The first thing Niko felt was hunger, raw and relentless, gnawing at him from deep inside. His mind was foggy, his senses dulled, like he was piecing himself together from scattered fragments. Slowly, he became aware of a scratchy pressure against his skin, a thick, rough cloth wrapped around him, pressing him down. Each breath came shallow and strained, his chest compressed beneath heavy layers that reeked of dust, damp earth, and something else—something metallic, dark, like old blood.

He blinked, his eyes struggling to adjust. His memories were fragmented, but he could almost remember a place cold and sterile, where blinding lights had burned into his eyes and leather straps had bound his wrists and ankles. A doctor had hovered over him, gloved and masked, preparing to cut away the parts of him they couldn’t understand.

But now... now he was here. Somewhere else entirely.

Desperation overtook him, and he forced his arm up, tearing at the cloth wrapped tightly around him. A thin ray of dim, gray light spilled through the break, and he squinted against it, struggling to make sense of his surroundings.

Wooden walls swayed around him, creaking with each bump in the road. Muffled voices drifted in from outside, and he felt an eerie disorientation. He was in a dark, confined space, like some kind of moving carriage. As his eyes adjusted, he realized he wasn’t alone.

Six pairs of eyes stared at him—children, huddled against the walls, their faces streaked with grime. Their hands were bound, their bodies trembling, and each child gaped at him, wide-eyed and horrified. One of the younger ones gasped, shrinking back from him, while another clutched a rosary with white-knuckled fingers. To them, he wasn’t just another bound captive.

They’d thought he was dead.

He noticed the cloth that had wrapped around him was stained, old, and dark, as if it had been used to cover a body. His body, or whoever they believed he was. The children watched him with a mixture of terror and disbelief, like they expected him to rise and reach for them with ghostly hands.

But he was no ghost. He was Niko, and he had endured far worse.

Ignoring their stares, he focused inward. Something was off. His body felt... different. Smaller, weaker. His arms, his legs, even the weight in his bones, they were all foreign to him. Beneath his confusion, a cold realization settled like ice in his stomach: this body didn’t feel like his own.

The thought jolted him, but it also made something click into place. He’d asked for this, another life, any way out of that blinding white room. But he hadn’t expected this... a strange body, wrapped in a shroud, lying among terrified children who looked at him as if he’d crawled back from the dead.

The carriage lurched again, throwing him sideways, and through a narrow crack in the boards, he caught a glimpse of the outside. Dark trees stretched endlessly under a dull gray sky, their skeletal branches clawing at the carriage as it rattled along a narrow path. Whoever had them trapped here was taking them somewhere far from the outside world—somewhere no one would come looking.

Outside, voices grew louder—rough laughter punctuated by heavy footsteps and the jangle of keys. Whoever these men were, they were confident, careless, sure of their control. Niko’s mind, unusually sharp despite the fog of hunger, latched onto that assurance. He knew that type of confidence all too well. It was the same arrogance he’d seen in the people who’d thought they could strip him down, dissect him, and reshape him.

One of the children, a boy with tangled hair and bruises blooming dark along his cheek, stared at him, barely breathing, as if one wrong move would summon something terrible. Niko met his gaze with a steady, assessing look. The boy looked worn to the bone, his gaze a mirror of defeat. The others looked no better—filthy, thin, horrified to find their dead companion moving. A faint spark of irritation flared within him. They were no help to him, not like this.

Turning away, Niko ran his fingers along the wooden walls, searching for any give in the boards. His hand brushed a small gap where two planks met, unevenly joined. There... a weakness he could work with. He glanced down, scanning the floor for anything that might serve as a tool, and spotted a thin, rusted strip of metal half-buried in the wood. Wrenching it loose, he felt its sharp, cold edge bite into his hand.

Whoever thought he was just another piece of cargo, something helpless, had made a mistake.

He returned to his task, wedging the metal strip into the seam and working it back and forth until the wood began to splinter, the crack widening just enough to let in another sliver of the outside world. The trees loomed beyond, stretching endlessly under the darkening sky.