Ren was the kind of person the world never really noticed.
Eighteen years old, bags under his eyes from too many part-time jobs and too little sleep, he juggled textbooks with cold convenience store meals and dreams too large for the concrete room he called home.
What little joy he had came from the pages of Crown of the Silent Vanguard — a sprawling epic of swords, secrets, and shattered empires. It was his escape, his refuge.
He knew every character by heart, from the justice inclined protagonist to the cunning villains, even the lesser-known side characters with three lines of dialogue. It was his world, more real than the life he lived.
But life, cruel and unyielding, had other plans.
The last thing he remembered was the screech of tires. The child's terrified eyes. The impact. Then — nothing.
No funeral, no eulogy. The world moved on, as it always did, and Ren vanished into memory. Or so it should have been.
He awoke to the scent of old wood and the chirping of strange birds. His body was younger, stronger. The sky was wider, bluer, and above him loomed towers of stone wrapped in mist. It didn't take long to realize he wasn't on Earth anymore.
But this wasn't the grand capital of Celesmere. Nor the war-ravaged fields of Velmora. None of the places from the novel matched this worn village tucked in the shadow of unnamed mountains.
And when he looked into a mirror for the first time — it wasn't the face of a known character staring back. Not the hero. Not the villain. Not even a background face in the crowd.
He wasn't in the story.
He was someone who didn't exist.
A non-existent boy in a non-existent place.
And yet, something stirred in the wind. A wrong note in a song too familiar. The world he thought he knew... was changing.
And maybe, just maybe, the forgotten thread would weave a story of its own.