To understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to do something first.
You need to believe in the Impossible.
Can you do that?
Good!
Then let me take you back, to the day of reckoning, to the day it all began!
****
Day 1
***
My vision was blurry, like someone had rubbed oil across a camera lens and left it to dry. My mind was racing—fast, wild and scattered—and none of the thoughts made sense. I felt wrong. Not sick and not tired. Just... wrong. Like someone had rearranged my insides while I slept.
I tried to focus. Bad idea.
A sharp ache surged through my whole body, a wave of pain that made my teeth clench without me meaning to. It wasn't localized. And it wasn't only my head or my chest. It was everywhere. Bones, muscles—if I even had any left—joints, skin. Everything hurt.
There were sounds around me. Voices, maybe. Movement. It was all muddled, like hearing people talk underwater. Nothing distinct. I couldn't even tell if they were speaking a language I knew.
I was disoriented, scared, and strangely calm all at once. That weird in-between space your brain goes to when it's too tired to panic properly but knows it should.
What happened to me?
I remembered sleeping. Just sleeping. I'd brushed my teeth, maybe, checked my phone, turned off the lights—and now I was here, wherever here was. My mouth felt like sandpaper.
I tried to swallow, just to wet my throat, but there wasn't much left in me to do even that. The little saliva I could gather went down like shards of glass. And It made me wince.
I wanted to scream, ask for help, do something—but I didn't even have the strength for that. The idea of screaming felt like trying to lift a car with broken arms. Pointless. My body was barely working.
Then, my vision started to clear.
The light hit me like a slap. Instinctively, I raised my hand to shield my eyes—and instantly regretted it. The simple act of moving shot fire through my limbs, and I hissed through my teeth, half a second away from blacking out again.
But I didn't.
I adjusted. Slowly. The light wasn't sunlight exactly, but it was natural. Warm and real. I blinked a few times, and the shapes around me stopped swimming.
I was in a street. A crowded one. People passed by without so much as a glance in my direction. Men hauling carts. Women haggling in front of stalls. Kids running, chasing each other barefoot through the crowd.
The buildings were made of stone, wood and clay—nothing modern. And the people? They were dressed like they belonged in a history book. Tunics, cloaks and leather belts. Some even had swords strapped to their sides.
My stomach dropped.
Where the hell was I?
Was I kidnapped? Drugged? Dumped in some third-world village as some twisted prank?
A loud growl answered the question I should have asked first. My stomach was gnawing at itself. It hurt. And not the kind of hurt you get when you miss breakfast. This was much deeper. A sort of biological warning siren that said: you're running on empty, and have been for a while.
I looked down at myself. And what I saw scared me more than the unfamiliar surroundings.
My arms were thin. No, more like—skeletal. My skin clung to the bones like it didn't want to be there. My hands trembled just from being held up. I seem to wore rags. Literal rags. Torn cloth with more holes than fabric. My legs were dirty, scratched, bruised.
I was sitting, back slumped against a crumbling brick wall. The remains of a building, by the look of it. In front of me, an earthen bowl sat half-sunk in the dirt. Inside it, a few dull, round coins.
I stared at it.
Then back at my hands.
And finally, the pieces started to fall into place.
I was a beggar.
Somehow—don't ask me how—I had become a street urchin. A sick, starving, probably homeless kid sitting on the edge of a street in what looked like a medieval marketplace.
No, not become. That wasn't quite right.
'This isn't my body.'
I knew it the way you know your own name. The way you recognize your reflection. This body was smaller and weaker. The limbs were different. The bones were lighter. The skin, though covered in filth, was that of a teenager.
A boy, probably sixteen. No younger than fifteen, no older than seventeen. You could tell by the stage of ossification around the clavicle and wrist—most epiphyseal plates would've fused by now, but the muscle growth was stunted. Malnourishment had arrested the development somewhere along the line.
Whoever this kid was, he'd been starving for years.
I wasn't him.
And yet, I was.
The thought hit me hard, like cold water.
I was dead. That much I was starting to accept. No amount of rationalizing could explain the change in body, the unfamiliar environment, or the fact that I had no memory of getting here. No memories of this boy's life, either.
That was the strangest part. If I had inherited his body, shouldn't I have gotten something? Fragments? Feelings? Anything?
But no. Nothing. Just the aching, broken shell of his body and the empty space where his past should be.
"Calm down, Mickey," I muttered under my breath, almost as a reflex. "One thing at a time."
That was my name. Mickey. It felt distant now, like a label from another life—but it was still mine, and I was holding onto it with both hands.
First, survive. Then figure out the rest.
I leaned back against the wall, breathing shallow and slow. My body couldn't afford panic. Not yet.
Someone passed by and dropped a coin in the bowl. I didn't see their face. Didn't even hear their footsteps until they were already gone. But the sound of metal hitting clay was sharp enough to snap me back to the moment.
I looked down at the bowl. Four coins now.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
And right now, something was all I had.