The cold was the first thing he felt.
Grass brushed against his cheek, wet with morning dew. The sky above was gray, heavy with clouds that threatened rain, and the trees whispered with wind that carried a scent that's unfamiliar, almost ancient.
Elias didn't recognize the air.
Nor the hands pressed against the ground as he pushed himself up.
They were slender, youthful.
Not his.
His heart skipped.
He staggered to his feet and stumbled to the edge of a nearby creek, dropping to his knees.
The reflection that stared back wasn't him.
The boy in the water had a lean, delicate face. Messy chestnut brown hair. Deep eyes that held a storm behind them.
Elias touched his own cheek. The boy's cheek moved.
"No…."
He backed away from the water, breath hitching in his throat. Everything around him, his skin, his bones, the way his body moved, it all felt wrong.
His mind screamed for familiarity.
For something to cling to.
But there was nothing
.
No wedding band.
No crumpled photo of Maya in his pocket.
No voicemail from Erin.
His chest felt like it was caving in.
"Where are they..?"
Images hit him like hot knives.
Maya's little hands covered in glitter and glue. The way she danced in the living room when she thought no one was watching. Her voice calling, "Daddy, daddy, look!"
Erin's arms wrapped around him on tired evenings. Her laughter as she burned another dinner. Her head on his chest while they watched old sitcoms in bed.
All of it, gone.
No farewell.
No warning.
Just darkness, and then this.
"What is this..?"
He sat there, gasping, like he couldn't get enough air, like the forest was suffocating him. His vision blurred. The sounds around him faded into the rushing tide of panic and disbelief.
Then something else came.
Not his memories.
Someone else's.
He didn't understand them at first.
Flashes, feelings, scraps of a life that wasn't his. A boy who packed his things in silence while his mother wept quietly in the next room. A father, stiff with pride but trembling hands, placing a coin pouch in the boy's pocket and whispering, "Make us proud, son."
A giggle. A tiny pair of arms around his leg. A two-year-old girl with chubby cheeks and soft brown curls, looking up and squealing, "Bobo!"
The ache in Elias's chest deepened until it felt like his ribs were going to crack open.
He didn't just lose a family.
He had stole the body of someone who had one.
Someone who had people who loved him. Who scraped together every copper they could from their cloth shop just to send their only son to a place like Verdant Oath Academy.
A boy named Auren Clyne.
An extra. A background character. Killed off before the novel's plot even began.
Elias let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a scream, burying his face in his hands.
He wanted to wake up.
He wanted Maya's tiny arms around his neck.
Erin's warm voice in his ear.
Not this cold forest. Not this lie of a body. Not a name that wasn't his.
He curled inward.
It started with silence.
Then shaking.
Then tears.
He cried the way a person does when grief is too big to contain. When it becomes a weight that sinks you under, slowly, quietly, until all you can do is let it.
Time passed.
He didn't know how long.
When he finally opened his eyes again, the light was fading. Birds chirped in the distance. The world moved on, uncaring, indifferent.
He sat up, legs numb. A satchel lay beside him. Auren's, no doubt.
He opened it with trembling fingers.
A folded cloth. A loaf of bread, slightly crushed. A vial of water. And at the very bottom, tucked into a corner, was a small piece of paper in a careful, slanted hand:
"For when you miss us. Love, Mama."
He clutched it like it was holy.
Like it might keep him from unraveling entirely.
He thought of his own daughter's notes. Crayon drawings, stick figures, hearts with "I luv u" scrawled across them.
Now someone else had left him a note.
And it wasn't meant for him.
"I don't belong here."
But there was no going back.
The road ahead curved uphill, a thin line vanishing into the fog. He could see the faint silhouette of a tower in the distance.
Verdant Oath Academy.
He didn't want to go.
He didn't care about magic, or oaths, or fate.
But he didn't know what else to do.
So he stood.
His legs barely worked. His chest still felt hollow. But he walked.
Because sitting still hurt worse.
And because, somewhere deep down, a part of him was terrified of forgetting Maya's face. Erin's smile. Their voices.
And moving forward, however painfully, was the only way to remember.