I died on a Tuesday.
I know this because the job was scheduled for Monday, and the client pushed it back a day.
Professional courtesy, he called it.
Even in the assassination business, some people respect weekends.
The bullet came from my own partner.
Classic.
Twelve years of watching each other’s backs, and it ended with him watching mine — through a scope.
I’d have been disappointed if it ended any other way.
My last thought, as the world went dark, wasn’t fear.
It wasn’t regret.
It was relief.
Finally.
Then I woke up in a forest.
Not slowly.
Not with the groggy confusion of a normal awakening.
One moment, nothing — the clean, endless nothing of death.
The next, I was flat on my back, staring up at a canopy of trees that were far too tall and far too purple to belong on Earth.
The air smelled wrong.
Cleaner than any city I’d ever worked in, thick with the scent of unfamiliar flowers and something metallic underneath.
My body felt wrong too — younger, lighter, humming with an energy I didn’t recognize.
I sat up.
My hands were smooth.
No calluses from years on the trigger.
No scar across my knuckles from a knife fight in Prague.
Different body.
Same tired soul.
“Well,” I muttered to no one.
“This is new.”
That’s when the screen appeared.
A rectangle of pale blue light materialized in front of my face, floating in the air like a bad hologram.
Text scrolled across it, and I felt — not heard, felt — a voice press against the inside of my skull.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: ANOMALY DETECTED.]
I stared at it.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: UNAUTHORIZED ENTITY DETECTED. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE.]
“Nice to meet you too,” I said.
The screen flickered, almost like it was surprised I’d responded.
Then it doubled down.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: SCANNING… ERROR. SCANNING… ERROR. ENTITY CANNOT BE CLASSIFIED.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: THIS ENTITY SHOULD NOT EXIST. INITIATING EXTERMINATION PROTOCOL.]
I raised an eyebrow.
“That’s a little dramatic for a first conversation.”
The ground beneath me trembled.
I’d been in enough dangerous situations to recognize the shift in the air — that electric tension that comes right before violence.
My new body reacted before my mind fully caught up, muscles coiling, senses sharpening.
The instincts had transferred, then.
Good to know.
The trees ahead of me groaned.
Then they split.
Something massive pushed through the forest — a creature the size of a bus, all scales and teeth and burning red eyes.
A lizard, if lizards were the size of buildings and radiated enough heat to blister paint.
It fixed those glowing eyes on me and let out a roar that flattened the grass in every direction.
Above it, a new screen appeared:
[QUEST ASSIGNED: SURVIVE THE FLAME DRAKE.]
[DIFFICULTY: IMPOSSIBLE.]
[SUCCESS REWARD: (ERROR — REWARD MANDATORY BY SYSTEM LAW.)]
[FAILURE PENALTY: DEATH]
[NOTE FROM SYSTEM: PLEASE DIE.]
I read the last line twice.
“You know,” I said, standing and brushing dirt off my unfamiliar clothes, “most things at least pretend to be polite before they try to kill you.”
The Flame Drake charged.
It was fast — faster than something that big had any right to be.
A wall of muscle and fire barreling straight at me, mouth opening to reveal a furnace glow building in its throat.
In my old life, I’d faced men with guns, blades, and bad intentions.
I’d learned one universal truth about killing: it’s not about strength.
It’s about precision.
Everything that lives has a weak point.
You just have to know where to look.
And somehow — I did.
The knowledge bloomed in my mind like it had always been there.
The soft spot beneath the jaw, where the scales thinned.
The vulnerable line of the throat.
My body knew, the way my old body had always known where to put a bullet.
The Drake lunged.
I stepped inside its reach — not away, toward — moving with a speed that surprised even me.
The world seemed to slow.
The heat washed over me but didn’t burn; something inside my chest, something cold and dark and hungry, drank it in.
The fire that should have incinerated me simply…
vanished.
Absorbed.
And I felt stronger for it.
“Huh,” I said.
Then I drove my hand into the soft flesh beneath the creature’s jaw.
I don’t know what I expected.
Maybe to bounce off.
Maybe to break every bone in my fingers.
Instead, my hand punched through scale and muscle like they were wet paper, that cold darkness in my chest surging down my arm and out through my fingertips.
The Flame Drake shuddered.
Its burning eyes went wide.
Then it collapsed, dead before it hit the ground, taking half the forest with it in a cloud of dust and splintered trees.
Silence.
I pulled my hand free, flexing my fingers.
No blood.
No injury.
The dark energy receded back into my chest, settling like a satisfied predator.
New screens flooded my vision, one after another, each more panicked than the last:
[QUEST COMPLETE.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: THAT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: HOW DID YOU—]
[MANDATORY REWARD GRANTED: SKILL [VOID FLAME] ACQUIRED.]
[SYSTEM NOTICE: I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON IT.]
I looked at the dead dragon.
I looked at the frantic blue screens.
I looked at my smooth, uninjured hand.
Six seconds in this new world, and something that governed reality itself already wanted me dead.
I should have been concerned.
Alarmed, at the very least.
Instead, for the first time in two lifetimes, I felt something unfamiliar stir in my chest — right alongside that cold, hungry darkness.
Interest.
“So,” I said, cracking my neck as more furious notifications scrolled past.
“You want me dead.” I smiled.
It felt strange on this younger face.
“Let’s see you try.”