They say the first death is the hardest.

  I suppose that depends on how many you get to have.

  My first death wasn’t particurly grand. Just fast.

  The battlefield was soaked in fire. Bck Clover’s world didn’t believe in fair fights — it believed in bloodlines and blessings, in mana pools and page counts in your grimoire. I had neither. A commoner born without fir, just a raggedy one-star grimoire and the stubbornness of a starving dog.

  But I cwed my way into the Magic Knights anyway.

  They called me resourceful. Cunning. Calcuted.

  What they meant was I pyed dirty — and when you're born with weak magic in a world that eats weakness for breakfast, you'd better learn to fight like you're already dead.

  I specialized in terrain manipution: stone walls, colpsing pilrs, stactite spears from above. I wasn’t fshy, but I made messes. And messes win fights.

  Until they didn’t.

  I was 25 when a reconnaissance mission turned ambush. Our squad — underpowered, outnumbered — was bait. I knew it the moment our signal spells went dead.

  I bought time. Laid traps. Made it look like we had more numbers than we did. Everyone else made it out.

  I didn’t.

  My st thoughts weren’t of regret. Just relief.

  I was so damn tired.

  So, naturally, I woke up again.

  Second life. New body. New world.

  A fresh reincarnation.

  But no mana. No grimoire. No status screens. Just sweat and soil and endless chores.

  A farm vilge tucked between rolling hills and occasional monster raids. It wasn’t home — not like the smog-choked cities of my first life, or the stone fortresses of my second — but it was peaceful. Humble.

  And that was enough.

  No wars. No rank evaluations. Just cows, wheat, and monster fences that needed repairs twice a week.

  I married. Raised chickens. I even smiled, sometimes.

  I died at 63. Quietly, in bed.

  I figured that was the end.

  I was wrong.

  Again.

  —

  My head split open.

  Or at least it felt that way. Like someone had crammed a decade of memories into my brain through a funnel, and the funnel had been on fire the entire time.

  Fshes.

  A courtroom. Shining marble and flickering magical screens. Legal glyphs floating midair. A voice, my voice, but older. Colder.

  “Objection. Gate residue readings were contaminated. Dismissed.”

  A girl — long bck hair, serious eyes — standing at a school gate, not waving.

  Another girl — shorter, softer, ughing as a glowing plushie floated behind her.

  Then a burst of static, like the world was buffering.

  Then silence.

  When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t lying on a battlefield or a straw mattress.

  I was sitting in a damn chair.

  In an office.

  A rge, gss-walled office high above a sprawling city full of magic glyph cars, glowing billboards, and steel towers shaped like ritual staves. Floating security drones zipped by outside.

  The office lights hummed softly. Papers were stacked perfectly on my desk. A smart wand sat in a gss case beled “EXHIBIT A.” The air smelled like coffee, ozone, and overwork.

  And then the pain started.

  A migraine like mana backsh and dehydration and a hammer to the skull all at once. My breath caught. My hands shook. I grabbed the edge of the table and braced myself.

  Memories that weren’t mine — but were — flooded in.

  I was twenty-nine.

  A prosecutor in the Central Magic Law Department, handling high-level magical crime and monster gate regution.

  A Rank Four Mage.

  Whatever that meant.

  The world I lived in — this one — didn’t have grimoires. Didn’t have knights or noble families. Magic came from internal cores, categorized by color and density. Cores were trained like muscles, tested annually, licensed and reguted like guns.

  And I’d been doing this job for seven years. Ten-hour shifts. Five days a week. Handling gate breaches, monster suppression hearings, illegal ritual cases, and anti-core trafficking.

  I was competent. Respected. Cold.

  And apparently, I had two daughters.

  …

  “Wait,” I whispered, as the pounding behind my eyes dulled.

  “Wait, wait, wait.”

  The memories reorganized, like shelves straightening themselves after a quake.

  Name: Kazen Arlow. Age 29. Graduated from the Central Arcana Institute of Law. Rose to senior prosecutor by 27. Known for ruthless focus, uncanny memory, and zero tolerance for mana-based corruption.

  Single father since wife, Lira Arlow, passed four months ago from Core Decay Syndrome.

  Two daughters. Ages eight and six.

  I hadn’t taken bereavement leave.

  I had filed a compint about the funeral timing cshing with a major case.

  I hadn’t visited home in four days.

  I lived in a tower apartment, alone.

  The girls stayed with a paid au pair. High-end. Certified. Legally bonded.

  The oldest — Rei — went silent after the funeral. She stopped drawing. Refused to cry.

  The youngest — Nia — still asked when mommy was coming home.

  I clutched my chest. It wasn’t a heart attack. But it should’ve been.

  I felt like vomiting. Like screaming. Like falling into a hole in time and never crawling out.

  This was my life?

  My third life?

  This was who I became?

  I pushed myself out of the chair. My legs were steady, trained. The body I was in wasn’t unfamiliar — I could feel years of martial conditioning yered under the suit, like carbon fiber under silk.

  But it didn’t feel like mine yet.

  I moved to the gss wall. Looked out at the city.

  Hover rails moved along magnetic paths. Teens rode wind-skates across arcane loops. A billboard dispyed a new home shield charm with the slogan “Protect What Matters — Even From the Abyss.”

  My hands were shaking again.

  I had magic. Again.

  But not enough to matter in battle. Not enough to conquer. Just enough to keep the system moving. Push paper. Cast binding glyphs in hearings. Stabilize gate ruptures during testimony.

  And two girls — my girls — were out there.

  Waiting.

  Or not.

  They’d probably stopped waiting.

  Rei. Nia.

  I hadn’t even remembered their names until now. That realization hurt more than anything else.

  I gnced at the clock.

  3:12 p.m.

  If I left now, I could make it back before their dinner.

  Assuming they still ate with me.

  Assuming they still wanted to.

  I turned, picked up the coat that hung by the door. It was tailored to my current body: bck, lined with enchant-resistant stitching. A faint mana filter shimmered across the colr.

  There was a small photo wedged behind the ID badge on the hanger hook.

  A woman with dark hair and kind eyes, holding two toddlers. Me — the previous me — stood off to the side, awkward, half-smiling.

  I pulled it free. Looked at her.

  Lira.

  The woman I’d loved — or at least married — in this life.

  Guilt surged. Not because I remembered her, but because I didn’t.

  I whispered, “I’ll do better. I swear it.”

  Then I walked out of the office.

  Out of the tower.

  And into the life I’d abandoned.

  For the third and, gods help me, final time.