I moved closer to the fireplace and stretched my hands towards the flickering flames. The cold from outside had seeped into my skin, yet the fire’s warm touch, even if only slightly, began to thaw it.

  Countless unanswered questions crowded my mind. How was it that I — someone from another world — could speak and understand the language of these people?

  Why had Whaley sent me here? What sort of fate awaited me in this world?

  And most importantly…

  What had happened to me that my forehead was bound in bandages?

  The dancing light of the fire cast trembling shadows upon the walls. Sparks drifted briefly through the air before vanishing, just as my thoughts appeared and dissolved in rapid succession.

  But the weight of those questions bore no resemblance to the lightness of sparks.

  Had it not been for the comforting crackle of the hearth, I might have been crushed beneath their burden.

  I lowered my head slightly and touched the bandage wrapped around my brow. A faint itch caused mild discomfort, but the true unease lay in not knowing the source of the wound that still throbbed from time to time.

  “I must have struck my head on something,” I thought.

  Yet that was not my most pressing concern.

  I needed information. I had to learn how I had come here, who I was, and whether this body truly belonged to me.

  The more I reflected, the more unsettling a truth surfaced.

  When I arrived in this world, I had not been in my own body. Upon waking, I had felt as though I were imprisoned within a stranger’s flesh.

  “But what of this body’s original owner?”

  If there had been one, where was his consciousness now?

  And most crucially…

  Were his memories still hidden somewhere within?

  For me to understand and speak the elderly couple’s language, this body must have spoken it before.

  There was only one explanation:

  The former owner’s memories must be concealed within me.

  I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes.

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  “Siri, can you access my memory? If you can, find out what happened in the accident involving this body’s former owner. Also, prepare a summary of him and play it in my mind as a video.”

  The moment the thought concluded, a sharp pain struck my head.

  Siri’s mechanical voice echoed inside my mind:

  “Host’s previous memories located. Scanning former bodily memories…

  Incomplete memory fragments detected. Reconstructing missing data… Preparing visual sequence… Sequence complete… Transmitting to consciousness.”

  And then—

  My mind was engulfed in blinding white.

  It felt as though dozens of knives had plunged into my brain at once.

  I shut my eyes tightly and clutched my head. The pain defied description.

  But after a while, an image emerged.

  And I found myself witnessing another person’s memories.

  His name was Alek.

  He was only fourteen years old.

  Like me, he was a solitary soul.

  The young Alek had worked as an apprentice to a farrier beside someone believed to be a distant relative. His life had been small yet orderly…

  Until rebellion erupted where he lived.

  Amid chaos and flames, he lost his family, his work — and in an instant, he became an orphan. Helpless.

  He had no choice but to search for a way out.

  It was then that he began hearing tales from travelling merchants about a place called Apsa.

  A city where people never seemed to run out, where food was plentiful, where stone buildings rose high enough to rival the mountains.

  A land where even a lowly slave, if he fulfilled the proper conditions, might become a king.

  Alek placed all his hope in Apsa.

  He had nowhere to go, no home to stay in, not even a single gold coin in his pocket.

  Yet he began to walk.

  He embarked upon a journey that lasted weeks.

  He walked from a place called Parha until his feet were raw and bloodied.

  But… the journey did not unfold as he had hoped.

  He found neither food nor water.

  No bed, no warm covering to wrap around himself.

  He wandered through abandoned streets, unable even to find a corner in which to shelter his head.

  And then—

  His body could endure the hunger no longer.

  He fell.

  As he fainted, his head struck a stone — not sharp, but hard enough.

  And after that…

  He opened his eyes in the very bed where I had awakened.

  When the images faded, my head was still throbbing.

  But I was certain of one thing now:

  This body was not mine.

  And its past…

  Had become my past.

  The flames in the hearth burned brightly. I took another log and cast it into the fire; sparks leapt briefly upward.

  Memories filled me — of hands that had once shaped horseshoes, of hopes reduced to ash in a blaze, of a boy who had walked long roads alone.

  The weight of possessing this body settled heavily upon my shoulders.

  It was impossible not to feel sorrow for Alek.

  But sadly…

  This world was no different from my former one.

  Those who lost their strength were always left at the mercy of the powerful.

  Bullies always prevailed.

  Within me, both grief and a blazing anger swelled.

  And at that very moment…

  The outer door of the adobe house opened.