The sound of water.
It reached him first, delicate and distant, like the voice of a forgotten lullaby.
The old man's eyes fluttered open, crusted with blood and dirt, his breath catching in his throat as light poured into his pupils like a flood returning to a dry land.
"So... I'm not dead yet," he whispered, voice hoarse and cracked, barely more than breath.
He lay half-submerged at the edge of a wide river, cool water licking at his limbs as reeds swayed gently nearby.
He standing up in his feet, he saw many tall trees as they are standing here for many decades. The sky above was vast — impossibly vast — a canvas of deep blue painted with drifting white clouds. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he heard the chirping of birds. He felt joy in his heart, as if he lost this feeling, had not noticed the beauty of nature for many years.
This was not Lost Veil.
This was somewhere else.
His body felt strange. Too light. His fingers, small. His skin… not his own. He struggled to rise, pain rippling through him like a second heartbeat, violent and raw. As he sat upright, a jolt of agony arced through his back, forcing a sharp cry from his lips. He reached behind him instinctively and felt it — a deep, torn wound, the kind left by steel. The flesh was wet with blood, fresh and warm.
It was no illusion.
"A final blow… to end a life."
Who had struck it?
When?
Was it the price of entering the lake, or had it happened after?
His legs trembled as he stood, and he looked down at his bare feet — the soles painted in red, as if he had walked through a battlefield. His arms, chest, and ribs were littered with bruises and cuts, the map of a life lived hard — or a death escaped by a thread.
But it was what came next that made him freeze.
The wound on his back — the wide gash that should have ended him — began to burn, fiercely, like fire beneath his skin. He gasped, falling to one knee. The pain was worse now than before. He gritted his teeth as if enduring a branding. Yet… through that pain, he felt something else.
It was healing.
Not slowly, not naturally. The flesh pulsed, shimmered faintly beneath the skin, knitting itself together — not cleanly, but with wild force, like an unseen energy refusing to let him die.
And in that moment, a terrifying question bloomed in his heart:
"Where am I?"
"What am I?"
He bent forward, scooping the river's bloodied water to wash his face, to wipe the haze from his eyes. But as the water cleared, he caught sight of something in the surface. A reflection. His reflection.
And he froze.
It was not his face.
Not the weathered face of a man who had seen kingdoms rise and fall, who had slept beneath burning skies and buried comrades beneath the snow. Not the man who had walked through the Lost Veil and surrendered to the deep.
It was the face of a boy.
No older than fourteen, perhaps fifteen. Thin, bruised, wild-eyed.
Strange. Unfamiliar.
A stranger.
"Who…?" he whispered.
The reflection stared back at him — silent, breathing — a vessel he did not know, but somehow now was. The heart in his chest beat faster, not from fear, but from something else: a stirring at the edge of memory, like a hand reaching up from water.
"Am I… reincarnated?"
"But How?"..... Is this because of the mysterious power within the Lost Veil's lake?
The question lingered, trembling in the air.
He staggered back from the river, his legs barely holding him. The trees swayed around him like silent watchers, and the river sang no answers. Only mystery.
Somewhere in the sky, a bird soared — high, free.
But he was no bird.
He was a blade dulled by time, reforged by fate.
His soul recast into the shape of a boy.
"Is this after life.."
He looked down at his trembling hands, the unknown skin, the scars that did not belong to him — or did now.
Suddenly a terrible pain began in his brain — savage and unrelenting — and as he fell to his knees by the riverside, gasping, it felt like fire was being poured directly into his brain.
But this time, it wasn't just pain.
It was memory.
Suddenly, as if a dam had broken, visions flooded into his mind, raw and uninvited. Flickering, fragmented images — sharp and ghostly — began to haunt the edges of his awareness. The world spun, and he clutched at the earth, eyes wide as those memories clawed their way into the light.
A name. A face.
Varn. Varn Stromvale.
That was his name now.
Not the name of the old man Markin Pegiom who had sunk into the Lost Veil.
But the name of the boy whose body he now inhabited.
He saw it — flashes of a past life not his own, but now inseparable from him.
A child with deep black hair, small and quiet, sitting alone beneath a flowering tree.
The Wind Blossom Clan's great ancestral home — elegant halls filled with the clash of wooden swords and the cold eyes of siblings who laughed when he fell behind.
His father — Patriarch of The great Wind Blossom Clan, Rakel Stormvale, a towering figure with wind-scarred hands and eyes that looked past him like he was air, not blood.
Varn's mother…
A warm face, soft voice.
Gone too soon.
Gone before he even learned to say "mother" without tasting sorrow.
He had no talent.
No affinity for the Wind Blossom's martial legacy — no wind-born grace.
While his brothers spun blades like dancing leaves, he stumbled.
While his sisters meditated in perfect balance, he strained just to feel the essence in his breath.
And so they mocked him.
Even the servants pitied him.
Even the elders forgot his name in council.
But one day… one day, something changed.
Not from within — but from outside.
An enemy clan — cold, ruthless, blood-bound to vengeance — came like shadows in the night. Their blades sought Wind Blossom Clan prized child, but they were too well-guarded.
So instead… they turned to the weakest. The forgotten.
The boy no one would miss.
They came for Varn.
He ran. Through the woods, through the night, beneath storms and moonlight.
He hid in roots, drank from mud, clutched his breath like it might be stolen too.
For two days, he evaded them.
Two days of terror and silence and hunger.
But in the end…
They found him.
And they killed him.
The old man — now Varn — clutched his chest as the final memory surged:
Cold steel slicing across his back, the pain unbearable, the betrayal total.
There had been no rescue. No redemption.
Just death.
Alone, forgotten, discarded.
And yet —
He was here.
Alive. Breathing.
In Varn's flesh.
With Varn's blood.
And his own soul.
He collapsed onto the grass, breathing hard, staring into the river as the ripples faded, the vision settling like dust after a storm.
"So that's what this is… the cruelty of this world" he whispered.
"This boy… this broken child… was abandoned even by fate. And Once at this age I was abandoned by time."
He looked at his bloodstained hands.
One life had ended in a lake of silence.
Another had ended in a forest of violence.
And now, both had been reborn as one.
The river flowed gently beside him, as if to say:
"The past is remembered. But the future is unwritten."
And as the wind stirred through the trees, Varn — no longer just a forgotten son,
No longer just a weary soul —
"Whoever I was… I am not him anymore," he whispered.
"But whoever I am now… the path is still mine to walk."
And so, on bloodied feet beneath a sky far too wide,
the boy who once was an old man began his new journey.
where the past still bled, and the future waited, unseen.