Raden was dead.

He was. Really and truly. He'd drawn his last, rattling gasp around his nemesis' blade. There was no coming back from that--not even if Elmira had exhausted her magic a thousand times over to try.

And yet.

He also. . .wasn't dead.

He could feel. Even if that feeling was not quite what he was used to. The air was cool--something like mid-autumn, that perfect week where the air holds no chill nor warmth. Soft cotton sheets whispered against his skin. His chest rose and fell--it was heavier than he remembered. And his hair was different. A little long, tickling the tops of his shoulders, the sides of his neck. He lifted an arm to scrub at his face, trying to wake up. His palm was soft. His face was soft.

His eyes blinked open, and--

A ceiling. At least, it looked like a ceiling. Except that it was smooth and flat and white, and there was a strange apparatus in the middle that whirled at a high speed, producing a low whoosh and looking fit to shred him.

Survival instinct kicked in before logic, and he rolled off the bed onto a strange, soft floor.

"Oof." He coughed--his voice strange in his throat--and got to his hands and knees. Rubbed a palm over the strange ground. Perhaps it was the pelt of some unknown creature?

Then he looked at his hand properly, and something shriveled in his heart.

It was small, and skinny, not a callous to be spotted anywhere on the damned thing, and with nails clipped to neat, useless perfection. He couldn't gouge out eyes with hands like this. He couldn't wield a sword, or fire a bow, or heft an axe with hands like--

"Oooaaaakleeeeey! Sweetie, you gotta get up! You'll be late for school!"

Raden flinched. Thin, smooth strands of brown fell into his vision. He shoved them back; they fell down again.

He became aware, quite suddenly and with no small amount of discomfort, that he could remember things, if he wasn't thinking too hard. Like that the spinning death trap was called a fan, and that the pelt covering the floor was a carpet. His brain helpfully provided more info: fans were used to cool air in a room and blow it down onto the room's inhabitants. Carpet was a flooring option for those who despised cold feet in winter. His was made from eighty-percent-recycled materials. And school was--well, not like the schooling he knew about.

He got up, slowly. This body was obviously nothing like the one he'd possessed prior. It was thin and wobbly and fleshy around the hips and belly. No muscle in sight. His feet were dismally small and unweathered. He was short, as well--probably only as long as his beloved Kingfeller.

He looked around the room. It was a disorienting mess of styles and aesthetics, all clashing like they were at war and none of them were winning. Necromancic here, clericlike there, paladinite over in that spot.

He froze.

There on the wall--a stunningly accurate rendition of himself, Kingfeller in his hand, blood decorating the glorious blade. The words--in an unfamiliar script, yet somehow legible to him--A Game of Kings etched across the top.

Raden stared for a long time before numbly turning away.

Raden found that the clothing in this world--which quite obviously, was not his--was much less complicated. It was also a hundred times more bizarre.

He ended up with a band tee (as his brain supplied him), cargo pants, belts--oddly he had the urge to add one after another until they occupied the space from navel to hip--high-tops, bracelets, a black denim jacket with the sleeves cut raggedly at the shoulders, covered in all manner of wild pins, and underneath all of that a packer and a binder.

He had discovered, to his immense horror, that this body was female.

There was one final accessory he placed upon this unfortunate new vessel, whose significance he wasn't exactly sure of, but it nagged at him until he fished out a white beaded bracelet with a question-mark charm from a messy pile of--fronting bracelets, his brain said, but the meaning of that term evaded him.

Then he mustered his courage--which once had carried him across raging battlefields--to go downstairs.

Oh, how mighty men fell.

The half-hour between Raden descending the steps to the first floor and Raden descending the steps to the road were chaotic, to say the least. The mother of the vessel spouted off a constant stream of things she had to do, things Oakley--which, he deduced, was this vessel's name--had to do, what she was going to cook for dinner, what scent of air freshener should they have next time, blah blah blah. He paid it little attention and instead focused on eating. The food was familiar, yet not. He was reluctant to try it--

He'd cleaned the plate five minutes later.

Oakley's mother--under no circumstances was he going to think of this vessel as himself--chided him not to eat so quickly, then handed him a paper bag which contained his next meal. His brain told him this was a fortunate thing which he should express gratitude for. He ignored it. He was not going to be beholden to anyone until he understood how this world operated.

The irritating part was that if he left the vessel alone, it more or less knew what to do all on its own. He'd have been doomed if he tried to find this world's schooling place. But he found that if he 'zoned out' (again, words which his brain provided him with) and just started walking, the vessel would follow the correct path of its own volition.

Thus how he reached the school within the hour, as opposed to within the decade.

He allowed the vessel to find its classroom. When he walked in, the mentor was in the middle of a lesson. He looked at Raden over the top of a pair of glasses that were ill-fit to his face and said, "Late again, Mr. Smith."

Raden pulled his lips back over his teeth and growled at him.

The teacher--who, he was informed, was named Mr. Stettsman, dropped his piece of chalk and spluttered indignantly. "That's detention, Mr. Smith, and you had better sit down."

Raden skulked to his seat. The inhabitants of this world were harder to deal with. He suspected it was because of this nonthreatening, weak vessel he was stuck with. Well, that was fine. He'd just have to get himself a new blade. Perhaps he'd call this one Worldsplitter. Yes, that had a nice ring to it.

Lunch crept around slowly.

When it finally latched at Raden's heels, he had settled quite thoroughly into despair.

If he'd been given a choice between this second life and death, he'd have happily jumped into his own grave and lay down to be buried.

Alas, he was stuck here now, and he'd be damned if he gave in without a fight.

At the very least, Oakley's mother was an astonishingly good cook.

He was halfway through demolishing the food she had given him when a fellow sat at his table. He prepared to defend his food, and he was ready when--

"Feeling soupy today, huh?"

Psst. His brain poked him. Which was a strange thing for a brain to do. That's our friend. Be nice to him.

Raden blinked at the other boy. "What?"

He cringed at the sound of the voice that came from this vessel's throat. He'd never manage a war cry with vocal chords like these.

"Ohh. You're new, huh?"

Raden's heart jumped. "You mean this is normal here?"

"Slow down, buddy." The other boy took a bite of food that looked considerably less edible than Raden's. "Lemme guess." He pointed his fork at Raden. "You were just going about your life as usual and now suddenly you're stuck in some new place with new people and it's weirding you out."

Raden stiffened. It wasn't completely accurate, but. . . "Can you. . .read my mind?"

"Nope. I just know Oak." The other boy--Asterisk, his brain told him--shoved more maybe-food in his mouth. "Don't worry. They'll explain later."

"Who is they?"

"Your buddies. Look, you're better off asking them when you see them, I'm not an expert on all this stuff. I just know what I've been told." Asterisk frowned. "Speaking of, what's your name, new guy?"

"It's Raden." He tried not to growl it, which wasn't hard as this vessel was hardly capable of such a thing anyway.

Asterisk snorted, laughed a bit. "Makes sense. Well, welcome to our world, buddy. You're gonna love it here."

Raden thought he'd lie awake till the dawn came again, with the thoughts whirling behind his eyes.

He didn't. Instead he was asleep, nearly as soon as this vessel's weight hit the bed, fast sunk into a black and dreamless slumber.

He woke in a much different place.

It was as unfamiliar as Oakley's strange, infighting room, yet more comfortable. More inviting, somehow. And--at the very least--he occupied his own flesh now.

Low voices murmured close by. One of them he recognized--it was the helpful voice that had shared information like what a ceiling fan was and what it did.

He opened his eyes and sat up.

He had been laying, as it turned out, on clover. The ground was covered in it, as far as his eyes could track it. Around him, evenly spaced and forming a perfect ring, were many tall oaks, their canopy forming a leafy blanket beneath pale dawn skies. Every oak held a door, each with its own color, plaque, and portrait. To his shock, one bore his own likeness.

There was a loose group of two or three. . .beings, though few looked human. A couple of them didn't even properly have faces. It was one of these ones who approached him.

"Hello. Your name is Raden, right?" They extended down a hand--well, a glove that looked like it contained a hand, but with no visible wrist. Their head was a pieced-together white globe with the top missing. Raden had witnessed many strange things, but this. . .was just too much.

"I'm Wikipedia," they went on, not bothered that he had yet to move. "We spoke earlier. Well, you kept calling me your brain, which in a way is true, but all that aside, we have met."

Raden stood--not taking the hollow glove to help himself up--and cautiously asked, "What kind of creature are you?"

"A fine question indeed, young man, and one of few whose answers I don't know." Wikipedia straightened their suit, which was white and pristine. "I know you're feeling disoriented right now. Many of us did, when we first arrived here. However, I think you'll find we're a pretty decent lot, once you get settled. Sorry about front-walling you earlier, but after the Sukuna incident--"

"Front-wall? Sukuna?" Raden's head hurt. "What are you talking about?"

"Alright, guys, let me handle this one."

Another approached. This one was human, as near as Raden could see, and something about his presence seemed to calm the tangle in Raden's chest.

The newcomer offered his hand for Raden to shake. "I'm Tidley. How about we take a walk? I think Oak would like to meet you."

Still confused, Raden trailed along after Tidley.

When they'd left the range of the others, Tidley sighed and said, "There's no real easy way to put this, but you've probably guessed by now that you're stuck here."

Raden could only nod. Obviously, he couldn't go home. He was dead--in that world, at least.

"But, you should also know you're not the only one." Tidley looked over at him. "In fact, most of us here are in the same situation. Me, this is the only life I've ever known, but plenty of the others have had to go through the same learning curve you're hitting now. It's just how it is here."

"But how is this. . .possible? Is this--this Oakley--is he magical?"

Tidley chuckled. "Well, no. Not exactly. Oak's just a teenager. Hyperfixates on things he likes. You. . .happened to be one of those things. And Oak's hyperfixations have a way of taking on a life of their own."

Understanding fell into Raden like a boulder. "I'm. . .fictional. In this world." The words felt strange on his tongue.

Tidley put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "In meatspace--the outer world, yes. But you're real in here, aren't you?"

Raden blinked.

Yes. That was true.

"None of us really knows how it works," Tidley said. "We prefer a less. . .logical explanation, that you and the others really came from realities outside our perception. But everyone's got their own take on how people like you come to be. Some think it's a gimmick of the brain, and who knows, maybe they're right." He shrugged. "I guess I should warn you, you might meet other. . .well, other yous out in the wild. Or versions of you. Your source material's pretty popular right now."

"But they're. . .not me?"

"No." Tidley put a hand to his chin. "Hm. Think of it this way, it's like those gacha-style TCGs Oak loves. If you pull the same card a bunch of times, sure, they all have the exact same art and effects, but they're each an individual card and independent of one another. Does that make sense?"

For some reason it did, and that unnerved Raden as much as everything else about this. "I think so."

"Plus," Tidley said, "your source isn't actually A Game of Kings. It's a fanfic, if I'm not mistaken, so you're unique in that regard."

"A. . .a fanfic?"

Tidley scratched his head. "I'm worse at this than I thought. Listen, just try to relax for now. You'll pick this stuff up as you go. And Wiki-P will help you out. For now, let's just get you settled."

They reached a glittering curtain of glass beads, and Tidley swept it aside. "After you."

Raden stepped through.

On the other side of the curtain was a room.

It was nothing like any room Raden had seen before, including that which he'd previously woken in. It was built solely of wood--out of what actually appeared to be a living tree, in fact, and two-tiered. On the first tier, which the curtain opened on, there were bookshelves and a desk and a couch where a lanky boy was stretched out doodling stars on his forearms.

He tipped his head back to look when the curtain fell back into place, and raised his eyebrows. "Oh--another one? I kinda had a feeling--"

The young man lifted his legs and then swung them back down, using the momentum to roll into a seated position facing Tidley and Raden. He looked. . .Mostly like his body, but taller, sharper in the face and shoulders, thinner in the hips.

"I didn't think it'd be Raden, though," he mused, almost to himself.

Tidley cleared his throat. "Raden, this is our core, Oakley."

Oakley lifted a hand and waved. "Hiya."

Raden almost had the urge to squat so that he'd be closer to eye-level with the boy. ". . .Greetings."

Oakley looked at Tidley. "So how source-separated is he? Like a little bit, or--"

"Not at all, that I've noticed," Tidley said.

Oakley blinked in surprise. "Oh. That's new."

"Source. . .separated?"

Raden wondered, for a short moment, if he would ever stop asking questions. He decided very quickly the answer was no.

"Yeah," Oakley said, and hopped up from the couch. "Alright, so. . .You've read books, right? But sometimes, especially if you read it really fast cuz you just can't put it down, you don't remember the events well afterward, or you get details of it mixed up, right?"

He gesticulated a lot as he said this. Raden nodded along, not sure where he was taking it.

"Well, that's sort of like source-separation. Let's say there's a story about a guy named Bob whose wife leaves him." Raden looked at Tidley inquisitively; Tidley just shrugged at him and mouthed, He's just like this. "Now let's say Bob showed up in our system, but he doesn't remember the bit about his wife leaving him, and in his version of events, they lived happily together. That's source-separation. But in your case, I bet if I read your source material to you, it'd be like someone had transcribed your thoughts verbatim down onto paper. Or a keyboard, in your case. So you have no separation. That's pretty rare, if I'm not mistaken." Oakley scratched his head with the cap end of his marker. "Anyway, welcome to the system."

"What's a system?"

Oakley waved a hand around. "This, basically. Us. Now let me add the disclaimer that all systems are different, and not everyone calls theirs a system. But generally, it's any person who shares a body with one or more other beings, or feels like they're more than one person. Oh, I think there's also some plural folks who identify as less than one too? Though I could be wrong." He caught Raden's confused stare and added, "Plural is another term for systems, or any folk that's more people per person. Or less, possibly."

Tidley let out an aggrieved sigh. "He means anyone who's not a single being in a single body."

"Our system's called the Oakwood System." Oakley volunteered this information like it might help clarify anything.

Raden didn't think it clarified anything.

Oak looked to Tidley once more. "So, he's number. . .Uhh--"

"Sixteen, Oak. Sixteen."

"Right! I was getting there. . ."