Raka had never believed in premonitions. To him, premonitions were simply the way people gave meaning to coincidences that happened after the fact. If someone felt uneasy before setting out and then got into an accident, people would say that their heart had known something was coming. But if they felt uneasy and nothing happened, no one would remember it. That was why, all his life, Raka had dismissed premonitions as nonsense that only sounded reasonable once everything was already too late. That night should have been no different. A light rain had been falling since late afternoon, leaving the streets wet and reflecting the glow of vehicle headlights like shards of yellow and white glass. The night air felt colder than usual, while the road ahead of him was relatively quiet. Raka walked with his head lowered, one hand holding his phone and the other tucked into his jacket pocket. The final chapter of a fantasy novel was still open on his screen, a story that had made him forget everything around him for the past few hours. It was about a traveler thrown into a foreign world who had to live another person's life to find his way home. Raka had let out a quiet laugh at the last passage, which described the protagonist standing at a crossroads between two worlds. If I were him, I'd look for a way home right away, he thought as he walked. He had no idea that a few seconds later, that simple thought would feel like the cruelest joke fate had ever played on him.
Raka slowed when he reached the edge of the road. The crossing light across the street was still red. He raised his face and watched the vehicles occasionally passing in front of him. Nothing was strange. There was no sign that anything was about to happen. There was no suspicious sound besides the rumble of rain, tires slicing through puddles, and the hum of vehicles in the distance. Yet for some reason, for the first time that night, a strange feeling arose in his chest. It wasn't fear. It wasn't anxiety, either. Just a small impulse telling him to stop for a few seconds longer. Raka stared at the crossing light, then glanced at his phone screen. He hadn't finished the chapter he was reading. He swiped the screen with his thumb and smiled faintly when he saw the sentence he'd just read. Not everyone who gets lost wants to be found. “Weird,” he murmured. “The author's getting more ridiculous.” The crossing light turned green. Raka slipped his phone into his pocket and started walking.
He had taken only a few steps when a horn blared.
Long and loud.
Raka turned.
In a fraction of a second, he saw blinding headlights cutting through the curtain of rain. His body froze before his mind could understand what was happening. He tried to move, but his legs no longer seemed to belong to him. The horn grew louder, mingling with someone's shout in the distance. Then everything happened so fast. His body was thrown aside, his phone flew from his hand, and the world seemed to turn upside down. He felt none of the pain he had always imagined death would bring. There was no drawn-out scream. No time to regret anything. All he felt was cold, then emptiness.
Darkness.
Absolute darkness.
There was no sound of rain. No streetlights. No pain. Even his body no longer felt like his own. Raka tried to open his eyes, but he didn't know whether he still had eyes. He tried to move his hands, but he didn't know whether he still had hands. For what felt like hours, he simply existed inside a directionless void. There was no up or down. No right or left. He seemed to be floating in a space with no distance, no time, and no end. Then a voice rang out.
The voice didn't come from any one direction. It seemed to appear directly inside his mind.
Witness.
Then a second voice appeared.
Witness.
Then a third.
The voices piled on top of one another until they formed an echo that made his mind tremble. Strangely, Raka could understand them all. He didn't recognize the languages they used, but their meaning entered his head just like that, as if he had known it since birth. There were male voices, female voices, old voices, young voices, and even voices that didn't sound human. Some sounded pleading. Some sounded angry. Others simply repeated the same word.
Witness.
“Who... who are you?” Raka tried to ask.
There was no answer.
He tried to scream, but no sound came out. He tried to run, but there was no ground beneath his feet. He tried to close his eyes, yet he wasn't sure whether his eyes were actually open. For the first time since the accident, a realization slowly emerged within him.
I'm dead.
The thought came so simply that it felt all the more terrifying.
Raka tried to remember what had happened at the end. Wet streets. Rain. The crossing light. The horn. White light. Then darkness. He wanted to say that it was all just a dream, but no dream felt this cold. No dream made someone lose all feeling in their own body.
“Am I really dead?”
The voices suddenly stopped.
The silence that followed was far more frightening than the thousands of voices before it.
Then, far ahead of him, a light appeared.
At first it was only a tiny point, like a star impossibly far away. But slowly, the light grew, spreading into a golden circle suspended in the darkness. Raka stared at it with a feeling he couldn't explain. The light wasn't blinding. If anything, it felt warm. There was something within it that made him feel as though he were looking at a door that had been waiting for him for a very long time.
He didn't know why, but the body that no longer felt like a body began moving toward it.
One step.
Then another.
The closer he drew to the light, the farther away the voices became. But before they vanished completely, one whisper came through more clearly than the rest.
“Don't trust the first life you remember.”
Raka stopped.
“What?”
There was no answer.
The golden light pulsed once.
Then another voice spoke.
“Find the split sun.”
Raka didn't even have time to ask what it meant.
Something pulled him.
Not a hand. Not the wind. It felt as though his entire existence were being dragged into the light. He tried to resist, but there was nothing to hold on to. For the first time since his death, Raka felt something resembling fear.
“Wait!”
The light grew brighter.
“I'm not ready!”
No one cared.
“Wait!”
Then everything vanished.
Raka woke up with a sharp gasp.
His chest rose and fell. Air forced its way harshly into his lungs. His hands gripped something soft beneath him. He slowly opened his eyes and immediately realized that he was lying in a place he had never seen before.
A high white-and-gold ceiling stretched above him. Thin curtains hung from a large bed with wooden posts covered in intricate carvings. The scent of flowers and incense filled the air. Sunlight streamed through tall windows along the side of the room, passing through deep-red curtains. Everything looked far too luxurious to be a hospital room.
Raka blinked several times.
Then he heard someone's voice.
“Your Majesty!”
A woman ran toward him and immediately knelt beside the bed.
“Your Majesty is awake!”
Raka froze.
Two more servants hurried in through the door. They wore long garments completely unfamiliar to him. One carried a bowl of water, while the other immediately bowed deeply.
“Call the physician!”
“No, not all at once!” the first woman exclaimed. “His Majesty just woke up!”
Raka stared blankly at them one by one.
His Majesty?
He tried to sit up.
His body felt heavy.
Very heavy.
He braced himself with both hands, then suddenly stopped.
Those weren't his hands.
His fingers were longer. His skin was rougher. Veins stood out along the backs of his hands. Several large rings circled his fingers, one of them decorated with a dark-red stone that glittered in the sunlight.
Raka stared at his hands for a long moment.
Then he touched his face.
A broader jaw.
A beard.
Skin far older than his own.
He drew a deep breath.
“Mirror.”
The servants exchanged glances.
“Your Majesty?”
“Mirror,” Raka repeated more firmly.
One of the servants quickly retrieved a large mirror standing in the corner of the room and brought it closer.
Raka saw his reflection.
Or rather, he saw someone wearing a face that wasn't his.
An older man in his fifties stared back at him from the mirror. His hair was streaked with gray. A neatly trimmed white beard framed his face. His eyes looked tired, as though he had spent decades carrying a burden too heavy for any human being.
Raka touched his cheek.
The reflection did the same.
He stepped back.
“Impossible.”
One of the servants immediately lowered his head.
“Your Majesty?”
Raka didn't hear him.
There was only one conclusion repeating in his mind.
I'm dead.
Then I woke up in someone else's body.
He looked at the mirror again.
For a moment, something strange happened.
The old man's face blinked.
Then, behind its reflection, Raka saw his own face.
His real face.
The face of a young man who should have died in the middle of the street only minutes ago.
It lasted only a fraction of a second.
Then the image vanished.
Raka flinched and nearly dropped the mirror.
“Your Majesty!”
“I...” Raka swallowed. “I'm fine.”
He had no idea how those words had come out so calmly.
A worried-looking female servant stepped closer. “Your Majesty may still be weak. The physician said that after being unconscious for three days, Your Majesty's memories and consciousness may not have fully returned.”
Raka turned sharply.
“Three days?”
The woman nodded.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Three days?”
“That's right.”
Raka fell silent.
In his mind, he heard the horn again.
Then darkness.
Then the voices.
Then the light.
He looked toward the window.
The sun shone brightly outside. Birds flew between the tall stone towers. From far away came the sound of a great bell, followed by the faint blare of trumpets.
Three days.
So it wasn't just a dream.
Raka slowly lowered his gaze to the unfamiliar hands that now belonged to him.
“Who am I?”
The question came out so softly that it was almost inaudible.
Yet the servants immediately froze.
The woman nearest him went pale.
“Your Majesty?”
Raka realized his mistake.
He quickly changed his expression.
“I mean...” He searched for an excuse. “I want to remember everything.”
The servant nodded quickly, as if relieved to have found an explanation.
“Your Majesty is King Ashwin of Veyra.”
The name sounded unfamiliar.
Yet the moment it was spoken, something stirred inside his head.
Not a memory.
More like a fragment.
A great hall.
A woman crying.
A drawn sword.
A boy standing in the rain.
A crown.
Then everything disappeared.
Raka closed his eyes.
King Ashwin.
He didn't know who this man was.
But the world outside seemed to know him.
And worse, that world believed Raka was him.
Suddenly, the bedroom door opened.
An old man entered without announcing himself.
He did not bow.
Unlike the other servants, the man simply stood a few steps from the bed and stared at Raka for a long moment.
His gaze was sharp.
Far too sharp.
Raka felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
The man wore a long dark robe bearing a golden sun emblem on the chest. His hair had turned white, but his body was still sturdy. His face held the calm of someone who had seen too much to be easily surprised.
“Your Majesty,” he said at last.
Raka nodded.
The man did not move.
Their gazes met.
Several seconds passed.
Then the man said quietly, “You're not the Ashwin I know, are you?”
Raka's heart seemed to stop.
For the first time since waking in that foreign world, he realized something far more dangerous than his own death.
Someone knew he wasn't the body's original owner.
And that man didn't seem surprised at all.