As usual, she awoke before the day began, before the first birds stirred, before the light crept across the horizon, before dawn whispered its quiet promise of renewal. The room was silent, the world outside wrapped in a comforting darkness. She sat on her bed, motionless, staring out the window, daydreaming, dozing off, unable to sleep no longer.


    This has been her daily routine ever since she twisted into someone else and was robbed of childhood. Everytime, she woke to this same emptiness, this same nagging detachment from the life she was supposed to inhabit. She would sit there, caught between wakefulness and sleep, her mind drifting through fragments of thought and memory. Sometimes she simply stared, her thoughts a blank canvas. Other times, she would spiral into contemplation, searching for answers to questions she could never quite articulate.


    But no matter how much she thought about it, no matter how often she dissected the details, nothing made sense. Her body felt foreign, like an ill-fitting garment she’d been forced to wear. This life, this name, felt like a cruel trick. An elaborate lie. If only this was some frightening dream. Despite the years spent here, it was as if she were an actor cast in the wrong role, fumbling through someone else’s story.


    When had it started, this unshakable sense of wrongness? She closed her eyes and searched for the beginning, as she often did. Six years old. That was when it began, when the first memories came, crashing over her like a tide she couldn’t escape. They were vivid, terrible, and incomprehensible to a child. Battles fought on blood-soaked fields. Shadows of faces she loved and lost. The smell of fire, the scream of steel, the silence of death. And just, pure loneliness... A terrible existence. She was miserable.


    At first, the memories didn’t feel like hers. They were like someone else’s nightmare, bleeding into her mind. But over time, they claimed her, seeped into her soul until she couldn’t distinguish them from her own. That''s when she started questioning if the memories were even real, then she questioned if this world was real. She cried endlessly in those early years, her small body wracked with headaches, sobs she couldn’t explain. Her parents, bewildered and desperate, thought she was ill, plagued by some unknown malady. The doctors were useless, more decorative than anything, but they stuck with her nonetheless, stuffing all kinds of cures down her throat.


    Three years of this, three years of confusion, pain, and loss, until the last memories came. By the end of it, the child she had been was gone. What replaced her was… older. Colder. A woman encased in the fragile shell of a child. A woman who had seen more than most could fathom, who had fought and killed, who had watched entire lives extinguished like dying embers.


    She raised her eyes to the window again, her reflection barely visible in the glass. The face staring back at her was a stranger’s, young and untouched by the horrors she remembered. Yet behind those eyes lurked a war-weary soul that didn’t belong here.


    And she couldn’t shake the thought that it would have been better to die in that temple than to wake up here.


    The birds began to stir, the familiar songs of the Munichskav, always heard an hour before dawn. She pushed off the bed, her bare feet brushing against the worn floorboards. She dragged a chair to the window, her movements slow, and slid the sash open. A faint breeze touched her face as she sat down, resting her elbow on the window stool. She cupped her cheek in her palm, her eyes half-closed, letting the lilting song of the munichs wash over her.


    This kind of peace was still unfamiliar, even after so long. Once, such stillness had been a luxury she couldn’t afford. But here, now, it came unbidden, a regular visitor in her strange new life. Compared to the endless pursuit of her past, the troubles of this existence barely rippled the surface. They were trivial. Insignificant. And yet, the contrast made her uneasy.


    Before, she never rested simply for the sake of it, her mind had always been bothered by one thing or another, an unseen goal, an endless fight. If she wasn’t training, she was hunting. If she wasn’t hunting, she was killing. There had never been time to stop. To think. To rest. Not until the end. Her end. Well, if she died. She was sure she had died. Right? The memory was hazy, but what else could explain this? This world, this body?


    Her thoughts drifted to the stories she’d heard, realmwalkers, or more specifically a subset of them, reincarnators, wanderborn as others may call them, souls pulled from one existence and thrown into another. Did they feel this same sense of displacement? This quiet discomfort, as though the air itself whispered that they didn’t belong? Perhaps they had a choice in the matter. Perhaps she was the exception. But the truth remained, she hadn’t chosen this.


    She tightened her fingers against her cheek, her nails grazing her skin as a faint shiver ran through her. The peace of this world felt wrong, like wearing a borrowed life that didn’t quite fit. As beautiful as the pre-dawn songs of the munichskav were, they only deepened the ache, a hint of what she’d lost, or perhaps, what she’d never truly had.


    She had dreamed of this, this life, a brighter, more loving, idealistic version of her childhood, consistently before her death. A life that had danced just beyond her grasp, always out of reach. All she had wanted was to return here, return home, and live in peace with the family she had lost so long ago. That had been the dream. But now, as she found herself living it, an unsettling realization clawed at her. All she could think about was the loneliness she had left behind, a conviction that she didn’t belong here. She had no claim to this life, no right to it.


    A question lingered, sharp and unwelcome. Does this mean she is a reincarnator now too? To be counted among those freaks? The very thought made her stomach turn, disgusted her, and she quickly rejected it.


    "Status," she whispered. Texts began to appear in her mind.


    [Elise Kenjigawa, Level 0, Inheritor]


    [Stats: STR 1, DEX, 1, CON 1, INT 1.6, WIS 1.2]


    [Skills: ???’s Blessing, Manifest Dominion, Chant of Conquest, Universal Speech].


    Like a newborn, she thought, except for the skills. At first, she had thought she was reliving her past, transported back in time by some twist of fate. The experiences were so familiar, so nearly identical to her childhood, that it seemed plausible. But that conclusion quickly went to the pits as she began noticing the changes, both unsettling and minor. Despite the strange sense of deja vu, she knew, with unshakable certainty, that this wasn’t her world. At least, not the one she had left behind. And if the memories of her previous life were real, well, that was another question entirely.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    For one, her stats had changed. That alone was enough to make her rethink. A person’s stats generally remain unchanged throughout their life, unless the circumstances were extreme. But then again, death itself could be considered extreme. A person’s stats were a reflection of their innate talents, an unchanging part of who they were. Except, of course, they trained under extraordinary conditions, as she had, or found themselves fortunate enough to undergo some rare form of personal growth. She remembered when her stats had all been one in the previous, nothing more than a blank slate. Now, her Intelligence and Wisdom had risen. It should have been a good thing, a sign of progress. Yet, she felt no pleasure from something she couldn’t explain.


    Next, and perhaps the most dramatic change, was her skills. She had possessed none of these in her previous existence. Chants of Conquest and Universal Speech were abilities she understood and accepted with surprising ease. Skills were meant to feel innate, impossible to reject, as though they were an inseparable part of one''s being.


    But the other two, Blessing and Dominion, were different. Troubling. Years of prodding and experimentation had yielded nothing, leaving them as lifeless as an unreadable script. Were they dormant, waiting for some hidden trigger? Or were they entirely passive? Did they require mana, like magic skills? But testing that theory was impossible with her level stuck at zero, a situation unlikely to change anytime soon, given her social constraints.


    Something plagued at the edges of her thoughts. Even if the skills were unusable, she should have understood them. Every skill required knowledge, either learned beforehand or imprinted directly into the mind upon involuntary acquisition. That was how Chants of Conquest and Universal Speech had arrived, a cascade of information so instinctive it felt exactly like recalling her previous memories, albeit through a much less agonizing process. But Blessing and Dominion? Nothing. No sudden clarity, no rush of understanding. Just silence. She was as clueless as a naive doe.


    Irritation nudged at her. Skills weren’t meant to be mysteries. They were tools, purpose-built and ready to wield. But these two sat idle, their potential locked behind a door she couldn’t find, let alone open. Why?


    Over the past few years, she had subtly scoured every corner of her limited world for answers. Every question turned cold, every guess failed. Even the process of trial and error became a cruel joke. The skills were there, etched into her soul, but no closer to revealing their purpose than on the day they’d first appeared. Honestly she was about to give up, or accept, that any new revelations would remain out of reach for the foreseeable future.


    Finally, the last personal change didn’t stem from her value stats but from a physical transformation, though perhaps appearance would be a more fitting word. She had long accepted her once-unremarkable dark brown hair and black wood eyes, the kind that blended into the crowd, unnoticed. But now? Now she was someone else entirely. Her hair had turned as white as snow, her eyes gleamed a startling gold, and her skin had paled to an almost unnatural degree.


    If she had once found comfort in her previous appearance, she could no longer say the same for this, in fact she hated it. Made her feel like a spectacle, an anomaly, some figure out of an old fairytale. Never, in all her long years, had she seen anyone resemble even anywhere near this new form. Maybe the elves, with their strange and ancient bloodlines, might possess something similar, but she''d never met one. Only heard whispers. But if she had to guess an entirely different species to find any resemblance, that was already a problem. And it did nothing to ease her parents'' obsession with the idea that she was somehow special. She couldn’t hide even if she wanted to.


    A heavy sigh escaped her lips. Sixteen. It had been sixteen years in this body, sixteen years in this new life, and she still hadn’t come to terms with any of it. Was she being unreasonable? To deny reality for this long? Was this denial too childish for someone her age? Is that even possible? To call herself naive? Or any other term associated with youth? It should have made sense, given her physical years, but not the mind inside her. By the end of next winter she''ll be seventeen, adulthood, where the weight of responsibility would only grow, along with the looming pressure of marriage. It would do her no good to remain confused, lost in the haze of wanderment. This childish reverie, this stubborn resistance to what was, needed to end.


    This was her life now. A truth as bitter as frost on blood. And this would be her life far into the future, stretching endlessly like the horizon beyond the barren plains. She paused, her breath catching. The future....


    It was a word that lingered like a wound in her mind, its weight pressing heavier with each passing year. The thought had been a faint whisper at first, easy to dismiss. But now, it clawed at her with an unease she could no longer ignore.


    A question. One she feared to face. Denied. Buried beneath excuses. She told herself this world was different, so different from what came before. But was it? Or was that just another lie, a fragile dream she clung to in the hope it wouldn’t shatter? On one hand, with her self-delusions, she would claim this world was so similar to the last. On the other, driven by her fears, she would insist this world was so vastly different.


    Maybe this rejection of reality was her way of hiding. Of avoiding the truth. Perhaps she couldn’t reconcile her past or her present self because of that question. Because the moment she accepted herself, both herselfs.


    It meant it had to be answered.


    It demanded an answer.


    And to answer it, she could only prepare, to reach for her spear once more.


    Her mouth opened as if to speak, but no sound came. She didn’t dare ask the question aloud, not even as a whisper. Instead, it echoed silently in her thoughts.


    Would the future repeat itself?


    Would it?


    This world felt both different and eerily identical. And if it was in essence nearly the same as before, then perhaps it wouldn''t be foolish to assume that history would indeed repeat itself, to varying degrees. The wise don''t sit and hope for the best of a bad storm, they prepare.


    She straightened, pushing away from her palm, as purpose solidified within her. The past was no longer hers to claim. Its sentimental value, the yearning for what had been, would all fade into the grave. What remained were hard truths, the facts, the consequences, and lessons on what to avoid.


    Her fists clenched, the tension in her limbs coiling like a spring, primed to unleash decades of instinctive motion. No more hesitation. No more wondering. If she couldn''t settle her identity issue now, it could wait. Time wouldn’t wait for her. She would do whatever it took in this life to keep the past from repeating itself, even if this wasn’t truly the same world.


    Her jaw tightened. The anger inside her simmered. An old woman’s resolve. She was Elise, Dragon Spear of Iowa, Secondborn of Lesh Taudi, Daughter of Lord Kazia of Bazeers Keep. And she would not allow a repeat, not while she drew breath.


    The sky began to shift, light spilling over the horizon, though the castle walls somewhat blocked her view. Has an hour already passed? She could feel the first rays kissing her skin. The sun would soon climb higher, its warmth spreading quickly. She stood, casting aside any lingering doubts, and began to dress.