The world was watching.
In New York, a businessman suddenly stopped walking as his eyes glued to the massive screen in Times Square.
In Tokyo, a woman frying a wok full of crabs was working while her eyes was strung at the small tv before her.
In London, a pub filled with people was strangely silent as the stared at the TV.
"Breaking news!" The announcer's voice trembled with barely contained excitement.
"Extreme athlete Ragna Thornfield is attempting what experts called suicide: the highest altitude jump ever recorded from an aircraft!"
The camera zoomed in on the balloon itself. The balloon looked almost like a toy as it floating at the very edge of where Earth's atmosphere met the void of space.
Fifty kilometers up which is equivalent to 164,000 feet.
Inside the metal basket hanging beneath the balloon was Ragna.
His wingsuit was blood-red, bound tightly against his body as Ice crystals formed on his visor. Through the curved glass of his helmet, he stared down, seeing a massive blue marble wrapped in swirling white clouds.
Up here eas incredibly silent. That no noise from earth could reach up there.
His hands, covered in thermal gloves, gripped the edge of the basket as he checked his watch.
The temperature was actually -73 degrees. If one were exposed to this level of temperature, they would deginelt die in minutes.
But Ragna had trained for this for about a year with hundreds of jumps with every possible scenario practuced and mapped out.
He reached for his watch and tapped on it.
It was the sigma to show he was ready.
"He's ready for the jump."
His team down on earth receive the signal as they made preparations.
Ragna took in a deep breathe, grabbed the edge of the basket and jumped.
---
"He's jumped! He's jumped!" The commentator's voice exploded across every speaker. "Ragna has left the balloon! He's in freefall!"
For the first three seconds, Ragna felt weightless as though he was floating, suspended between Earth and space, before gravity truly takes hold.
Then the fall began.
Wind hit him like a sledgehammer. Even in the thin upper atmosphere, the speed was brutal. His body rotated once, twice, before his training kicked in and he spread his arms and legs, catching the air with his wingsuit.
The fabric between his limbs snapped taut with a sound like a gunshot.
Now he wasn't falling—he was flying.
The cameras mounted on his helmet and chest captured everything. The curve of the Earth. The black void above. The endless drop below. Millions of people watched with held breath as Ragna carved through the stratosphere.
"Current speed: 400 kilometers per hour and accelerating!" The announcer was shouting now, unable to contain himself. "He's dropping through the atmosphere faster than most cars can drive on a highway!"
Ragna angled his body, minute adjustments that sent him into a controlled dive. This was the danger zone. Too steep and he'd spin out of control. Too shallow and he wouldn't build enough speed to break the record.
His visor began to fog from his rapid breathing. Ice crystals that had formed at altitude now melted and streaked across his field of vision. He couldn't wipe them away—couldn't move his hands without destabilizing his flight.
The altimeter on his wrist spun backwards like a broken clock. 45,000 meters. 40,000. 35,000.
"He's passing through the stratosphere!" another commentator yelled. "Watch this, folks—he's about to enter the sound barrier zone!"
The air was thickening now. Every meter closer to Earth meant more resistance, more buffeting, more force trying to rip him apart.
Ragna gritted his teeth. His jaw ached from clenching. His whole body was rigid, locked into position, fighting against the wind that wanted to twist him into an uncontrolled tumble.
The temperature was rising. Up in the stratosphere, it had been deadly cold. But as he fell, friction began to heat his wingsuit. He could feel warmth spreading across his chest, his arms.
30,000 meters.
The speedometer in his helmet display climbed higher. 800 kilometers per hour. 850. 900.
"Ladies and gentlemen, he's approaching terminal velocity!" The commentator's voice was raw with excitement. "No human in a wingsuit has ever gone this fast!"
Ragna's vision started to narrow. The edges went gray. Blood was being forced away from his head by the sheer speed, the G-forces pulling at him like invisible hands.
He forced his breathing to stay steady. In. Out. In. Out. If he passed out now, he was dead.
950 kilometers per hour.
The sound of the wind changed. It went from a roar to something higher, sharper. A scream.
And then he broke it.
The sound barrier.
For one impossible moment, everything went silent. The wind stopped. The roar vanished. Ragna hung in that pocket of stillness, faster than sound itself, wrapped in a bubble of compressed air.
Then reality caught up.
BOOM.
The sonic boom rippled outward. People on the ground, miles below, heard it—a distant thunder that made them look up at the clear sky in confusion.
"HE DID IT!" Every commentator in every language screamed the same thing. "SONIC SPEED! Ragna Thornfield has broken the sound barrier in a wingsuit! Maximum recorded speed—978 kilometers per hour! This is history, people! HISTORY!"
But Ragna wasn't celebrating. He was counting.
Five minutes into the jump. His oxygen was limited. His altitude was dropping. Every second brought him closer to the point where he'd need to pull his parachute.
20,000 meters. 15,000. 10,000.
The clouds rushed up at him like a white wall. He punched through them and suddenly the world came into sharp focus. Green fields. Gray cities. Tiny cars on ribbon roads.
His crew's voice crackled in his helmet radio. "Ragna, prepare for chute deployment. You're at five thousand meters."
He nodded, though no one could see. His right hand moved toward the deployment handle at his chest. Every jumper knew this by heart. Pull at the right altitude. Count three seconds. Feel the jerk as the parachute opens.
Simple. Safe. Practiced a thousand times.
4,000 meters.
His fingers wrapped around the handle.
3,000 meters.
He pulled.
Nothing happened.
Ragna pulled again, harder this time, yanking the handle with all his strength.
Still nothing.
"Wait..." one commentator said slowly, the excitement draining from his voice. "Wait, is his parachute—"
2,000 meters.
Panic—real, cold panic—flooded Ragna's chest for the first time. He twisted in the air, reaching for his backup chute. His fingers fumbled with the emergency release.
He pulled it.
Nothing.
"The parachute isn't deploying!" The announcer's voice cracked. "Ragna's parachute has failed! Both chutes!"
1,500 meters.
The ground was no longer distant. He could see individual trees now. Houses. Cars. The designated landing zone, a bright orange circle in a field, rushing up at him like a target.
"Emergency crews, standby!" someone was shouting. "We have a critical failure!"
1,000 meters.
Ragna's training took over. Even in the panic, even knowing he was seconds from impact, he forced himself to think. Angle the body. Spread out to create drag. Try to slow down even a little.
His heart was thunder in his ears. Blood roared in his head. Every muscle in his body was locked tight.
500 meters.
He could see people in the landing zone, tiny figures running and pointing. He could see the pattern of leaves on the trees. The cracks in the pavement.
300 meters.
This was it. No way out. No miracle. Just physics and gravity and the unstoppable truth of a human body hitting the earth at terminal velocity.
200 meters.
In his mind, flash after flash of memory. His first jump. His father's face. The view from every mountain he'd climbed. The girl he'd loved and lost. Every moment that had led him to this cold, beautiful point at the edge of death.
100 meters.
The ground filled his vision. Green grass. Brown earth.
50 meters.
He closed his eyes.
But impact never came.
---
Instead of earth and bone and blood, there was—
Nothing.
Not empty space. Not blackness. Just... absence. A void that wasn't dark because there was no light to be dark against. A silence that wasn't quiet because there was no sound to be quiet from.
Ragna existed in that nothing, and the nothing existed in him.
Time didn't pass because time didn't exist. Distance meant nothing. He was everywhere and nowhere, falling and still, alive and dead and neither and both.
And then—
Something moved in the void.
A presence. Ancient. Wrong. It shouldn't exist, but it did. It watched him with eyes that weren't eyes. It smiled with a mouth that wasn't a mouth.
The thing was hunched. Twisted. Like a person bent by centuries of weight, by knowledge no human mind should hold, by hunger that had never been fed.
When it spoke, the words didn't come through sound. They were carved directly into Ragna's consciousness, etched into the meat of his brain.
"Preserve your soul... for me."
Terror—pure, primal, wordless terror—exploded through Ragna's being. He tried to scream but had no mouth. Tried to run but had no legs. Tried to wake up but had no consciousness to wake from.
The presence reached for him with fingers that were like roots, like smoke, like disease.
"You are mine now. You have always been mine. You will always be—"
---
Air.
Ragna gasped and his lungs filled with oxygen so sweet it hurt. His heart kicked against his ribs like a trapped animal. Blood rushed to his head in a wave that made his vision swim.
He was sitting.
Not falling. Not dead. Not in the void.
Sitting.
His hands—he could feel his hands. They were pressed flat against something smooth and cool. Wood? He looked down. A desk. A normal, ordinary, scratched-up wooden desk with carved initials and dried glue stains.
Ragna's head snapped up.
He was in a classroom.
Rows of desks stretched out in front of him. A blackboard on the wall, covered in chalk writing he couldn't quite focus on. Windows along one side showing afternoon sunlight and trees with red leaves.
And people. Dozens of them. Teenagers, sitting at desks, all turned to stare at him with expressions ranging from confusion to disgust to barely concealed amusement.
"Is he having another breakdown?" someone whispered.
"Pathetic," another voice muttered. "Just like his traitor parents."
Ragna's mouth opened but no words came out. His hands—his hands were smaller. Thinner. Softer. He lifted one, turning it in the light, and it wasn't his hand. Wasn't the callused, scarred hand of an athlete who'd spent years climbing and jumping and surviving.
This was the hand of a teenager. Maybe sixteen. Maybe seventeen.
He touched his face. No stubble. No weathering from wind and sun. Smooth skin stretched over unfamiliar bones.
"What..." he started to say, and even his voice was wrong. Higher. Younger. Unbroken by years of shouting into helmet radios and thin air.
Memories that weren't his own slammed into his consciousness like a freight train.
A different name—Ragna Stormborn. Parents accused of treason against the Empire. Executed in the public square while a crowd cheered. A childhood spent being spat on, beaten, mocked. Years at the bottom of the social ladder at Death-Star Academy, the empire's most brutal school for summoners.
Summoners.
That was the wrong word but also the right word. People who formed bonds with creatures—Symbiotes—and used them to fight, to survive, to climb the ruthless hierarchy of power.
And this Ragna—this version of him—had never bonded with a single creature. Was considered worthless. Trash. The son of traitors who deserved nothing but contempt.
"Luckily..." Ragna whispered to himself, his new voice shaking. "Luckily... I'm alive."
But he wasn't. Not really. The old Ragna—the jumper, the athlete, the man who'd touched the edge of space—was dead. Had to be. You don't fall from 1,000 meters with a failed parachute and walk away.
This was something else. Something impossible.
"I've..." he breathed out slowly, gripping the edge of the desk until his knuckles went white. "I've reincarnated."