11:47 PM.
Dan's eyes hurt. Not the kind of tired where you just need some coffee—the kind where your eyeballs feel like they've been swapped out for sandpaper while you weren't looking.
He was the only person left in the student affairs office. Just him, a desk lamp that flickered every few minutes, and enough paperwork to build a small fort. Permission slips. Budget proposals. Disciplinary reports. Activity schedules. The whole boring machinery of university life, and he was the guy who kept it from exploding.
His nameplate said: Dan Black, Secretary, Office of Student Activities.
Fancy title. Reality check? He was basically the janitor for other people's ambitions. The students loved their shiny event planners. The faculty praised the student prefect for his "leadership." Meanwhile, Dan was the one making sure the lights stayed on, the money went to the right places, and nobody accidentally started a fire during the spring festival.
He grabbed his coffee. Cold. Of course it was cold.
Forty-seven more forms. Due tomorrow morning.
The office was dead quiet. Campus was asleep—just the library still lit up, and this sad little office. Three years he'd been doing this. Three years of late nights, early mornings, and a paycheck that made him wonder why he didn't just go work at a convenience store.
Twenty-nine years old. No family—the orphanage took care of that. No close friends, because who has time for friends when you're buried in everyone else's problems? No real plan. No dream. No burning desire to climb some corporate ladder that probably led to a slightly nicer desk.
Just work. Sleep. Repeat.
He checked his phone. Nothing. There was never anything.
Well. Almost nothing.
His hand stopped over the keyboard. His eyes drifted to the drawer where he kept that old photo. He didn't need to open it. He knew exactly what was there. A woman with dark hair and a smile that could probably melt ice. Old classmate from university. They'd studied together. Walked the same paths. Talked about futures that never happened.
He never told her.
By the time he got his act together, she was married. Moved away. Living a life that didn't include some quiet secretary who couldn't even say what he felt.
Dan sighed and turned back to the forms.
Regret's just paperwork for the soul. File it away. Move on.
He'd told himself that so many times it was basically a prayer now.
His eyes started getting heavy. The numbers on the budget report were blurring, swimming around like fish in muddy water. He blinked. Rubbed his eyes. The blurring didn't stop.
When did I last sleep? Thirty-six hours? More?
The fluorescent light above him flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Dan looked up.
The ceiling was gone.
Not fallen—gone. Just... not there anymore. Instead, there was this massive stretch of darkness with stars he'd never seen before. The office walls started dissolving like sugar in water. His desk, his papers, his cold coffee—all of it just vanished into a wind that came out of nowhere.
He tried to stand up, but his body felt wrong. Too heavy. Too light. Both at the same time. Like falling and floating at once. Like that moment right before sleep when reality stops making sense.
This is it, he told himself. You finally lost your mind. Sleep deprivation wins.
But the stars kept getting brighter. And somewhere in that impossible sky, Dan felt something look at him.
Not see him. Look. Like it had a reason.
Then a voice. Except there wasn't any sound. Just words pressing directly into his brain:
You wanted meaning. You wanted purpose. You wanted a life that wasn't paperwork and silence.
Let's see what you do when the weight is real.
Dan tried to scream. The stars swallowed it.
He woke up to smoke.
Not campfire smoke. The thick, choking kind. Burning buildings. Wood and hay and... something else. Something that smelled like meat that had been burning way too long.
Dan's eyes snapped open.
He was face-down on hard dirt. His office clothes were gone. Instead, he was wearing rough linen and worn leather—the kind of stuff that smelled like someone else had already sweated through it. His hands looked different. Calloused. Tougher. His whole body felt different. Younger. Leaner. Hungry in a way that hurt.
No. No, no, no—
He pushed himself up and immediately regretted it. His stomach tried to turn inside out. When was the last time he eat? just by the feel it - look like he did not eat for a week, by the way his guts were twisting. His vision went blurry as he looked around.
A village was burning.
Houses made of wood and stone were on fire along a muddy road. Bodies everywhere. Not soldiers—just regular people. Farmers. Shopkeepers. A woman with her arm still stretched toward a doorway where a kid's toy sat in the dirt.
Dan's brain, trained by years of handling crises on paper, tried to process it. Number of houses destroyed: unknown. Casualties: too many. Immediate threats: incoming.
Then he heard them.
Shouting. Metal hitting metal. Boots stomping the ground.
Currently two groups were coming from opposite ends of the village. One side looked like mercenaries—mismatched armor, different colors, all of them carrying weapons like they knew how to use them. The other side moved like actual soldiers. Same shields, same discipline, all of them marked with a red symbol Dan had never seen before.
They weren't fighting each other. Not yet. They were both here for the village. And the people who hadn't run were trapped in the middle.
Dan's body moved before his brain caught up. He stumbled toward a collapsed house where a kid was screaming.
But halfway there, he stopped.
Wait. Wait, wait, wait.
His head was spinning. One second he'd been in his sad little office with cold coffee and forty-seven forms. Now he was... where? Some kind of medieval nightmare? The smoke stung his eyes. The heat from the fires was real—too real for a dream. He could feel it baking his skin.
This isn't possible. This isn't—
He looked down at his hands again. Calloused. Scarred. Not his hands. His clothes were wrong. His body felt wrong. He didn't know where he was, how he got here, or even whose skin he was wearing.
Panic started crawling up his throat.
I need to stop. I need to think. Figure out what's happening. Find somewhere safe and—
Then the screaming came again.
Not just any scream. A child's voice, high and terrified, cutting through the chaos like a knife. "Help! Please, someone—!"
Dan's feet moved before his brain finished processing.
Screw figuring things out.
The confusion didn't disappear—it was still there, buzzing at the back of his mind like an angry hornet. But something else was louder now. Something older than his fear. The same thing that had made him stay late at work to help a student who'd lost their scholarship application. The same thing that had made him cover for a coworker who was about to get fired.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know how any of this worked. He didn't know if he was dreaming, dying, or losing his mind.
But there was a kid in trouble. And Dan Black had spent his whole life watching from the sidelines.
Not this time.
He ran toward the sound.
Dan grabbed the beam. His new body was stronger than his old one, but not strong enough to budge the damn beam.
I'm going to watch this kid die, he thought. Just like I watched everything else slip away. No! moveee!
Something broke inside him.
Not the beam.
Something deeper. Some door he didn't even know existed suddenly swung open. And through it came a light that had no business being in a burning village.
Dan saw—
Threads. Thousands of glowing threads connecting everything. The girl. The beam. The burning houses. The soldiers coming from both directions. The sky. The ground. Every person, every object, every possible choice branching out like rivers.
And he realized he could touch them.
Not with his hands. With something else. With intention.
The thought came naturally, like he'd always known it, unconsciously he thought: This beam is not heavy anymore.
The wood lightened. Not weightless, but manageable. He lifted it, tossed it aside, and pulled the girl free.
She latched onto him, crying.
And Dan felt something else—a warmth spreading from his chest. A presence settling into the space around him. The threads closest to him started shimmering, and suddenly he understood.
Range. My range is maybe... about twenty meters? Thirty?
Within that area or bubble, everything listened to him. Outside it, the threads were distant. it's unrecognizable.
But the warmth—the faith—wasn't coming from him. It was coming from the girl. The way she was gripping his shirt, the way she absolutely believed that this stranger who just lifted a beam like it was nothing would save her.
Unwavering faith, Dan thought. That's what makes the range bigger.
He looked up at the burning village. At the mercenaries and soldiers closing in. At the bodies of people who died because two kingdoms couldn't stop fighting long enough to remember that villages werent battlefields.
Dan had spent his whole life handling other people's problems on paper. Filing reports. Balancing budgets. Making sure someone else's dreams ran smoothly.
He had no army. No weapon. No training. Just a starving body and a power he'd figured out thirty seconds ago.
But he had a kid clinging to him like he was the only thing keeping the world together.
And he had the threads.
Dan looked at the nearest mercenary—a scarred guy with a sword still wet from someone's blood—and thought:
You're not taking another step into this village.
The mercenary's foot stopped in mid-air.
The guy looked down at his own leg like it was not belonged to him. He tried to move forward. Nothing. His other leg locked up too. His whole body just... froze. Like someone hit pause.
"What the—" he started.
Dan scanned every soldiers coming from the other side. Ten of them. Shields raised. Spears ready.
None of you are entering this village. Not today.
Ten bodies stopped. Ten confused soldiers found themselves stuck to the ground, arms useless, weapons hanging in hands that wouldn't move.
Dan stood in the middle of a burning village, holding a terrified kid, wearing a body that was running on empty, and for the first time in his life, he made a decision that was actually his.
He walked toward the center of the village, where the road opened up into a small square. A well stood there—water still clean somehow. A wooden platform, probably used for announcements or festivals, rose above the mud.
Dan climbed onto it. Still carrying the girl.
More soldiers were coming. More mercenaries. The fight between the two groups had stalled because their front lines had just... stopped. Now both sides were sending scouts to figure out what the hell was happening.
They'd see him. Some guy in peasant clothes, holding a kid, standing on a platform in a burning town.
And when they saw him, they'd attack.
Dan's heart was hammering. His new body was already shaking from hunger and adrenaline. He looked down at the girl in his arms. She was still clinging to him, face buried in his chest, shaking like a leaf.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
That thought sat there, cold and honest. He wasn't some hero. He wasn't a soldier. He was a paper-pusher who'd been transported to god-knows-where with a power he'd discovered thirty seconds ago.
But here was the thing he realized, standing on that platform with smoke stinging his eyes:
If he didn't do something, he was going to die.
Not metaphorically. Not "his dreams would die." His actual body would be cut down by one of those soldiers or mercenaries, and he'd bleed out in the mud of a village whose name he didn't even know.
And these people—the villagers still hiding in the ruins, the girl in his arms—they'd die too.
So that's the choice, Dan thought. Fight or die. Not exactly complicated.
He didn't have a grand plan. He didn't know if this power would last. He didn't know if he could save everyone.
But he could try to save someone. Starting with the kid in his arms. Starting with anyone still breathing in this hellhole.
His first goal: push back the armies. Just enough to create a window. Just enough to get people out.
One step at a time. Survive first. Everything else comes after.
Dan looked at the approaching forces. The mercenaries from one end. The soldiers from the other. Both of them hungry for blood.
He couldn't freeze all of them. His range was too small. His control was too new. But maybe he didn't need to freeze all of them. Maybe he just needed to freeze enough of them to make the others think twice.
The warmth from the girl spread a little further. Her faith—blind, desperate, childlike—pushed against his range, expanding it by another meter.
Faith, he thought. It starts with one person. Then maybe another. Then...
He didn't know what came after. He'd never planned for anything beyond the next stack of paperwork. He'd never dreamed of a life that was actually his.
But right now, none of that mattered.
The first wave of soldiers entered his range. Dan raised his hand.
You're not hurting anyone in this village.
Fifteen bodies locked up.
Behind them, the mercenary commander was screaming orders. The army captain was calling for more men. The two forces, united for a moment by the impossible thing in front of them, started reorganizing.
They'd attack again. More men. Arrows. Fire. Everything that had already destroyed this village once.
Dan didn't know how long he could hold them. He didn't know if his power would last. He didn't know if the girl's faith—or whatever scraps he could get from the terrified villagers still hiding in the ruins—would be enough to expand his range to something that could actually protect them.
But for the first time in his life, Dan wasn't waiting. Wasn't watching. Wasn't filing reports for someone else's dreams.
He was fighting. Because the only other option was dying.
And as the threads of fate bent toward his will—just for a moment, just enough to hold back the first wave—Dan allowed himself one small, honest thought:
Let's see if I can survive the next ten minutes.