Darkness.
Not the darkness of closed eyes or a moonless night. This was absolute—a void that swallowed everything.
John Parker floated in nothing.
Where—?
Memory crashed over him. The screech of tires. Headlights blazing through his windshield. Metal crushing metal. And in that final second before impact, Sarah's face flashed through his mind—her smile that morning, the way she'd kissed him goodbye, completely unaware it was the last time.
No. Sarah—
Rage and desperation tore through him. Not rage at death itself, but at being ripped away from her. At leaving her alone. At a future stolen before it began.
I can't leave her. I can't—
PAIN.
It slammed into him like a spear through his ribs. Real. Physical. Agonizing.
John's eyes snapped open.
Blue sky. The smell of salt and smoke. The creak of wood beneath him. He tried to sit up and agony exploded across his torso—a deep gash running along his left side, blood pooling beneath him.
What the hell—?
His hand moved to the wound and he froze. That wasn't his hand. Too small. A child's hand.
Panic clawed at his throat. He forced himself up on one elbow, ignoring the screaming pain, and looked down at himself.
A child's body. Maybe seven or eight years old. Wearing a torn red cloak and leather armor, both soaked in blood.
This isn't possible. This isn't—
He looked around wildly. He was on a boat—no, a ship, ancient-looking, with a single mast. The deck was scorched and splintered. And there were bodies. Men in bronze armor, their shields bearing a lambda symbol, lying in pools of dried blood.
And other bodies. Dozens of them. Men in different armor, foreign-looking, scattered across the deck like fallen leaves.
A battlefield. This is a battlefield.
{ DING }
A sound chimed inside his skull, and John flinched.
A translucent blue screen materialized in his vision, glowing text scrolling across it.
{ CONNECTING TO HOST... }
{ 1%... 10%... 50%... 99%... 100% }
{ CONNECTION COMPLETE }
{ THE ULTIMATE SUMMON SYSTEM HAS BEEN INITIALIZED }
John stared at the impossible screen floating in front of him, his mind struggling to process anything through the pain, the confusion, the sheer wrongness of everything.
"What..." His voice came out high and young, not his own. "What is this?"
{ HELLO, HOST. TO BEGIN, PLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME: _________________ }
"I don't—" John stopped. His breath came in ragged gasps. Blood loss was making him dizzy. "I don't understand. Where am I? What happened to—"
He looked down at the child's body he was inhabiting. At the wound that was slowly killing him. At the dead warriors surrounding him.
How did this child end up here?
THREE HOURS EARLIER
The ship cut through the waves, its red sail snapping in the wind. Prince Leonidas huddled beneath the deck, his small hands gripping the hilt of a training sword he barely knew how to use. Above him, he could hear his bodyguards' voices—tense, urgent.
"How many ships?" Captain Dienekes demanded.
"Three. Persian war galleys. They're gaining on us."
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the creak of wood and crash of waves.
"We cannot outrun them," another voice said—Aristodemus, the youngest of the guards, barely twenty years old. "Not with this wind."
"Then we don't run." Captain Dienekes' voice was iron. "We protect the prince. That is all that matters. Sparta needs an heir."
Footsteps thundered above. Leonidas pressed himself against the wooden hull, his heart hammering. He'd seen seven summers, trained since he could walk, but nothing had prepared him for this. For running. For hiding. For the fear that tasted like copper in his mouth.
His father—King Kleomenes—had sent him away three days ago when the Persian army breached Sparta's outer defenses. "Live," his father had commanded, gripping his small shoulders. "Live, and one day reclaim what is ours."
But now, even escape seemed impossible.
CRASH.
The ship lurched violently. Leonidas tumbled across the deck, his shoulder slamming into a wooden beam. Grappling hooks bit into the rails above, and through the gaps in the floorboards, he saw shadows—dozens of them—swarming aboard.
"SHIELD WALL!" Dienekes roared.
Bronze rang against bronze. Men screamed. The wet sound of steel finding flesh.
The deck exploded with violence.
Seventy-eight Persians poured over the rails like a flood, their curved swords glinting in the sun. They wore scaled armor and silk, their faces hidden behind bronze masks shaped like snarling demons.
Six Spartans stood against them.
"BACK TO BACK!" Dienekes commanded, and his warriors moved as one, forming a tight circle in the center of the deck. Their shields locked together, creating a wall of bronze emblazoned with the lambda—the symbol of Lacedaemon, of Sparta, of everything they would die to protect.
Beneath the deck, Leonidas heard the roar of battle. He crawled toward a gap in the floorboards and pressed his eye against it.
What he saw would haunt him forever.
The Persians crashed against the Spartan shield wall like a wave against a cliff. The first rank died on Spartan spears—thrust, withdraw, thrust again. Bodies fell. But for every Persian who dropped, two more pressed forward.
"FOR SPARTA!" Aristodemus shouted, his spear finding a gap in enemy armor. A Persian fell clutching his throat.
But there were too many. Far too many.
A Persian blade slipped between shields, biting into a Spartan's thigh. The warrior—Kleombrotos—grunted but held his position. His spear continued its deadly work even as blood ran down his leg.
"HOLD THE LINE!" Dienekes' voice cut through the chaos. "FOR THE PRINCE! FOR SPARTA!"
The Spartans fought like cornered lions. Every thrust was precise. Every movement economical. They gave ground only in inches, their boots slipping in blood—both Persian and their own.
But inches became feet. Six became five.
Kleombrotos fell first, three Persian blades finding him simultaneously. He died with his shield raised, his last act protecting his brothers.
Five Spartans remained.
Leonidas lay beneath the torn sail, frozen in terror. Through a gap in the blood-stained fabric, he watched his world end.
The Persians swarmed like ants over a carcass. Their blades rose and fell in a rhythm of death. The deck ran red.
"HOLD!" Dienekes roared, but his voice cracked—desperation bleeding through discipline.
A Persian axe hooked over Theron's shield, yanking it down. Three blades found the gap. Theron's scream cut short as steel punched through his throat. He collapsed, choking on his own blood, his hand still gripping his spear.
Four left.
Leonidas bit down on his knuckles to keep from crying out. Tears streamed down his face. These men—his protectors, his teachers, men who'd carried him on their shoulders and taught him to hold a sword—were dying. For him.
"TIGHTER!" Dienekes commanded. The remaining four pressed their shields together, their circle shrinking. They stood knee-deep in corpses now—at least thirty Persians lay dead around them.
But fifty still stood.
Aristodemus—young, barely a man—took a spear through his shoulder. He screamed but didn't fall. Instead, he grabbed the spear shaft and yanked, pulling the Persian who held it into range. His sword took the man's head.
Then another blade found Aristodemus's side. And another. And another.
He fell to his knees, still swinging, still fighting, until a Persian boot kicked him flat. He didn't get up.
Three left.
"My prince," Dienekes gasped, his eyes scanning the deck even as he parried a curved sword. "If you can hear me—know that Sparta lives through you. Through YOUR blood. Do not let our deaths be meaningless!"
A Persian blade caught him across the face. The captain's eye erupted in red. He roared—not in pain, but in defiance—and his spear took two more enemies before a sword found his heart.
He died on his feet, shield raised.
Two left.
Nikolaos—a giant of a man who'd taught Leonidas how to wrestle—took a spear through his gut. He dropped his shield and grabbed the spear shaft with both hands, holding the Persian in place while his brother-in-arms drove a sword through the enemy's skull.
Then three more Persians descended on Nikolaos. Their blades rose and fell. Rose and fell.
When they stepped back, he was already dead.
One.
Kleomenes the Younger—named after Leonidas's own father—stood alone in a circle of corpses. Blood poured from a dozen wounds. His shield arm hung useless at his side. His spear was broken.
But his sword still worked.
"COME THEN!" he roared at the remaining Persians. "COME AND MEET YOUR DEATHS!"
Forty enemies surrounded him. They'd learned to fear these red-cloaked warriors. They hesitated.
Then their captain barked an order, and they surged forward as one.
Kleomenes killed three more before a sword took him in the back. He fell to one knee. Another blade opened his shoulder. Another his thigh.
But through the pain, through the dying light in his eyes, he saw the torn sail in the corner. Saw the small shape hidden beneath it.
With his last strength, Kleomenes crawled. Each movement left a trail of blood. The Persians laughed, thinking him already dead, already irrelevant.
He reached the sail.
Leonidas's eyes went wide with horror as the dying warrior collapsed on top of him, covering him completely with his body.
"Don't... move..." Kleomenes whispered, his breath wet and rattling. "Don't... make... a sound..."
Then his weight went slack. Dead.
Leonidas lay frozen beneath his protector's corpse, barely breathing, tears streaming silently down his face. Above him, he heard Persian voices. Footsteps. Laughter.
They were searching the ship.
"Find the boy!" a voice commanded in accented Greek. "The prince must be here! Search everything!"
Footsteps came closer. Closer.
A boot kicked a barrel. Wood splintered.
Then—
The sail was ripped away.
Sunlight flooded Leonidas's vision. He lay there, trapped beneath Kleomenes's body, staring up at a dozen Persian warriors. Their swords dripped red.
"There!" one shouted. "The whelp hides beneath the corpse!"
Hands grabbed Kleomenes's body and threw it aside like a sack of grain. The warrior who'd taught Leonidas to ride, who'd sung him to sleep on cold nights during the journey, who'd died protecting him—discarded.
Leonidas scrambled backward, his training sword forgotten, pure animal terror driving him.
A Persian reached for him, curved blade raised—
Kleomenes's hand shot out.
The "dead" Spartan still had one final breath left. His fingers closed around the Persian's ankle and *yanked*. The enemy crashed down, and Kleomenes's broken sword—held in his other hand—drove upward into the man's throat.
The Persian's blood sprayed across young Leonidas's face.
Then the other Persians descended on Kleomenes with their blades. This time, they made certain.
But in that moment of chaos, Leonidas ran.
He didn't think. Didn't plan. Just ran across the blood-slick deck, small and fast, darting between larger bodies—
A blade caught him across his side. White-hot agony.
Another slashed his face, opening a line from his forehead across his left eye and down his cheek.
He fell.
The deck rushed up to meet him. His vision blurred red—blood or tears, he couldn't tell.
Boots surrounded him. Voices above, speaking in a language he didn't understand.
No, he thought through the pain, through the terror. No. Father. Dienekes. Kleomenes. They died for me. They DIED—
Rage flooded through him. Not a child's tantrum, but something ancient and terrible. The fury of a bloodline that traced back to Herakles himself. The wrath of Sparta.
I will NOT die like this. I will have VENGEANCE. I will—
A boot pressed down on his chest, crushing the air from his small lungs.
A sword raised high, sunlight glinting off its edge.
I will kill them. I will kill them ALL. I SWEAR IT—
The blade fell.
Darkness took Prince Leonidas.
---
But darkness did not keep him.
---
BACK TO THE PRESENT
John gasped, the memories—not his memories, the prince's memories—flooding through him like ice water. He could still feel the rage, the desperate need for vengeance burning in this small body.
No. Not just the body. The soul that had inhabited it before him had left something behind. An echo. A promise written in blood and dying breath.
Vengeance.
The blue screen still floated before his eyes, patient and glowing.
{ HELLO, HOST. PLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME: _________________ }
John looked down at his small, blood-covered hands. At the wound across his side that was slowly killing this body. At the corpses of six warriors who'd died protecting a prince.
Sarah, he thought, his heart aching. I'm sorry. I don't know how I'm here or why, but I'm so far from you now.
But he was alive. Somehow, impossibly, alive.
And this body—this prince—had died swearing vengeance.
John's jaw tightened. His own rage at being torn from his wife, and the murdered prince's fury at his protectors' deaths... they merged into something cold and absolute.
He looked at the screen.
"My name," he said, his young voice steady despite the pain, "is Leonidas."
A pause. Then he added, voice hardening:
"Leonidas John. And I'm going to need more than a name to survive this."
{ NAME ACCEPTED: LEONIDAS JOHN }
{ ANALYZING HOST CONDITION... }
{ WARNING: CRITICAL INJURIES DETECTED. HOST SURVIVAL: 3% }
{ WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE THE BEGINNER'S PACKAGE? THIS INCLUDES EMERGENCY HEALING. }
{ YES / NO }