He woke with a throbbing headache, the dull, nagging kind that clung to his temples and made the light slipping through the blinds feel like a silent interrogation. Dawn had already broken somewhere beyond the narrow window, though he had not noticed when it happened. His body protested every movement, stiff and uncooperative after another all-nighter, and the two hours of sleep he had stolen in scattered fragments offered no mercy. Only a few weeks remained until his final thesis defense, the last obstacle before he could finally leave university behind, yet the list of tasks waiting for him seemed endless, sprawling through his thoughts like a maze without an exit.
He lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling, listening to the faint hum of the city waking up. As he lifted a hand to massage his temples, his thoughts began to drift in directions he could no longer control. Data still needed cleaning. Charts remained unfinished. A stubborn section of the discussion chapter sat untouched, glaring at him from memory alone. Emails from supervisors, reminders about documentation, and unresolved experimental results crowded together, pressing on him like a physical weight. He tried to stretch, hoping movement might loosen the tightness in his head, but the effort only sharpened the pain.
Tea, he thought. Always tea.
The thought was automatic, almost comforting. A small ritual that marked the transition from helpless exhaustion to forced functionality. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, trying to push away the fog of waking, but responsibility clung tighter than the haze. The coming weeks loomed over him, heavy with both anticipation and dread. He wondered, not for the first time, how he had ended up here. Pulled forward by deadlines, driven by obligation, and haunted by the simple desire to finish, he felt trapped in a cycle that promised relief only after one last, exhausting push.
As always, the morning depression hit hardest.
It arrived without warning, crashing into him like a train that refused to slow down. Today, in his mind, it was a Japanese bullet train, sleek, unstoppable, and devastatingly precise. Growing up in a small country had taught him early what scarcity felt like. Only one or two shops carried what much of the world took for granted, and even then, availability was unreliable. His city moved at its own lethargic pace, content with stagnation, offering few real opportunities for students who lacked the right connections. Every chance to earn, every step toward independence, depended not on merit alone but on favors, networks, and names he did not possess.
The pressure built as his thoughts spiraled inward. He began tallying grievances as if the world owed him something. Every setback, every misstep, every wall raised by circumstance converged in the pale light of dawn. He wanted to blame the city, the system, and the randomness of luck itself. Anything that could explain why the path forward had always felt so narrow, so unforgiving.
Yet the sun continued to rise, indifferent to his thoughts. The day would not wait.
Work demanded attention. Studies needed to be completed. Research had to be pushed forward. Code required debugging and refinement. AI had eased parts of the burden, sparing him the hours once lost to manual coding, endless forum searches, and tutorial videos. Tasks that once consumed entire nights could now be completed faster, more efficiently. Still, the work itself remained stubbornly difficult. Testing, fixing, adjusting, and reworking filled the hours just as thoroughly as before. Faster did not mean easier. It never had.
His morning unfolded in fragments. Minutes slipped away into the haze of depression before he even noticed. Emails demanded responses. Notifications chimed relentlessly. Messages pulled him out of focus again and again. Then there was group work, coordinating with thesis teammates whose free time seemed perpetually devoted to everything except the project they all depended on. The struggle was never just the tasks themselves. It was the friction between people, the delays, and the constant waiting while the clock continued to tick.
He knew he was not blameless.
He carried his own flaws, and he recognized them well enough. One of the largest was his addiction to online novels. For nearly ten years, he had lost countless hours to stories of transmigration and reincarnation, worlds built on second chances and rewritten destinies. Apart from smoking, it was the vice he never tried very hard to deny. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind lingered a faint, irrational hope that one day he might wake up somewhere else entirely. A world of magic and effort, where fate could be challenged directly and second chances were not fantasies but foundations.
This world, by contrast, felt painfully predictable. Life followed a script that rarely changed. School led to college. College led to university. University led to the endless competition of job hunting. Work paid just enough to survive. Marriage followed, if one was lucky enough to find someone willing to accept his flaws. Children came next, destined to struggle in similar ways. And eventually, there was waiting. For illness, accident, or time itself to end it all.
Ordinary. Far too ordinary.
So fiction became his refuge. A place where effort mattered, where growth felt tangible, and where life could feel limitless, even if only through a screen.
After what felt like hours spent tossing in bed, scrolling through updates, messages, and newly released chapters, he finally glanced at the time and realized barely an hour had passed. Time had stretched and twisted in the quiet misery of the morning. Habit eventually forced him to move. He dragged himself through the routine without thinking. Brushing his teeth. Washing up. Taking a shower. Letting warm water pound against his shoulders until his thoughts dulled enough to function.
When he finally looked into the mirror of the small washroom, he froze.
The reflection staring back was not what he wanted to see.
Thick, high-powered glasses distorted his eyes, lenses strong enough to warp the edges of his face. He had been wearing glasses since he was twelve or thirteen. Now, at twenty-five, he had gone through more pairs than he could remember. His black hair was thin and unkempt, something he half-heartedly blamed on the city's water, bad products, and any excuse he could find, though he knew genetics bore most of the responsibility. At least his beard offered some consolation, lending him a slightly rugged look he could almost call handsome on better days.
His body told a harsher story. A thin frame. Weak muscles. Years spent sitting in front of a computer or lying on his bed reading novels. Little exercise. A stereotypical nerd's body, he thought. Someone who wanted more from life but never quite reached far enough to grasp it.
They said that when a person hit the bottom, when there was nothing left to lose and nowhere left to go but upward, destiny sometimes extended a hand.
Today, it seemed that hand had arrived.
At first, he noticed it as a faint shimmer in the mirror, like the afterimage left behind by staring too long at a bright light. He blinked and leaned closer. Something was wrong. The washroom light was yellowish, warm, and dull. Yet the shimmer reflected back in blue.
A small blue dot hovered at the center of the square mirror.
He stared, holding his breath, waiting for it to vanish. Instead, the dot expanded, slowly at first, then with growing confidence. It spread outward until the mirror no longer reflected his room. The surface fractured into shifting patterns, a kaleidoscope of images that refused to stay still.
Each fragment showed a different version of himself.
Some were familiar, almost comforting. Versions of him without glasses, stronger and healthier, with full heads of hair and confident stances, men who looked as if effort had been rewarded and life had bent slightly in their favor.
Others were harder to face. Versions who carried the same face but were worn thin by years of compromise. Shoulders slumped, eyes dulled, expressions hollowed by disappointment. Versions who had given up quietly, who had accepted less not because they wanted to, but because they had stopped believing anything else was possible.
And then some forms went far beyond discomfort. Alien reflections shaped by unfamiliar biological laws, bodies that had evolved along paths far removed from carbon-based life, yet still carried something unmistakably his.
He could not focus on all of them at once. Some blurred into shapes he could not name, but he felt them. A calm awareness. An instinctive recognition. Each reflection looked into its own mirror or reflective surface, yet somehow into him at the same time.
He understood without explanation. In that moment, across countless parallel worlds, every version of himself was staring back. They were aware of one another. Watching. Waiting.
Then the reflections began to overlap.
The countless versions folded inward, layering over each other as if reality itself were compressing. Separation vanished. Boundaries dissolved. Everything collapsed toward a single point of impossible density.
A spark ignited.
A brilliant flash erupted from the mirror, sharp and overwhelming. Light flooded his vision. Stars burst behind his eyes. He shut them instinctively, heart pounding, convinced something irreversible had just occurred.
When he opened his eyes again, his vision still stinging, everything appeared unchanged.
The washroom was the same. The mirror remained ordinary. The walls are dull and close. The smell of soap and water remains unchanged. For a brief moment, he wondered if exhaustion had finally driven him to hallucinate.
Then he noticed the door.
It was on the wrong side.
His breath caught as he stared at it, his mind insisting the door had always been on the opposite side. He stepped into the hallway cautiously. The space felt familiar yet wrong, like a memory recalled incorrectly. His mother's room should have been directly across the hall. Instead, it sat to the left, its door closed, occupying a place it had never belonged to.
The hallway had not emptied. It had rearranged itself.
Unease crawled up his spine.
Outside, the street bustled with life. People moved normally at a glance, yet something felt off. Like an old photograph restored too cleanly. As he focused on the details, the truth became impossible to ignore.
Everyone wore the same devices.
Small earpieces nestled in their ears. Thin glasses rested on their faces. Sleek, unobtrusive, and universal. This was not a wealthy city. Not a technological hub. In his world, such devices were rare outside the capital.
Here, they were everywhere.
Confusion tightened in his chest. He hurried back to his room and searched. And he found them.
Glasses. Earpieces.
His hands trembled as he put them on.
The world changed instantly.
Information layered itself over reality, intuitive and seamless. A calm voice spoke.
"Welcome back, Master Raziel. Good morning. You have much to do today. Shall we continue from where you left off?"
In that moment, doubt vanished.
He was no longer in his original world.