Chapter 1

Sharp pain. That was the first feeling that raged through my body. I felt like my insides had been pulled out through every orifice while my skin was set aflame. I wanted to scream, but I didn't have a voice. All I could feel was the boundless pain amongst infinite darkness.

That's when the sound struck me. It was muffled and difficult to understand like my ears were blocked with fluid, but I steadily started to understand words as time passed.

"What did you do?" The voice of a panicked girl was the first words I could hear.

"Me? I didn't do anything. This is hardly my fault. He shouldn't have gotten in the way." Another girl spoke up, her voice sounded less concerned and more irritated.

Did I know a pair of girls? I didn't think so. I tried to think back to how I had ended up in this situation, but my mind was blank. When I tried to recall more, I felt a rebound of pain. My head nearly split in two.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

"He's still alive?" A boy's voice that sounded snooty spoke up. "How surprising."

"Ahhhhhhh… ghhaaaaaa…"

"Will someone shut him up? He's hurting my ears." The irritated girl added.

It was only at that moment that I realized that the sound of screaming was coming from my lips.

"I will just put him out of his misery." The boy stated as I heard the sound of steel being drawn.

"Niles, No!" The first voice I had heard cried out.

I might have felt fear if my mind could have processed what was going on, but the pain overrode everything else. I stopped screaming, but I couldn't say it was because of the threat. Screaming only caused my throat to become hoarser, and it didn't seem to lead to an end to the pain, so I simply stopped. This proved to be the act that pushed me over the edge. Without screaming, I had nothing keeping me from succumbing to the intense pain, and I fell unconscious again.

My dreams were dark and filled with pain. I started to remember murky pieces of my former life. The problem was that the pieces didn't all seem to fit together. I had memories of being a soldier fighting in a war. I had memories of being a farmer, working in a field. I became certain that these memories came from many different people. I tried to count how many, but the number was quickly lost. I remembered dying no less than fifty times, and many of those times were quite brutal. Very few of my lives were peaceful or pleasant. It seemed like I had been fated to live a rotten life and die an early death.

My hearing seemed to return. "He's received a great deal of damage. I strongly recommend you do not send him home. We can keep him stable here until a healer with a healing familiar can repair the damage."

"A healer?" A woman's voice screeched. "Do you know how much a healer costs? I'm not going to waste money on this… this useless boy!"

"Now honey, it was our daughter who put him in this situation." A patient older male voice spoke.

"So? It was his fault for overstepping himself. He has no relation to us whatsoever. He's just some vagrant the help brought in."

"Please… mistress. If you pay for the services, I will work to pay it off." Another woman with a somewhat gentle voice spoke.

"You already were working so that we paid room and board for this… waste of space! Why, if it wasn't for your child being my daughter's playmate, I would have already kicked him on the street."

"Honey, perhaps we can come up with something…" The man spoke.

"Please! I-I'll do anything…" The kind woman begged.

"Didn't you listen? You're already working extra! This expense requires something a bit more."

"M-more? What more?"

"Your daughter…"

"Catelyn, what about her?"

"As you're aware, my daughter will be going to school soon. Her familiar is exceptional, so we're sending her to the best school in the country, The Azure Dragon Academy. She will need someone to take care of her. Of course, her brother will be there, but he can't enter the girl's dorms, nor should he."

"You want to send Catelyn to Azure Academy?"

"She will go as my daughter's servant. She already knows my daughter's likes and dislikes, so she should be able to transition into the role quickly."

"My daughter got a full scholarship to Griffin Academy. They have the best program for law. She wants to become a lawyer…"

"Hmph! That stuffy old place is nothing compared to the Azure Academy. And of course, she will need to take the classes my daughter is taking as to aid her in her studies, so she can forget law." The shrill woman spoke as if things were already decided.

"As I was saying…" The other woman's voice sounded strained as she tried to be polite.

There was the sound of a door opening. "I'll do it!"

"Catelyn!"

"I'll be Margaretta's servant. I'll go to Azure Academy. Please, just heal him."

I wanted to keep listening, but I felt a prick in my arm. While they were conversing, the doctor had been steadily working on my body. The pain immediately diminished with whatever he had injected me with, but my consciousness soon followed.

I regained my consciousness and my hearing several times, but I still couldn't quite manage to lift a finger, or even open my eyes. I tried to listen in on conversations during the times I was awake, although most of the time I appeared to be alone. I could hear the steady beep of an EKG or the distance call for some nurse over the intercom, but that was it. I was able to reason I was in a hospital of some sort.

The pain was still there, although the drugs the doctor gave me did help. I wasn't getting stronger though. My body seemed to be in a state between life and death. Since I had nothing but time, I used it to go over my memories. Using the cues and names I had already heard, I started to pick out memories that I realized came from this life. I was able to remember my name.

"Jordan." I felt a soft hand gently touch the back of mine. "We managed to get a healer. They will come and fix you up in two days. Just hold on for me. Please."

This was the voice of the girl I had first encountered, and I had managed to attach that voice to the girl named Catelyn. Through my fragmented memories, I seemed to recall that we were friends. I had lived with her family. My family had died when I was younger, and her family had taken me in.

It wasn't that simple. They were a family of servants, and their house was a building on the Augustus estate. Catelyn's father had grown ill and died several winters ago, so it was just me, her mother, and her. Catelyn's mother worked for Madame Augustus, and Catelyn had become friends with her daughter, Margaretta Augustus. As for me, I was just a lay about living off their goodwill. I typically kept my head low, as Madame Augustus seemed to hate me. Catelyn kept their small servant space clean and did the cooking while her mother worked all day every day. Meanwhile, I spent my days lazing around in the fields and avoiding busy work.

My current situation had come when Margaretta's older brother had come from abroad. He had returned home to escort her back to their new school. I had never gotten along with her brother, and two years ago when he left for school, I had never been happier to have him gone. He seemed to fancy Catelyn, and it was something I had found irredeemable. He had been gloating and trying to flirt with her. I had grown angry and ended up challenging him.

Even though he was two years older than me and had already manifested his familiar, I wanted to teach him a lesson. I had a trick or two up my sleeve. I had intended to chuck a rock at his head before he could act. Just as we were going to start, it was interrupted. Margaretta had attacked me instead from the side. She must have seen the rock hidden behind my back. I never saw her attack coming. I was engulfed in flames, and that was how I ended up in the hospital.

I tried to come up with more details, but they didn't seem to come. My mind had been shattered, and now there were all of these other lives mixed in. It made it impossible to remember anything from my own life in any more detail. All I could say was that I had been a foolish young boy. The memories that came from various soldiers reanalyzed our encounter. Those memories told me how foolish I had been. Niles outclassed me in every way.

I was never a threat to Margaretta's big brother. Niles would have brutalized me if I had given him the chance. I didn't realize it at the time, but he had been looking at me mockingly. He had intended to break me in front of Catelyn as a means of winning her heart. In retrospect, his plan might have worked, and Margaretta had spared me the embarrassment.

I also realized that those thoughts were not the kinds of thoughts I should have had at my current age. I was only fifteen, after all, and could barely even be considered a man. Well, some of my memories included soldiers who fought alongside fifteen-year-old boys. I even recalled once being a fifteen-year-old who was handed a gun and sent to the front lines. That was one of my death memories. Somehow, these memories gave me a much richer range of experiences to pull from. I barely felt like the same person anymore. No, it was more accurate to say I had changed completely!