half a century.
He was seventeen.
The realization hit him not as a joy, but as a terrifying, cosmic joke. He frantically patted himself down. He wore the simple tunic and trousers of a village youth, not the rags of a quarry worker. He ran to a nearby stream, its water so clear he could see the mossy stones on the bottom. He stared at his reflection.
The face that stared back was his, but not his. It was the face of the boy from the quarry, the one with foolish dreams in his eyes, untouched by fifty-three years of grinding despair. The face of Kael, age seventeen.
"A dream," he whispered, his voice cracking. "A dying dream."
But the cold water he splashed on his face was real. The ache in his heart from the memory of his death—the slow, painful seizing of his lungs—was too vivid. He remembered every scar, every lost friend, every single day of his seventy years. The knowledge was a library crammed into the skull of a boy.
Days turned into a week. Kael, operating on a bizarre autopilot forged by a lifetime of survival, foraged for food and found shelter. His mind, however, was a maelstrom. He was in the Verdant Maze, the great jungle of the East. He knew this from the snippets of lore traders brought to the Valerian Empire. A world away from the Ashen Caldera. How? Why?
Was this the afterlife? A paradise for a life of suffering? The thought was almost laughable. The universe had never shown him kindness before.
The answer, the true and horrifying answer, came on the tenth day. He stumbled upon a small, isolated village built into the trunks of the massive trees. As he approached, a hunting party returned, led by a stern-faced woman with a jade pin in her hair. They dragged the carcass of a Razorvine Creeper behind them.
And Kael knew her.
Not personally. But he had seen her face before. In his previous life, a grizzled merchant in the quarry, weeping into his ale, had shown him a faded portrait. It was his daughter, who had run away from the Empire years ago to seek her fortune as a beast hunter in the Verdant Maze. He had described her jade pin in excruciating detail.
Kael felt the blood drain from his face. The merchant had told that story when Kael was forty-five. That was twenty-five years before he died. But here she was, looking exactly as she did in the portrait.
It wasn't a dream. It wasn't the afterlife. The world hadn't sent him back.
He had been sent back. To seventeen. To a different place, but the same time.
He fled into the jungle, a scream tearing from his throat. He ran until his new, powerful lungs burned and his legs gave out. He collapsed at the foot of a colossal tree, laughing. It was a broken, hysterical sound that echoed through the vibrant, living jungle.
His fate wasn't to die as dust. His fate was to relive the struggle, again and again. A new starting point, a new set of challenges, but the same powerless body, the same lack of a spiritual root. The architect of his existence, whoever or whatever it was, was not merciful. It was cruel.
His laughter subsided, replaced by a chilling silence. He had knowledge. He knew things. He knew about the Blighted Sands in the South, the Sky-Piercing Theocracy in the North. He knew of ore veins undiscovered, of political shifts years in the future, of "geniuses" who had yet to be born.
A spark ignited in the ashes of his despair. Hope.
In this life, he wouldn't be a laborer. He would use his knowledge. He remembered the merchant mentioning a rare Sunstone deposit in a cave system not three days' journey from this area. A single stone was worth a fortune, enough to live a life of comfort, to escape the grind.
He had a purpose. He would beat the system.
It took him four days to find the caves, his old-man's patience warring with his youthful vigor. He found the Sunstone, a fist-sized crystal that pulsed with a warm, gentle light. It was more magnificent than the merchant had ever described.
He was clutching his new future in his hands when the Canopy Stalker descended.
It moved with utter silence, a blur of chitin and shadow. Kael, for all his seventy years of experience, was still in the body of a seventeen-year-old who had never fought anything more dangerous than a desperate, starving man. His knowledge was useless against its speed.
He had time for a single, wide-eyed stare as claws like polished daggers ripped through his chest. The Sunstone fell from his grasp, rolling into a dark crevice.
As his lifeblood soaked into the mossy ground, his last thought was one of bitter, profound irony. He had the knowledge of an old man, but the weakness of a boy.
The world went dark.
And Kael gasped, his lungs full and strong, the scent of salt and sea breeze filling his nose. He was on a fishing boat, the sun beating down on his seventeen-year-old skin. A new place. The same cruel echo. The loop was real. And his knowledge, alone, was not enough.