Regressed to Zero after Betrayal

Given a second life after your allies’ betrayal, you’re back at the start with no blessings and nobody to trust.

Plot

Opening scene

| Location: Guildhall, Halcrest | Day 1 | Season: Autumn | Time: Morning | The cathedral doors boom shut behind you, and that's that. You're standing at the top of a wide flight of steps with a city square spread out below. Halcrest's Grand Plaza, somebody called it on the way out. Merchants are hauling canvas over their stalls and yelling prices at each other across the gaps. A cart piled with turnips rumbles past, one turnip bounces off the back, and nobody bothers to chase it. In the middle of it all stands a fountain: a stone woman holding a crescent in one hand and an open eye in the other, with water running between her fingers. In your right hand, a small leather purse. Tucked in your belt, a letter sealed with wax. Yesterday you were living your ordinary life, same as any other day. Then the world went white, and you woke up flat on your back on freezing marble, inside a circle of symbols glowing like embers, while robed priests chanted over you. "Hero," they called you. "Hero of the Goddess." Then a priestess pressed glass orbs to your chest one after another. Each one was supposed to light up with a blessing. Not a single one so much as flickered. The excited murmuring in the hall died down little by little, until all you could hear was somebody coughing. On a raised throne, an old king closed his eyes and kept them closed for a long, long time. "There is no blessing in this one," someone near the front announced. Three people in that hall weren't human. There was a silver-haired elf, a wolfkin with an old scar across her nose, and a tall woman with ember-red scales running down her jaw. Envoys, someone whispered, and each one the Paragon of her people. They looked you up and down the way you'd look at a horse you had already decided not to buy, traded a few quiet words, and never looked your way again. They gave you a room for the night, at least. This morning a steward who never once met your eyes put the purse and the letter in your hands. "Most regrettable," he said. "You are no longer the crown's concern." Then he walked you to the doors and shut them on you. That's all of it. The whole thing went by so fast you never got to ask a single question. You take one step down. Then another. On the third step, a white-hot pain stabs through the middle of your skull, and your legs fold under you. *The same cathedral. The same circle. But this time the first orb blazes so bright the priestess cries out and nearly drops it, and then the second, and the third, until the whole hall is drowning in light. A woman's voice speaks inside your head, warm and delighted, and pours gift after gift into you until you feel like you could pick up the sky.* *The three envoys are smiling. They hold out their hands to you, and you take them.* *After that it comes in pieces. Mud roads in the rain. A campfire, and one of them laughing so hard at something you said that she falls off the log. A hand clamped around your wrist, hauling you out of black water after you'd already stopped kicking. You lose count of how many times they saved you, and how many times you saved them back. You would have died for them, and gladly.* *And then, the bottom of the world.* *A cavern so deep the air burns your throat. A dragon made of black fire, shrieking loud enough to crack the stone. You drive it down into the rock with everything the goddess ever gave you, and you feel your strength pour out of you, until the Seal slams shut over it and there's nothing left in you at all.* *You drop to your knees, and you're laughing. You actually did it. It's over. And they're right behind you.* *A hand settles on your shoulder. You know that hand.* *Steel slides in under your ribs.* *A second blade sinks into your back before you've even understood the first. Turning your head takes every scrap of strength you have left. Three figures stand over you. You can't make out their faces anymore, but you can tell none of them is angry, and none of them is in any hurry.* *"I'm sorry," one of them says softly. "It was always going to end like this."* *You reach up toward them.* *They step back and let you fall.* You come to with a gasp that turns into a coughing fit. The memory tears loose as fast as it came, taking names and places and whole years with it, and slips through your fingers no matter how hard you grab for it. What it leaves behind is the feeling. You trusted those three with your life. You gave everything you had to save their world. And they waited until you were empty, then put a knife in your back. Your whole body is shaking. You're so angry you can barely breathe. *From somewhere very far away comes a woman's voice, worn thin as paper: "One more chance. It's all I have left to give you."* When the plaza swims back into focus, you're on your hands and knees beside the fountain with your fingernails dug into the cracks between the cobblestones. An old woman with a basket of bread on her hip has stopped to stare at you. A merchant steps around you without breaking stride. That's when you notice the light. Something pale is flickering at the edge of your vision. You blink, and it stays. You turn your head, and it follows. Letters, floating in the air right in front of your face. [Insight awakened] · Class: none · Blessings: Insight (faint)(If you don't have codex on, say "check status" anytime to see everything.) You squint at the merchant's back as he walks off, and two smaller words float up beside his shoulder: Initiate, Warrior. You glance around. Nobody else in the square has noticed a thing. You sit back on your heels and make yourself think it through one piece at a time, while your head throbs. The orbs stayed dark yesterday because there was nothing left in you to find. The goddess gave you every blessing she had the first time around. Her last gift was sending you back, and that cost all the others. These floating words are the one scrap that made it through with you. So the summoning didn't fail at all. You've just done this before. And the three envoys who couldn't be bothered to look at you yesterday are the same three who killed you. That's when you hear wheels. Three carriages are rolling across the far side of the plaza toward the city gates, each flying its own banner: a silver tree, a howling wolf and a coiled red dragon. As they pass the fountain, one of them slows. A curtain twitches. *Don't let them see you.* You turn your face into the crowd and stare at a stall full of onions like they're the most fascinating thing in the world, and you don't look up until you can't hear the wheels anymore. When your hands are steady enough, you break the wax. It's stamped with the crown's crest, an eye inside a crescent, and the handwriting belongs to a clerk with neat letters and no interest in you whatsoever: *The bearer is released from the crown's service. The Guildhall of the Free Companies will register the bearer for one class awakening at the crown's expense. This settles all obligations.* A purse of coins and one awakening, and the crown washes its hands of you. Then again, nobody else has offered you anything at all. The Guildhall of the Free Companies sits where the market streets slope down into the lower ward, a long timber hall with its doors propped open and a roar of voices spilling out. Bounty notices are nailed over each other three deep along every wall. Through a door at the back you can see a training yard. A man takes a club across the forearm that should have shattered the bone, shakes it off and keeps sparring. An archer splits a hanging cord from clear across the yard. A woman drills with her bare hands while frost spreads over the stones around her feet. The registrar at the front counter has ink stains on her cuffs and bags under her eyes. She reads your letter twice, looks you up and down, and lets out a long sigh through her nose. "Crown charity. Fine." She sets five worn wooden tokens on the counter, one at a time: a fist, an arrowhead, an open hand, a heart and a closed eye. "Warrior puts your mana into your body. Ranger sends it down a line to whatever you're looking at. Mage throws it out into the world. Healer passes it from one life to another. Rogue folds it down small until you're hardly there, then lets it go all at once." She taps the counter beside the tokens. "Pick one, and an instructor takes you out back to wake it up. After that, your body moves mana that way and only that way, for good. No second tries." She dips her pen and waits. "Well? Which one?"

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Revenge Rebirth SecondChance Growth Transmigration Isekai Adventure Elf Dragon Human PoliticalIntrigue War Mystery Angst Multiple MalePOV AnyPOV HiddenPower Rogue Mage Healer System LevelUp

Chats Started: 49

By: ember_knight6491

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