Chapter Text
It was cold.
Not simply cold like when you go outside in the middle of winter without a coat. It was a much deeper sensation, as though the cold had seeped all the way into my bones. I felt as though I were completely submerged in icy water, unable to make my way back to the surface.
And yet, I couldn’t actually feel any water against my skin. Truthfully, I didn’t even know if I still had skin. I didn’t know where I was, nor whether I could even consider this place a place.
My body seemed to drift aimlessly through something vast and empty. There was no floor, no ceiling, no walls. Nothing around me. Not even a real sound. Only an endless silence.
Or perhaps it wasn’t my body that was floating.
Perhaps it was my mind.
I had no idea.
I tried to move, but nothing happened. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t do that either. Were they closed? Probably. How long had I been here ? A few hours ? A day ? Months ? Years ? I had no idea. Time seemed to have completely lost its meaning.
I could have been here for a few minutes, or for several centuries.
And yet, something seemed particularly strange to me.
I wasn’t panicking.
Well… I think I wasn’t.
I should have been panicking, shouldn’t I ? I was alone in an unknown place, unable to move, unable to see, and not even able to tell whether I was still alive. Anyone in this situation would probably have been terrified.
I was simply thinking.
I knew the situation was abnormal. I knew I should have been afraid. But that fear never came.
It was as though I could understand what I was supposed to feel without actually feeling it.
I almost had the feeling that this was going to last a long time.
A very long time.
Perhaps I would never be able to leave this place.
Was I being punished to remain here for all eternity? If that was the case, I wondered what crime I could possibly have committed to deserve such a sentence.
…
Wait ?
Something had just changed.
Warmth.
Very faint at first, barely perceptible, but different enough from the cold surrounding me to catch my attention. It gradually enveloped me, as though someone had just draped a warm blanket over me.
After that icy sensation that seemed as though it would never disappear, the warmth was almost comforting.
Almost reassuring.
Then a light appeared.
At first, it was nothing more than a tiny point in that endless darkness. But it quickly grew, becoming brighter and more intense, until the light began to sting my eyes despite them still being closed.
I tried to turn my face away, but I couldn’t.
Something was pulling me.
I could feel it clearly now.
I was being sucked in.
“What the…”
My voice never came out. Or perhaps I hadn’t actually tried to speak. I didn’t know.
The light completely engulfed me.
The warmth grew stronger.
I no longer felt like I was floating.
I was falling.
No…
I was rising.
Or perhaps I was simply being thrown somewhere.
I could no longer tell the difference.
Everything turned white.
Then—
“AHHHHH!”
I suddenly regained consciousness.
My lungs contracted, and I violently sucked in a huge breath of air.
Air.
Real air.
I was breathing.
I was alive.
Well… I think I was.
My eyes opened slightly, but an overwhelming brightness immediately assaulted them. I quickly shut them again before opening them a few seconds later. I blinked several times, giving my vision time to finally adjust to the light.
Green.
Far too much green.
Trees.
Branches.
Leaves.
A forest.
I remained lying on the ground for a few seconds, staring up at the foliage above me. The wind gently swayed the branches, and I could hear the birds singing along with the steady rustling of the leaves.
Everything seemed strangely normal.
Except for the fact that just a few seconds ago, I had been trapped in an icy void I couldn’t escape from.
I slowly sat up and placed a hand against the ground to help myself to my feet.
Then I stopped.
A hand ?
I looked at my fingers.
They were small.
Far too small.
I turned my hand over, then the other, examining them carefully. These weren’t my hands.
I stood up completely and looked down at my body.
A white dress covered me. It was simple, slightly worn around the edges, but I didn’t recognize it at all.
It wasn’t my dress.
This wasn’t my body.
I slowly raised my hands toward my face.
Again, something was wrong.
I needed to find a mirror.
Or at least something that could serve as one.
I turned my head and noticed a shimmering surface between the trees.
Water.
A lake.
I slowly approached it and crouched down at the water’s edge.
Then I looked at my reflection.
I fell silent.
A little girl was staring back at me from the surface of the lake.
She looked about ten years old, perhaps a little younger. Her hair was straight and fell around her face in strange shades, somewhere between gray, beige, and brown. Her features were delicate, almost childlike.
I tilted my head. The reflection did exactly the same. Then I brought a hand to my cheek, carefully observing the little girl facing me. She copied my movement with perfect precision.
This face wasn’t mine.
I recognized neither the shape of her eyes, nor her nose, nor the curve of her lips. Even the color of her hair was unfamiliar to me. It was straight and fell around her face in strange shades, somewhere between gray, beige, and brown. At first glance, the child looked about ten years old, perhaps a little younger.
I slightly opened my mouth to examine my teeth.
The fangs immediately caught my attention.
They were noticeably longer than mine, long enough for me to notice them without even having to look for them. I gently ran my tongue over them, perplexed, before straightening up.
That was when I noticed something above my head.
Two small bumps were protruding from my hair.
I slowly raised my hands and touched them. My fingers met a hard, smooth surface.
Horns.
My eyes widened slightly as I carefully felt them. They were pointed, slightly curved, and almost seemed to resemble the small branches of a beetle’s horns. I touched them again, as though they might disappear the moment I stopped looking at them.
They didn’t.
I looked at my reflection in the water again.
A child. Slightly pointed ears, unnaturally long fangs, two horns on her forehead, and a simple white dress, slightly worn around the edges.
All of that would have already been strange enough, but there was one much more obvious problem:
This wasn’t my body.
“What kind of mess have I gotten myself into…?”
My own voice startled me.
It was higher-pitched, younger, and above all, different from the voice I remembered having. I remained silent for a few seconds, as though saying anything else would somehow fix the situation.
Of course, it didn’t.
I needed to think.
My last memory went back to just moments before my death.
I had been walking peacefully through the streets of my neighborhood on my way home. It had been a perfectly ordinary day, so ordinary that I probably wouldn’t have remembered what I had done before that moment if it weren’t for the fact that those had been my final moments.
Then I heard screaming.
A girl was being attacked.
I remembered turning around.
I remembered seeing the man.
I remembered realizing that he had a knife.
And most of all, I remembered deciding to intervene.
Looking back, it had probably been stupid.
I should have called someone, asked for help, or simply stayed at a distance. But at the time, I hadn’t thought about it.
I had wanted to help her.
The problem was that the attacker turned on me instead.
I remembered the blade plunging into my body, the sudden pain tearing through me, and that surreal realization that came only a few seconds later:
I was going to die.
Then nothing.
Well… not exactly.
After my death, I had found myself in that strange, empty, freezing space. I had no idea how long I had remained there. There had been no way to measure time in that place.
Then that warmth had appeared, followed by the light that had drawn me toward it before completely swallowing me.
And now, I was here.
In a forest.
Inside the body of a child I didn’t know.
With horns.
I looked around.
Trees stretched out in every direction, and I couldn’t see any sign of civilization. No road, no house, not even a path that might lead me to some kind of settlement.
I was completely alone.
If I really had become some kind of creature with horns, pointed ears, and fangs, then there was one possibility I wasn’t quite ready to accept.
A demon.
The word crossed my mind.
It was so absurd that I almost laughed.
A demon?
Seriously?
And yet, the longer I looked at my reflection, the less ridiculous that hypothesis seemed.
This body was clearly not human.
I didn’t know what I was yet, but something told me that there was nothing ordinary about this little girl.
I placed a hand against my chest.
My heart was beating.
I was breathing.
My body was functioning perfectly.
So why did I have this strange feeling ?
I thought about it for a few moments before finally understanding what had been bothering me since I woke up.
In a situation like this, any normal person would probably have been having a full-blown panic attack.
I had just died, woken up in an unfamiliar body, in a forest I knew absolutely nothing about, and I might have even become some kind of fantastical creature.
I should have been terrified.
I should have been completely panicking.
I should have wanted to cry, scream, or run around desperately searching for someone.
But I felt nothing.
I knew I was confused because I didn’t understand the situation.
I knew I was disoriented because I had no idea where I was.
And I knew perfectly well that the situation was dangerous.
But emotionally…
Nothing.
I knew what fear was.
I remembered the feeling.
I remembered the way my heart would race, the knot in my stomach, that instinctive urge to run whenever something threatened me.
And yet, when I tried to find that sensation now, there was absolutely nothing.
It was as though I could understand emotions without being able to feel them.
I could know that something was sad without feeling sadness.
I could know that a situation was frightening without feeling fear.
Even my own death elicited nothing from me.
When I thought about the knife, I remembered the pain, but that memory came without any emotion attached to it.
I knew I had died.
But I wasn’t sad that I was dead.
That realization made me uncomfortable.
Well… I think it should have made me uncomfortable.
I lowered my eyes to my small hands.
They were thin and delicate, the hands of a child who had probably never held a weapon in her life.
And yet, something about the way I looked at them gave me the feeling that they didn’t belong to me alone.
As though this body had a history of its own.
As though someone had lived here before me.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds.
And suddenly, an image appeared.
A forest.
The same forest, but from a different time.
I saw a little girl running between the trees.
She had the same hair.
The same horns.
The same face as the one I had just seen in the reflection of the lake.
I wanted to approach her, but the image disappeared before I could do anything.
I opened my eyes abruptly.
I remained completely still.
That wasn’t my memory.
I didn’t know how I could be certain of it, but I was.
That memory had nothing to do with my life.
Someone else had lived in this body.
Someone else had worn this face.
Someone else had possessed these horns.
And yet, that person was no longer here.
Apparently, all that remained were fragments of her existence, scattered memories that surfaced without warning in the depths of my mind.
I looked at my reflection in the water once again.
The little demon stared back at me in silence.
I didn’t know who she was yet.
I didn’t know what had happened to her.
I didn’t know why I had taken her place.
And above all, I didn’t know why, despite all these changes, a part of me felt as though this body belonged to me now.
I finally looked away from the lake and stared at the forest stretching out before me.
One thing was certain: staying here and doing nothing wasn’t going to give me any answers.
I needed to find a road, a town, a village, anything.
I needed to figure out where I was.
So I started walking north.
Fortunately, in my previous life, we had been taught at school how to find our way when lost. Basic survival skills, I suppose. The main thing was to observe the sky, locate the sun, and try to determine which direction it was moving in.
Of course, in my case, I had no compass and absolutely no idea where I was, so I might as well make use of what I had.
The problem was that I had absolutely no idea how far I had already walked.
This forest seemed enormous.
No matter which direction I looked, all I could see were trees. Some of them were so massive that I had to tilt my head all the way back just to see their tops. Every now and then, I spotted a few birds or small animals that immediately disappeared into the bushes whenever they heard me approaching.
So I kept moving forward, without really knowing what I was looking for.
A road.
A house.
A village.
A person…
Anything that could at least prove that I wasn’t completely alone in the middle of nowhere.
After walking for a while, my stomach began to protest.
I stopped and looked around.
That was when I noticed several bushes covered in small berries. They looked fairly ordinary. I stared at them for a few seconds, vaguely wondering whether they were edible.
Then I ate them.
I didn’t know why, but this body was incredibly hungry.
Almost ridiculously hungry.
I hadn’t eaten since…
Well, technically, I didn’t even know how long it had been.
Maybe since my death.
And honestly, I didn’t really care whether these berries were poisonous or not.
After all, what did I have to lose ?
My life ?
I was already dead once.
That was probably the most absurd thought I could have had in a situation like this, but somehow, it seemed perfectly logical to me.
I had been reincarnated without asking for it, abandoned in the middle of a forest without the slightest clue as to what had happened to me, with no one around to explain anything and, apparently, without even being given an instruction manual for this new body.
So if a few poisonous berries decided to finish me off, so be it.
Fortunately, nothing happened.
So I continued on my way.
As I walked, I began analyzing my situation more seriously.
Now that the initial shock had passed, I had to at least figure out who I had become.
According to the few vague memories that were coming back to me from this body, her name was Klonen.
Klonen.
I thought about the name for a few seconds before understanding its meaning.
“Clone…”
I sighed.
Of course.
Thankfully, my German classes in middle school hadn’t been completely useless after all.
Klonen did indeed mean “to clone” in German.
It was a rather strange name for a person, but after everything I had just experienced, I certainly wasn’t going to start complaining about how unusual my name was.
I’d just have to live with it.
I kept walking, trying to piece together the memories I now possessed.
Though “memories” might have been a generous word.
They were more like fragments—isolated images that appeared in my mind before disappearing without explanation.
But one thing seemed certain.
I really was a demon.
I didn’t know exactly how I could be so certain, but the memories belonging to this body left very little room for doubt.
Klonen was a demon.
A demon who had lived here before me.
And apparently, she hadn’t had a particularly peaceful life.
I saw an image of her running through the forest.
She was running fast.
Very fast.
She seemed to be fleeing from something.
I didn’t know what.
I couldn’t see anyone behind her, but the expression on her face was enough to tell me that she was being chased.
She kept glancing over her shoulder while trying to keep moving forward.
Then she tripped.
I saw the ground rushing toward her.
A impact.
And…
Black.
That was all.
I frowned.
Was that really all I had?
I kept walking, thinking about that strange sequence of memories.
Perhaps her body had been badly injured and Klonen had died there.
Maybe that was why I had taken her place.
But then why had I been sent here ?
And above all, what had happened to the real Klonen ?
I had no answers.
I tried to reach further back into her memories.
The result was even stranger.
The oldest memory I could find was that of a rabbit.
A small rabbit.
I saw it in a clearing.
Then Klonen caught it.
No.
She killed it.
I remained silent for a few seconds.
Why did I remember this ?
I felt nothing as I watched the scene.
No disgust.
No sadness.
No guilt.
Only a kind of cold observation.
She had killed the rabbit.
Probably to eat it.
And then…
Another image.
A cave.
A silhouette.
A woman.
I couldn’t see her face properly, but something about the memory made me think she was Klonen’s mother.
Then the woman left.
She left Klonen alone in the cave.
And then…
Nothing.
I stopped for a few seconds.
“…What the hell ?”
I had just realized what the real problem was.
The memories belonging to this body were completely incoherent.
They weren’t simply incomplete.
They had holes in them.
There would be fragments of one part of her life, and then nothing. One situation, followed suddenly by another that seemed to have taken place much later.
There was no connection between them.
I could remember Klonen watching humans from the woods.
I could see their faces.
I could almost hear their voices.
But I had no idea why she had been watching them.
I could remember another scene in which she was inside a house, but I had no idea how she had gotten there.
I could remember someone whose name I didn’t know, and somehow sense that they had been important to Klonen, only for the memory to disappear before I could understand why.
It was as though someone had taken an entire life, cut it into pieces, and then mixed them all together.
I could see some of the pieces.
But an enormous number of them were missing.
And the worst part was that I didn’t even know whether those gaps were natural.
Perhaps the real Klonen had simply forgotten certain things.
Perhaps her memories had disappeared along with her.
Or perhaps…
I slowed down.
Perhaps someone had deliberately erased those memories.
The thought crossed my mind without causing the slightest bit of fear.
Once again, I knew it should have worried me.
But nothing.
I simply kept walking.
The sun was slowly beginning to sink behind the trees, casting long shadows across the ground.
I looked up at the sky before turning my attention back to the path ahead.
I still didn’t know where I was going.
I didn’t know what was waiting for me.
I didn’t even know how long I would have to walk before I found someone.
But at least I had a name now.
Klonen.
A demon whose body I now inhabited.
A demon whose memories I possessed fragments of.
And a demon I knew absolutely nothing about.
I sighed.
Well, this new life was certainly off to a great start.