Theo's lungs burned with laughter, not exhaustion. The evening air on the empty highway was cool, a relief after the blistering heat of the day.
"So then," he wheezed, clutching his stomach. "The professor says, 'This circuit diagram is your future!' and Priya, without even looking up from her phone, says, 'Sir, my future has better connectivity.' I swear, his face turned the color of old eggplant!"
Beside him, Arjun snorted, almost spitting out his bottled chai. "She didn't!"
"She did! The entire back row lost it. Old Gupta didn't know whether to scold her or ask for her network provider."
They walked along the dusty shoulder of the road, the fading orange sun stretching their shadows long behind them. Their college was twenty kilometers behind, the promise of a cheap, legendary dosa stall another five ahead. This was the adventure – broke, brilliant, and stupidly optimistic. Theo Sharma, 19, third-year engineering student, whose greatest concerns were semester fees, his mother's worrying, and whether the campus wi-fi would ever work.
"We are going to die of old age before we reach that stall," Arjun groaned, but his eyes were smiling.
"Death by dosa is a noble end," Theo declared, throwing an arm around his friend's shoulder. "We'll be legends. 'They died as they lived – chasing spicy food on an empty wallet.'"
Their laughter was a bright, fragile thing in the vast emptiness. It was the last truly human sound Theo would make.
The roar of the engine was wrong. It wasn't the steady hum of a truck or the putter of a farmer's motorcycle. It was a raw, panicked scream of metal pushed past its limit. It came from behind them.
They turned.
A black SUV, windows tinted, weaved across the empty highway like a drunken beast. It was moving too fast, far too fast for this road.
"Jump!" Arjun yelled, yanking Theo toward the scrubby ditch.
Time, which had been laughing with them, turned to thick syrup. Theo's foot caught on a pothole. He stumbled, his eyes locked on the oncoming grille.
The world exploded into a cacophony of shattering glass and twisting metal. But not from the SUV hitting them.
From the SUV itself.
A side window burst outward as the vehicle, in its wild swerve, clipped a kilometer marker and spun. Theo saw a heavy, metallic box fly out of the shattered window. It tumbled through the air, spinning, and the lid burst open.
A waterfall of cash – thousand-rupee notes, pale pink and green – erupted into the evening light. It rained money, a surreal, silent blizzard against the orange sky.
Bank robbery.
The thought was cold and clear in the midst of the chaos. The SUV, now sideways, screeched to a halt fifty meters past them. The passenger door flew open. A man in a black mask stumbled out. His eyes were not on the crashed vehicle. They were on Theo and Arjun, frozen by the ditch.
He raised his arm. Not a hand. A gun.
Theo's mind went blank. This wasn't real. This was a movie. A bad, loud, confusing movie.
"Run, you idiot!" Arjun's voice was a strangled cry.
Theo ran. He ran toward the ditch, toward the thin hope of cover. The gunshot was a thunderclap that swallowed the world. He didn't feel the impact. Not at first.
He felt a sudden, violent shove between his shoulder blades. It knocked the air, the fear, the very idea of running out of him. He pitched forward into the dust. The taste of iron flooded his mouth.
He heard Arjun screaming his name, the sound fading under a rising, high-pitched whine in his ears. He saw the dust, each particle perfectly outlined in the slanting sunlight. He saw the scattered money, some of the notes drifting gently to land near his outstretched hand.
Mom, he thought, the word formless and full of ache. I'm sorry. The fees. I was going to pay…
The masked man's boots crunched on gravel, approaching. Theo tried to turn his head. Darkness crowded the edges of his vision, warm and insistent.
The last thing he saw was the robber's cold, indifferent eyes above the mask, and beyond him, the first star of the evening twinkling mockingly in the violet sky.
Then, nothing.
Consciousness returned without fanfare.
There was no light. No sound. No feeling of a body.
There was only… awareness. A tiny, fragile point of self floating in an absolute, silent void.
Am I dead?
The thought sparked, and with it came a sensation. Pressure. Not around him, but within him. A crushing, dense weight at the very core of his being. It was suffocating.
I can't… breathe…
But he had no lungs. The instinct remained, a ghost of a life once lived. The pressure built, becoming unbearable. He was a star being born in reverse, collapsing inward.
Just as the point of awareness felt it would be snuffed out forever, something… shifted.
CRACK.
A soundless, fundamental rupture.
From the unbearable density, something flowed. It was warmth. It was light. It was information. It was a voice that was not a voice, speaking directly into the essence of him.
[Mythic Skill: 'Prime' has been Integrated.]
[Host Soul Signature: Theo Sharma. Status: Deceased. Reintegration Protocol: Active.]
[Error. Suitable Vessel Unavailable in Local Spatial Layer.]
[Searching Adjacent Realms…]
[Vessel Located. Compatibility: 41.7%. Acceptable. Initiating Soul Transference.]
The void twisted. The point of awareness was pulled, stretched, hurled through layers of nonexistence. Sensations, alien and terrifying, flooded in.
Cold.
Wet.
Rhythmic, gentle motion.
A profound, cellular weakness.
[Transfer Complete.]
[New Vessel Designation: Aurelia Jellyfish (Juvenile).]
[Soul Load Capacity: Minimal. Skill Allocation: Forced to Basic.]
[Prime Status: Dormant (Stage 0.1). Core Functions: Analysis, Basic Synthesis Locked. Soul Harvest & Evolution Protocols: Locked.]
Theo… understood. And in understanding, he wished for the void again.
He had a body. But it was not a body. It was a bell. A translucent, gelatinous, pulsing bell, no larger than his human fist. He hung in dark, cool water, drifting with a languid current. He could feel the water—every subtle shift, every tiny particle—through his entire form. He had no eyes, but a 360-degree field of vague, light-sensitive perception. He had no limbs. Only a faint, instinctual control over the rhythmic contraction of his bell, which propelled him in weak, directionless pulses.
He was a jellyfish. A baby jellyfish.
The panic was a human ghost in a non-human shell. It triggered a frantic, uncoordinated pulsing. He moved, bumping softly into a smooth, rocky surface.
A new, instinctual signal bloomed in his primitive nervous system. Hunger.
A tiny, shimmering shrimp-like creature drifted into his perception field. Without thought, trailing tentacles Theo hadn't even been aware of lashed out. Stinging cells fired. The shrimp convulsed and was drawn up toward his underside, where a simple mouth absorbed it.
A wave of simple, cellular satisfaction washed through him.
The human mind inside the jellyfish bell screamed.
This was hell. This was a cosmic joke. He was dead, reborn as the most insignificant creature in what was clearly some kind of underwater cave or dungeon pool. He had a… system? A skill called 'Prime' that sounded godly but was currently as useful as a stone. Dormant. Locked.
Tears were impossible. Sobbing was impossible. All he could do was hang in the dark water, pulsing weakly, absorbing the microscopic plankton his tentacles caught, and drown in a despair so vast it threatened to extinguish his awareness again.
Days passed. Or what felt like days. His jellyfish perception had no concept of time, only of light and dark cycles filtering from somewhere high above. He drifted. He ate. He survived.
One day, as a faint shaft of light pierced the water from a crack in the cavern ceiling, a new prompt appeared in his mind, simple and stark.
[Prime: Dormant Core Activated.]
[Function: Basic Analysis - Online.]
Suddenly, his vague perception sharpened. As a small fish, sleek and silver, darted past, new information overlaid his senses.
[Target: Glimmer Minnow. Threat Level: Negligible. Soul Density: Very Low. Edible.]
The fish was gone before he could react. But the shock of the analysis held him still. It worked. However minutely, Prime was working.
Later, he drifted into a patch of glowing blue moss on the cave wall.
[Target: Luminous Cave Moss. Composition: Basic Nutrients, Weak Photoplasmic Energy. Non-toxic. Digestible with effort.]
Theo focused his simple mind. Digestible with effort. He had to try. He had to do something. He nudged his bell against the moss. It was soft. He extended his mouth, pressing it against the glow. It was harder to break down than the plankton. It took time. But as he absorbed it, a new, faint warmth spread through his gelatinous form. A different kind of satisfaction. Not just fullness, but a tiny, almost imperceptible strengthening.
[Vitality: +0.001]
It was nothing. A microscopic gain. But to Theo, the human mind trapped in the jellyfish, it was a lifeline. It was a number. It was progress.
He didn't have hands. He didn't have a voice. He had Prime. And he had a will to live that had survived death and transfiguration.
He pulsed his bell, turning slowly in the dark water.
Okay, he thought, the human logic stubborn and clear amidst the alien instincts. Okay. I'm a jellyfish. I'm in a dungeon. I have a broken, god-tier system. Step one: Don't get eaten. Step two: Figure out how to eat everything that isn't me. Step three…
He looked up at the distant crack of light with his whole body.
Step three: Get the hell out of this puddle.
He began to pulse, slowly, deliberately, toward the faint glow. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single, wobbly, gelatinous contraction.