Chapter 1 – A New Beginning

“Ria!”

 

Yun jolted awake, forehead slick with sweat, his body clammy beneath the thin, ragged sheets that clung to him like a second skin.

 

His back rested on a hard slab of wood, adorned with hay he used as a makeshift bed, gaze riveted to the ceiling, where thin rays of moonlight slipped through cracks in the tattered roof that shielded him from the open sky.

 

It was still the dead of night.

 

And yet, he was now fully awake.

 

It would prove impossible to return to slumber’s embrace and sleep until dawn, a few hours away.

 

Not after the dream he just had.

 

Nightmare might have been more apt a word.

 

It remained seared into his mind like an indelible remembrance. More than just a trick of the mind as his brain sought rest from the stress of living, but a true memory of a time so long ago that not many of them remained intact.

 

Alexandria, or Alex as he first knew her.

 

The name of a girl who hid her true nature from the world, never letting it slip until her last moment.

 

As for why she did so, even after all this time, Yun could only speculate.

 

Still, it wasn’t that hard to offer a conjecture.

 

She had hardly been the first to attempt such a foolish thing.

 

Even in a world believed to be beyond such considerations, one widely believed to be at the apex of humanity, built on an ideology of egalitarianism, such stories were all too common.

 

Not even the Commonwealth of Man could be considered a utopian ideal. In fact, only a fool would think so. After all, it would be absurd to even assume such distorted ideals could be possible as long as living beings remained in charge. Their flaws would undoubtedly be part of the system.

 

But there was no use dwelling on it now, not when that world was forever out of reach.

 

Their deaths had changed everything.

 

Yun took a while to calm himself, staring absentmindedly at the ceiling. No matter how many times he was faced with the events of his first death, he could never simply ignore them. Unlike all the subsequent ones, the first had wounded him deeply, leaving a permanent mark on his psyche.

 

Indeed, the incident now fresh in his memory had resulted in not only his death but also the death of his colleague. Yun knew not how much time had passed since then, nor was there a point in trying to find the answer, for when he woke up next, he found himself a newborn, stranded in a realm much different than the one he knew.

 

That world ran on laws and principles utterly foreign to him, stirring a sense of alienation that only faded with time.

 

Being a baby had its advantages: despite retaining most of his knowledge, his newly formed brain remained malleable, allowing him to quickly adapt to his new circumstances.

 

For the most part, that life passed in quiet monotony.

 

As the son of a poor peasant, his achievements were limited. He sought to understand the circumstances that led him here, in this foreign world reminiscent of the fifteenth century in the Old World of Terra, before mankind had even begun to dream of travelling between the stars, but his quest proved futile in the end.

 

For one, the night sky was devoid of stars, an impossibility for one who had spent the majority of his life in space.

 

Also, the technology was rather primitive. Whether it’d be industrial or medicinal, this world was lacking in both.

 

Despite being the fourth out of nine children, only six made it to adulthood, with most dying of very treatable illnesses. Yun had to spend most of his time on agriculture, using hand tools to sow and harvest, just barely able to feed himself and his family.

 

There was no time for anything else, let alone unravelling the mystery of how he had arrived in this world.

 

After a few years of futile efforts, Yun eventually gave up.

 

Growing accustomed to the harshness of the land, he married a lass from a nearby village and, with his meagre savings, managed to buy a small plot of land not far away where he raised his own family.

 

Fortunately, that world was peaceful. Not once was he made to bear arms, and he finally succumbed to old age sometime after his wife, surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

 

It was far from the ideal life, yet also far from the worst.

 

He found contentment in everything but one thing…

 

Despite searching high and low, Yun had never found any traces of Ria.

 

It only made sense that if he was to be reborn in this world, so should Ria, yet it seemed it wasn’t meant to be. As far as he knew, he was the only one here.

 

With this one regret in his heart, Yun breathed his last breath, only to wake up moments later once again as a babe.

 

This shocked him more than anything.

 

The event he thought was a singular occurrence happened once again without warning. The world had changed, being alien once more.

 

He had to start again from scratch, acclimating himself to this foreign world.

 

And so the cycle spun on, for who could say how long…

 

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Yun had long since stopped counting. His lives blurred together, memories fragmenting as his mind shielded itself from the endless tide.

 

The human brain was never meant to hold onto this endless flow of time.

 

Closing his eyes and exhaling once, Yun rose from his hard bed.

 

Night still pressed in, the world around him lost in sleep. Yet Yun knew he could not return to bed, not after that dream.

 

Instead, he chose to begin his day early.

 

After all, it was merely an hour or two ahead of his usual time.

 

Indeed, Yun was an early riser, a remnant of his former life as a farmer. By now, it had been ingrained into him.

 

He quickly folded the sheets and put them to the side, revealing that his bed was nothing more than a paltry amount of hay laid on top of a wooden base, a very uncomfortable resting place for most people, but one that Yun had grown accustomed to.

 

If anything, this was rather luxurious compared to what he had had to make do with at other times.

 

With a broom from the corner, Yun swept the scattered hay—evidence of his restless night—back into a pile, frowning at how little was left.

 

Before night came again, he would have to replenish it, lest he wanted to sleep on the cold, hard floor again… Not that it mattered much to him.

 

The roughness of his life served as a constant reminder that he was, at least, still alive.

 

He could easily change it were he inclined to do so, but didn’t feel like making the effort.

 

With his bedding tidied up, Yun stepped outside.

 

Indeed, his bedroom opened directly onto the outdoors. There wasn’t even a door blocking the interior from the elements.

 

There had been one, once. But ever since it fell into a state of disrepair, Yun hadn’t bothered to fix it. Instead, he simply removed it and let it rot away by the side of the building.

 

Now, beyond the threshold of his dwelling, Yun was almost blinded by the moonlight that he had to use his hand to block its glamour.