The world came back in pieces first the cold.
Not the kind of cold that stiffens your fingers while waiting for a bus. No. This was the kind that seeped into bone and stayed there, curling around his spine like mold in a cracked wall. The kind that made you feel hollow, like something important had leaked out and didn't plan to return.
Then came the wet stink. Like burnt lard and rat piss, tangled with the sour rot of something once alive. His nostrils flared instinctively, and he gagged dry, retching pain that wrung his ribs like an old cloth.
He opened his eyes.
A wooden ceiling or what was left of one. Jagged beams hung over him like the ribs of a dead giant. Through the gaps, the faintest trickle of grey morning light bled in, just enough to see the drifting motes of ash and dust in the air.
Then the pain arrived.
Everywhere.
Legs cramped. Stomach hollow. Fingers trembling like broken branches. He tried to move and felt the coarse scrape of old straw beneath him sharp, poking through what little skin remained over his bones.
Where am I ?
And then he realized.
He wasn't himself.
This wasn't his bed. Not the cramped Tokyo apartment, not even the mattress on the floor. This wasn't his body.
He looked down his hands were thin. Child-thin. Too thin. Gray, calloused fingers trembled as he turned them over. Nails chipped. Wrists like twigs.
And the skin.
Pale brown, too pale. Bruised. Starved.
The rush hit him like a brick. A wave of heat flooded his skull. Images. Memories. A different life not his, and yet now… painfully his.
> "Mama said the grain was coming next week…"
"Don't go near the back alley. The smoke-boys take people there…"
"Pa never came back from the sea…"
"Keep Liora warm. Always keep her warm."
The boy's name had been Elias too. Elias Varden. A coincidence? Or a trick of fate?
His real self Elias Nakamura, engineer's assistant, dropout, genius by necessity drowned under the weight of Elias Varden's final memories. Each one bleeding into the other. Hunger. Fear. The sharp slap of a merchant's whip. The coppery taste of rust when biting nails for iron.
He clutched his chest. It ached. Not with injury grief.
The boy had died afraid. Afraid he couldn't protect her.
Her?
He sat up violently. Too fast. Dizziness crashed in, and the room spun like a drunken top. His breath wheezed like torn bellows.
Then he heard it.
A small sound. A wet cough, low and broken.
He turned.
There, curled in the far corner of the shack beneath a blanket barely fit for a dog, was a girl. No older than eight. Filthy hair matted over her eyes. Cheeks hollow. Lips cracked. Her breathing wrong.
He crawled toward her.
Each inch sent lances of pain up his arms, his knees, his spine. But he crawled. Past the shattered bowl, past the crumbling stone hearth with no fire.
The girl's hand twitched.
She whispered, voice faint, stuck between fever and dream.
"Eli…"
His heart stopped.
Not Elias Varden's.
His.
And for the first time since waking, Elias forgot his confusion, his pain, his own name.
He reached out.
His hand hovered inches from her cheek, unsure whether to touch or tremble. Her skin looked like thin wax, stretched too tightly over bone, dusted with ash. Her lips were dry, cracked at the corners. Fever clung to her like steam in a dying bathhouse unmoving, wrong.
"Liora…" he whispered.
The name didn't feel foreign.
It slid off his tongue like it had always belonged there.
She flinched under the sound, her little body recoiling as though expecting a blow. Her knees curled tighter to her chest, and her fingers clenched the threadbare blanket as if it could stop the cold that had already won.
Elias's throat closed.
He knew her.
Not just as someone else's memory but truly, knew her. The System hadn't implanted files. It was the boy's soul Elias Varden still echoing in his bones.
He saw her drawing pictures in ash on the floor, humming to herself when she thought no one was listening. He remembered her asking if boiled rat was supposed to taste like chicken, trying to make him laugh.
She was clever. Too clever. She remembered where the water puddles gathered after rain. She counted how many crumbs came from a stale loaf and always gave him the bigger half.
She's all I had, the old Elias whispered in his mind.
She's all you have now, he whispered back.
"Liora," he said again, firmer this time.
Her eyelids fluttered. Crusted lashes cracked open, and pale brown eyes blinked at him confused, unfocused, fever-glazed.
"Mmh…" she murmured, her voice papery, brittle. "Eli… hungry… s'spinning…"
"I know." He reached down and touched her forehead.
Scalding.
He didn't need a thermometer to know how bad it was. The kind of fever that stole days and gave back ghosts. If she wasn't already dying, she would be soon.
He looked around the shack. Filthy rags for walls. A single rotting plank nailed across the window. No food. No fire. No light. The floor was dirt no, mud, half-frozen and oozing through broken boards.
This wasn't shelter. It was a grave with a roof.
And she'd been alone here. For how long?
That same tightness wrapped around his lungs again. It wasn't from illness. It was grief, ancient and new, twisting with guilt.
She waited for you.
You almost didn't wake up in time.
Elias pressed his hand gently to her cheek. "I'm here," he said.
It didn't feel like a lie.
Her eyes slowly closed again, her breath rattling softly. Shallow, too shallow.
There was no time for questions. No time for shock or existential panic.
She needed heat. Water. Food. Now.
He looked back at her, then at the rusted cooking pot in the corner, the pile of half-charred wood, the shards of broken roof.
"Hold on, Liora," he whispered.
"I'll fix this."
Elias pushed himself to his feet. His legs trembled like wet branches. Every joint felt rusted, dried and tight like old leather. But he forced his body to move. To fail now was to let her die. There was no one else.
He stumbled toward the shack's broken door, yanked the splintered plank aside, and stepped out into the slum.
The air outside slapped him like a dirty hand cold, sharp, and soaked in smoke. The sun barely made it through the grey film overhead. The sky was ash, the alleys were mud, and every breath carried the sting of wood rot and urine.
This was no city.
It was a corpse of a city, twitching in slow decay.
He saw them: hunched shapes in doorways, curled forms beside leaking barrels, gaunt children with blank stares. No one looked at him. No one cared. Hunger made ghosts of the living here.
He turned into the alley behind the shack, eyes scanning, mind racing.
What do I need?
Fire. Clean water. Something to boil with. Something to burn.
The old Elias's memories kicked in, mixing with his own logic like twin engines. He remembered how to start a fire without flint, how to purify water with boiling, how bone ash could filter toxins.
He grabbed what he could splintered wood slats from a collapsed crate, soot-covered bones discarded behind a butcher's stall, a filthy clay bowl with a hairline crack. He wrapped them in a rag he peeled off a dead rat's nest and staggered back toward the shack, arms full, lungs burning.
Inside, the air was even colder now.
Liora hadn't moved.
"Just a little longer," he muttered, dropping to his knees beside the crumbled hearth.
He scraped out the damp ash with a shard of broken tile, piled the driest scraps of wood he had, then stacked the bones around them like brick an old trick to reflect heat. He pulled threads from the rag, twisted them tight, and struck the edge of the cracked bowl with a rusted nail until it sparked.
Once.
Twice.
The third time, the spark caught.
The tiny flame hissed, guttered, then flickered into life.
Elias shielded it with his hands, fed it slivers of kindling like it was something sacred. The warmth touched his fingers and crept up his arms, too weak to fight the cold but strong enough to matter.
He filled the bowl with collected runoff rainwater mixed with melted ice from a broken drain. Cloudy, probably full of bacteria. But heat could fix that.
He balanced it carefully over the flame.
The fire crackled.
The water boiled.
Steam curled into the air like the breath of a god.
He dipped a cloth into the bowl, wrung it out, and pressed it gently to Liora's lips.
At first, nothing.
Then her cracked lips parted, just barely.
She swallowed.
Not much. Just a few drops. But her throat moved.
She was still here.
Elias let out a shaky breath and sat back, eyes burning.
He couldn't cry. Not now. It would take too much out of him.
His hands were still shaking when it happened.
A soft, mechanical chime echoed in his skull no sound in the room, only in his head. A flicker of something unseen blinked across his vision like the flash of a firefly.
Then came the voice.
> [Welcome, User.]
[Business Creation System Initializing...]
[Mission: Survive. Invent. Prosper.]
Elias stared ahead, unmoving.
Not shocked.
Not thrilled.
Just… ready.
Because deep down, some part of him had already decided:
He wasn't going to die in this shack.
He wasn't going to let her die, either.
And if this world thought it could bury them
Then it had just handed a starving boy the tools to burn it down.
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Hello everyone! 🌟
I'm thrilled (and a little nervous) to share that I've written my first novel ! This story has been a labor of love, and I'd be so grateful for your support.
Whether you're a fellow book lover, a friend, or just someone who enjoys encouraging new creators, your readership, reviews, or even a quick share would mean the world to me.
Thank you for being part of this journey I hope you'll enjoy the story as much as I loved writing it! ❤️