Anastasius felt himself falling.
He could not see where he was going, nor could he tell how far he had already fallen, because his eyes remained firmly shut and no matter how hard he tried to open them, his eyelids refused to obey him. There was no ground beneath his feet, no wind rushing against his skin and no sensation of movement beyond the strange feeling that his body was slowly descending through an endless darkness.
He tried to move his arms, but nothing happened.
He tried to move his legs, yet they remained completely still.
Even his fingers refused to respond.
Panic began to creep into his thoughts as he struggled against the invisible force keeping his body still, and the more he fought, the more he became aware of how helpless he was.
"What’s happening?"
He tried again to open his eyes, putting every bit of strength he could find into the effort, only for the same darkness to remain behind his eyelids.
He did not know how long he fell, whether it was seconds or minutes or hours, because time had lost all meaning in this place where nothing existed except the endless descent and the silence that pressed against him from every direction. He tried to call out for someone, anyone, but his voice remained trapped somewhere inside him and refused to leave his throat.
Then, without warning, Anastasius was brought to a sudden halt that left him suspended in the same darkness with the same stillness and the same silence, and yet something had changed because he was no longer moving and the sensation of descent had vanished as completely as though it had never been there at all.
He waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
The darkness and the silence remained and his body remained frozen in place, and for a long moment he simply existed in that empty space with no sense of where he was or what he was supposed to do next.
Then, slowly, he became aware of something beneath him.
It was not the nothingness he had felt during the fall but something solid that pressed against his back and his legs and his arms as though he were lying on a surface that had not been there before. The sensation was strange and unexpected and for a moment he did not understand what it meant, and then he realized that he could feel his own body again, could feel his chest rising and falling with each breath, could feel the weight of his limbs resting against whatever he was lying on.
He tried to open his eyes and this time, they obeyed.
Light flooded in and he squeezed them shut again immediately, the brightness stabbing his eyes, and he lay there with his eyes closed and his heart pounding while he waited for the pain to fade.
"What the hell?"
His voice came out as a rasp, barely recognizable as his own, and the sound of it made him freeze because it did not sound like him at all. It was thinner and weaker and it hurt to speak, but at least he could speak, at least he could hear himself, at least he was not trapped in that silent darkness anymore.
He opened his eyes again, this time taking a moment to let his vision adjust and found himself staring at a ceiling he did not recognize. It stretched high above him, framed by elegant wooden beams and decorated with intricate carvings, while long curtains hung from the tall windows along the far side of the spacious room, shifting gently in the morning breeze.
"This isn’t my room."
He blinked several times, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The walls were built from smooth stone, while the room was furnished with dark wooden furniture that looked far more refined than anything he had ever owned. To his left, tall windows allowed warm sunlight to pour into the room, illuminating the unfamiliar surroundings and making the spacious chamber feel even larger. None of it belonged to him, none of it made sense, and none of it was anything he had ever seen before.
"Where am I?"
He tried to sit up, but his body refused to cooperate, his muscles weak and unresponsive as though they had forgotten how to move, and the effort sent a sudden wave of dizziness through him that forced him back against the pillow.
"What’s wrong with me?"
He lay there with his breath coming in short gasps, his heart pounding against his chest as he desperately tried to remember how he had gotten there, what had happened before the falling, and whether there was anything he could still recall.
Then the memories began to return.
The car crash.
His brother’s voice.
The sound of his sister crying.
Anastasius stared at the unfamiliar ceiling as the realization slowly settled over him.
"Didn’t I die?"
His breathing became heavier as another thought entered his mind.
"Am I dreaming?"
Before he could think of anything else, a sharp pain suddenly tore through his head.
The pain began somewhere deep inside his skull and spread through his entire body like fire coursing through his veins, forcing a sharp gasp from his throat as he grabbed his head with both hands and pressed his palms against his temples as though he could somehow hold himself together through sheer force.
"Stop, stop, stop."
His fingers twisted desperately into his hair and pulled, but the pain refused to fade. Instead, it grew worse with every passing second, becoming so intense that he was certain something inside his head was being torn apart.
"Please, just stop."
He wanted to scream, but his throat refused to cooperate, leaving only a broken sound somewhere between a gasp and a cry to escape his lips. The sound echoed through the unfamiliar room before fading into the silence, leaving him alone with the unbearable pain.
"Make it stop. Please, make it stop."
His body trembled violently against the mattress as he squeezed his eyes shut, desperately wishing for the pain to disappear, but instead of fading, it continued to consume him until the world around him began to blur.
The pain continued, and he curled inward as much as his weak body would allow, pulling his knees toward his chest while his hands remained locked around his head. His breath came in ragged gasps that never seemed to bring enough air into his lungs, leaving him struggling to breathe as the pain continued to overwhelm him.
"I can’t, I can’t, I can’t."
He did not know what was happening to him, why his body felt as though it were burning from the inside, or how much longer he could endure it before something inside him finally gave way.
And then the memories came.
They came all at once, flooding through his mind in a rush of images, sounds, and feelings that did not belong to him, yet somehow felt as though they had always been there, buried somewhere deep inside him and simply waiting for him to remember them.
He saw the same room he was currently in. He saw a man with a warm smile and strong hands. He saw a woman with kind eyes and gentle fingers. He saw an older boy with the same dark hair and proud posture, and he saw a younger girl with a bright laugh and more energy than she seemed to know what to do with.
He saw a family.
His family.
No.
Not his.
"What is this? What are you showing me?"
The memories belonged to someone else, someone whose body he was inside, someone whose life he had somehow inherited without understanding how or why, and the name came to him through the flood of images and sounds and feelings that were not his own.
"Aric."
"Aric Noctra."
The name felt strange, yet somehow familiar, as though he had known it long before this moment.
The middle child of the Southern Duke.
The memories continued to pour into him and with them came the understanding of who Aric had been. He was a boy who had been born with a weak body and a powerful gift, a boy who had spent his entire childhood watching his older brother succeed and his younger sister thrive while he struggled to keep up with both of them. He was a boy who had collapsed when his Mana Core became overwhelmed and had spent three years unconscious in a bed while his family waited for him to wake up.
Three years.
"I was asleep for three years?"
"I?"
The memories kept coming, and with them came the emotions Aric had felt during those long years of helplessness, emotions Anastasius experienced as though they were his own. He felt the shame of being unable to move, the envy he had felt toward his siblings, and the self hatred that had grown inside him like a disease that could not be cured. He felt the resentment Aric had carried toward his parents for continuing to live their lives while he remained trapped inside a body that could no longer keep up with them. He felt the bitter anger Aric had felt toward his mother when he learned she was pregnant again, as though she had decided to replace him with a child who might actually be healthy.
"Why would you think that? Why would you believe they didn’t love you?"
The emotions were overwhelming, and although they did not belong to him, Anastasius understood them.
He understood them because he had felt something similar once.
The memories eventually stopped and the pain slowly began to fade, leaving him alone in the unfamiliar room with nothing but the weight of two lives pressing down on him at once. He loosened his grip on his hair and let his hands fall to his sides, lying there in silence as he stared at the ceiling, trying to steady his breathing while his mind struggled to make sense of everything he had just experienced.
He looked down at his hands, at the pale thin fingers that did not belong to him.
"My name is Aric Noctra."
The words felt strange in his mouth, foreign and unfamiliar and yet somehow necessary.
"But I remember dying as Anastasius."
He closed his eyes and took a slow breath.
"So who am I now?"
Before he could find an answer to the question that had begun to consume him, the sound of the door opening broke through the silence and pulled his attention toward the entrance.