Ren left Orien School the way a stranger leaves a building he is still pretending to belong to.

Quietly. Politely. Without making eye contact.

Outside the main gate, the late afternoon air smelled faintly of rain that had not arrived yet. Hover taxis lined the curb in soft, glowing rows, anti-grav engines humming so low you could only feel it under your feet, never quite hear it.

He raised his light-brain, tapped the icon, and a hover taxi peeled out of the row almost before the request finished sending.

"Destination?" the dashboard hologram asked.

"Home."

The vehicle confirmed his address from his light-brain and lifted off without further conversation.

Ren leaned back against the seat and looked out the window.

Orien City stretched below him in long, layered ribbons of motion.

Hover lanes, six and seven levels deep. Crystalline towers reaching into low cloud. Holographic advertisements drifting between buildings, taller than anything that had stood on his old Earth. Service drones moving in clean lines along their assigned paths. Even the occasional android, walking calmly through the lower streets like an ordinary commuter, indistinguishable from the human pedestrians around it except by the small light at its temple.

’Even after three days,’ Ren thought, ’this still feels like a dream.’

It was the kind of dream he had never been able to afford.

In his last life, he had been an orphan. Foster homes that ranged from indifferent to genuinely cruel. A cramped apartment in a forgotten corner of an old city. A part-time job that paid almost nothing. A community college course he could only attend in his spare hours.

Then a truck.

Then nothing.

Then this.

He still didn’t fully understand what had happened. Three days ago, he had woken up in a teenager’s body in a soft, sunlit bedroom in a stranger’s apartment, with two sets of memories layered inside his skull — the original Ren Valis’s eighteen years of life on Edius, and his own twenty-something years of life on Earth.

The original Ren had been quiet, awkward, a little lonely. A loner by inclination, with a small handful of polite acquaintances at school and a reading habit his parents indulged. Not unhappy. Just... solitary.

It was, Ren had to admit, a personality that fit him very well.

He almost smiled again.

The hover taxi banked gently around a tower, slid into a lower lane, and began descending toward the residential district.

After about twenty minutes, the taxi pulled into the entry pad of a tall, quiet apartment building. Ren tapped his light-brain, paid the fare, and stepped out.

The lobby door opened with a soft chime.

So did the elevator.

So did the front door of his family’s apartment, which scanned his face and decided he was permitted to enter.

And then he was inside, in the warmth and quiet of a home that was technically his.

Empty.

Not abandoned — empty. There was a living plant on the side table, watered that morning by an automatic mister. There was a soft blanket folded over the back of the couch, exactly where someone tidy had folded it. There were fresh groceries in the kitchen pantry, ordered remotely and delivered while he had been at school.

It was a home that was lived in.

Just not by his parents.

They were, at this exact moment, on Jupiter.

Yes. Jupiter.

Ren had spent the better part of his first day in this body sitting on the kitchen floor, holding his head in his hands, staring at the family photo on the wall, and quietly trying to absorb that fact.

His parents in this life were Plant Pathway cultivators. Both of them at the peak of their current stage, both of them part of a long-running exploration team that had been investigating a Jupiter Secret Realm for the past several months. The realm was rich in a particular catalyst material they needed for their next breakthrough. So they had gone.

They called every few days. Sometimes more often, when they could.

Right on cue, his light-brain rang.

Ren accepted the call.

A hologram of his parents appeared in front of him, projected at full size by the apartment’s living room display.

His mother was a classic western beauty. She was forty-eight, but she looked twenty-five — Plant Pathway cultivation slowed aging dramatically once a cultivator crossed Tier 2.

His father, beside her, was fifty. Handsome, lean, wearing the soft outer layer of his exploration suit and looking, as he always did when he came home from a long mission, slightly tired and slightly amused.

"Ren!" his mother said with a warm smile. "Did you just get home from school?"

"Yes," Ren replied.

His father chuckled. "So, today is the big day, huh? Awakening Day."

Ren nodded.

His mother’s expression softened. "Ren, we know today is important. But you shouldn’t put too much pressure on yourself. Even if you don’t awaken a talent tonight, it’s completely fine."

She paused, and her voice gentled further.

"We will still love you no matter what."

Ren was, for a moment, slightly surprised.

Not by the words.

By the fact that they had been said to him at all.

He couldn’t remember anyone saying that to him in his last life. Not the foster parents who had taken him in. Not the ones who had given him back. Not anyone.

His father continued, mistaking the small silence for nervousness.

"Your mother and I actually met when we were both in our twenties, during an expedition in a Secret Realm."

His mother laughed softly. "That place was extremely dangerous. Your father almost got himself eaten by a mutated vine beast."

His father coughed. "That was one time."

"It was a memorable time."

"It was one time."

Then his father looked at Ren more seriously.

"What I mean is — your life isn’t decided by just one awakening. Your mother and I both took ten years to even reach Tier 2. Whatever happens tonight, it is a beginning. Not an ending."

His mother nodded. "So relax. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself."

She paused, then smiled brightly.

"Oh — and we also prepared a gift for you."

Ren raised an eyebrow. "A gift?"

His father nodded. "It should arrive tomorrow. Something we obtained during our last Secret Realm exploration. We thought it might help you after your awakening."

"So get some good rest tonight," his mother added gently. "Tomorrow might be an important day."

Ren nodded. "Alright."

The hologram flickered once.

And then his parents were gone, and the apartment was quiet again.

Ren stood in the middle of the living room for a long moment, looking at the empty space where their projection had been.

’Even if you don’t awaken,’ his mother had said. ’We will still love you no matter what.’

He had not known how to respond to that.

He didn’t know yet.

He turned away, walked to the kitchen, made himself a simple meal of rice and grilled vegetables, and ate it slowly at the small table by the window.

Outside, Orien City pulsed quietly in the dark — neon and holograms and the soft lights of hover lanes drifting between buildings like rivers of fireflies.

Somewhere out there, millions of other eighteen-year-olds were doing exactly the same thing he was doing. Eating. Waiting. Pretending to be calm.

Some of them, tonight, would awaken talents that would change their entire lives.

Some of them would not.

Ren washed his plate, set it carefully on the drying rack, and walked back into the living room.

The clock on the wall read 11:24 PM.

Thirty-six minutes.

He sat down on the couch, then changed his mind, then walked to the window. Below him, the city kept moving. Above him, the stars were visible only as faint smudges through the city’s light.

Somewhere up there, his parents were on Jupiter, watching the same midnight cross over the same planet, knowing what tonight would mean for him.

Ren placed one hand on the glass.

’In my last life,’ he thought, ’I never got to be anything. I was running out of time and didn’t even know it.’

He looked at his reflection in the window. A teenager with sharp features and dark, careful eyes. Not the face he had grown up with. Not the face that had ended on a wet road in a different world. But his face now.

’In this life, I have a family. I have a future. I have time.’

’I am not going to waste it.’

He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed slowly, the way the original Ren’s body remembered breathing. Steady. Even. Unhurried.

Whatever talent awakened tonight, he would use it. Whatever pathway opened, he would walk it. Whatever the world threw at him next, he would meet it standing up.

The clock ticked over. 11:25. 11:26.

Ren stood by the window, watching the dark sky over Orien City, and waited for midnight.

Tonight...