Unauthorized Reincarnation – Season 2
Chapter 1: Unauthorized Reincarnation Act I: Erosion
The void was endless.
No sky. No earth. No light, no sound. Nothing to touch, nothing to breathe. Not even the rhythm of a heartbeat. Time itself refused to move here. It was as though existence had been swallowed whole, leaving Daniel suspended in a silence too complete to endure.
He drifted—weightless, thoughtless—until faint vibrations stirred in the emptiness.
Rrrring… Rrrring…
A sound. A relic from a world he no longer belonged to.
His hand twitched, and somehow—though he had no body—it was there. A phone. Old, cracked at the edges, glowing faintly against the abyss.
He pressed it to his ear.
“…Daniel?”
The voice was warm. Familiar. Like sunlight filtering through the windows of a life he had lost. Teacher Susan.
Her tone carried concern, the kind that felt too heavy for him to hold.
“Daniel… why don’t you go back to college and finish what you started? I know it’s hard with all the debts your stepfather left behind. I know how fragile your family’s condition is. But listen—”
Her words softened, a gentle thread pulling him toward something human.
“I don’t know if it’s enough to motivate you. But I’ll help. I’ll pay your college fees. I’ll help you rejoin society. And after you finish, I’ll help you find a proper job. You can live like a normal person again. Don’t throw everything away, Daniel.”
For a moment, he almost believed. He wanted to. The echo of her voice stirred something that hurt worse than silence: memory.
“…It’s too late, teacher.” His voice cracked, thick with things unsaid. “Maybe if I had listened to your advice back then… maybe I wouldn’t have…” His words trailed into the void.
Susan’s voice pressed on, softer now, soothing, pleading. She spoke as though her faith could hold him together, as though she could still reach him across the endless dark.
But Daniel’s reply cut through, flat and final.
“It’s too late because…”
His hand tightened around the phantom phone.
“…I don’t exist.”
The line clicked dead.
And the abyss swallowed the sound once more.
The void pulsed once. Then again.
Rrrring… Rrrring…
Daniel’s gaze drifted toward the faint glow blooming in the darkness. The same phone. The same crack down its screen. The same lie of familiarity in a place where nothing should exist.
He hesitated. His thumb hovered over the answer icon. Then he exhaled and pressed it.
“…Hello?”
A coarse, deliberate voice sliced through the static. “So you do answer, boy.”
Daniel froze. That voice—aged, calm, and edged with restrained fury—belonged to one man only.
“Shifu Jiǎn Zhé…” he whispered.
“You remember,” the old man said, tone sharp as folded steel. “Then remember this as well: I told you the blade of vengeance dulls faster than it cuts. What use is discipline when your heart is rotten?”
Daniel’s jaw tightened. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I wouldn’t?” Jiǎn Zhé barked a dry laugh. “I crossed an ocean to escape blood and sin. I taught you to break the chain, not forge another!”
Daniel’s voice rose, echoing through the emptiness. “And being good got you killed!”
Silence. Then a sigh heavy with centuries.
“I had no choice,” Daniel continued, voice cracking. “I had to avenge you. They shot you in cold death in front of me—because your kindness refused to look away from the conflict in front of you. You said kindness was strength. Tell me, Shifu, was it?”
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For a moment, the void seemed to pulse with their shared grief.
Jiǎn Zhé’s tone softened, almost like a father’s lament. “You still think vengeance is choice. It’s not. It’s a chain, boy. You wrapped it around your neck and called it justice.”
Daniel bit his lip until he tasted blood that wasn’t there. “You came all the way from China to Indiana for that same ‘justice,’ remember? The kind that got you buried in a foreign land.”
A long pause. Then the old man chuckled—not with mirth, but pity. “Dead? You’re right. I am dead.” His voice hardened, iron beneath silk. “But unlike you, I exist.”
The words struck like a blade drawn slow.
Static hissed. The light on the phone dimmed.
Daniel whispered, “Shifu—”
Click.
Silence.
The phone slipped from his hand, vanishing before it touched the nothing below.
The void swallowed him again, colder now, heavier. The echo of Jiǎn Zhé’s final words gnawed at the edges of his fading self.
Exist.
He tried to speak, but the thought itself unraveled mid-formation.
The void stretched forever, swallowing thought, swallowing self.
Daniel drifted—weightless, voiceless—adrift in the nothing between memories.
There was no direction, no gravity, no time. Only the ache of awareness refusing to fade.
Mom.
The word echoed weakly in his mind. A whisper from a life long buried.
He closed his eyes, though he no longer had any, and tried to imagine her face—the faint freckles across her nose, the way her dark hair fell forward whenever she laughed.
“If these are hallucinations,” he murmured, “then let them keep coming. Just this once… I want to hear her voice one last time.”
He reached for the phantom glow, fingers slipping through it like mist. Again and again he tried, the phone evading his grasp each time—until, on the fifth attempt, his hand finally closed around it.
The screen flickered weakly, light trembling like a dying flame.
He stared at it for a long moment, afraid of what he might hear—and more afraid of silence.
Then, with trembling breath, he called.
“Come on… pick up…”
Click.
“Hello?”
The voice was soft, unsure, carrying a faint echo of youth.
Daniel froze. “Lily?”
“...Daniel?” she replied, surprised but calm. “It’s been a while.”
He swallowed hard. “Lily… please. Give the phone to Mom. I just… I just want to hear her voice.”
There was a pause. Then a quiet sigh. “Alright,” she said gently. “Just don’t regret it.”
Footsteps echoed faintly through static. Then a rustle, a soft breath—and another voice came through, light and confused.
“Hello? Who’s calling?”
Daniel’s throat closed. The sound of her voice shattered him.
“Hi, Mom,” he managed. “It’s me… Daniel. Your son.”
A small laugh answered him, bright and childlike.
“I have a son? Good sir, you must be kidding. I’m twelve years old, you know. I have two best friends—Marcus and Oliver. We do everything together.”
Daniel’s breath hitched. “Mom… no, please…”
She giggled again, oblivious. “You know, even though we’re friends, Oliver sometimes gets super jealous! There was this time when Marcus and I were eating ice cream, and Oliver saw us together. He started fighting Marcus right in front of me. Silly kids…”
Her tone softened, almost wistful. “Hey, good sir, have you seen my friends? They went out together last night and didn’t come back.”
Daniel pressed the phone against his forehead, tears burning down his unseen face. “Mom… please stop… they’re gone… they’ve been gone a long time.”
But the voice only laughed faintly, humming a tune from some forgotten summer.
Then the line shifted. A quiet breath, heavier this time.
“Now you know,” Lily’s voice whispered, steady, cold. “Now you see what we are.”
Daniel tried to speak, but no words came.
Her tone hardened, cutting through the static.
“Are you happy now?”
The phone clicked. This time, the sound did not echo. It was a period at the end of a sentence he had finished reading long ago. The void was silent once more.
The silence stretched.
Not even the echo of Lily’s last words remained.
Then Daniel broke.
He cried—not in bursts, but in a soundless collapse of everything he had left.
Tears streamed from eyes that no longer existed. The pain was real, yet it no longer belonged to him. Each tear carried away another fragment of what little self he still remembered.
The grief that had kept him tethered—the final thread of his being—began to fade.
Even as he wept, he forgot why he wept.
Even as he felt, he forgot what feeling was.
His mind emptied, hollow as the void around him.
And still, the tears flowed.
He hung there motionless—like a statue of sorrow carved into nothing.
His eyes were closed, yet the tears did not stop. They drifted upward, shimmering faintly before dissolving into the dark.
From afar, a light appeared.
Faint. Distant. Slowly growing.
It cut through the black like a star piercing the deep sea.
The closer it came, the softer the void became—like the air before dawn.
Daniel didn’t move. He didn’t see it.
He simply was.
The light reached him at last, and within it moved a shadow.
A shape—human in outline, but more like a memory given form.
A hand extended from the radiance. Pale. Gentle. Weightless.
It hovered before Daniel’s face for a long, motionless moment—as if deciding whether to touch a dream or a ghost.
Then, slowly, the hand reached forward.
Its index finger pressed lightly against Daniel’s forehead. The touch was neither warm nor cold. It carried the simple, undeniable weight of presence. It was real.
And in that instant—
The feeling of being touched rushed through his body,
and Daniel opened his eyes.
