Death, it turned out, only needed seven seconds to change everything, and Ethan Cole spent those seven seconds thinking about how ridiculous the way he was about to die was.
The headlights of the container truck blinded his eyes a fraction of a second before his body was thrown like a rag doll. The sound of the horn, the screech of tires on the wet asphalt of Millbrook—all of it faded so quickly that his brain didn't even have time to process the pain that should have come. What came instead was silence. A strange, thick silence, as if the world were holding its breath for a moment.
Then a transparent box appeared before him, floating in the air for no reasonable explanation. [SYSTEM ACTIVATED] [Transition Error Detected. Adjusting Destination...]
Ethan didn't have time to ask what the writing meant, because the silence from before suddenly turned into a tremendous suction, as if his entire being were being pulled through the eye of a needle. He felt no pain. He only felt himself vanish, then exist again in a completely different place.
When his consciousness returned intact, the first thing he noticed was the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves—not the smell of asphalt and gasoline that should have greeted him if he had truly survived the accident. The second thing he noticed was that he was lying on the roots of a giant tree, in the middle of a forest whose trees towered so high that the sky was visible only through small gray gaps.
Ethan slowly sat up, his head throbbing, but strangely, there was no wound. No blood. No broken bones. He touched his chest, his arms, his face, searching for proof that the truck had really hit him, but all he found was a body that felt foreign, leaner and lighter, with skin that had never worked a single day in a shipping warehouse like his original body had.
"This isn't my body," he muttered, his own voice sounding strange to his ears, deeper than usual.
The transparent box appeared again, this time larger, filling half his field of vision. [HOST STATUS] Name: Ethan Cole Level: 1 Class: undetermined HP: 42/42 MP: 15/15 Strength: 7 Agility: 8 Endurance: 6 Intelligence: 9 System Note: Soul-body synchronization running at 91 percent. Anomaly detected. Host is not the rightful recipient of this vessel.
Ethan read the last sentence over and over, as if the words would change if he stared at them long enough. Not the rightful recipient. Vessel. Those words spun through his head like a wheel that couldn't stop.
He stood up, his legs trembling slightly, and only then realized that his clothes had changed too. The cheap leather jacket and oil-stained work pants were gone, replaced by a cream-colored linen shirt with neat stitching and leather boots that looked expensive—something he had never been able to afford in his entire life.
The rustling sound in the bushes made him freeze.
Ethan turned quickly, his heart pounding, but what emerged from behind the bush was only a small silver-colored deer. Its eyes stared at Ethan for a moment before it leaped away in another direction. Ethan let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
He began to walk, without any clear destination, simply following the instinct that standing still in the middle of an unfamiliar forest wasn't a wise choice. Every few steps, a small status box blinked in the corner of his vision, providing information that came without any further explanation, as if the System expected him to already know how it worked.
[Region Detected: Veyrune Forest, Northern Border of Aldheim]
Those names meant nothing to him. Aldheim. Veyrune. He had never read those names in any book, never heard them in anyone's conversation. The vague sense of unfamiliarity that had existed before now became a cold certainty. This wasn't just a new place. This was a different world.
Ethan stopped walking, leaning against the rough bark of a tree as he tried to organize his scattered thoughts. His mother. He thought of his mother, who might now be standing by the roadside where the accident had happened, or might have already received a call from the hospital, or, in the worst-case scenario he could imagine, might be standing in front of her own son's coffin.
That thought made his chest tighten, tighter than the fear of the unfamiliar forest around him.
"I have to find a way home," he whispered to himself, though he wasn't even sure where those words were directed.
The status box responded, as if it had heard him. [Warning: Synchronization decreasing to 89 percent. Every use of System abilities will accelerate the decline in synchronization. At 0 percent, the vessel will reject the Host completely.]
Ethan felt his blood turn cold. Reject completely. He didn't need a long explanation to understand what that meant. This body, however strong and young it felt, wasn't his, and in the end it would expel him to who-knew-where.
He continued walking, faster this time, following the direction where the trees looked a little sparser, hoping that meant he was getting closer to the edge of the forest. Dry twigs crackled beneath his new boots, a sound that felt too loud amid the forest's heavy silence.
About half an hour later, Ethan arrived at a small cliff overlooking a vast valley. From there, he could see a city far below, with towering stone towers and thin smoke rising from chimneys. The city looked so real, so alive, and yet so foreign that Ethan felt as though he were staring at a painting that had suddenly come to life.
For a moment, awe overcame his fear. Then he remembered the System's message from before, and that awe turned into wariness.
He had just begun searching for a way down toward the city when the sound of footsteps came from behind him—slow but certain, like someone who deliberately wasn't in a hurry because he knew his prey couldn't run far.
Ethan froze. He wasn't alone.