In the end, it wasn't an explosion, a lab accident, or some climactic betrayal by a cackling rival.
It was a toaster.
A battered, chrome-plated relic from the last century, still stained with breadcrumbs and the faint scent of burnt bagels. It had been with him since undergrad—a gift from a roommate who'd once sworn it was "vintage" in the same way asbestos was "retro." Arin Ember, twenty-three years old, PhD candidate in applied genetics and molecular evolution, died not in a blaze of glory, but in the dumb, accidental inferno that erupted when that toaster shorted out and lit his cluttered kitchen ablaze.
A toaster that had caught fire. That's what killed one of the most brilliant minds of his generation.
Fitting, really.
Arin had always joked with his lab mates that he wanted to die surrounded by fire. "Preferably plasma," he used to say with a mischievous grin, the bluish glow of Bunsen burners dancing in his glasses as he pipetted DNA samples with the elegance of a pianist. "Nothing fancy. Just… hot fire."
They rolled their eyes, laughed it off.
Some called him dramatic.
Some even called him crazy.
He called it curiosity.
Because while the rest of the university's bioengineering division was busy growing synthetic organs, correcting inherited diseases, and playing bio-god with CRISPR like it was a toy, Arin was chasing something far stranger. Obsessive, even. His desk was a chaos of protein gels, charred notebooks, and half-finished energy drinks.
He'd asked questions no one else dared to take seriously:
"What if life could evolve under artificial conditions?"
"What if code—genetic or otherwise—could be forced to adapt, not just through natural selection, but conscious intervention?"
"What if we stopped asking what nature intended… and started telling it what to become?"
His thesis wasn't on curing disease or enhancing memory. It was on synthetic genetic pathways—the reprogramming of life itself. He didn't just edit DNA; he rewrote it, line by line, as if it were a software script waiting to be compiled into flesh. His inspirations weren't just scientific papers; they were insects and dragons and fireproof lizards, creatures forged by hostile environments and shaped into marvels of biological engineering.
He had studied everything from the crystallized exoskeletons of beetles that survived volcanic ash, to the way dragonfly wings dispersed heat, to thermal-shock proteins in desert reptiles that basked on sunbaked rocks without cooking alive.
All for one seemingly absurd personal goal:
To create an organism that could survive fire.
Most thought it was metaphorical. Symbolic. Some poetic extension of childhood trauma. A way to cope. After all, Arin had grown up in the south, in a region where wildfire season had long since turned into wildfire era. He'd seen entire towns vanish into smoke. Schools evacuated. Homes charred black. He never talked much about it, but every now and then, you could see it in his eyes—when he stared too long at a flame, lost in thought, like it was whispering to him.
But he hadn't meant it symbolically.
He had meant it literally.
Arin didn't just want to study fire.
He wanted to understand it.
To tame it.
To give it shape.
He believed that if fire was humanity's oldest tool, then its next evolution should be life itself.
In his lab notes, half-singed and later recovered by firefighters, the final line of his last experiment read:
"If fire destroys life… then let's build life that eats fire."
Pain.Not the sharp, searing agony of flames licking at flesh, nor the bone-snapping jolt of impact. This was different. Duller. Heavier. The slow, grinding torment of a body starved and overused. Muscles clenched as if they'd been locked in place for days. His stomach gnawed at itself with hollow frustration. His mouth was dry as scorched sand. Every joint ached like it had been reassembled wrong.
His first breath was a wheeze.His second, a gasp.
Arin Ember sat up, groaning, his spine protesting each vertebra that shifted. A dull throb pounded behind his eyes, rhythmic and cruel, as if someone had tried to knock the memories out of him with a sledgehammer. And maybe they had—because something was missing. Everything felt hazy, like the static silence after a detonation.
Blinking against the light, he tried to make sense of his surroundings.
The sky was wrong.
That was Arin's first coherent thought as consciousness settled in like fog lifting from a war-torn coastline.
He blinked up into the strange heavens, his vision adjusting slowly. There were three suns—not symbolic, not metaphorical, not an illusion. Real and burning. One was golden and steady, casting a warm amber glow like midday on Earth. Another hung distant and crooked, a pale crescent that bled white light, colder and watchful. But it was the third that unsettled him most: a deep blood-red orb, throbbing dimly in the upper atmosphere like an open wound refusing to scab.
It didn't move with the others. It pulsed.
"This isn't real," he thought."This shouldn't be real."
The second thought came slower, heavier, like it had to crawl its way through the fog:Why am I alive?
He remembered fire. He remembered heat. He remembered the scent of burning plastic, melting polymers, and flesh. He remembered pain that wasn't poetic, wasn't beautiful, wasn't even interesting—just final. And then… nothing.
He drew in a shallow breath and tried to sit up. His body resisted, unfamiliar and reluctant. The muscles in his back and stomach cramped weakly, like they belonged to someone who hadn't eaten a full meal in days. There was no strength here. No lab-toned arms. No careful hands made steady by years of pipetting and micro-calibrations. This body was young. Underfed. Unrefined. Rural.
The rough linen shirt clung to his skin with an itchy stubbornness, its weave uneven, its collar barely holding together with uneven stitching. His trousers were coarse and tied with a fraying string. His hands—he stared at them—were scraped, callused in strange places. Not from laboratory work, but from axes, ropes, and cold mornings spent splitting firewood.
Arin inhaled, his breath catching as the world tilted sideways. The sky spun briefly, the blood sun swimming in his vision. He leaned forward, planting one small hand into the cracked earth as the vertigo passed.
Around him stretched a clearing, wild and unkempt. Tall grass, dry from sun and wind, rippled in waves around him. Beyond the tree line, nestled at the edge of a dense forest, a small village slouched in the dirt, crooked and quiet. Thatched rooftops leaned at odd angles. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys shaped more by time than intent.
He could smell baking bread, chimney soot, and manure on the breeze. Primitive. Pastoral.
And then his gaze dropped to the ground before him.
A book.
It lay nestled in brittle grass, half-buried under a fallen leaves. Bound in cracked black leather, edges frayed and curling, it pulsed faintly—just once—when his shadow fell over it, as if reacting to his presence.
He reached for it instinctively, though every nerve warned caution.
The moment his fingers touched the cover, a warmth flowed into his skin, not heat, not fire, but recognition—like the book knew him. Or not him exactly… but the soul now wearing this unfamiliar shell. It was old. Older than the village. Older than the forest. It smelled of ink, of dried herbs, and the faint metallic tang of magic.
There was no title. No markings. Just leather, worn smooth by years or centuries.
He opened it slowly, but there was nothing there to see, it was blank.
He stumbled toward a nearby puddle, where rainwater had gathered in the curve of a flat stone. His reflection shimmered.
A boy stared back.
Maybe thirteen. Sharp-boned. Pale from malnutrition or lack of sunlight. Hair like coal dust, tangled and unkempt. Eyes the color of dying embers—unsettling, too bright for someone so young. A small, faded scar arched under his left cheekbone, like a forgotten brand. There was pain in those eyes. Weariness. But also… awareness. Too much for a child.
An orphan, maybe. A laborer. A nobody.
He wasn't on Earth.There were no glowing screens. No centrifuges. No data logs. No AI gene models or cooling tubes or sterile gloves. No toasters at least.
And inside him—a fire that hadn't gone out, his passion for fire burned even brighter.
His legs moved on instinct.
The Grimoire stayed tucked against his chest like a lifeline.
The clearing sloped downward toward the village. Each step he took sent a dull throb behind his eyes. His thoughts were getting slow, unfocused. The kind of fatigue that seeps into the bone, the kind that came from too many all-nighters back in the lab… except this time, it wasn't caffeine withdrawal.
This was something else.
This body was weak.
And it was fighting him.
The village came into view — if it could even be called that. No paved roads. No signs. Just crooked wooden buildings leaning into each other like tired friends, connected by threads of laundry lines and creaking fences. Lanterns flickered above narrow doors. Smoke curled from chimneys. Chickens roamed freely, pecking at dirt.
He didn't know what he expected, but this felt... too quiet. Too small. Like the whole place was holding its breath.
No one noticed him at first. A barefoot kid in threadbare clothes didn't draw attention.
A few people passed by, too busy carrying baskets or hauling water. No one looked twice.
That suited him fine.
He found an abandoned stable at the edge of the village — more rotted planks than structure. Its roof sagged. One wall was missing. But it was dry, quiet, and above all, empty.
Arin slumped against a pile of hay and winced.
His skull felt like it was cracking from the inside.
Then came the heat — not fire this time, but memory.
It started as flashes.
Faces he didn't recognize.Laughter that didn't belong to him.Pain. Hunger. Longing.
A name:Lio.
That wasn't his name.
But this body remembered it.
He curled up and let the wave pass through him.
More fragments drifted in like ash on the wind.
He saw himself — Lio — standing in a storm, barefoot and angry, yelling at someone behind a closed door. A woman's voice screaming back. Then silence.
He remembered hiding under market stalls during winter to steal half-frozen fruit.Carving marks into wood to count weeks without rain.Trying to start a fire with flint and failing, again and again.
A life of surviving.
Not thriving.
Orphaned. Alone. Clever, but invisible.
Lio Ember.
So that was the name this body once wore.
When Arin opened his eyes again, the stars had replaced the suns, and the village was asleep.
He sat in silence for a long time, feeling the echo of someone else's life pressing against his own.
Maybe this was how it worked — reincarnation, transmigration, soul-binding — whatever happened to bring him here didn't overwrite Lio completely.
And somehow, that made it feel heavier.
More real.