Chapter 1

My uncle got obsessed with the Great Work, fasting and doing breathwork at home every day.

After he passed out from low blood sugar, they also found a stone.

He insisted it was the Philosopher's Stone, and that he was almost there.

I spent three days working on him, got him to believe in science, and had the stone taken out.

Once he was eating properly again, his labs came back into the normal range.

Then he came across AI-generated videos about people achieving immortality in the modern world, and decided I was the one who'd ruined him.

He drugged me with sleeping pills, and while I was out, he threw me off the roof.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day they took him to the hospital.

This time, I'm going to watch exactly how he ascends.

Chapter 1

I opened my eyes with a violent gasp, my shirt soaked through with cold sweat.

Above me was the familiar ceiling of my medical-school dorm. Sunlight slipped through the curtains onto my desk, where my anatomy textbook still lay open to the page I'd studied the night before.

I wasn't dead. I'd come back.

With shaking hands I grabbed the phone vibrating across my desk. Dad flashed on the screen.

The instant I answered, my father's panicked voice crashed through the speaker.

"Nate, your uncle has kidney stones, but he's not making any sense anymore.

"Can you get emergency leave from Dr. Parker and come home? The doctors want to do lithotripsy or put him on medication to pass the stone, but he won't agree to anything. He's smashing things in the emergency department and the nurses can't hold him down."

My father's voice trembled with helplessness.

Then my uncle's shrill, hysterical scream tore through the background.

"Let go of me! What would the uninitiated know? This isn't a kidney stone. It's the Stone. It's my Philosopher's Stone!

"Nobody is ruining this for me a second time. Anyone who lays a hand on my Stone, I'll kill his whole family!"

The moment I heard him, I knew Raymond had come back too.

My fingers tightened around the phone until my knuckles turned white.

"Dad, don't panic. Listen to me." I forced myself to breathe and made my voice sound anxious but helpless.

"I can't get away right now. The department chair just added a major pathology quiz this afternoon. It's worth thirty percent of the course grade. If I miss it, I fail the course and lose my place in the honors clinical-research track."

Dad adored his younger brother, but he loved me too, and he cared about my future.

The mention of the research track stopped his panic cold. His tone turned hesitant.

"It's that important? Then you can't miss it. You've worked toward that placement since you were a kid. Your uncle's problem shouldn't cost you your future."

"But look at the state he's in, and I'm here on my own. I don't know what to do." My father's voice was full of despair.

I hardened my heart. "Dad, Raymond's almost forty. He's a grown man and he gets to make his own calls. He's refusing treatment, and the hospital isn't going to strap him to an operating table. If you force him, he'll only hate you more. Go along with him for now. Don't fight him. If it comes to it, take him home. Let me finish the quiz and I'll figure something out."

"All right. All right, I'll stop arguing with him. You focus on your exam and don't let this distract you. I'll keep an eye on him."

Chapter 2

After ending the call I rushed into the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face.

The face in the mirror was pale but alert, and my eyes slowly turned cold.

Somewhere in the past few years Raymond had found his way into the online immortality forums, and they'd swallowed him whole.

Every day he burned cheap incense in his apartment and sat cross-legged, claiming he was drawing in the life force of the universe.

Then came the fasting. One cup of water and a few leaves of lettuce a day.

From a medical standpoint, he was killing himself.

Prolonged extreme calorie restriction had wrecked his metabolism, and severe malnutrition and hypoglycemia were the inevitable result.

As for the Stone he treasured, it was a kidney stone. Calcium oxalate deposited in his kidneys because he never drank enough water and ate like a lunatic.

In my previous life I used every scrap of medical knowledge I had to save him, and he repaid me by breaking my body on the pavement.

I wasn't making that mistake twice.

But things went worse than I expected, and they went bad fast.

Less than three days later, Dad called again.

This time his voice carried more than panic. It carried terror.

"Nate, your uncle's beyond saving. He's ascending. He really believes he's ascending."

My heart dropped. "Dad, slow down. What happened?"

"After he got back from the hospital he threw out everything in his apartment. Rice, oil, vegetables, meat, all of it. He said he had to fast harder to purify the Stone."

Dad sucked in a breath, his voice shaking. "And he's joined some group online, the Luminous Path. They're all out of their minds in there. All day they talk about shedding the mortal shell and burning off earthly desire. Raymond isn't even drinking water anymore."

As a medical student, I went cold at the words no water.

A person can go without food for a week or two, burning through stored glycogen and fat.

Without water, electrolytes collapse within days. The blood thickens, the kidneys fail, and shock and death follow.

Dad's voice shook. "He's so thin his face has changed. His eyes are sunk into his skull and he gives off this strange smell, like rotting apples. It breaks my heart. But I can't say a word to him without setting him off. He says he's escaping the prison of the flesh. Nate, what am I supposed to do?"

Rotting apples.

That description went straight to a line in my textbooks: ketoacidosis.

His glycogen was gone. His body had been forced to break down fat in bulk for energy.

Fat metabolism produces ketones, and once ketones build past what the body can clear, ketoacidosis follows.

Worse, severe ketoacidosis damages the central nervous system. Hallucinations, agitation, delirium, then deep coma, then death.

What Raymond called escaping the prison of the flesh was, medically, the last flare of a dying brain.

A terrible premonition closed around my throat like a hand.

Chapter 3

"Dad, listen to me carefully." I lowered my voice and made every word count.

"From this moment on, you do not go back to Raymond's apartment. Go home, throw the deadbolt, and don't open that door for him no matter what. It doesn't matter what he says or how loud he screams. Even if he says he's dying. Do you understand me?"

My father was stunned by my tone and stammered. "Nate, don't scare me like that. He's still your uncle."

"Do what I'm telling you, Dad. What's happening to him can cause psychosis. That won't be your brother out there anymore. That'll be a sick man who isn't in control of himself. Do you understand?"

Dad sounded frightened. He started to say something else, then finally just agreed.

The second I hung up, I didn't waste another breath.

If Raymond's mind was going, it would happen within days. I had to get home and protect my father.

I ran out of the dorm toward my adviser's office, buying the next intercity ticket from Merriton to Kingswell on my phone as I went.

"Dr. Parker, there's an emergency at home. My father's life may be in danger. I have to leave right now."

I burst into her office and put the ticket confirmation down in front of her before I'd filled out a single line of the leave form.

One look at my white face and bloodshot eyes was enough. Dr. Parker approved the leave in the university system without a word.

In the back of the rideshare to the station, I called my mother with shaking hands.

Mom had been stationed away from home for years, and she came back so rarely I could count the visits.

Her personality matched her uniform: hard, severe, rigid, all discipline and principle.

She was an absolute materialist, and she'd never once hidden her contempt for Raymond's rituals.

Raymond was more afraid of her than of anyone alive.

When she answered, that cold, steady, commanding voice hit me like a shot of adrenaline and steadied everything.

"Nathan? Why are you calling at this hour? What's wrong?"

"Mom, Dad's life is in danger. I'm already on my way home. Can you get emergency leave?"

I pushed the fear down and laid it out. "Raymond's gone over the edge with this immortality thing. I think he's going to come after Dad."

The line went silent for about two seconds.

"I'll clear it with my CO now. Fort Vardon is about four hours from Kingswell by car. I'm walking to the motor pool." Her voice dropped into something that frightened me.

"Nathan, listen to me. Stay in contact with your father the whole way and confirm he's safe. If Raymond touches one hair on his head, I'll put him down myself."

Her promise loosened something in my chest.

But four hours, plus my train and my transfer, left a gap wide enough for anything.

The landscape outside the window blurred into streaks while I sat there and burned.

I had to keep Dad safe.

I opened our family chat and started firing messages at him.

I didn't dare ask outright whether Raymond had shown up. I was afraid of tripping his nerves, and more afraid he'd decide I was overreacting and hide it from me.

So I used the dumbest, most reliable method there was.

I sent him every piece of junk I could find.

As long as he kept replying, he was awake and he was safe.

Those three hours on the train were the longest of my life.

I refreshed the screen about once a second, terrified of missing anything.

Just before we pulled into Kingswell, my phone buzzed.

Dad had sent a long voice message.

I played it and held the phone to my ear.

"Nate, stop worrying. Your uncle came by and knocked. He looks pitiful. He's nothing but skin and bone. He couldn't even stand straight, just held onto the doorframe and wheezed."

Dad's voice had gone soft with relief. "He told me through the door that he knows he was wrong.

"He seemed sincere, and as weak as he is, where would he get the strength to hurt anybody? He's my brother. I can't just let him starve out in the hallway. I'm going to help him in, sit him down, and make him something hot. You do well on that exam. I'll call you back in a bit."

Chapter 4

The recording went off in my head like a bomb.

[Dad, do NOT open that door. When something's this out of character, something is wrong. Pretend nobody's home.]

[Dad, did you hear me?]

I sent message after message.

Only my own bubbles came up on the screen. From Dad, nothing. Not another word.

I called. No answer.

I tried video. Declined.

The train had barely stopped and the doors weren't fully open before I was through them.

I ran for the exit and called Mom.

"Mom, the plan's changed. Don't come to the station. Dad's about to open the door for Raymond. Go straight home. Straight home."

I screamed it until my voice tore.

"I'm ten minutes from the Kingswell exit. Nathan, be careful. Don't take him head-on. Wait for me."

Mom still sounded steady, but the engine howling behind her voice told me the pedal was on the floor.

Outside Kingswell Union Terminal I flagged the first cab I saw and dropped into the passenger seat.

"Elmwood Court. Please, go fast. I'll pay double. No, ten times the fare. Any ticket you pick up running a light, I'll cover it. My father's life is in danger. Please."

I dumped every bill in my wallet onto the dash while I talked.

The driver took one look at my face and floored it, and the cab launched off the curb.

My heart was in my throat the entire way.

Dad's gentle, honest face and Raymond's twisted one kept overlapping in my mind.

I hated myself for not telling him the truth sooner, and I hated my father for that bottomless, ruinous need to rescue his little brother no matter what it cost the rest of us.

"Faster. Please, faster." I stared down the road and dug my nails into my palms until they bled, and I never felt it.

Tires shrieked.

The cab stopped at the entrance of the complex and I ran without closing the door.

We lived on the third floor.

I took the stairs two at a time. The motion lights snapped on one after another as I pounded past, and not one of them touched the dark in my chest.

Second floor. Landing. Third floor.

I reached our security door.

From inside came my father's terrified, unrecognizable scream.

Then something heavy hit the floor, followed by the bright crash of breaking glass.