The Deadman Tales: The Family on the Mountain

If you lived a life you never truly got to live—never chased your dreams, never became who you could have been—would you take a second chance? Reborn as an infant in a world of magic, monsters, and buried empires, he awakens on a mountain hermit’s doorstep with nothing but the quiet weight of what he never had. No destiny, no shortcuts, no guarantees—only a life he must build from the ground up. Now named Rayner, he grows in a brutal frontier where survival is earned, learning to endure, craft, and fight. He trades with dwarves, battles goblins twisted by violence, and explores forgotten ruins where skill and will mean everything. Far from the mountain, a young goblin girl named Gilly loses everything when her home is destroyed by the very monsters her kind is feared to be. In a world where “goblin” is spoken with hatred, few care to see the difference between those who destroy and those who suffer. When Rayner finds her, both still children, he makes a choice that changes both their lives—he saves her. But survival is only the beginning. Given a second chance, Gilly rebuilds herself piece by piece, rising from a frightened girl with nothing into an apprentice of the Dune Sea Merchants, carving out her place in a world that never intended to give her one.