'Ah, what the fuck.'
'What the fuck.'
The thought drifted through his mind as darkness surrounded him.
He couldn't feel his body. Couldn't see anything. There was only the memory of impact metal, weight, a sound like bones snapping.
'I couldn't even live properly.'
He had lived in the orphanage for as long as he could remember, but he was never attached to the place. Some people talked to him from time to time, but Kael never thought of any of them as "friends."
When he turned eighteen, they sent him away. He'd walked out with a small bag and a strange sense of relief.
He'd been free.
And then
A truck.
No warning.
No miracle.
The truck slammed into him.
Darkness.
Cold.
These were the only things he could see and feel.
It was like floating in an endless void for endless time. Kael didn't know how long he'd been there. He couldn't feel anything at all.
Until something pulled him from the void.
It was as if his soul were tied to a rope and someone on the other end had jerked it with brutal force.
The void shattered.
Light burst into his vision Harsh, blood-red, and wrong.
Kael gasped, his lungs burning as they dragged in air that tasted of iron and smoke. His eyes snapped open.
'What...' he thought, confused, before terror covered his face.
Bodies.
Dozens of them sprawled across the ground, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Blood pooled in the dirt, soaking into his hands as he pushed himself upright. The stench hit him next copper and rot and something worse, something that made his stomach heave.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
The words tore from his throat, raw and panicked. This wasn't the street. This wasn't the hospital. This was....
A battlefield.
Broken armor and swords scattered all over the ground. Many of them were on the bodies—both armor and swords.
Just then, he heard a sound.
In the distance, screaming.
Screams from humans mixed with growls and screeches that didn't belong to humans at all.
Metal clashing against metal.
All these strange sounds surrounded him. He brought his hands up to his face.
These hands these weren't his. Calloused, scarred, smaller than they should be.
He looked down at himself. Leather armor, torn and bloodstained. Mud caked on boots he'd never owned.
Terror clawed its way up his spine.
'I died.'
I know I died. So what is this? What-'
Pain exploded in his skull.
Kael screamed, closing his eyes and clutching his head as something invaded his mind. Not a voice not exactly. More like data being forcibly uploaded into his brain, foreign information carving itself into his consciousness.
A robotic tone echoed through his thoughts, mechanical and glitching:
\ PARTIAL MEMORY INFUSION PROCESSING... \
\ SYNCHRONIZATION: 23%... \
\ COMPLETE. \
The pain vanished as suddenly as it came, leaving behind fragments of memory that weren't his own.
It wasn't exactly memories more like information he had received.
'Corvin. Bastard son of House Ashenlore.'
Images flickered through his mind like a broken film reel. A cold stone manor. A father who wouldn't meet his eyes. Siblings who sneered and spat at his feet. The word "bastard" following him like a curse since childhood.
And then exile. Not the merciful kind. The deadly kind.
They'd given him a rusty sword and sent him to die.
This body Corvin's body had been cannon fodder.
Interrupting his thoughts, someone screamed at him.
"BASTARD!"
The roar snapped Kael back to reality. A knight sat atop a massive warhorse twenty feet away, his armor splattered with gore. His visor was raised, revealing a scarred, brutal face twisted in fury.
"Get your worthless ass up and move forward! NOW!"
Kael stared at him blankly. The knight spat on the ground and wheeled his horse around, charging back toward the front lines where the fighting raged.
'Move forward? Into that slaughter?'
'I'll die.'
He didn't want to fight, but he had no other choice. If he had to escape this place, he had to take the sword.
His hand moved on its own, reaching for a sword stabbed into the corpse beside him. The blade came free with a wet sound. Heavy. Unfamiliar. He didn't know anything about swordplay.
'What am I doing?'
Around him, soldiers trudged past, their faces blank with exhaustion and terror. Following orders because orders were all they had left.
Kael's eyes widened in horror at the sight in front of him.
Arrows several arrows suddenly flew toward him. The type of scene he would watch in movies. But now it was real. And dangerous.
A black cloud against the gray sky, death raining down in iron-tipped shafts. Men fell screaming. One arrow punched through a soldier's throat three feet from him. Another shattered against a shield.
Several whistled toward him.
They missed.
By inches, by luck, by fate Kael didn't know.
For a second he thought he'd survived.
He let out a shaky breath, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Then something pierced his chest.
He looked down at his body only to find an arrow shaft sticking into of his chest, right above his heart. Blood spread across his leather armor in a dark bloom.
The strength left his legs. He collapsed into the mud, gasping, drowning in air.
'No.'
'Not again.'
'Not like this.'
'I just wanted to live...'
Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision.
But somewhere in that darkness, something else stirred.
Something that refused to die.