The last thing Liam Keko remembered of his old life was the sound.
Not the impact—his mind refused to keep that—but the horn. Long. Panicked. A wall of noise that swallowed the night as he stepped off the curb, half-distracted, thinking about nothing more important than getting home before the rain started.
Then there was silence.
Not darkness. Not pain. Silence—vast and patient, like the pause before a storm breaks.
Liam floated in it, unmoored from time, from weight, from himself. Thoughts drifted in and out like debris in deep water. *Am I dead?* The question felt too small for the space he was in, like whispering into an endless hall.
A second sound replaced the silence.
A bell.
Sharp. Metallic. Rhythmic.
*Clang. Clang. Clang.*
The world slammed back into him.
Liam gasped and sat upright, lungs burning as if they'd never been used before. Light flooded his vision—white panels overhead, threaded with thin blue lines that pulsed softly, almost like veins. The air smelled clean. Too clean. Not rain or oil or city dust. This was sterile, cold, and faintly electric.
He looked down at himself.
A uniform.
Dark navy fabric hugged his arms and torso, fitted but unfamiliar, stitched with silver trim and an insignia he didn't recognize: a stylized trident wrapped in a ring of stars. His hands—his *hands*—were unscarred, steady, younger than he remembered.
A voice echoed through the room.
"Cadets, on your feet. Arrival cycle complete."
The voice wasn't human. Not fully. It carried a resonance that vibrated in his bones, as if the words were being spoken directly into the structure of the room.
Around him, others stirred.
Rows of beds extended farther than Liam could see, each occupied by someone roughly his age. Some looked confused. Some afraid. A few—disturbingly—looked calm, as if they'd been expecting this.
Liam's heart pounded.
*This isn't a hospital.*
He slid off the bed, his boots hitting the floor in perfect unison with dozens of others, though he didn't remember putting them on. The floor itself was metal, warm beneath his feet, humming softly like a ship's engine.
A ship.
The thought landed with strange certainty.
A section of the far wall dissolved into light, rearranging itself into a massive viewing screen. Stars filled it—thousands of them—sharp and brilliant against a void so deep it made Liam dizzy.
Then the fleet came into view.
Ships the size of cities drifted in formation, their hulls etched with glowing runes and angular cannons that suggested both advanced technology and something older, almost mythical. Energy sails shimmered like ghostly wings, bending starlight as they moved.
Gasps rippled through the room.
The voice returned.
"Welcome to the Naval Fleet Academy."
The words settled heavy in the air.
"You have been selected," the voice continued, "because your existence ended… and did not."
Liam's stomach dropped.
Images flickered at the edge of his memory headlights, rain, the horn—but they slipped away before he could grab them.
"You stand at the threshold of a greater war," the voice said. "One that spans galaxies, dimensions, and histories you were never meant to know."
The insignia on Liam's chest pulsed faintly, warm against his skin.
"Your past lives are irrelevant," the voice concluded. "Your potential is not."
The screen shifted again, revealing a massive structure ahead of the fleet: a station forged of steel and starlight, rings rotating slowly around a glowing core.
The Academy.
Liam swallowed.
He didn't know who had chosen him.
He didn't know why he was here.
And he didn't know what he had become.
But as the fleet moved forward and the stars bent around them, the truth settled deep in his chest, undeniable and terrifying.