"I guess this is what they mean by 'look both ways.'"
Those were the last words that passed through Zane's mind as the truck's headlights swallowed him whole. A deafening screech. Then silence.
Not heroic. Not tragic. Just... pitiful.
Zane had been twenty-two. Unemployed. Directionless. The only thing he was leveling up in was caffeine consumption and existential dread. No girlfriend, no achievements. Just another face lost in the sea of the forgettable.
Until his eyes snapped open—gasping, choking on ash, with smoke stinging his lungs and fire dancing across the sky.
Zane sat up, heart hammering, surrounded by devastation. Buildings in ruin, walls crumbling, and the acrid stench of burning filling the air. This wasn't Earth. It wasn't anything familiar.
He looked down at smaller hands, a younger frame—maybe thirteen or fourteen at most.
"This isn't my body," he muttered.
> [Warning: Void Signature Detected]
A strange message flickered in the air before him.
Then he saw the book.
It lay beside him, its leather blackened and cracked, a faint symbol glowing faintly on its cover—alien, yet oddly familiar. Zane didn't know why, but he felt connected to it. Like it belonged to him... or rather, the boy whose body he now inhabited.
And whoever his parents were, they were gone.
Before he could process any of it, a monstrous roar shattered the eerie silence.
The ground shook beneath him.
Zane turned toward the source, eyes wide. Something huge was moving through the smoke, snarling, hunting.
And that's when it hit him.
This wasn't some blessing. This wasn't a gift.
And he'd just "respawned" right in the middle of it.