823 Years Ago – 2024
Have you ever felt like you’ll die from work only to die in the alley, well that’s how Seung-yoon died .
It was not how he’d imagined going out, he always figured it’d be a heart attack at his desk — another late night debugging code, energy drinks stacked like monunts to poor life choices, his body finally saying this is the end, hold your breath and count to
... Anyways let’s continue.
Instead: wrong place, wrong ti, wrong fucking city.
The gang firefight erupted without warning.
One mont he was walking ho from the convenience store, ramyeon and beer in a plastic bag.
The next — tat-tat-tat! — muzzle flashes lit up the narrow street like a strobe light, and sothing hot punched through his chest.
He dropped the bag. The beer can rolled away, hissing softly as foam spilled out.
Tsssss...
That’s gonna stain, he thought stupidly, watching his blood pool on the concrete.
The gangs kept shooting, nobody noticed the civilian caught in the crossfire, nobody cared.
In Seoul’s forgotten districts, people died every day.
Yoo pressed his hand against the wound. Blood leaked between his fingers, warm and slick.
His brain already rewired to think like a ga developer through hours of sleepless nights, tried to calculate blood loss rates, ti to unconsciousness, survival probability.
Zero percent.
He laughed — a bubbling, wet sound.
All those late nights finishing the ga. All that crunching to et deadlines, for what?
Only to die in an alley at twenty-nine, alone, surrounded by strangers who’d step over his corpse on their way to work tomorrow.
The world dimd at the edges.
I had things I wanted to do, he thought. Places I wanted to see. A ga I wanted to finish.
I wasn’t done yet.
Darkness took him.
But that wasn’t the end.
The Void Between
Yoo’s soul scattered.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Normal souls — when they died — went... sowhere. Heaven, hell, reincarnation cycle, oblivion. Pick your mythology.
But they went intact.
His didn’t.
The mont of death coincided with sothing else. Sothing vast and incomprehensible touching Earth for a fraction of a second — a tendril of cosmic energy, searching, cataloging, analyzing this insignificant planet for future use.
It brushed through Seoul. Through that alley, and through Yoo’s dying body.
His soul fragnted like glass under a hamr.
Pieces of consciousness scattered across dinsional barriers.
So fragnts dissolved imdiately, unable to maintain cohesion.
Others drifted in the void between realities — not alive, not dead, just... existing.
Ti didn’t work normally in the void.
Seconds could be centuries, centuries could be heartbeats.
Yoo’s fragnts floated, disconnected.
Each piece containing mories, personality fragnts, skills, but none whole enough to be called a person.
I’m forgetting, one fragnt thought — the piece that held his na.
What was I? another wondered — the piece containing his profession.
Why does this hurt? whispered a third — the emotional core, forever replaying that mont of death.
They drifted apart, slowly losing coherence.
In another thousand years, there would be nothing left — just background radiation, cosmic dust, forgotten.
But 823 years after his death — subjective ti; actual ti was aningless here — yet sothing changed.
The void pulled.
The Gathering
Two entities started a ga.
Aethon and Chaos, positioning themselves above Earth like grandmasters over a chessboard.
Their power was so imnse that reality bent around them, creating ripples that propagated backward and forward through ti.
One ripple touched the void where Yoo’s fragnts drifted.
Pull.
The fragnts felt it.
After 823 years of dissolution, suddenly there was direction, purpose, and a destination.
Co, the energy seed to say. You are needed.
The fragnts moved, slowly at first, then faster, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, they began to coalesce.
The piece holding his na found the piece holding his mories. They rged — awkward, painful, like torn flesh knitting back together.
Yoo Seung-yoon, the combined fragnt rembered. I am — I was —
Another piece joined, his skills — coding, ga design, system architecture. The analytical mind that could break down complex problems into manageable components.
I made gas, the growing consciousness recalled, I created worlds.
More fragnts arrived — his personality, sarcastic, tired, cynical but fundantally decent.
His determination — the part that stayed up seventy-two hours straight to fix a ga-breaking bug because players deserved better.
The emotional core was last. It ca reluctantly, still carrying the pain of death, the regret of an unfinished life.
When it rged, Yoo Seung-yoon was whole for the first ti in 823 years.
And he scread.
Not physically — he had no body, but his consciousness shrieked with the agony of reformation, of pieces forced back together, of mories flooding back all at once.
I died I died I died I died—
Wrong place wrong ti bullet through chest beer can rolling—
I wasn’t done I wasn’t ready I had things to do—
The scream echoed through dinsional barriers.
Then, gradually, it faded.
Yoo’s consciousness stabilized, whole, aware, confused as hell.
Where am I?
He couldn’t see, had no eyes.
Couldn’t feel, had no body.
But he was aware — more aware than he’d been in the void’s tiless drift.
What happened?
mories sorted themselves, death, fragntation, void, ti, so much ti, then gathering, then—
Now.
Am I dead? Is this the afterlife?
Before he could process further, sothing grabbed him.
Not physically, but he felt it — cosmic energies wrapping around his reforming soul like fingers around a marble, lifting, pulling,and directing.
Where are you taking ?
No answer, but the movent continued.
He was being dragged through dinsions, through barriers that should have been impassable, through layers upon layers of reality his human mind couldn’t comprehend.
Then — impact.
The Womb
Thud!
Yoo slamd into sothing.
There was flesh around him, warm, wet, confining.
His consciousness pressed against biological matter — a body, but not his.
Wrong size, wrong shape.
What the—
He tried to move, but couldn’t.
His awareness was trapped in this tiny space, this cramped prison of flesh and fluid.
Oh god oh no. No no no no—
Understanding hit like a second death.
He was in a womb.
I’ve been reincarnated.
Panic surged, he wasn’t coming back to die agin from either overwork or stupid decisions, let rest in peace, he tried to reject it, tried to pull his consciousness back out, tried to escape—
Pain.
Blinding, excruciating pain, as if on cue his soul and this body began binding together, lding at a level deeper than physics.
He couldn’t separate even if he wanted to.
The binding process was wrong, normal reincarnation — if such a thing existed — would start fresh, new soul, new body, natural developnt from conception.
This wasn’t that.
His soul was adult, fully ford, complete with twenty-nine years of mories, personality, skills.
Trying to cram all that into a fetal brain was like downloading a terabyte of data onto a floppy disk.
The body convulsed.
He felt it — his first physical sensation in 823 years. Tiny limbs twitched, heart stuttered.
The bain matter tried to accommodate consciousness far too large for it.
I’m killing this baby, Yoo realized with horror, my presence is too much, this body can’t handle—
Then sothing else activated.
A voice.
Not external, but also not the baby’s.
Sothing that was now part of him, born from the rger of his reforming soul and the cosmic energies that had gathered him.
"I am Akasha Archive," the voice said calmly, coldly.
"Initiating ergency protocols. Adjusting host body to accommodate consciousness. Estimated ti: 47 hours. Warning: process will be extrely uncomfortable."
Who the fuck are you?
"I am your innate skill. Born from the unique circumstances of your reincarnation.
Designation: Akasha Archive.
Function: information storage, analysis, optimization.
I am not external. I am you."
Before Yoo could process that, the adjustnt began.
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