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.