Kael woke to the sound of his phone alarm.
The noise was familiar, a generic beeping he'd heard thousands of times before. But it was wrong. He'd changed that ringtone years ago, switched to something less annoying after a particularly bad morning shift.
He opened his eyes and stared at a ceiling he hadn't seen in fifteen years.
White tiles. A water stain in the corner shaped like a bird. A crack running from the light fixture to the window. His dorm room ceiling from hunter academy. The room he'd lived in from age nineteen to twenty-two, before graduating and moving into that first terrible apartment.
Kael sat up fast. Too fast. His back didn't hurt. No broken spine, no shattered ribs, no ruptured organs. He'd died with those injuries seconds ago, felt his body give out under the weight of a collapsing support beam.
Now he felt fine. Better than fine. His body was young, healthy, whole.
He looked down at his hands. They were smooth, no calluses from fifteen years of hauling supply packs. No scars from minor gate injuries. These were the hands of someone who'd never worked a day of real labor in his life.
"No," he said out loud. "That's not possible."
But he knew this room. The narrow desk pushed against the wall, covered in textbooks he recognized. The cheap wardrobe that barely held a week's worth of clothes. The single window overlooking the academy training grounds. Every detail matched his memory of being nineteen.
Kael scrambled for his phone, knocking over a water bottle in the process. The phone was old. Ancient, by his standards. A model from when smartphones were still trying to figure out what they wanted to be. But it worked.
He thumbed it on and stared at the date displayed on the lock screen.
September 1st, 2032. 6:47 AM.
His mind went blank. Then it started racing.
This was impossible. He'd died in 2047. Died at age thirty-four after fifteen years of failure and disappointment. Died saving three children from a gate break. He remembered dying. Remembered the pain, the blood, the feeling of his body shutting down.
But somehow he was here. Back at age nineteen. Back at the beginning.
Kael stood on shaking legs and walked to the small mirror mounted on the wall. The face that stared back was his, but younger. No stress lines around the eyes. No permanent exhaustion from too many double shifts. His hair was darker, thicker. His cheeks had more color.
He looked like he had hope.
"This is the day before the First Gate Break," Kael said to his reflection.
The words came out steady, but his hands were shaking. September 1st, 2032. He knew this date. Had it burned into his memory from a hundred history lectures, a thousand news retrospectives. Tomorrow, September 2nd at 2:47 PM, the First Gate Break would occur in downtown Seoul. A massive S-rank dimensional rift would tear open above the city center and ten thousand people would die in the first six hours.
His parents would be among them.
The thought made something twist in his chest. His parents. They were alive right now. Working their normal jobs, living their normal lives, with no idea what was coming.
Kael tested his memories. He closed his eyes and thought about his original timeline. Everything was there. Every detail, every moment, fifteen years of experiences sitting clear and accessible in his mind. He remembered his parents' funeral. Remembered graduating from the academy. Remembered his first day as a porter, the supervisor's contemptuous look when he explained Kael would be carrying bags for real hunters.
He remembered dying yesterday. Or fifteen years from now. Or however time worked in this situation.
"I went back," he said to the empty room. "I regressed."
The word felt strange. Regression was something from fantasy novels, not real life. Time didn't move backward. Dead people didn't wake up young again in their old dorm rooms.
But here he was.
Kael's phone buzzed in his hand. A text notification from his mother: "Don't forget to eat breakfast! Love you."
He stared at the message. She was alive. Right now, in this moment, his mother was alive and worried about whether her son was eating properly. In his original timeline, she'd be dead in thirty-two hours and nine minutes.
His hand moved before he thought about it. He dialed her number.
She picked up on the second ring. "Kael? Is everything okay? You usually don't call this early."
Her voice hit him like a physical blow. He hadn't heard it in thirteen years. Not since the funeral, when they'd played a recording of her voicemail greeting because someone thought it would be comforting.
"Mom," he said, and his voice cracked on the word.
"Honey, what's wrong? Are you sick?"
Kael closed his eyes. He could picture her in their small kitchen, probably making coffee, wearing the robe she always wore on weekend mornings. His father would be in the living room, reading the news on his tablet.
"I'm fine," he managed. "I just wanted to hear your voice."
There was a pause on the other end. "Are you sure you're okay? You sound upset."
He was going to break down. He could feel it coming, emotion building in his throat like pressure behind a dam. But he forced it down. There wasn't time for breaking down. There were thirty-two hours until the gate break and he needed to do something.
"I'm okay," he said again. "I just missed you."
"We had dinner together three days ago."
In his original timeline, that had been the last time he'd seen them. They'd met at a cheap restaurant near campus. His mother had asked him how his classes were going. His father had told a bad joke about mana cores. Kael had complained about his training scores and left early because he had studying to do.
He'd never seen them alive again after that dinner.
"I know," Kael said. "I just wanted to call."
His mother's voice softened. "Well, I'm glad you did. Your father and I worry about you, living in that dorm all alone. Make sure you're taking care of yourself."
"I will. I promise."
They talked for another minute about nothing important. His mother mentioned something about work, asked if he needed money for food. Kael answered automatically, barely hearing his own responses. All he could focus on was the sound of her voice, alive and real.
When they finally hung up, he sat on the edge of his bed and let himself shake for exactly thirty seconds. Then he stood up and got to work.
His laptop was on the desk, an old model that took forever to boot up. While he waited, Kael organized his thoughts. He had regressed fifteen years into the past. He had all his memories from the original timeline. He knew the First Gate Break was coming tomorrow.
The question was what to do about it.
He couldn't stop the gate break itself. That was beyond impossible. Gates were dimensional rifts, tears in reality caused by forces nobody fully understood even fifteen years in the future. The Seoul Gate would open whether Kael wanted it to or not.
But he could minimize the damage. He could save people. He could save his parents.
The laptop finally loaded. Kael opened a browser and started searching. News sites were already buzzing with reports of strange phenomena. Mysterious lights in the sky. Animals acting strangely. Electronic equipment malfunctioning near certain locations.
The government was calling it atmospheric disturbances. Scientists were baffled. Conspiracy theorists were having a field day.
Kael knew better. Those were pre-gate symptoms, dimensional energy leaking through before the main break occurred. In his original timeline, people had ignored the warnings until it was too late.
He pulled up a map of Seoul and marked the location where the gate would open. City center, right above the financial district. His parents worked in a building six blocks from ground zero. In the original timeline, they'd tried to evacuate but got caught in the crowd. Trampled. Dead before the monsters even arrived.
Kael stared at the map. Six blocks. That was survivable if they left early enough. If they weren't in the building when the panic started.
He picked up his phone and dialed again.
His mother answered immediately. "Kael? Did something else happen?"
"Where are you working tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow? The same place I always work. Why?"
"I need you and Dad to take the day off."
There was a long pause. "Honey, we can't just take random days off. We have responsibilities."
"Please." Kael kept his voice level. "I know this sounds crazy, but I had a dream. A nightmare. Something bad is going to happen in Seoul tomorrow. I need you both to stay home."
"A nightmare?" His mother's tone shifted to concerned. "Kael, are you sure you're feeling alright? Maybe you should go to the campus health center."
"I'm fine. I just need you to trust me."
Another pause. He could hear her thinking, weighing whether her son was having some kind of breakdown.
"What kind of something bad?" she asked finally.
Kael couldn't tell her the truth. She'd think he was insane. "I don't know exactly. Just a feeling. Please, Mom. Just this once. Take the day off. Both of you."
His mother sighed. "Your father has an important meeting tomorrow. And I have a presentation I can't miss."
"Cancel them."
"Kael."
"Please."
The desperation in his voice must have gotten through. His mother went quiet for a long moment.
"If this is really that important to you," she said slowly, "I'll talk to your father. Maybe we can work from home tomorrow. Would that help?"
It wouldn't be enough. They needed to be far from the city center. But it was a start.
"Yes," Kael said. "That would help. Thank you."
After they hung up, he turned back to his laptop. There were other people he could warn. Other deaths he could prevent. But how? Nobody would believe a nineteen-year-old hunter academy student claiming to know the future.
He needed credibility. He needed proof. He needed something that would make people listen.
The problem was he didn't have anything. Just memories of a timeline that hadn't happened yet.
Kael spent the next three hours searching online. He found forums discussing the strange atmospheric phenomena. Found government statements reassuring everyone that everything was fine. Found speculation ranging from reasonable to completely insane.
None of it would help. The gate break was coming and most people wouldn't know until it was too late.
He checked the time. 10:23 AM. Thirty hours and twenty-four minutes until the Seoul Gate opened.
His phone buzzed. Another text from his mother: "Your father and I talked. We're taking tomorrow off. Working from home. Happy now?"
Kael typed back: "Very happy. Thank you. I love you both."
The response came quickly: "Love you too, honey. Take care of yourself."
He stared at the message for a long time. In his original timeline, those words would have been the last communication he ever received from his parents. The funeral director had handed him his mother's phone, recovered from the disaster site. That text had been on the screen, unsent. She'd been typing it when the building collapsed.
Now it was sent. Now they were safe, or safer at least. Working from home meant they'd be miles from the epicenter when the gate opened.
Kael stood and walked to the window. Below, the academy training grounds were filling up with students. Young hunters-to-be, most of them with cores better than his E-rank. They were laughing, talking, practicing techniques. None of them knew what was coming.
Tomorrow at 2:47 PM, everything would change. The First Gate Break would prove that monsters were real, that humanity needed hunters to survive. Some of those students down there would become heroes. Some would die in their first real gate encounter.
Kael had been neither. Just another failure who'd scraped by for fifteen years before dying to save three children.
But that was the original timeline. This was a new chance.
He looked at his reflection in the window glass. Nineteen years old. E-rank core. No special abilities, no constellation sponsors, no advantages except one: he knew what was coming.
"I won't let it happen again," Kael said.
The words were a promise. To his parents, to those ten thousand people who'd died in the original timeline, to himself. He had thirty hours to prepare. It wasn't enough time to stop the gate break, but it was enough to make a difference.
He turned back to his laptop and started planning.