"What would you do if you woke up one day and found yourself in a body that wasn't yours?"
The reflection seemed to ask him that very question.
A pale young man with ash-colored hair and crimson eyes stared back from the mirror, as if he was that same person.
But he wasn't.
he didn't look like this.
Slowly, Neo raised his right hand,and strangely the mirror reflected the same.
A perfect imitation.
As if, it is a reflection of his own.
"No... no... no..."
His voice trembled.
"This can't be happening."
the strange voice increased his suspicions.
Clutching his head, Neo stumbled backward.
His gaze darted across the room.
A messy bed stood at its center. A wooden shelf occupied the right wall. To the left, a window stood at the centre of the wall covered by curtains.
This...this had to be a dream.
It had to be.
Sooner or later he would wake up in his own room, in his own body, and all of this would disappear.
Yet nothing felt like one.
It all felt real.
"No... NO!"
With a shout, he drove his fist into the mirror.
CRASH!
The glass exploded into countless shards.
A sharp pain shot through his hand.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood dripped from his knuckles and splattered onto the floor.
Neo froze.
The pain was real.
As the blood continued to fall, his eyes landed on a jagged shard lying among the wreckage.
His reflection stared back at him.
Ash-colored hair.
Crimson eyes.
and a stranger's face.
And for the first time, Neo could no longer deny the truth.
he had been transmigrated.
***
"okaay..." neo sighed.
He couldn't undo the transmigration. But he could decide what to do next.
first things first, he need to know more about his current body, and confirm if he was even in the same world as before.
Neo walked toward the shelf and beagan searching.
As he searched through the books, it made his suspicion stronger- the language did not belong to his world at all.
as continued to search he stumbled upon a worn diary and a strange metalic device.
He picked up both and sat down at the bed.
The diary looked old, its pages yellowed and stained by neo's blood.
after cleaning his blood from the bed sheets he opened the diary and began reading aloud.
"Well... well... well. Since you are reading this, you may wonder "who I am, why I am here", and I'm pretty sure you have no previous memories of yours."
Neo paused.
That was already wrong.
He remembered everything - he knew he dinot have any "memory loss"
Frowning slightly, he continued.
"To start, your name... our name is Neo or more precisely it is neos, neo for short. To clarify your doubts further, you and I are the same. It's just that you have lost your memories, and it may be my fault."
"Our name, huh?" neo muttered under his breath
As he continued reading, the diary began describing the world.
Athero.
A world where magic existed.
A world where supernatural powers were part of everyday life.
A world entirely different from Earth.
The previous owner claimed he had intentionally erased his memories in preparation for something he himself couldn't accomplish.
Neo stood and walked toward the window. though the diary mentioned of a magical world, he was no fool to blindly belive the words of a diary.
Pulling back the curtains, he looked outside.
His thoughts came to a complete stop.
Floating islands drifted across the sky.
Carriages flying in the air.
People casually using magic as if it was no less than a miracle.
For several seconds, he simply stared.
Then he closed the curtains.
Magic was real.
Interesting.
Returning to the bed, he resumed reading.
The further he read, the darker his expression became.
According to the diary, a catastrophe would eventually consume the world.
A disaster capable of bringing civilization to an end.
And somehow, the responsibility of stopping it had landed on him.
"Of course it has."
Why simply wake up in another world when you could inherit an apocalypse too?
The diary continued, detailing fragments of future events, important individuals, and several techniques.
Then he reached to a strange page.
At the top was a strange sequence of symbols.
"Borgath vel umkroth, Xuán lóng bō rì..."
"Kreth vazul ombrik, rúnar ríst ek þér."
Neo blinked.
A ritual?
Only after finishing the final word did his eyes drift downward.
There, written beneath the chant in large letters, was a warning.
DON'T SPEAK IT ALOUD BEFORE READING THE FULL PAGE.
"..."
For a brief moment, neither moved.
Then the floor vanished.
"What?"
a huge pit was direcly beaneath him
His stomach lurched as he plunged into darkness.
he continued to fall as he was covered by the strange darkness.
as he fell a strange voice echoed in his head
[WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST TRIAL]