Death

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From an Unspecified Observer

At a particular moment in time, an anomaly occurred, one thought to be impossible by the Gods of ARC. When a soul was unshackled from its body, it didn't dissipate as most souls do, instead remaining the same as it was in life, although it did emit an attracting force that pulled other unencapsulated souls towards it and absorbed those souls once they came into close enough proximity to it. If left alone, this soul would eventually destroy the very fabric of reality and the gods with it. Left with no other choice, the gods of ARC pooled their powers to create a vessel that could hold and adapt to the soul in a place where it wouldn't be unusual for humanoids to have bodies similar to the soul's vessel.

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Homes Manor

[Cyrus Homes] (Age: 9)

I awoke with a start to the echo of clashing blades, the echo so clear that I could practically see the sparks produced by the clash. The blanket that had been presumably draped over me the previous night, when I fell asleep researching some strange movements from my family's enemies, was quickly discarded in my rush to open my bedroom door.

The ensuing sprint through the hallway to the stairs caused the soft sound of footfalls and quiet squeaks from the floorboards to echo, and then all sounds of a struggle stopped. Dread filled me as I paused to rip a painting off the wall behind me and pocketed the knife present in the alcove behind the painting, just in case my suspicions were correct. Now more cautiously, I proceeded down the stairs, then into the living room.

The room was decimated, the furniture in pieces, and the walls marred with blood, cuts, and deformities. There were two bodies in pools of crimson present by the window opposite the entrance I'd come through, with the dining table in between me and an assassin dressed in dark leather garments crouched over them.

My face scrunched up into a slight frown at the scene, my vision blurring as tears dripped down my face, but I pressed on. My silent footsteps took me just behind the dining table, where, with a rustle of cloth, I drew the knife and threw it at the back of the assassin's head.

He reacted instantly, jumping up and moving slightly to the left. Two light thuds followed his movement, my knife finding its mark in his heart and his in mine. We both collapsed, and memories flitted through my mind of my family and their talent that cost us everything. My vision started dimming, and the last thought through my head was, 'I should have listened'.

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Avallion

Enveloped by a warm current, I was guided toward a sense of completeness. Then it completely overtook me, and my being snapped into place. My senses started coming back—eyelids fluttering open, glimpsing hundreds of skyscrapers through the window of a sky-rise apartment.

It was obvious I wasn't on Earth anymore. The number of identical skyscrapers, each reaching at least 150 meters, arranged in concentric rings around a central tower, was unlike any city I knew. The only conclusion was that this was either hundreds of years in the future or on not Earth at all.

The view was magnificent. Never before had I seen anything like it, the skyscrapers created an almost virtual atmosphere. The roads filled with electric vehicles and sidewalks bustling with unique pedestrians enhanced the unreal ambience. It reminded me of a vibrant but artificial New York, so well planned it could be a utopian metropolis from a dream.

In other news, my appearance had changed significantly, as evidenced by my reflection in the window, which displayed an ordinary Asian girl with pink hair staring back at me. She seemed about four years younger than my original self, judging by her height and the traces of baby fat on her face. Finding myself in this unfamiliar body raises a ton of questions mainly —how and why—things that will remain unanswerable without more information.

I took stock of the living room. It had the usual furniture: a couch, a dining table with chairs, a rug, and a kitchen adjacent to the living area. On the dining table was a pristine, modern tablet displaying bizarre morning news: "Hugieian and Radonian integration is transitioning smoothly. [2044/01/05]" I scrolled down and found an ad for magic tutoring: "Get personalized magic assistance catering to your magic needs for just $1000 per session."

Magic exists here, huh? I should save my opinion for when I have more information, but it sounds like magic will be somewhat useful. Maybe it could have saved me from some of my mistakes. I wonder how this world's government is structured with there being magic and intelligent alien races around. Man, I can't believe that aliens look so humanoid. At first, I thought those pink-skinned aliens were humans who had some advanced cosmetic surgery to look pink, and that the elf-like humans were fantasy fanatics, having had some cosmetic work done on them, but it looks like I was wrong.

Curious about this world's power structure, I tested different finger movements on the tablet, mainly swiping and tapping areas that users wouldn't usually interact with. The shortcuts were very similar to what I was used to on an iPhone, except swiping down or diagonally down didn't bring up the time, battery life, or utilities. A quick upward swipe brought me to the tablet's home screen, where I found nothing resembling a search engine—just a messaging app without messages and a bland news application. Damn.

I took a deep, shuddering breath and started exploring. The floor was exceptionally smooth, almost like marble, a texture that kept me company as I clumsily stumbled into the hallway. My legs trembled with the strain of walking, a weakness unnoticed in my initial few meters of exercise, something that I guessed was a product of my age, foreign body, a neural disconnect, or some kind of muscle atrophy caused by inactivity.

The sliding doors in the hallway, the pair of shoes at the front door, and the apartment's minimalist aesthetic, along with that rug which I now recall looking almost like Japanese tatami mats, highlighted how uniquely Japanese the architecture was. It was nothing like the expansive but elegant European mansion I was familiar with—a place brimming with bright colors, inefficient to the extreme, so much so that ordinary people had to study its layout to avoid getting lost due to the place's unerring symmetry and its ungodly ornaments that never failed to make me grimace with excess cringe.

Sliding open the first door on the right I came to a empty study, furnished with a desk, a comfortable looking black chair and an almost empty bookshelf sitting comfortably attached to the right wall, the only thing remotely interesting about the room was the letter laying on the shelf, looking positively musty as if it had survived the 1700's and somehow was more ostentatious than letters between royals in the 1700's.