Safsan opened his eyes.
Nothing happened.
He tried to move his hand.
Nothing.
His fingers.
Nothing.
His legs.
Nothing.
For a moment, Safsan wondered if he was still unconscious.
Then he breathed in.
Pain answered.
His chest tightened so violently that the breath stopped halfway.
Safsan's eyes widened.
He slowly forced the air back out.
His entire body hurt.
Not one place.
Everything.
Muscles he didn't know he could feel.
His shoulders.
His back.
His chest.
His neck.
His legs.
Even breathing felt like his body was arguing against being alive.
Safsan swallowed.
That hurt too.
He wanted to react.
He wanted to make a sound.
Instead...
he swallowed the pain with it.
That was what he had always done.
When something hurt, he contained it.
When something frightened him, he thought through it.
When something became too heavy, he found somewhere inside himself to put it.
Not because the pain disappeared.
Because showing weakness had never helped him survive it.
So Safsan remained still.
And breathed.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Then his mind began working.
Where am I?
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
His eyes moved.
That was one of the few things his body still allowed him to control.
The battlefield.
He remembered that.
The civil war.
Blood.
Safuu.
NAREZEN.
The two knights.
Then...
Safsan's thoughts stopped.
There were bodies everywhere.
Too many.
Some were people who had survived everything that came before.
Now they were dead.
The ground was torn apart.
Marks stretched across the battlefield.
Some looked as though something had cut directly through people, stone and earth without caring what stood in its way.
Safsan stared.
He didn't remember this.
His breathing became heavier.
Then he saw the chains.
Or rather...
what they had left behind.
His mind immediately produced fragments.
Black.
Absolute black.
Green and red lightning.
A feeling of breathing for the first time.
Then—
nothing.
Safsan tried to remember.
His head hurt.
Someone.
There had been someone.
Standing somewhere he shouldn't have been able to stand.
Time.
Safsan's eyes narrowed.
A face almost appeared in his memory.
Then vanished.
Kairo.
The name didn't come.
Not yet.
Safsan didn't remember pulling him out of time.
He didn't remember calling him his first test.
He didn't remember the fight.
He didn't remember the second in which almost everyone around them died.
He didn't remember his chains killing people.
He only saw the result.
And his brain was desperately trying to build a story from pieces it didn't have.
Safsan breathed out.
His body trembled from the effort.
"What..."
His voice barely existed.
He swallowed.
"...happened?"
No answer.
And perhaps that was the cruelest part.
Safsan had spent his life trying to understand what was happening around him.
Now he was lying in the consequences of something he himself had done...
and he didn't even know it.
SEENEE watched him.
For once, I think we should leave Safsan there for a moment.
Because there is something you need to know before he understands what happened.
Something about Safsan that I have avoided explaining properly.
You already know that Safsan was born twice.
But those words can give you the wrong idea.
Reincarnation.
Death.
Another life.
Another body.
A soul returning as someone new.
That is not what happened to Safsan.
Not exactly.
So let's go back.
All the way back.
Before the dreams.
Before Odania.
Before Safuu.
Before Kairo.
Before the chains.
Before Nafsan.
To Safsan's first birth.
...
A child was born.
His mother held him.
He was alive.
For only a few seconds.
Then...
he died.
There was no adventure.
No childhood.
No first word.
No first step.
His first life lasted only seconds.
His mother lost her son almost immediately after bringing him into the world.
The child's body was gone.
His life was over.
That should have been the end of Safsan.
Years passed.
His mother lived with what had happened.
Time continued because time does not ask whether someone is ready for it to continue.
Then, years after losing that child...
she became pregnant again.
This was not the same pregnancy.
Not the same body.
Not the same child developing inside her.
Months passed.
And eventually...
she gave birth to a son.
To her, he was a blessing.
A new child.
A new life after one she had lost.
And physically...
that was true.
The baby she held was not the body of the child who had died years earlier.
Different body.
Different pregnancy.
Different birth.
Years apart.
There was no physical continuation between them.
Except for one impossible detail.
The baby in her arms...
was Safsan.
Not another version of Safsan.
Not someone who would eventually become Safsan.
The same Safsan.
The child who had died after only seconds of life...
had been born again.
Years later.
Through another pregnancy.
Inside another body.
The mother believed she had been given another son.
She had no reason to believe otherwise.
But somehow...
the son she had lost had returned to her.
And this is why calling what happened "reincarnation" creates a problem.
Safsan did not simply die and begin another ordinary life as another person.
Something else happened.
And the strangest part isn't even his second birth.
It is his first death.
More specifically...
the few seconds before it.
Birth.
A few seconds of life.
Death.
Such a short existence should contain almost nothing.
But something happened during those seconds.
Something connected to Safsan's Origin.
Yes.
Safsan has an Origin.
SEENEE may not be certain of that.
From what he knows, Safsan has never awakened one.
At times, Safsan appears almost as though an Origin is completely absent from him.
But Safsan has one.
The question is not simply:
Does Safsan have an Origin?
The better question might be:
What happened to it?
And now...
there is another problem.
Nafsan.
The man Kairo saw fighting an adult Safsan across universes.
The man Safsan attacked with his chains as though killing him was an absolute necessity.
NAFSAN.
THE SAFSAN HUNTER.
Nafsan has a direct connection to something that happened during those few seconds.
Between Safsan's first birth...
and Safsan's first death.
I am telling you this now because I don't consider it a major spoiler.
At least...
not yet.
Right now, it is information.
Later...
you may realize it was a spoiler all along.
A spoiler you received before you had enough information to understand what it spoiled.
A SPOILER YET TO BE A SPOILER.
...
Safsan breathed in.
Pain.
He breathed out.
Pain again.
The battlefield returned.
His eyes moved across the dead.
He still didn't know.
He didn't know about his first life.
He didn't know what had happened during those few seconds.
He didn't know what had happened to his Origin.
He didn't know who Nafsan was.
He didn't know that an older version of himself would one day fight Nafsan across universes.
He didn't even know what he himself had done only moments ago.
Safsan tried moving his fingers again.
Nothing.
His body refused.
So he stopped fighting it.
For now.
He stared at the sky.
His mind continued trying to process the bodies around him.
Something inside him wanted an explanation.
Something else was afraid of what that explanation might be.
Safsan slowly exhaled.
Then he heard movement.
Not inside his head.
Not a dream.
Not a heartbeat.
Someone was still alive.
Safsan's eyes moved toward the sound.
And for the first time since waking...
someone began walking toward him.