KamiKowa: That Time I Got Transmigrated With A Broken Goddess

Efler reached the top of the tower, her boots scuffing against splintered planks. The crossbow across her back caught starlight along its steel reinforcements.

"The view," she said, settling against the tower's railing with her back to the fire below. "Though I've never seen stars arranged quite like this."

Xavier studied her profile in the strange light. The constellation overhead cast everything in silver and blue, softening the sharp angles of her face.

Each word she spoke was accompanied by a ghost of white vapor, a fleeting cloud that dissipated in the biting wind.

"Different from home?" he asked.

"Very." Efler's voice carried an odd note, almost wistful. "Sometimes I dream about other stars. Familiar patterns. But when I wake up, I can never quite remember what they looked like."

She pulled her cloak tighter, the fur-lined edges rustling against the wooden rail. Her hands, Xavier noticed, bore the calluses of someone who'd spent years with weapons, but also softer marks—the kind that came from writing, from delicate work.

"Dreams have teeth in a place like this," Xavier said, his voice low. "They chew on what's real."

"Do you dream about your home?" The question came quietly, as if she wasn't sure she should ask it.

He held her gaze, a hundred different answers dying on his lips. Her posture was a fortress—shoulders squared, chin high, a stillness learned by someone who knew they were constantly being watched. A queen in exile, even if she didn't know it.

"Sometimes. Usually about people I've left behind." He shifted his weight, the tower creaking beneath them. "What about you? Anyone waiting for your return?"

Efler was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice had gone distant. "I thought I knew. But lately, everything feels... unclear. Like I'm remembering someone else's life."

The admission hung in the frozen air. The ever-present wind seemed to die, and the silence that rushed in felt heavier, more profound, than the cold. For a moment, it was just the two of them on the roof of the world, suspended in her confession.

"That sounds familiar," he said carefully.

"Does it?" She turned to face him fully, and the raw hope warring with confusion in her eyes sent a phantom ache through his very soul.

It wasn't recognition, not yet. It was something more fragile: the first flicker of a signal across a dead channel.

"Sometimes I see you fight," she continued, "and my heart starts racing for no reason I can understand. Not fear—something else. Like I should know what you're going to do before you do it."

"Could be you're just good at reading people."

"Maybe." But she didn't sound convinced. "I might be losing my mind. These mountains do that to people, supposedly. The cold gets into your thoughts, scrambles things around."

She laughed, but there was no humor in it.

"Tell me about these dreams," Xavier said. "The ones with different stars."

Efler's fingers stilled on the railing. "They're... complicated. Full of impossible things. Buildings that reach toward the sky like glass mountains. Lights that move without flame. People my age wearing strange clothes, studying in rooms filled with more books than should exist."

Xavier's breath caught. She was describing Catalyst Academy. The crystal spires, the holographic displays, the student uniforms.

"And in these dreams," he pressed gently, "are you one of these people?"

"Sometimes." Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "I'm someone else. Someone with a different name, different hair. Someone who..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "It sounds mad when I say it aloud."

"Try me."

Efler looked at him for a long moment, as if weighing whether he could be trusted with whatever she was about to reveal. The starlight caught the gold flecks in her eyes—eyes that were definitely familiar, even if the face around them had changed.

"In the dreams, I have a brother. Someone I'd do anything to protect." Her hands clenched into fists. "But when I wake up, I can't remember his face. Just this... ache. Like I've lost something precious and can't even remember what it was."

"That must be terrifying," he said. "Feeling like parts of yourself are missing."

"Yes." The word came out as if she'd been waiting for someone to understand. "Exactly that. Like I'm living someone else's story and my own is locked away somewhere I can't reach."

She turned back toward the stars, her shoulders sagging slightly. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually dead. If this is some kind of afterlife where we're forced to play out other people's lives."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because the alternative is that I'm going insane, and that seems worse somehow."

Xavier moved closer, close enough that he could see the tension in her jaw, the way she gripped the railing like it might anchor her to reality.

"What if neither of those things were true?" he asked. "What if you were exactly who you're supposed to be, just... somewhere you weren't supposed to be?"

Efler's head snapped toward him, her eyes searching his face with sudden intensity. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Xavier said, choosing his words carefully, "what if the dreams aren't dreams at all? What if they're memories of a different life, a different world?"

"That's impossible."

"Is it? You just said you thought you might be dead. Compared to that, being displaced seems almost reasonable."

She stared at him for a long moment, and Xavier could see the gears turning behind her eyes, the desperate, analytical way she tried to force logic onto the impossible. The sheer intensity of her focus was so purely Ashley that he had to fight back a smile.

"You talk like you know something about this," she said finally.

"Maybe I do."

"And maybe you're just as mad as I am."

Xavier smiled then, despite everything. "Probably. But I've found that the maddest explanations have a way of being the most accurate lately."

Efler studied his face in the starlight, her expression cycling through confusion, hope, and fear in rapid succession. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible.

"In the dreams, the impossible ones... there's someone I care about. Someone with white hair who makes me feel..." She stopped, color rising in her cheeks. "This is ridiculous."

"What does he make you feel?"

"Safe. Annoyed. Protected and protective at the same time." She laughed, the sound less brittle now. "Like I could trust him with anything, but also like I wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled."

"Sounds like a complicated relationship," he said. "But he sounds like a pretty cool guy."

"The most complicated." She looked at him again, and this time there was something different in her gaze.

"Xavier?"

His name. She said his real name.

It wasn't a question. It was a fragment of a memory that had clawed its way to the surface, spoken into the freezing air like an incantation. It landed in his chest not as a sound, but as a physical sensation—a warm, resonant thrum that had nothing to do with Essentia meters or combat readiness.

It was the feeling of a frayed cord snapping back into place across worlds.

"Hello, Ashley."