You don't die heroically.

No accident, no fire, no last great thought. It's something ridiculous. You're sitting at a table, staring at a screen that's set too bright, thinking that you should actually get up. Get some water. Do something productive. Your heart decides against it at that very moment. No pain, just an irritating tug, as if someone had turned off the sound of the world. You slide off the chair, slowly enough that it would be almost embarrassing if anyone else were there to see it.

Then nothing.

When you breathe again, the air smells of stone and cold wind.

Your back is on hard ground, rough enough that it scratches through the fabric. You open your eyes and see the sky—gray, endless, much too far away. For a moment, you think you're not quite dead yet, just awake somewhere you don't belong. Then you hear voices. Screams. Footsteps. The metallic clang of weapons.

You sit up.

Below you lies the forecourt of Basgiath.

You don't need an explanation. No memory slowly returning. The knowledge is simply there, heavy and relentless, like a book you've read too many times. Parapet. Rider quadrant. Death as a teaching method. Dragons that burn you or ignore you, depending on their mood.

You are early.

Too early.

The candidates are still gathering, nervous groups, forced jokes, tense shoulders. The atmosphere has not yet shifted, not yet deadly—but it will soon. Your stomach tightens because you know what comes next. Who will fall. Who will scream. Who will never survive the first day.

You stand up, unsteady on legs that feel foreign. Your body is different. Stronger than your old one, but not imposing. Inconspicuous. Someone who is overlooked when he says nothing.

Then you feel it.

A change in the air. No sound, no command—more like an instinct that ripples through the crowd like a crack. Conversations break off. Heads turn. You turn with them, slowly, because you're in no hurry. You already know who's coming.

Xaden Riorson enters the square.

He looks exactly as you remember him, and yet not. Taller. Sharper. More real. His presence presses against the room as if he had his own gravitational field. The Marked follow him, not closely, but clearly belonging. His eyes glide over the candidates, cold, calculating – until they linger on you for a fraction of a second.

Just a moment.

But it lingers.

You know that you did something wrong at that moment. You didn't speak, didn't move, didn't do anything that would warrant attention. And yet he scrutinizes you as if he had discovered an error in an equation. Something that shouldn't be here.

You don't lower your gaze. Not out of courage. Out of caution. People like Xaden react to submission just as badly as they do to provocation.

The corner of his mouth twitches slightly, not quite a smile. Then he turns away, gives orders, takes complete control of the room. The world starts moving again. Breaths are released. Voices return.

But it's too late.

You know it, as surely as you know that the parapet will be called upon soon.

You are not part of the story as it was written. You woke up before it. And Xaden Riorson saw you before you had a role.

As the command to assemble sounds and the crowd moves toward the parapet, you realize something crucial:

You are not here to replace Violet. Not here to save Xaden. Not even here to survive.

You are here because something has gone wrong.

And Basgiath does not forgive deviations.