"Damn... the pain is far too real to be a dream."
Those were the first words that escaped from between his cracked, parched lips-his voice hoarse and foreign to his own ears, as though someone else were speaking through him. He tried to swallow, but his throat was as dry as a barren desert, and a strange bitter taste filled his mouth. The young man forced his eyes open, only to find that the bleak grey ceiling of his cell in Blackrock Prison had vanished, replaced by an infinite canopy of interlocking branches that veiled the sky like an enormous green dome. The light filtering through the leaves was sickly and pale, casting long, menacing shadows across the ground.
The smell of mould and damp that he had grown accustomed to in prison-that smell which had seeped into his very pores over the years-had been replaced by the scent of wet earth, dead pine needles, and a sharp, nauseating metallic odour... the smell of fresh blood, unmistakable to a nose that had been schooled in violence. He tried to sit up, but his head spun in a violent wave of nausea, as though an iron hammer were striking the inside of his skull. He braced himself on the ground with a trembling hand, his fingers touching cold, wet moss. He looked around in bewilderment. There were no guards with stone-cold faces, no rusted iron bars, no screams of prisoners being beaten. Only a dense and forbidding forest stretching in every direction-trees massive with gnarled trunks like tensed muscles-and a heavy silence broken only by the wind rustling through the leaves like the whispers of lost souls.
He reached into the breast pocket of his velvet shirt-a fine garment he would never have worn in his previous life, where rags were the norm-and withdrew a carefully folded piece of paper, its texture heavy and smooth, as though fashioned from the finest imported parchment. For the twentieth time since waking, he read the words inscribed in an elegant, gilded hand, the ink shimmering with a faint lustre in the forest light:
"Dear Mr Dex Williams, it is with great pleasure that the administration of Horizon Academy informs you of your success in the preliminary selection. We cordially invite you to join the Academy at the beginning of next month to complete your enrolment procedures. For further details, please use the enclosed Mana seal..."
His hand trembled as he held the letter, as though the page weighed a tonne. "Dex Williams? Horizon Academy? What is this nonsense? Have I finally lost my mind?" He raised his hand to feel his face-his fingers met smooth skin, free of the coarse scars and unkempt stubble he had accumulated over years in prison. He looked down at his hands: they were pale, clean, with long and elegant fingers like those of a pianist or an artist-not the rough, swollen hands that had grown accustomed to breaking stones and hauling weights.
"For the love of hell... this is not my body."
Memories surged into his mind like a violent flood, sweeping everything in its path. The last thing he could remember was chaos... the dusty prison yard, the roar of furious inmates, the manufactured riot used as cover for something far larger, and then that cold and burning pain all at once as the blade-a serrated dagger-sank into his left side, tearing through his organs. He remembered the rough ground cold against his cheek, the sounds fading away, the darkness swallowing him slowly, and the absolute certainty that he had died alone and forgotten. And yet here he was-breathing, feeling, suffering-but in another place, in another body that seemed younger and considerably more privileged.
"Don't tell me I've become one of those heroes from those trite novels who get reincarnated into other worlds," he muttered with bitter sarcasm, his voice echoing faintly between the trees as he struggled to absorb the surreal reality. "Wasn't death supposed to be the end of my miserable story? Must I suffer in another life as well?"
He rose with difficulty, leaning against the thick trunk of a tree carpeted in a dense layer of green moss-and there he saw them. Five bodies scattered before the entrance of a small, dark cave that looked like the mouth of a lurking beast. The scene was horrific: a bloody canvas painted by swords and daggers with callous abandon. He approached cautiously, the prisoner's instinct-that sixth sense that keeps you alive in an environment of killers-working at full capacity. He examined the bodies with an expert eye long accustomed to witnessing death in its most grotesque forms.
"Two of them are wearing noble attire similar to my own-fine silk and linen, light armour embroidered with some family's crest... a golden roaring lion?" he whispered, nudging one of the bodies with the tip of his polished leather boot. "They must have been this body's companions-personal guards, or perhaps close friends." The blood had dried on their armour, and their faces were frozen in expressions of terror and pain. "As for the other three..." his gaze shifted to the men clothed entirely in black from head to toe. Their garments were designed for concealment-lightweight and allowing silent freedom of movement-their faces covered by cloth masks that concealed every feature. "Professional killers," he concluded immediately, noting the quality of the weapons discarded beside them. "The method of killing is clean: strikes directed at lethal points on the neck and heart. These are no common brigands after money-these are professionals hired for a specific assignment: elimination."
Dex looked down at his chest, where he found a long vertical tear in his shirt directly over his heart, the area stained with dried blood that had formed a brown crust. He felt the skin beneath the torn fabric, but found no wound. The skin was completely intact, as though the stabbing had never occurred. "They succeeded in their mission," he realised with a coldness that sent a chill to the bone. "The original owner of this body-the true Dex-was indeed killed. A direct stab to the heart, causing instant death. But for some reason, when my soul entered this body, the wound healed-or perhaps some sacrifice was required to bring me here. A new body, an old soul."
He let out a slow breath, relief mingled with unease. "The only silver lining in all this chaos is that whoever sent these killers believes I am dead. The mission is complete-those who survived have departed and left the bodies to rot in the forest. That gives me the element of surprise... and time. The world believes Dex Williams to be a cold corpse, and that is the finest cover I could ever hope for."
He set to work. In prison, you learn never to let anything go to waste-not even what the dead leave behind. He approached the bodies and began searching them with a composure that would have driven any ordinary person to horror and revulsion. "I hate this, but necessity knows no law. I need every tool available to survive."
From the assassins, he took three sharp daggers forged from a dull black metal that seemed to absorb the light around it, along with two small vials: one containing a golden-yellow liquid with a powerful herbal scent-an antidote, perhaps-and the other a thick, dark green substance that appeared deeply toxic. From his fallen companions, he found a sturdy, high-quality leather backpack. He opened it eagerly, discovering a small fortune given his current circumstances: Academy enrolment documents sealed in red wax, a detailed map of the region, a full leather water canteen, and several compact provisions that resembled energy bars wrapped in wax paper.
"Good-enough to stay alive for a few days if I ration carefully." He stripped the assassins of their long black overcoats, useful for camouflage at night and warmth against the forest's bitter cold, and pulled one on over his tattered, blood-stained clothes.
He dragged the bodies away from the cave one by one, pulling them by their feet. The sun had begun to tilt toward dusk, and the shadows were lengthening, transforming into phantom monsters that danced between the trees. "I can't leave them here," he thought as he wiped cold sweat from his brow. "The smell of blood will draw every predator in this forest toward me. And I'm in no state to face even a wild rabbit, let alone a beast."
He used a sturdy, sharpened branch he found on the ground as a crude digging tool. The earth was hard and riddled with roots, and his new body-despite its healthy appearance-lacked the physical fitness and endurance he had known in his previous life. His muscles began screaming in protest, and his soft hands started to blister. After hours of gruelling effort, he had dug three shallow graves: a collective one for the assassins, and two separate ones for his companions-a final gesture of respect for their loyalty. "Rest in peace," he said in a hushed voice as he pushed the last of the earth over them. "You fought with courage, whoever you were. I hope you find the rest that I never found."
He returned to the cave exhausted, his body trembling from fatigue and cold. Darkness had devoured the forest entirely, transforming it into a world of impenetrable blackness and unknown sounds. He tried to sleep, but adrenaline and unanswered questions pumped through his veins like venom, keeping his eyelids from closing. He stepped out of the cave and sat on a cold rock at the entrance, attempting to organise his scattered thoughts. He raised his head toward the sky in search of stars-and the blood froze in his veins at the sight.
"I will never get used to this..." In the sky, there was not one moon as in his old world, but two. The first was a full, enormous moon, silver in colour, illuminating the forest with a pale and cold light, its surface scarred with craters and dark seas. Beside it floated a second, smaller moon, its colour tending toward a blood-soaked violet-and it was shattered. Half of it was entirely missing, and a vast field of glowing rocks and asteroids drifted around it in a slow, mournful cosmic dance: a silent witness to some ancient and devastating catastrophe that had once befallen this world.
"Twin moons... the name Williams... Horizon Academy... and this strange sensation of energy filling the very air..." He drew a deep breath and felt something flowing into his lungs with the air-something that was not merely oxygen, but a light, vital energy that tickled his chest and coursed through his veins like static electricity. "Mana. It's real here."
And then, without warning, as he muttered to himself, it appeared before him. A translucent blue screen floating in the air, rectangular in shape, its edges glowing with a neon light-exactly like those found in the video games and novels he used to read. "Status?" he whispered uncertainly, his voice trembling. The screen expanded, and letters and numbers appeared-but they were distorted, flickering and blinking as though there were a fault in the connection or interference in the signal. The only thing that was clear and stable was the name at the top: Dex Williams.
"There is no room for doubt now," he rested his head in his hands and felt a hysterical laugh trying to claw its way out of his chest. "I have been reincarnated inside the world of 'Ekarthas'-the world of the novel 'Legend of the Silver Dragon'."
He remembered the novel he used to read in the prison library to kill the long, tedious hours. An epic fantasy in three massive volumes, of which he had only managed to read the first two before his life was cut short by that treacherous stab. "Of all the worlds in existence, why this cursed one? And why this character?" He tried to recall everything he knew about "Dex Williams." The memory was hazy-the character had been utterly marginal, barely worth a mention. "He was referenced only twice... only twice, and only in the first arc of the novel, the Academy arc. The first time, he was mentioned in passing during a conversation between professors wondering about his unexplained absence from the entrance examinations. The second time, he appeared as an unidentified corpse found in the forest months later," he recalled with bitterness and regret. "A side character? No-I'm less than that. I'm nothing but a cheap plot device used to showcase the forest's danger and the world's cruelty."