Garret Thompson died exactly how he lived: face-first in a puddle of his own poor choices.
He was perched on a rickety kitchen chair in his cramped one-bedroom apartment, trying to pry the cap off a fresh bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey with his teeth. The chair wobbled. Garret, weighing well over two-sixty and swaying like a ship in a gale, decided the best fix was to lean harder.
Physics disagreed.
The chair bucked, Garret flailed, and the bottle slipped. It shattered against the counter edge, sending the jagged glass neck straight into the soft underside of his jaw with personal spite. Blood sprayed. He hit the linoleum hard, still clutching the broken bottle like a trophy. For one glorious, idiotic second, he actually laughed. It was a wet, gurgling sound that painted the cheap tiles red.
"Well… shit," he wheezed, staring at the ceiling. "At least I died doing what I loved."
The world went dark mid-chuckle.
When the darkness spat him back out, Garret was lying on his back in the dirt. This was real soil, smelling of manure and growing things. Two suns hung in a painfully blue sky; one was a bright gold, the other a smaller, faint orange. A lazy breeze carried the distant cluck of chickens and the creak of old wood.
Garret blinked slowly. "…The hell?"
He sat up. His head didn't spin with the usual three-day bender weight. His body felt lighter. He wasn't skinny or athletic, but he was no longer the bloated sack of regrets he'd dragged around for years. He looked down at a rough linen tunic, mud-stained trousers, and calloused hands. They were bigger than he remembered, but solid rather than fat. Farmer's hands.
He touched his face and felt a thick, jagged scar running from the corner of his mouth across his jaw. His nose felt crooked in two places, and his stubble was like sandpaper. He looked like the kind of man who started bar fights for fun and finished them by accident.
"Great," Garret groaned. "I died a loser and woke up as a slightly more solid loser with a face like a crushed tin can."
He pushed himself up. The movement was surprisingly easy. The body had muscle memory, despite a faint ache in the lower back from hard labor. His brain still expected the old drunken sway, causing him to stumble once and mutter a string of creative curses.
The farm was a mess. There was a weathered wooden house with a sagging roof, a barn that had seen better decades, and fields where weeds were winning the war. A rain barrel stood near the porch. Garret shuffled over, cupped his hands, and splashed cold water on his face. The reflection staring back was ugly in a lived-in way, the kind of face that made people cross the street at night.
"Garret Mole," he said aloud. The name felt right, matching the clumsy handwriting he'd seen on a ledger inside.
He wandered into the one-room house. It held a straw mattress, a table, two chairs, and a small clay jug in the corner. He uncorked it and took a sniff. It was weak ale, probably watered down and sour, but it was wet and alcoholic.
He took a long pull and sighed in something like contentment.
"Okay. New world. Fantasy setting. Two suns. This is some isekai nonsense," he chuckled darkly. "The hero is probably out there doing push-ups while I'm over here trying to figure out how to grow a potato."
He sat on the porch step, jug in hand. The distant treeline of the Ashfeld Borderlands looked dark and unfriendly. Something howled in the distance, and it wasn't a wolf.
"Not my problem," he told the horizon. "I'm not signing up for round two just because some kid with a glowing sword needs backup. I'll fix this farm enough to keep the ale flowing and stay away from anything that smells like destiny."
"Mister Garret!"
A scrawny girl of about sixteen was jogging up the path. She had dark hair, a face smudged with dirt, and a wooden practice sword at her hip.
"You promised you'd show me that footwork today!" she called out. "The one where you trip the goblin and stomp on its neck! I brought my sword!"
Garret stared at her, then looked at his jug. He took a slow, deliberate drink. "Kid, I don't even know what day it is. Go bother someone with working brain cells."
"But you said—"
"I say a lot of things when I'm drunk. Most of them are lies."
The girl—Pip, his new memories suggested—planted her hands on her hips. "You're not drunk now. You're just being lazy."
"Same difference."
Pip puffed out her cheeks. "Fine! But I'm coming back tomorrow! You're the only one around here who survived more than three monster fights, so you have to teach me!"
Garret watched her march off, her wooden sword swinging with heroic intent. He leaned back against the porch post and closed his eyes.
"Welcome to the new world, Garret," he muttered. "Try not to die again before lunch."
Another unnatural howl echoed across the borderlands. Garret raised the jug in a lazy toast.
"Not my circus. Not my monkeys."
He took another long drink and waited for the ale to make the apocalypse feel further away.
End of Chapter 1