Chapter 1: The Brutal Rebirth

CHUG… CHUG…The antiquated train groaned as it thundered through the mountain tunnel, the roar of the wind a desperate, harrowing shriek in the metal carriage.

Skylar "Skye" Vance snapped her eyes open. Her vision was instantly blinded by a hostile flash of light. The ceaseless, jarring rattle and grinding friction of the train wheels beneath her sent a wave of agonizing vertigo through her system, creating a moment of terrifying, disorienting unreality.

The deep. Before the darkness, she remembered the abyssal cold, the catastrophic, pressure-cooked explosion deep beneath the ocean, the water turning into a suffocating shroud of fire, and her body—the peak-performance instrument of a master assassin—dissolving in the chaos. How, then, had she found herself here, in this suffocating, crude space?

“Hsss…”

She raised a small hand, the action stiff and unfamiliar, to rub her throbbing forehead. The touch brought her to a dead, sickening halt. Ignoring the dizzying haze, she stared at her hands with mounting horror.

She distinctly recalled her own hands—the scarred, calloused hands of the veteran assassin—being vaporized, shattered into biological mist in the final blast. Yet, the pair before her now were utterly intact. More unsettlingly, they were small. For a woman approaching thirty, who had endured countless years of lethal training, brutal combat, and hardened survival, these hands were a profound, monstrous departure from memory. They were smooth, unblemished, and chillingly delicate.

These hands belong to a girl, perhaps fifteen or sixteen.

A terrifying, razor-sharp suspicion pierced the haze. She reached up, fingers trembling, to touch her face, tracing the delicate, unfamiliar bone structure, the soft, untouched elasticity of the skin. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, a frantic, desperate rhythm against her will.

This is not my face. This is not my body. The thought was a cold, brutal blow.

Skylar’s eyes narrowed, the assassin’s instinct immediately overwhelming the initial human shock. Her icy gaze, framed by a curtain of long, untidy bangs, swept the surroundings with a meticulous, deadly assessment.

She had initially assumed a miraculous retrieval by her organization, but the grotesque truth lay in the details. The train carriage was a relic—old, the wooden seats scarred and cheap, the windows rattling loose in their frames. The few passengers were dressed in the provincial, tasteless fashion of a bygone era. A faded, patriotic cartoon poster, plastered to the carriage wall, bore a date that plunged her soul into arctic horror.

X year, X month, X day.

Skylar’s eyes went wide. She lurched to her feet, staring at the date imprinted on the poster.

Isn't this fifteen years ago?

The sudden, violent movement brought on a wave of debilitating nausea, forcing her to stabilize herself against the rickety wall. Her eyes dropped to the floor, fixing on a drab, military-green schoolbag whose contents had been violently emptied onto the dirty floor. Amid the scattered papers and crumpled textbooks, the stark inscription on the school badge shone clearly into her mind, a final, damning piece of evidence:

Ninth Grade, Class Five, Skylar Vance.

The master assassin, whose mind had once handled lethal complexity and unimaginable pressure, was utterly, brutally blindsided by this temporal catastrophe.

“Hey, Skylar Vance! Who gave you permission to stand? Get down on your knees, now!” A high-pitched, childish voice, dripping with pure, unearned entitlement, ripped through the silence of her shock.

Skylar turned her head slowly toward the sound. Three girls swaggered down the aisle. Their cotton-padded jackets, printed trousers, and tight pigtails screamed of a provincial, tasteless existence. But the sight of them, despite their pathetic appearance, instantly validated Skylar’s horrific rebirth.

Tiffany Reid, Sharon Zhu, and Gail Zheng. The "Three Beauties" of Third Middle School.

In the sparse, miserable history of the girl whose body she now inhabited, these three girls had been relentless, casual tormentors. Crucially, Skylar remembered their faces, their voices, their smug cruelty, a memory dormant for a decade and a half.

This was the graduation trip. This was the exact moment that had fractured her former life—the precise chronological point fifteen years ago where her fate had been sealed, leading to her brutal training and eventual death.

Heaven had played the most colossal, most vicious joke imaginable. After enduring thirty years of hell, becoming a cold, unfeeling weapon, and finally meeting a gruesome end in the deep sea, the sands of time had been brutally inverted. She was back. Was this a chance to mourn, or a demand to choose a different path?

Skylar’s eyes narrowed further, the glacial cold of a predator replacing the victim’s fear. Whether this was a dream or a painful reality, one thing was certain: the Skylar Vance who stood here now would never be the timid, cowering puppet of the past. The woman who died was a weapon forged in fire; she would not revert to soft clay.

“Hey, Skylar Vance, are you deaf?! I said crouch down! You’re disgusting and an eyesore! Did you not hear me?” Seeing Skylar stand motionless, Tiffany Reid’s already flushed face darkened with impotent fury. Her voice turned shrill, desperately trying to reassert dominance.

The few passengers who glanced over simply returned to their naps, choosing to observe the entertainment rather than intervene in adolescent cruelty.

Skylar’s consciousness snapped back completely. Her cold eyes locked onto the trio. She recalled the plan: Tiffany and her friends had intended to torment her throughout this trip—beatings, verbal insults, and isolation—culminating in her being left behind, snatched by traffickers, and disappearing from school forever.

The realization—that these three spoiled, petty children had been the catalysts for her fifteen years of endless agony and bloodshed—filled Skylar’s heart not with heat, but with a terrifying, absolute glacial cold. Her eyes became deadly.

Tiffany was deeply unnerved by the sheer, unblinking intensity of the stare. A sliver of fear pierced her thick arrogance, but years of ingrained superiority forced her to stand her ground. She thrust her chin out and shrieked, "Skylar Vance, take back that disgusting look! If you don't obey me right now, you’ll pay for it when we get back to school!" With a full semester until the entrance exams, she knew she had ample time to make the girl's existence a protracted, living hell.

Fifteen years ago, the original girl would have collapsed, trembling, meekly obeying. But the soul standing there now was a killer who had executed men for far less. Their pathetic threats were meaningless.

They want to play? Fine. I will show them what a real game looks like.

A calculating glint flashed in Skylar’s eyes. She pivoted swiftly, darting toward the adjacent lavatory—a movement designed to look like a fearful, desperate retreat.

The trio paused, then erupted in high-pitched, mocking laughter. Tiffany preened, her thin lips curling into a cruel smirk. She swaggered toward the door. “You think you can run? Today, I’m going to show you what absolute helplessness means! Come on, drag her out!”

The desire to terrorize the weak fed Tiffany's monstrous ego. She felt invincible.

But the next moment, standing at the lavatory door, her confidence was brutally shattered. The train plunged into a long tunnel, swallowing the carriage in absolute, suffocating darkness. She reached for the handle, only to grasp empty air. Before her mind could register the threat, a force—cold, strong, and terrifyingly efficient—snatched her into the blackness. Not just her, but Sharon Zhu and Gail Zheng were dragged violently into the cramped, metal stall.

Before the girls could even shriek in effective protest, a volley of sharp, brutal blows began to rain down on their heads. They screamed, a desperate chorus of terror and pain. "Agh! What is that?! Stop! Stop it!"

Their desperate cries were swallowed by the tunnel’s roar. Skylar used a detached wooden dipper—the lavatory’s designated water scoop—wielding it with the precision and force of a trained killer. Blows rained down, strategically targeting soft tissue and bone, turning the bullies' frantic movements into chaotic, self-inflicted injuries. In the small, metal cell, they stumbled over each other, kicking and elbowing their allies in frantic attempts to escape the unseen fury. Just as the train began to emerge from the tunnel, the three girls, battered, bruised, and unconscious, slumped into the rank filth on the floor.

Skylar stepped out of the lavatory, her expression serene and utterly untouched. With a flick of her wrist, she wedged a folded book into the handle assembly, locking them inside to their agonizing awakening. She then calmly tossed the now-splintered wooden dipper into a bin. The momentary exertion had left her arms slightly aching, a grim reminder of her current physical limitations.

Must intensify the training. The raw power and honed reflexes of her former body were tragically distant. Although she had no desire to return to the life of a murderer, Skylar knew the world was ruled by the cold hand of power. Strength was the only true currency, the only reliable defense against the darkness.

She stared out the window at the swiftly moving landscape, a rare, chilling, and triumphant smile touching her lips. Since fate had inexplicably handed her the reins of destiny once more, she would not be the same compliant girl.

This time, I will not compromise. I will seize everything. I will dominate.