Something was wrong. Catastrophically, irrevocably wrong.
The thought never fully formed into words; instead, it settled as a cold, hollow void where panic should have flared and agony should have screamed.
Neriah lay broken on the dark edge of the road. He felt no abrasive asphalt against his skin, no chill seeping through his clothes, no trace of pain from the shattered bones he must have had.
By all rights, the hurt should have been blinding. Yet there was nothing, a vast, hollow numbness. His body refused to obey him, resting there as something distant and detached.
In that quiet stillness, he understood with terrible clarity: he was dying, even if he couldn't feel it.
A dozen yards away, the truck that hit him sat wedged sideway into the brick facade of a clothing store. Plumes of dust billowed into the night air, drifting in slow, ghostly curls. Shattered glass lay scattered across the road like frozen constellations, catching the dim glow of streetlamps while pulverized mortar drifted downward, settling in the cold breeze.
The cruelty of the timing cut deep. Just as the life he had worked so hard to build was finally beginning, it was snuffed out.
---
Across the street, a handful of onlookers stood frozen on the pavement: two friends on their way to a club, a businessman in a suit heading home, a loiterer lingering on the corner, and a few shopkeepers stepping out into the cold air.
Only seconds earlier, the street had been quiet.
The two friends broke into a run toward the smashed storefront.
"I've called an ambulance!" one shouted, shoving his phone into his pocket as he yanked at the truck's crumpled cab door.
"Let's get the driver out before it gets worse!"
The other peered through the spiderwebbed windshield. "He's slumped over the steering wheel, looks like a head injury!"
---
Near the curb, the man with tattooed forearms, the one who had been loitering on the corner, finally moved. He possessed a broad, imposing build, the kind of person Neriah would normally have steered clear of on an empty street, but now he dropped smoothly onto one knee beside him.
The harsh, shallow rattle of Neriah's breath seemed to draw him closer. In Neriah's wide, glazing eyes, desperate pleading burned through the fog.
"Can you hear me?"
Neriah tried to nod, but his neck wouldn't answer. His lips parted, trembling as he forced out a faint, slurred whisper: "Am I… going to be okay?"
"Hey. Look at me." The man's voice was low, steady, almost soothing. "Stay with me, alright? Help is already on the way. You're going to be fine."
While holding Neriah's gaze, the man slipped a practiced hand into the front pocket of Neriah's hoodie. His fingers closed around a phone, not to dial for help, but to pocket it. A brief glint of satisfaction passed over the thief's face as he pulled the device free. It was a brand-new flagship model. He had spent the evening tailing the businessman across the street hoping for an opening, without luck, but this disaster had handed him an effortless score.
He cast a quick, calculated glance around. The two club-goers were wrestling with the truck door, the businessman had vanished around the corner, and the few remaining witnesses were huddled in shock.
Standing up, the man pressed the stolen phone to his ear, feigning urgency as he backed away into the shadows.
"Hello? Yes, is this the family of the person who owns this phone?"
He spoke loud enough for nearby ears to catch. It was a seamless performance. The phone was gone, stolen out from under him, but Neriah could hardly bring himself to care.
---
The terrifying uncertainty of his failing body tightened around his chest.
On this four-way intersection. When the pedestrian signal glowed green, the road was clear, but Neriah had waited a beat out of habit before stepping off the curb.
The truck came out of nowhere from his right, no horn, no warning, only the sudden, deafening roar of an engine accelerating violently into the crossing.
He had barely managed to turn toward the sound, eyes blown wide in the blinding high beams. Even if he had tried to run, there wouldn't have been time.
The impact had been cataclysmic. It wasn't just a sound; the shockwave rattled his skeleton, bruised his organs, and set every tooth vibrating in his jaw. The heavy metal grille slammed into him with the sheer momentum of a wrecking ball, launching him into the air. For one weightless, suspended second, he hung above the asphalt before crashing down, bouncing and rolling across the road like a broken toy.
When he finally skidded to a halt, the world went dead quiet. The squeal of locked tires and the thunderous crash into the brick wall were instantly swallowed by a high-pitched, suffocating ring.
Lying on his side, eyes fixed toward the wreckage, his first instinct had been simple: *Get up.* But no command reached his limbs.
His mother was waiting for his call. He had promised to ring her the moment he reached his apartment, knowing that every passing minute would only stoke her worry. The thought of failing her stung, he was supposed to prove he could stand on his own feet, an independent adult, yet here he was, ruined because he hadn't paid enough attention.
Those, however, were the petty regrets of a man who still believed he had a tomorrow.
For a brief span, hearing voices and seeing the street lights tricked him into thinking he would pull through that this was just a bad dream from which he'd awaken.
Then the fog crept in. His thoughts scattered, slipping like sand through his fingers. His vision darkened around the edges.
His eyelids grew impossibly heavy, each passing second demanding more effort than he possessed to keep them open.
The awful, unyielding truth finally took hold: *I'm dying. I am actually dying. Not down the road, not in some distant future. Right now.
The weight of that finality crushed him. He was far too young. He wasn't ready to let go. There was an entire lifetime left unlived, an endless list of things he still wanted to see and do.
His eyelids surrendered to the dark. Sight failed him completely.
Every promised tomorrow, every unmapped future, evaporated into nothingness.
And in that exact instant, torn violently away from a dying reality, Neriah opened his eyes somewhere else entirely.
---
Deep in an ancient forest, a strange sprout pushed through the rich loam. Two vibrant, jade-colored leaves parted like opening shells, framing a slender stem that coiled upward in an elegant spiral.
As it reached toward the canopy, the stem thickened, crowned by a massive, luminous bud. Shimmering with an ethereal blue radiance, the star-shaped bud began to stir. Emerald sepals peeled back, releasing layers of velvety blue petals that unfurled in a slow, graceful bloom.
At the heart of the blossom, resting on a soft, fragrant bed, lay a young boy curled in a tight fetal embrace, knees tucked against his chest. The satin petals cupped him like a protective cradle, pulsing with a quiet, soothing energy.
Shaking off the heavy residue of sleep, Neriah forced his eyes open. Pale, brilliant light flooded his vision, resolving through a blur of drifting motes.
He paused, letting his senses adjust.
With sluggish, uncertain limbs, he pushed himself upright and looked around the unfamiliar space.
Where the hell am I?
He turned his head, bewildered. The world around him was unnervingly vivid, its colors saturated beyond anything in nature. It felt like standing inside an oil painting or an alien rainforest.
Colossal, ancient trees rose around him, yet their proportions were uncanny: too tall, too symmetrical, with leaves bearing a strange, iridescent hue he couldn't name. Gnarled trunks and massive boughs tangled with hanging vines, weaving an unbroken canopy high above. Moist bark glistened in the soft ambient light, while thick roots spread across the mossy floor like slumbering serpents.
Strange birds with melodious calls flitted between branches, their songs blending with the rustle of a gentle breeze. Deeper within the timber, wood groaned and settled under the steady, omnipresent hum of unseen insects.
The air smelled rich and damp, a heady blend of sweet petrichor, dark loam, and vibrant vegetation, alive with both relentless growth and ancient decay.
Golden sunlight spilled through breaks in the canopy, painting the ground in sharp, dappled patterns.
Neriah climbed to his feet.
Something strange remained fixed directly on his right in a line of sight: a translucent interface floating in the air, crisp and jarring against the organic scenery, as if a HUD from a video game had been projected onto his retinas. A luminescent blue bar hovered before him, and beneath it, clean typography read:
\[Combat Mode: skill mode]
«HUD» SP: 500
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Panic arrived in distinct waves. First came stubborn, reflexive denial.
This isn't real. This can't be happening.
Then followed the cold, pragmatic chill of survival.
If this is real... what am I supposed to do?
Drawing a slow breath, Neriah tried to steady his racing pulse. He raised his hands to eye level and froze in astonishment. They looked pristine, small, smooth, rendered with an uncanny perfection that felt closer to a character model than living flesh.
He turned his left hand over. The small scar on his thumb, a keepsake from an accident in the kitchen when he was twelve had completely vanished. His skin was smooth and unblemished in the filtered sun. The warm, humid air washed over him, and beneath his bare feet, the solid loam held firm.
"Did I get Isekai'd ?" he muttered aloud, his voice trembling in the vast quiet. "Am I stuck inside a game, or dumped into some anime world?"
Struggling to make sense of his surroundings. None of it added up.
He forced himself to think rather than spiral: facts over panic. He remembered the truck, the impact, the dark street, and his old life with total clarity. The notion that he had been run over only to wake up in an anime trope sounded absurd.
Transmigration was fiction an escapist fantasy from web novels and stories. Years ago, he might have daydreamed about this: drafting character builds, unlocking starter skills, naming an inevitable sword, and setting off to fight a demon king or become a hero.
Yet facing it now, he felt no thrill. Only profound disorientation.
If he was truly dead, he should be in an afterlife. He had done his share of good and bad deeds in roughly equal measure, surely enough to warrant some peaceful paradise rather than the indifferent wilderness of a place that didn't know or care whose story had landed in it.
Where was the deity? The god, goddess, angel, or demon who had pulled his soul from the threshold of death?