The sun was already high when Sunny opened his eyes again with a gasp.
Instead of the gunpowder and gasoline he inhaled last, a new stench of herbs, mildew, and old sweat immediately filled his nostrils - making him frown.
His body ached—with clothes that felt loose, thin, and unfamiliar.
He struggled to sit up, wincing as a dull throb spread from his chest down to his hips.
His bones, creaking like old floorboards. As his ribs screamed. And muscles felt like they'd been rearranged with a butcher's knife.
The whole room swam in his vision. Wooden walls riddled with splinters. A straw mat beneath him soaked in stale sweat.
One cracked jug of water. And a set of tattered gray robes in the corner hung limp, like a dead man left standing.
There were no beeping monitors. No hospital tiles. No echo of sirens or heels on linoleum.
Just silence.
And the soft, ghostly tinkle of wind chimes swaying in the humid breeze outside.
"Where the fuck am I?"
He staggered to his feet and caught a glimpse of himself in the copper mirror nailed crookedly to the wall.
But the face looking back wasn't Sunny Macrey. Not the Dragon. Not the warlord of Gotham's underworld.
"That's not _ ." Sunny spoke as he touched his unfamiliar face, and found himself speechless.
"Did I …." He muttered as thousands of thoughts flashed through his mind, crossing many possibilities.
Reborn _ no.
Back in time _no.
Amnesia _ no.
Drug or dream _ um maybe.
Switched bodies _ fuck_ …
Sunny shook his head and stopped this wild train of thought going nowhere before looking down at his new body.
Thinner. Younger. With pale skin and a face that looked like it hadn't seen the sunlight in months.
His eyes were sunken and rimmed with black veins. His hair long and greasy.
And his back? Bent like someone used to bowing.
"This body's been through shit."
Sunny thought and surveyed his surroundings to look for any clues or things which may help him get an idea about his new identity, but found nothing.
The whole hut was 'cleaner' than a gambler's guts.
In disappointment, he could only walk towards the door.
His hands stopped at the handle, eyes staring at the scar free fingers _ with no callouses from years of training or broken knuckles.
"Let's hope someone's standing outside waiting to answer." He muttered before opening the door and stepping into the sunlight.
The burning heat caught him off guard for a few seconds. But once adjusted , he removed the hand covering his eyes, and looked around himself.
A courtyard stretched out before him like a half-forgotten painting. Dirt floors. Wooden buildings with cracked beams and faded banners. Poorly built and poorly maintained.
Many younglings in similar gray robes trained in the distance—punching, meditating, reading. And some slashing swords at the wooden dummies.
It wasn't a city. It wasn't even a slum.
It was like those ashrams in the old hindu myths, or that thing in Chinese dramas, called a ….
"A sect."
That's what the banner above the central hall read in crude, archaic letters:
< Nightblade Sect - Outer Court >
A young girl passed him with a basket of herbs, wrinkling her nose as if he were a rotting rat.
He staggered down the path, every bone in his body was aching, his stomach growling like a dying wolf. Yet no one offered help. No one even looked twice.
Most ignored. Some glanced, and just sneered.
'They don't care if I live or die.' He thought as he stopped by a well, and leaned on it for support.
And then he felt it.
A faint, twitching thread inside his chest. Like something curled up and half-dead.
'What the hell…?' Sunny muttered as he faintly remembered some flashes from before he died.
He closed his eyes—and for a moment, the world flickered. In his inner vision, he saw it: a lotus, black as a coal, crumpled and sealed tight. Its petals shriveled and starved.
It pulsed once. Weakly In response to his gaze, before shrinking and withering.
Sunny gasped in pain and clutched his chest. Feeling a faint bump under his skin, as if a tattoo had been carved there.
He pulled down the collar of his robe - and there it was.
Etched just above his heart, barely visible under the skin, - the outline of a black lotus.
He tried to sense the vision again, … But nothing.
No answers. No instructions. Just a faint presence. — And hunger.
"What the hell is happening?" Sunny muttered in confusion, feeling a mild headache with these constant questions.
And then—
"Oii! Look who decided not to die after all."
A voice came from across the courtyard. Sharp, nasal, cruel.
Sunny looked up.
A skinny, long-limbed boy no older than seventeen strutted toward him with the swagger of a rat in charge of a gutter.. His gray disciple robe was ironed and custom-trimmed, his belt had a tiny iron badge—a mark of Outer Court honor.
Behind him trailed two cronies, both grinning like hyenas.
The scrawny one sneered. "Sunny the Dog lives. A miracle. I lost three spirit stones on your corpse."
'So the original body's name was Sunny too. Cute.'
The Dragon didn't respond. As though the name was his. But the boy clearly thought he was someone else. Cause otherwise….
"Got anything to say, mongrel?" The boy, Thomas, if the whispers were right, stepped closer, and poked his finger into Sunny 's chest. "You lost your trial, shamed the sect, and then pissed yourself in the beast pit. And now you crawl out and walk like a drunk ghost?"
Laughter followed. As one of the bootlickers kicked dirt at his feet. While another spat near his robe.
Sunny 's hands couldn't help but curl into fists.
He didn't know who this 'Sunny' they talked about was. He didn't care. But he did know what that tone meant. He'd heard it in every alley, every interrogation room, and every prison yard back in Capital city.
That tone like a rat mimicking a roar, _ it always meant a fight was coming.
"You wanna go again, Sunny?" Thomas said with a wolfish grin. "You wanna die twice? Maybe this time you'll stay dead."
He turned, before laughing—and for a moment, Sunny 's fingers twitched toward the brick on the ground beside him.
The boy swung his fist, but Sunny ducked to a side and hit his chin with a brick from the well.
Baamm
A teeth flew over, along with a splatter of blood, but before they touched the ground, Sunny kicked the boy in front of him in the ribs and knocked him down faster.
By the time his two minions came to their senses, their cheap leader was already lying at his feet. Eating dirt.
"You … you .."
"How dare you sneak attack.."
Sunny ignored the nonsense from ants and raised his feet, ready to stomp down and crush the skull of this stupid bitch.
But just then …
"Hey, the guy's so scared, his soul left his body."
A mocking remark reached Sunny's ears, and he looked up to see the same trio smiling at his silent reaction.
'Not yet. Let them live ….' Sunny muttered to himself and retracted his hand from the brick.
Trying to avoid the edge of danger in a world, he didn't even know the name of.
'...For now.'
The leading idiot Thomas didn't even know how close he was to death, and he was still bent over, laughing loudly while thinking he scared Sunny silly.
But before the trio could get out of their ecstatic reverie and turn their attention back to him for a fight _ someone interrupted their bullying.
"Hey, what's that noise? Get back to training before I rip your ears off and parcel it home."
A gnarly roar echoed from far away, and immediately the trio paled in fear, and ran away without looking back.
"You lucked out." Thomas didn't forget to leave a curse behind, before disappearing from Sunny's vision, who felt just the same.
###
A/N - "It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard."
----Just a nice quote I came across.