For as long as he could remember, Kyro had never been particularly good at making important decisions under pressure.
He could reference over a dozen examples from his childhood or early adolescence to prove the point, but it all boiled down to one simple truth: when the pressure was on, he was a shit decision-maker.
So it was with a kind of grim, unsurprising inevitability that when faced with the single most bizarre situation of his sixteen-and-a-quarter cycles of life, Kyro responded the only way he knew how.
He did nothing.
Rather than panic, spiral, or impulsively poke at something clearly beyond his understanding, he stuck to the one plan he'd already committed to: clean himself up before doing anything else.
His rebirth had clearly messed with his head somehow. With any luck, the distraction would shake that nonsense right out of him. The accompanying cleanliness certainly wouldn't hurt.
Gods, was he wrong. On both fronts.
Scrubbing himself raw, repeatedly, while his body protested like a broken old toy turned out to be no picnic. By the time Kyro finally rid himself of the inches-thick crusted filth and godawful stench clinging to his skin like tar, he was exhausted, hungry, and three hours had passed.
Three hours.
He was honestly impressed he still had skin left.
Pretty sure I'm now the cleanest person in the entire Ashen District, Kyro thought as he studied his reflection in the cracked bronze mirror mounted on the wall.
Same unruly mop of dark brown hair, almost black. Same tired chestnut eyes. Same faint scar on his chin from a childhood fall. Yet none of it helped dispel the nagging sense of wrongness that had settled somewhere deep beneath his skin.
Physically, he hadn't changed much either. Lean, wiry, years of scraping his way through life having ensured that. Perhaps the only obvious differences were the angry pink patches where he'd scrubbed too hard.
Then there was the wound.
A slanted, blackened gash marring the left side of his chest.
"What the hell happened here?" Kyro murmured, gingerly tracing the edges with his fingers.
Black streaks radiated outward from the cut, branching in jagged veins like some kind of cursed tattoo etched into his skin.
"So much for holding out for a symbolic first ink," he muttered.
The wound wasn't fully healed, but it was healed enough. Which was the problem.
He should be dead.
Every instinct screamed it. That blade had gone through his heart. He remembered the certainty of it, the finality. And yet, here he was: breathing, standing, very much alive, with no idea why.
Did Nia Soren feel guilty and use some kind of Ascendant ability to save me?
It was the only explanation that even remotely made sense. Ascendants pulled insane stunts all the time. It was practically their brand. Not involving him, usually. Nor his two-roomed shack, for that matter.
Drawing a slow breath, Kyro let his gaze drift around the residence.
There was no sign of a struggle. No blood. No evidence that Nia Soren had ever broken in, let alone stabbed him through the chest. Honestly, if it weren't for the wound, his missing clothes, and the strange messages burned into his awareness, he might have written the whole thing off as an absurdly vivid fever dream.
Right. The messages. His eyes sharpened.
Procrastination was one thing. Denial was another.
Shaking his head, Kyro shuffled over to his chair and collapsed into it. Earlier, he'd managed to cook a pot of thin gruel, pair it with stale bread from the cupboard, and wash it all down with a full pitcher of water. Partly because he was starving. Mostly because he wanted to be as clear-headed as possible for what came next.
[Initiate System Integration?]
[Yes / No]
The prompt resurfaced, crisp and impossible to ignore.
It wasn't exactly a voice. More like a thought. Not a passing one, but a persistent, mechanical presence humming at the edges of his mind. Not loud. Not intrusive. Just there. Waiting.
Kyro wasn't sure where the earlier messages had gone, but their words still echoed with uncomfortable clarity.
[S Genome (Type A Cells) Assimilation: Complete], the first had read.
[Symbiogenesis: Successful], the second.
Needless to say, he had no idea what any of it meant.
"Type A Cells?" "S Genome?" What the hell was going on? And "Symbiogenesis?" What was that even supposed to mean? Some kind of merger? A partnership? Neither possibility inspired confidence.
The last message was different.
Not just because it had lingered when the others faded, but because Kyro could feel it, coiled, latent, like a trigger waiting for a conscious pull. One deliberate mental nudge, and he was certain he could effect this "System Integration." The sensation was strange. Bordering on supernatural.
As for what "System Integration" actually entailed, that was anyone's guess. The Ascendant Authority kept a tight rein on what information regarding Ascendants was released to the public. Kyro had his theories—of course he did—but jumping to conclusions felt dangerous.
"I'm walking on very thin ice here," he murmured solemnly.
There was no shortage of stories about normies baited into ruin by predatory Ascendants—promises of power, protection, miracles—only to wake up shackled by unbreakable vows, contracts, or other conveniently vague agreements that always seemed to favour the other party. Illegal? Sure. Relevant? Not especially. Ascendants got away with plenty, so long as it stayed quiet. Meaning recklessness wasn't an option. Not now. Not ever.
Whatever this is, it traces back to whatever happened after I blacked out, Kyro thought.
He'd tried combing through his memories more than once, but every attempt ended the same way. The moment he reached the stabbing, everything dissolved into a fragmented, slippery haze, more dream than recollection. Whatever followed was buried deep. Maybe the answers were there. Maybe not. Clarity, it seemed, wasn't a courtesy extended to people on the brink of death.
So.
Either Nia Soren—or someone like her—had used him as part of a twisted experiment.
Or he was dead, and this was some warped approximation of an afterlife.
Neither option inspired confidence. Both sounded utterly ridiculous. But one fact remained uncontested.
Something had happened to him.
Something beyond the stabbing.
And whatever it was, Kyro needed to figure it out. Quickly.