The first thing Julian felt was pain. A crushing, suffocating ache in his chest. His lungs burned as though fire crawled inside them. His throat was dry, his lips felt chapped, and the taste of iron lingered on his tongue.
Slowly, consciousness clawed its way back. He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was not white tiles of a hospital, nor the familiar dull gray of his penthouse. Instead, it was rough, uneven stone, damp with age.
This was definitely not the decor of any hospital he knew of.
Before that, how the hell did he even survive being crushed by a truck? The situation was making zero sense.
"…What… the hell?" he rasped as he slowly tired to move, but that felt like a chore, one that seemed impossible to achieve right now.
His thoughts broke off when he noticed the smell. Acrid, bitter herbs, mixed with the faint sulfurous stench.
Julian turned his head weakly and spotted shattered glass on the floor that he lay on. The broken bottles contained what seemed to be faintly glowing liquids that pooled between them.
His brows knit together. "This… isn't right." His voice was hoarse, but the words still came out.
He dragged his hand across the floor, when his fingers suddenly brushed against something soft and brittle.
When he brought it closer to his face, he realized it was a dried herb, its veins blackened from overuse.
Surrounding him were piles of similar herbs, burnt roots, and withered leaves, all seemingly discarded in failure.
It was then he noticed his hands.
Not the clean, scarred hands of a man who spent years in labs and offices, but thin, trembling ones with dirt stuck deep under the nails. His skin was so pale that it was almost translucent, and he had veins that created blue lines which run across his wrists.
"…What the—"
His words were soon cut off when a sudden rush of memories slammed into him, forcing him to clench his head in pain.
Images of a life that wasn't his started flashing before him. He saw the life of a kid known as Elias Verdan, born into an influential family, his dreams of becoming an alchemist, his failure and more importantly... His family.
For the first time, Julian experienced what it was like to have a family, even if it was through the eyes of another.
He experienced the warmth of a mother, the daily banter of siblings and the strictness of his father until they also abandoned him.
And finally, his death.
Laying in a pool of his own sweat, Julian realized one thing for sure. He was not on earth anymore and the body he was in definitely wasn't his.
He had somehow reincarnated in the body of Elias Verdan.
For a man of science, this was insanity. An impossibility. Reincarnation belonged in myths, in novels and no scientific fact suggested its possibility and yet, here he was.
Julian's logical mind rebelled against it. This can't be real. This shouldn't be real.
And yet… it was.
The frailness of his body, his dry throat that begged for water, the smell of herbs and minerals around him, the glowing stones on the wall.... They all served to remind him that this was not a dream.
A fact that took him a couple of minutes to accept but again, as a man of science, adaptability was one of his strong suits.
Still laying on the floor, he calmed himself down and arranged his thoughts.
"I have somehow been reincarnated into Elias Verdan," he started, even stating that he had been reincarnated felt strange coming from his mouth, "in a world that's similar to earth during the Renaissance… but not quite."
"And more importantly," he paused, "unlike Earth's science, they have Alchemy."
Sifting through Elias's memories, Julian began to piece together what he knew of this world's so-called alchemy.
According to this world's history, the first Alchemist appeared 300 years ago, an eccentric man who discovered that certain mixtures of herbs produced certain results.
He discovered that certain steels made stronger armor, that certain stones glowed in the dark, and certain combinations of roots could cure fevers that once claimed entire villages. From there, the craft spread like wildfire.
But as the years passed, what was once considered the practice of a mad man had evolved into a discipline revered almost like science.
Kingdoms built academies dedicated to alchemy, merchants traded rare herbs at prices that rivaled gold, and nobles funded expeditions to uncover lost formulas of the first Alchemist and rare materials used in alchemy.
Alchemy wasn't just medicine or metallurgy, it was means to turn weakness into strength, the ordinary into extraordinary.
Yet, according to Elias's memories, he had been a failure at it.
Julian exhaled slowly. The irony of his situation wasn't lost on him.
He, Julian Hale, a man who had pioneered breakthroughs in chemical synthesis and molecular engineering back on Earth, was now in the body of a boy who couldn't even manage the basics of alchemy.
"Figures," he muttered bitterly, pressing a hand to his forehead. "The universe really has a sense of humor."
Regardless of his situation, he observed one thing. Alchemy in this world was just an extremely watered down science.
In the eyes of the original Elias and the people of this world, alchemy was a miracle. But to Julian, it was a primitive form of science, it was crude and most of all, it was dangerous... especially the alchemists that made potions for various uses.
They had no clue of what the elements in the herbs contained, they had no idea how processing of said herbs worked and they didn't care whether or not it had side effects as long as it worked as intended.
Therefore, a potion for headache could cause organ failure and they wouldn't care. There was zero innovation in the field as if they were afraid of straying from the path already laid out by the first Alchemist.
What made it worse was that the Alchemist Guild controlled every scrap of alchemical knowledge. Without their approval, no one could dream of becoming an alchemist.
The Guild's grip was absolute. They hoarded recipes, guarded their libraries like fortresses, and punished anyone who dared experiment outside their sanctioned methods.
Anyone who attempted to deviate, to push beyond the boundaries of what was "approved," was branded a heretic, stripped of rights, and in rare cases… executed.
Julian almost laughed, though it came out as a cough. This wasn't progress. It was dogma. They treated alchemy not as a discipline to be expanded, but as a religion to be worshiped blindly.
But if there was one thing he hated, it was being controlled. Luckily, Elias had been kicked out of the guild so he wasn't restricted to their ways anymore.
Alchemy, in the hands of these people, was little more than superstition mixed with rituals. But in his hands? It could become something else entirely.
Something revolutionary.
"Elias Verdan may have been a failure," he murmured, "but I am not, I am Julian, a genius Polymath and I'm going to revolutionize Alchemy."
He felt as if he was a little kid again with a rediscovered love for science but before he could get ahead of himself, he broke into a coughing fit.
Covering his mouth with his hand, Julian felt a warm liquid on it and when he brought it to eye level, he realized it was blood.
"I guess I'll have to fix myself first before anything." With that, he placed his frail trembling hands on the cold stone floor and pushed himself up, "let's find out what's killing me."