The bed sheets rustled violently as a handsome young man sat bolt upright, eyes wide and heart hammering. The air was cool, unfamiliar—tinged with an earthy aroma and faint traces of lavender, unlike anything he'd known before. Pale morning light spilled through gauzy curtains, casting soft gold across a polished wooden floor. His breathing was sharp, shallow, chest rising and falling like he'd just run a marathon.
"Where am I?" he whispered hoarsely. His voice trembled, uncertain, as though unused for years.
Then it hit him.
Not a realization—an invasion.
A flood of memories surged through his mind like a tidal wave: foreign words, intricate customs, faces and places that didn't belong to him… and yet, somehow, did. Knowledge that felt older than time settled into his bones. He clutched his head, gripping dark locks of tousled hair as visions overtook him. Spires that reached into pink clouds. Creatures with eyes like mirrors. Powers wielded like breath. I am a transmigrator, he finally murmured, voice steadier now, a strange acceptance blooming behind his confusion.
The man—no, boy—sat frozen, and the layers of fog peeled back one by one, revealing a recent past soaked in agony.
He saw himself. A weary face staring at the door of his apartment, his shoulders slumped with the weight of exhaustion and quiet hope. The lights were on. Her shoes were there. Home, he'd thought.
But inside… betrayal.
His girlfriend. Another man. Their laughter turned panicked when they saw him. Pleas and curses clashed in the air like daggers. He couldn't hear them—not really. The silence inside him was louder than any of it.
Blind, numb, he stumbled out the door, down the steps, across the lawn. The night was warm but he felt nothing. His thoughts didn't wander—they fled. Dreams he'd once chased seemed foolish now. Useless.
He reached the road, drawn by the emptiness it offered. No headlights. No sound. Just the dull hum of distant city life.
And then—pressure.
Not pain, not yet. Just an invisible force crushing his right side, like a monstrous hand squeezing his ribs inward. He barely managed to turn his head before the car collided with him, metal kissing flesh in a brutal embrace. Time fractured. He was airborne, flung like a rag doll into the dark, bones snapping like dry twigs with every impact.
He landed hard. The ground did not welcome him—it took him with indifference.
The sky above seemed impossibly far away. His vision blurred, fading in and out like a flickering screen. Blood pooled beneath him, warm and thick. And in those final moments, he didn't cry. Didn't scream.
"I'm free from this hell of a life." he whispered, almost surprised by the peace in those words.