Gideon's eyes fluttered open with the kind of lazy resistance reserved for people who had just died, met a possibly evil god, and then got teleported back to the land of the living with zero emotional buffering.
He stared at the ceiling for a moment, just breathing. Not because he was reflecting on some profound truth—he was mostly trying to figure out if he still had a spleen.
The ceiling looked familiar. Too familiar. Cracks in the stone. Faint dust caught in slants of light. A place that didn't change, even if everything else had.
Ah. The cathedral.
Back again.
A good old-fashioned NPC respawn. Nothing like waking up on a glorified stone countertop after getting forcibly drafted into divine nonsense. Classic Gideon.
He slowly sat up on the long rock table, wincing slightly—not from pain, but from the sheer dramatic irony of it all. His resurrection platform of choice. Cold. Sturdy. Emotionally unsupportive.
The scene around him hadn't changed a bit.
Sunlight poured in gently through the stained glass windows, casting soft colors across the floor in lazy, uneven patches. The painted designs hadn't shifted—they never did. Silent saints, half-forgotten symbols, and one bird with unsettlingly judgmental eyes. They all watched from the glass like they knew exactly how many times Gideon had been here.
Long wooden benches lined the open space ahead. Unused. Undisturbed. Not even a speck of dust dared to ruin their symmetry. Rows and rows of solemn quiet. The kind of quiet that didn't just feel empty—it felt like it had chosen to be empty.
And there it was. That faint hum in the air. Not music. Not words. Just the soft, lingering whisper of peace. A stillness too perfect to be natural. Like the cathedral itself was breathing slowly, politely pretending not to notice the walking contradiction that had just popped back into existence on its altar.
Gideon furrowed his brows like a man who'd just realized his fork was missing a prong. Something felt off. Not wrong, exactly, but tilted. Slightly cursed.
The kind of subtle weirdness that made the hairs on the back of his neck sit up like nosy neighbors peeking through curtains.
He rose to his feet with the grace of someone who'd just remembered they might have bones. His boots—wait, did he have boots? No time to check—landed softly on the cathedral floor, and he spun in a slow circle, surveying the room like a tourist trying to remember if this was the church from the postcard or just another one that looked suspiciously holy.
Nothing. Nothing out of place. Same old stone. Same suspicious bird in the stained glass. Same empty pews that radiated the energy of judgmental librarians. He frowned deeper.
Then it hit him.
Not a thought. Not a memory. A sound.
A voice. Inside his head. Talking.
Narrating.
Badly.
It wasn't even his voice.
"What the hell? Why am I hearing an obnoxious voice inside my head that sounds like it's trying way too hard to be clever?"
The silence in the cathedral somehow managed to feel offended. Or maybe that was just Gideon projecting.
He dropped to one knee like a man hit by a full sack of existential crisis. His fingers gripped the edge of the altar table for balance as his thoughts frantically shuffled through mental filing cabinets labeled "Important Stuff" and "Things We're Pretending Aren't Real." Nothing was adding up.
This wasn't just resurrection disorientation. This was... plot twist territory.
"I am confused, but not that confused. What are you? Why are you speaking inside my head? Is this that weird thing Agharan said he jammed into me like a divine USB stick?"
No answer.
Just the faint, lingering echo of Gideon's own voice in the air.
And the distinct, stomach-sinking realization that he might not be alone in his own brain.
"USB stick? What in the fragmented fangs of logic is a USB stick? Wait—why do I even know that word? And why does my mouth keep serving nonsense like it's hosting a buffet for brain fog?"
Before Gideon could even begin drafting a list of possible reasons for the voice in his head—because yes, a voice in his head now apparently required investigative follow-up—something strange snapped through his thoughts.
Not a sound. Not a vision. A memory.
A whole chunk of someone else's life just barged into his mind like it owned the place.
There was no warning. No polite knock. Just boom—and suddenly he was standing somewhere else, seeing things he'd never seen, feeling things he'd never felt, and making choices he definitely did not remember making.
The details poured in too fast to grab hold of—faces, sounds, laughter, grief. It hit like an emotional freight cart with no brakes and far too much backstory.
And just as quickly as it came, it ended.
He blinked.
His breath caught in his chest, like it wasn't sure whether to inhale or call security.
"What the hell is happening?"
That wasn't his life. It wasn't his memory. But it hadn't felt borrowed.
It had felt lived.
And not just as a dream or some distant filmstrip in his head—he knew it. Deep down in that place where real experiences usually grow, like personality mold.
The name floated up afterward, quiet and obvious.
Steven.
That was the person he'd just... been? For a moment? A man who wasn't him, but also was, because now parts of Steven's past were nestled inside Gideon's head like awkward party guests who'd moved in and refused to leave.
He stood there, not shaking, not panicking—just processing.
And maybe, maybe, slightly more sarcastic than usual.
Something had changed. Not a full shift. Just a tilt. A nudge. Like a few mental sliders got bumped by a cosmic elbow.
The thoughts in his head didn't all sound like Gideon's anymore. Some of them had too much logic. Some of them had weird Earth knowledge. Some of them had opinions on traffic laws. It was subtle, but it was there.
Gideon was still Gideon.
Just... Gideon, plus imported memories, light personality seasoning, and an internal narrator who probably had opinions about breakfast cereals.
Whatever just happened, it didn't erase him.
But it definitely rewrote a few footnotes.
The inside of Gideon's mind was starting to feel like a very disorganized library. Two sets of memories—his and Steven's—were now shuffling around like mismatched roommates trying to share a studio apartment. Some of the thoughts were clearly his, filled with mild exasperation and dry commentary. Others… not so much.
One moment he'd remember guiding a newbie through Floor 1 with the patience of a man who'd done it a hundred times. The next, he was recalling what it felt like to ride in a thing called a "car" while being irrationally angry at red lights.
There were birthdays he didn't have. People he'd never met. A supermarket argument over cereal that felt a little too personal.
The lines between the two identities blurred in strange places. Familiar routines now carried unfamiliar logic. Emotions bubbled up from memories that didn't belong to him but still tugged at his chest like they'd always been there.
Steven's memory didn't just visit. It unpacked. Rearranged a few mental shelves. Possibly painted the walls.
And somewhere in the middle of that chaos, something... clicked.
Whatever programming made Gideon an NPC—one of the silent, smiling guideposts of this world—started to unravel. Not in a dramatic, sparks-flying kind of way. It was subtler than that. Like a quiet backdoor got nudged open and someone walked through with muddy boots and too many questions.
Sentience.
Not the manufactured kind. Not the illusion of choice.
The real deal. Raw, awkward, full-access self-awareness.
All because Agharan, in his infinite and slightly unhinged wisdom, had decided to play cosmic prankster and slam Steven's memories into Gideon's unsuspecting skull.
It wasn't supposed to mean anything. A joke. A divine "what if." Just a way to mess with the local floor greeter and maybe watch him glitch out for a few days.
But it didn't stay funny.
Because it worked.
And now, the result was walking around, half-guide, half-invader, technically still an NPC but with the full internal toolbox of a real person from another world. Someone with context. Someone with questions. Someone who wasn't supposed to exist like this.
It wasn't just an oddity. It was a problem.
A very big, very unpredictable problem.
An NPC with the built-in privileges of the system... and the memories of a man who came from outside it.
Not a glitch. Not a miracle.
Just Gideon.
Which might've been worse.
Gideon exhaled slowly, as if trying to physically push the nonsense out of his lungs. It didn't work, obviously. The nonsense had taken up long-term residency.
"You know I can hear you, right? Whatever happened to subtle buildup? Maybe a little suspense? A sprinkle of foreshadowing? No? We're just throwing plot twists out like free samples now?"
Silence. The kind that wasn't empty, just smug.
Great.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, though he wasn't entirely sure if the gesture was his or one of Steven's leftover habits. It was getting hard to tell. Their thoughts were starting to blur like two overlapping browser tabs—one trying to calculate existential dread, the other buffering a cat video.
Somewhere between gaining sentience and losing plausible deniability, Gideon had apparently leveled up.
Not just as a person.
But almost as a Player.
Almost.
Sure, he still had the inner wiring of an NPC. But now, thanks to Steven's memory dump, he had instincts. Reflexes. Knowledge of a world where people used phrases like "Wi-Fi" and willingly paid taxes. He knew how to read body language in a bar fight. He also knew how to microwave pizza rolls.
All in all, he'd become dangerously competent.
Almost.
Because, unfortunately, Steven—the original owner of the extra brain data—had been a bit of a disaster. Not a complete fool, but certainly the kind of guy who saw a cliff and thought, "Well, what if I believe in myself really hard?"
A brave man.
A bold man.
A thoroughly unprepared for consequences kind of man.
"That's a straight-up insult."
Which it was. And also completely accurate.
The combination left Gideon in a weird limbo: half-programmed to point out tutorial objectives, half-ready to throw a chair mid-boss fight, and fully aware that none of this was supposed to happen.
And while this chaotic upgrade might not have caused any immediate explosions, it had lit a fuse.
A slow one.
The kind that hissed quietly in the background while everyone pretended not to notice.
It wasn't a problem yet.
But it would be.
Very soon.
And definitely not for Gideon.
That, at least, was comforting.
Gideon leaned against the edge of the stone table like a man who'd just come back from vacation only to realize he'd never actually left his job. His fingers drummed slowly across the surface, partly to keep balance, partly because his brain was still doing backflips somewhere behind his eyes.
His new state—whatever it was—didn't come with a manual. Just confusion, a suspicious narrator, and a growing pile of existential questions that he really didn't feel ready to answer before dinner.
He let out a slow breath and muttered to the ceiling like it owed him money.
"That Agharan... he really woke up one day and said, 'How can I make Gideon's life both dramatic and emotionally inconvenient?'"
No reply.
Of course.
The gods were always quiet after the chaos. Like celestial pranksters ghosting you after dropping a cow in your living room.
Gideon pushed himself off the table, trying to walk with purpose. That purpose quickly turned into a wobbly suggestion.
His legs didn't seem entirely sure they were on his side anymore—one step forward, one step vaguely sideways. It was less walking and more interpretive staggering.
His hand reached out for balance on nothing in particular as the room casually tilted at an angle that felt entirely personal.
"I feel like I just lived two lifetimes back to back... and somehow still didn't get a break in either one."
His voice sounded a little too real now.
Because that was exactly what it felt like.
Not just memories in his head.
Not just new data downloaded into an old frame.
He lived it. Or, well, it lived through him. And now both versions of him were looking at each other across the same body, probably filing complaints about space usage.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't even fear.
It was the weird, tired ache of too much reality trying to fit into one person.
And Gideon—glorious half-NPC, half-sentient, semi-imported bug in the system—was just trying to figure out how to stand upright without tripping over.
Out of absolutely nowhere—no dramatic sound cue, no magical sparkle, not even the courtesy of a warning ping—a semi-transparent interface blinked into existence right in front of his face.
Hovering.
Waiting.
Mildly smug.
It was unmistakable: a status board.
Neatly arranged tabs, glowing headers, way too many numbers for someone who hadn't even asked for math today. It floated like it owned the airspace.
Gideon blinked at it, squinting slightly, just to make sure his brain hadn't finally decided to start drawing hallucinations out of sheer boredom.
Yup. It was real.
That was a status board.
His status board.
"Wait. This is—this is supposed to be a Player-only thing."
And yet, here it was.
Displaying his name, his stats, even a few unfamiliar-looking traits that were probably concerning but would definitely be someone else's problem later.
He reached toward it out of pure curiosity, maybe a little awe, and—
His vision suddenly lurched like the inside of his skull had just been put through a spin cycle.
The status board swam, stretched, and dissolved into white noise. Everything else followed.
There was a sharp tilt. A full-body wobble.
And then gravity gently reminded him that sentience didn't come with balance insurance.
He hit the cold floor like a sack of philosophical potatoes.
"Damn it."
•••••
Gideon's eyes creaked open like old doors someone forgot to oil. His brain felt like it had been rolled out flat and then folded back into itself, possibly by divine pastry chefs. For a second, he didn't know where he was—or who he was—but that second passed quickly, replaced by the warm haze of familiarity.
His room.
The classic, rustic charm of the default NPC commoner lifestyle. Four walls that didn't know luxury if it slapped them with a pillow, a bed that squeaked if you breathed near it, and just enough space to be legally considered a room.
The torchlight flickered lazily against the wooden wall. It cast uneven shadows that danced around like they were bored of the quiet. The air had that faint mix of old wood, burnt oil, and whatever vaguely medieval smell counted as normal here.
His head throbbed with the gentle persistence of someone knocking politely but relentlessly on the inside of his skull. He reached up, rubbing his temple like he could manually remove whatever had just crash-landed in his mind.
And then he noticed it.
The soft weight resting against the edge of the bed. Something warm. Familiar.
He looked down.
There she was.
Alice.
Her head was nestled beside him, just at the mattress's edge, black hair cascading across the sheets in soft, unbothered waves. She was sound asleep, breathing quietly, like the world outside didn't have gods, glitches, or collapsing logic loops.
That alone made something tighten in his chest. Not pain. Not fear.
Just... grounding.
He blinked a few times, like that would help clear the fog in his head. It didn't. But it gave him a second to process the quiet comfort of seeing her there.
"Alice."
Her name left his lips in a soft breath. Half relief. Half disbelief. All heart.
She didn't stir.
But that was okay.
Because for the first time since all this began, something actually made sense.
Gideon let his voice drop just a little, soft enough to blend with the torchlight and the stillness in the room.
"Alice."
Like it had been waiting for that cue all along, the girl beside the bed stirred in an instant. No groggy blinking. No slow dramatic awakening. Just—up, like she'd been ready to launch at a moment's notice.
Her dark eyes locked onto him, wide and full of relief, like the world had just started spinning again. And then came the smile. The real kind. The one that made you feel like everything terrible might actually be okay for a minute.
Without a word, Alice lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, almost like she was trying to make sure he didn't glitch out of existence again. Her small frame pressed against him, trembling just enough to betray how long she'd been holding herself together.
And Gideon—Gideon smiled.
Because that warmth? That quiet, fierce little hug from his sister?
That was real.
"You are alive!"
"Of course."
Like he did this every other weekend. Just a casual resurrection and nap. No big deal.
Alice pulled back just enough to look at him, her brows drawn tight, like she was trying to memorize every part of his face just in case reality decided to get funny again.
"Big sis Marie found you lying on the floor of the Cathedral earlier. You weren't breathing. No pulse. Nothing. You just—"
She hesitated. Swallowed.
"I was so scared."
Gideon exhaled slowly, his smile faltering just for a second—not because he was afraid, but because he hadn't realized how badly someone else had been.
This wasn't just a game to her.
It never had been.
Gideon lifted a hand and gently rubbed the back of Alice's small frame, his fingers moving slowly, like he was trying to calm her down through sheer sibling energy alone. She still clung to him like he might disappear again if she let go for more than a breath.
"I'm fine."
He said it simply, like that was enough to undo fear. But for now, that was the only line that mattered.
Alice loosened her grip, just a little, enough for him to breathe more than emotionally.
And then he saw it.
Still floating there.
Unmoving. Unblinking.
The interface.
His status board.
It hovered like a quiet witness to everything he couldn't explain away. Transparent edges. Flickering stats. Tabs he didn't dare open yet. It wasn't fading. It wasn't glitching.
It was just... there.
Proof that none of this was a dream.
That strange voice in his head? Real.
The overload of memories from another life? Also real.
The headache he was currently ignoring by sheer willpower? Very real.
His smile vanished, replaced with the kind of neutral expression people wear when they're trying not to scream in a room with other people in it.
Because now, reality had officially overstayed its welcome.
He wasn't just Gideon, the helpful, reliable Floor 1 guide NPC anymore.
He was Gideon, the semi-sentient, status-equipped anomaly with unresolved divine trauma and a reluctant questline he never asked for.
And he was going to have to face the dungeon.
Not just because it was there.
But because he had to.
For Alice.
For the life he somehow still had.
For every confused emotion tangled up inside him like a badly coded loop.
His fingers curled slightly, not in anger—just in quiet commitment. A kind of internal switch flipping into place.
"Agharan… wait for me there..."
He took a deep breath. Exhaled through his nose.
"I'm going to beat the shit out of you."
It wasn't a threat.
It was a promise.
A very NPC-flavored promise, wrapped in plot armor and family related motivation.
•••••
NAME: Gideon Brangwen.
CLASS: Non-Player Character.
SUBCLASS: New Player Escort.
GOLD: 0
LEVEL: 1
HP: 10/10
MP: 10/10
SP: 10/10
[STATS]
CONSTITUTION: 1
INTELLIGENCE: 1
STRENGTH: 1
DEXTERITY: 1
AGILITY: 1
AVAILABLE STAT POINTS: 12
[SKILLS]
NPC Privilege Skill: Inheritance of the Doomed
Tier 1: Fleetpaw Instinct.
•••••