"Don't be a sayer, be a doer."
Jack lived by that line like it was a commandment.
He couldn't even remember where he first heard it—some movie, some jacked-up idiots preaching success like it was religion. The internet loved calling it satire. Loved saying it was a warning. Loved explaining how grind culture fries your brain and turns you into a walking L.
Jack thought that was cope.
Those guys wanted the same things he wanted: money, muscle, respect—proof that they were somebody and not just another forgettable dude grinding out a forgettable life. Yeah, they screwed it up. They went full psycho, kidnapped people, and it all spiraled into bodies and prison and "true story" documentaries.
But that didn't make the want stupid.
It just made their execution stupid.
Jack wasn't kidnapping anyone. He wasn't doing crime like some 90s meathead with a God complex. He was doing it the modern way—the way you could actually win.
Streaming.
A real setup. A decent PC. A webcam at the right angle. Lighting that didn't make him look like a goblin. He had game skills, a loud personality, and enough confidence to sell the bit. Even before graduation, he'd built a small following—nothing crazy, but real. Numbers that moved. People who came back.
And the second he graduated high school at eighteen, he dipped.
He told everyone it was for college down south. That sounded responsible. That sounded normal. But the truth was he was done with the north—cold mornings, fish stink, and working like a medieval peasant on his family's boat for pocket change.
That life was NPC-coded.
And Jack wasn't an NPC.
California was where main characters went. Where the real players went.
Sun. Gyms. Beaches. Girls in bikinis who smiled like they had options. Money that looked possible if you just committed harder than everyone else. Maybe Hollywood if things went insane. Maybe modeling. Maybe getting famous enough that people who ignored him back home suddenly acted like they "always believed."
And Jack was committing.
He trained because abs mattered—every influencer he respected looked carved out of stone.
He streamed because views mattered.
He stayed loud, stayed wild, stayed on-brand because attention mattered most.
Donations started coming in. Not life-changing yet—but enough. Enough to pay rent. Enough to feel the future tightening into focus.
He'd finally gotten monetized.
He was finally starting to win.
Then he woke up in his underwear in a wheat field.
Headphones still on.
Sun blasting him straight in the face.
"…What the fuck."
Jack squinted and pushed himself upright.
Golden wheat rolled in every direction, swaying like the world was lagging. No roads. No buildings. Just endless fields, then trees, then mountains sitting way too clean on the horizon.
It didn't feel real.
It felt like a game map before textures finished loading.
"Bro," he muttered, rubbing his face. "Did I just respawn or some shit?"
His brain stuttered, then rewound.
The stream.
Chat popping off.
Him waving the airsoft rifle because it looked real on camera and the chat loved edgy bullshit.
He remembered his crackhead neighbors pounding on the wall— always mad about noise while they themselves were blasting music at three in the morning and doing drugs.
Then—
The door exploding inward.
Cops came in yelling.
Jack had shouted something stupid. Something meme-worthy, or well worthy enough at least for gunshots to follow.
Then there was just static.
Thinking of it his chest tightened.
Jack grabbed at himself—chest, ribs, stomach. No blood. No holes. Same body. He was alive.
Which made absolutely no sense.
"I got shot on stream," he whispered. "I literally got shot. I was monetized. I was—"
Panic surged.
"No. No, no, no. You're kidding me. I didn't even get a real girlfriend yet, or even a driver's license. Oh no, my parents are gonna be pissed."
A voice spoke beside him.
Soft. Halting. Like each word had to squeeze through something narrow.
"D-do you ever w-wonder what's u-up there… in the s-stars?"
Jack snapped his head around.
There was a baby lying in the wheat.
Just… there.
Diaper. Chubby limbs. Thumb in its mouth.
And massive white wings folded neatly along its back.
Jack stared.
"…Nah," he said flatly. "This is bullshit. I'm hallucinating. This is my brain blue-screening before it shuts off."
The baby didn't even look at him. Just stared up at the sky, sucking its thumb like this was a normal Tuesday afternoon.
"L-like," it continued, "if s-someone up there is w-wondering what's d-down here."
Jack shoved himself backward, heart slamming so hard it hurt.
"Nope," he rasped. "No. I'm dead. I finally start winning and I die? That's not funny. That's not—"
The baby turned its head and smiled.
Bright. Happy.
"O-oh! You are d-dead. Very d-dead."
Jack squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his palms into them.
"Oh, come on, man," he groaned. "Seriously? Did I get swatted? Did chat do this? I was this close. I just got monetized. I just—"
The baby sat up with careful seriousness. Its wings rustled, neat and expensive-sounding. The thumb popped free of its mouth with a wet sound that made Jack's stomach turn.
"No," it said calmly. "The cops were supposed to do a drug b-bust into your n-neighbor's home… but they a-accidentally chose the wrong d-door."
The words landed like a brick to the chest.
Then the baby brightened.
"But d-don't worry. N-nothing was wasted. Because you were live… it did a b-big thing."
Jack stared.
"M-millions saw it. C-clips spread. People talked." It beamed. "Some even w-went outside."
The baby angel smiled like it had personally cured cancer.
"They t-touched grass," it said reverently. "I-it was very moving. For a while."
Jack's mouth went dry. His eyes flicked up to the empty, indifferent sky, searching for a camera. A boom mic. The punchline he had clearly missed.
"My death made people log off?" he asked.
His voice came out thin.
"F-for days," the baby said proudly. "S-screen time dropped. G-gyms filled up. T-three divorces were avoided. A man in Ohio s-stopped doom-scrolling, f-finally got a job… then a wife… then a family."
Jack stared at the sun like it owed him an apology.
The anger came slow. Heavy. Not just anger at the cops. Not just anger at fate. Anger at the shape of the joke.
That his ending had been repackaged into a wellness anecdote.
That his corpse had become a motivational footnote.
His lips moved like he was chewing something bitter.
"So I got executed by SWAT," he muttered, "and the universe handed me a 'thanks for your service.'"
The baby's smile collapsed into a small, offended pout.
"N-no. Not 'thanks.'" It huffed. "I-impact. You were an i-impact event."
It straightened.
Not just posture—presence.
The field reacted. Wheat stilled. Wind paused. Even the sky seemed to lean closer, listening.
The baby lifted a tiny hand.
Light gathered there—quiet, deliberate—until a white sphere hovered above its palm. It pulsed slow and steady, like a heart beating outside a body. The wheat around it bowed away as if instinctively making space.
"My chosen one," the baby said.
Something shifted in its voice. Still childish. Still stuttering.
But heavier now, as if the stutter were a costume it wore on purpose.
"Y-your time is n-not over," it continued. "Because your s-soul value is extremely low… I have chosen you."
Jack's stomach dropped.
"Wait—no." The words came fast and ugly. "No, no, no. Stop right there. I know what this is and I'm saying no. You can't do this to me, baby-angel-thing, or whatever you are. Do you have any idea how hard it was to finally get monetized?"
His voice cracked as panic spilled through him.
"Just give me a second chance. As myself. As a nobody. I'm not a hero. I don't want quests. Pick a firefighter. Pick a doctor. Pick literally anyone with a degree. I don't even have a driver's license—"
"S-sorry," the baby said brightly, like explaining bedtime rules. "This is not a democracy."
It tilted its head.
"You don't get to choose."
A beat—just long enough for Jack to feel it sink in.
Then, lightly—
"But you will get to come back and become a millionaire if you succeed."
The promise landed soft.
Casual.
Like a loaded gun pressed gently to his ribs.
Jack's mouth opened—questions flooding up, protests, bargaining—
But the baby smiled again, and all the weight in the air vanished, as if none of it mattered.
"Now stop whining."
The white sphere drifted toward Jack.
Slow. Patient. Certain.
Jack scrambled backward on his elbows, panic detonating through his limbs. "No—no, fuck this—" He swatted at it, wild and useless, hands slicing empty air.
Too late.
The sphere touched his chest.
It didn't burn.
It didn't bounce.
It pushed.
Skin gave way like it wasn't a barrier at all. The light slid through him—through muscle, through bone—like something slipping into water.
Jack made a sound that wasn't a word.
Then it reached his heart.
And pain detonated.
Not sharp pain. Not injury pain.
Something deeper—absolute—like an ancient weight being seated inside him, like a brand pressed from the inside out. Like his soul had been forced open and something had been hammered into the center of it.
Jack screamed and collapsed into the wheat, clawing at his chest, choking, rolling, trying to dig it out with his fingers. His nails tore skin. His lungs refused to work right. Every breath came wrong—misaligned. Owned.
The baby leaned close.
Its shadow stretched too far, thin and crooked, like it belonged to something standing just behind it.
Its voice softened, almost fond.
"H-happy hunting, my c-champion," it whispered.
"M-make big dreams come true."
Jack tried to shout wait—
But something hooked him.
Hard.
Like a rope cinched tight around his spine.
The world ripped away beneath him.
"Oh shiii—!"
He shot upward.
Wheat shrank into gold static. Wind punched the breath out of him. Clouds slammed into his face wet and cold. The sun hung above like a cruel spotlight.
Air thinned.
His chest seized.
He clawed at nothing, lungs screaming for oxygen that wasn't there.
And as the world went distant and narrow, one last thought flared—hot and desperate—
Please let the millionaire thing be real—
Then the cold swallowed everything.
Jack's vision pinched to a point.
And snapped to black.
---
Then the world rejected him.
His body convulsed.
Something recompiled him—bones twisting, pulling inward, resizing like a character creator slider dragged the wrong way on purpose. His frame shrank. Shoulders narrowed. Weight shifted. A new center of gravity snapped into place with sick, intimate certainty.
Copper flooded his mouth.
His skull throbbed like someone had hit it hard enough to knock the soul loose.
He punched through something—like clipping through a loading screen—
—and slammed into stone.
Impact.
Ears screaming. Vision fracturing. Blackness swallowing the edges.
Dying.
Again.
He dragged in a breath.
Blood filled his mouth instantly—hot metal, thick and disgusting. His head felt split open from the inside. Hands grabbed him, shaking him like they could reboot him back to normal. Voices shouted over each other in a language he didn't know—
—and yet understood.
Like his brain had just force-installed a translation patch mid-crash.
His eyes snapped open.
Sky—bright, brutally blue—clouds drifting like nothing mattered. The sun sat up there like an admin watching the server burn, smug and blinding.
Jack threw a hand up to block it—
—and froze.
That hand wasn't his.
Small. Pale. Slender. Fingers too delicate, nails too neat, wearing segmented bracers like jewelry pretending to be armor. The wrist was narrow enough to make his stomach lurch.
No.
He pushed himself up, shaking, half-dazed—
—and a man lurched into his vision, hovering like a panic attack given a body.
Messy blond hair. Crooked teeth. Gray-blue eyes huge with terror. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week or washed in a month. Dirt was ground into his skin like war had claimed him personally.
His mouth moved.
"Princess! Princess Aleria!" he shouted, voice cracking. "God's mercy—say you're breathing! Are you alive?"
Jack's brain lagged so hard it stuttered.
Princess?
"What the fuck did you say?" he snapped automatically—because that sounded like an insult. Like some medieval dude calling him soft.
The soldier's face lit with relief—
—and Jack's blood turned to ice, because the voice that came out of his mouth was not Jack's.
It was high.
Soft.
Sweet.
A girl's voice. A princess voice.
Jack froze so hard his lungs forgot what they were doing.
…What.
His hands shot to his throat like he could squeeze the sound back into the right shape. He looked down—
Chest smaller, pressed tight under leather and plate. Shoulders slim. Waist wrong. Hips wrong. Everything wrong in ways his nervous system recognized before his thoughts could.
And hair—long, blonde—spilled into his vision, catching sunlight like it belonged in a painting, not a war.
He swallowed and tasted blood again.
"I'm—" he tried, and it came out like her, not him.
I'm a…
I'm a chick.
I'm a princess.
The soldier was still talking, frantic, reverent. "Your Highness—thank the saints—stay down, please—"
Jack wanted to scream at him to shut up, to explain, to say this was a prank, to tell him where the camera was—
Reality answered for the soldier.
A scream cut through the air. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Pure pain.
Jack looked up.
And the world finally loaded in.
A stone wall so massive it didn't feel real—wide enough to march a whole formation across, with a drop off the edge that made his stomach crawl. Towers rose at intervals like teeth. Blue banners snapped in the wind—royal blue, white dragon sigils glaring through smoke.
And the people—
Blond. Blue-eyed. Most of them.
Some wore leather and wool like hunters dragged into hell. Others wore chainmail under blue tabards stamped with the dragon. Heavy infantry in plate shoved past like walking doors. Archers lined the crenellations, hands raw, faces gray with exhaustion, drawing and loosing in a desperate rhythm.
A bolt punched into one of the archers near the tower.
Flat thunk.
The man jerked, eyes wide, bow slipping from his fingers. For half a second he didn't even understand he'd been hit—then he folded over the stone.
Blood poured down his tabard, bright against the blue, like someone had dumped paint over the dragon.
Jack's mouth went dry.
Oh. They're actually killing people.
Below the wall, the field was black with bodies and movement.
The attackers came in layers.
First the mob—hooded peasants in dark cloth, faces half-hidden, skin streaked with grime, eyes too bright. They climbed ladders like insects, dying in stacks, scrambling over the dead like the dead were just rungs.
Behind them came the real threat.
Men-at-arms in blackened mail and plate. Shields. Spears. Swords that didn't look ceremonial—just used. Just hungry. They climbed slower, smarter, using the peasants as moving cover. Every time a peasant took an arrow in the throat, a heavier soldier slid into the gap without hesitation.
And when they reached the top—
the wall stopped being a wall.
It became a butcher's table.
Men screamed.
Steel rang.
Blood turned the stone slick.
Jack's gamer brain tried to label it anyway, because that's what it did when it couldn't cope.
Wave one.
Wave two.
Elites.
Except there was no HUD.
No respawn.
No safe zone.
And the name the soldier kept saying—Princess Aleria—was apparently him now.
And somewhere inside that new, sweet throat, Jack realized the worst part:
this body had already died once.
So if he died again—
there was probably no "do over."
Just black.
Just nothing.
Just… game over.
Then Jack saw a black-hooded attacker vaulted the crenellation and went to work—hacking at a defender like he was chopping firewood, laughing through his teeth.
A defender rammed him back with a shield, shouting something sharp and proper—civil words dragged into a world that didn't deserve them.
Then a heavier brute in black armor crested the ladder.
He moved different. Not frantic. Not scared. Disciplined. Like he'd done this a hundred times and gotten bored halfway through.
He drove a blade into a defender's gut, lifted him like a fish on a hook, and pitched him over the wall like trash.
The man fell screaming.
The scream cut off.
Jack's brain hard-looped.
This is real. This is real. This is real.
A knot of defenders rushed the brute—brave or desperate—and he cut through them with one ugly sweep. Bodies opened. Steam rose off spilled intestines like the world was cooking people.
Jack gagged.
And then—like the game decided to spawn in a boss fight—something charged into view.
A tall, silver-haired monster of a man with two hammers.
He kicked the black brute so hard it almost looked funny.
The invader flew backward.
Over the edge.
His scream faded into distance and ended with a dull, final impact.
Jack stared, mouth open, thoughts refusing to connect.
This wasn't Counter-Strike.
This wasn't a stream.
This wasn't a bit.
This was a real medieval siege—
and Jack was on the wall, in a princess's body, surrounded by blond men and black nightmares, while people died close enough for their blood to hit him.
He'd fought off a couple homeless dudes once. Some schoolyard bullshit. That was it.
He was not built for this.
Not even close.
Hands grabbed him again—shaking, frantic.
The dirty blond soldier leaned in, eyes huge, still shouting over the roar, still treating Jack like something precious.
Jack turned toward him, still trying to process the ancient language pouring into his ears—old as hell, yet somehow understandable—
A shadow fell behind the man.
Jack saw it a half-second too late.
A black-armored soldier stepped in like a nightmare in plate.
And the greatsword came down.
Clean.
Horrifyingly easy.
The blade went through the blond man's head like it was warm bread.
The top half slid.
Blood erupted—hot and sudden—spraying Jack's face and armor in a wet red burst.
The man's eyes went empty before the scream even had a chance to become a sound.
His severed head dropped into Jack's lap.
Heavy.
Real.
The body crumpled beside him, still twitching, spilling life onto the stone like a knocked-over bucket.
Jack made a noise.
A tiny, sharp squeak—pure panic, pure humiliation—
—and it hit him harder than the blood: that sound came from her throat.
From the princess body.
The black-armored killer stepped forward.
Tall. Plated. Slow in the way predators were slow when they already owned the room. Dark skin showed only in thin gaps around the helm. A T-shaped visor hid most of his face—
—but his grin still found a way through.
It wasn't a smile.
It was appetite.
Jack's breath caught.
His mind screamed MOVE, but his body didn't have a weapon, a shield, a stance—nothing. No training. No instincts besides run.
He scooted back on his palms, armor scraping the stone.
"Don't—" he tried.
The word came out thin. Small. Useless in all that noise.
The giant chuckled, lowering himself like he was about to pick up a toy.
"Don't worry, little white rabbit," he murmured, voice thick with want. "I'll be gentle. I swear it—"
Jack shoved backward harder, kicking at the stone—
and for half a heartbeat the world paused as the edge of the wall kissed the back of his heel.
His stomach dropped so hard it felt like his soul fell first.
"Oh—"
The ground vanished.
He fell off the fucking wall.
It was so high his brain reached for the dumbest comparison it had—Statue of Liberty?—even though he'd never seen it in real life, only on screens. That was how wrong it felt. That was how impossible it was.
Not graceful. Not noble.
He windmilled once, fingers clawing at empty air, the stone rushing past as the sky spun and the world flipped.
He screamed.
A sharp, high, terrified sound ripped out of him—out of her—as the battlements shrank above and the city yawned open below.
"THE PRINCESS—!" someone shouted.
Someone else screamed.
Then gravity finished the sentence.
He hit the cart like a thrown body.
Wood splintered.
Flour exploded.
The impact punched the air out of his lungs in a white choking burst. The cart collapsed under him, boards cracking as sacks tore open and clouds of powder billowed up like a ghost erupting from a grave.
His head slammed into wood.
Hard.
Pain flared—bright, total—
and the world folded.
The last thing Jack felt was weightlessness again.
Then nothing.