Now, in this alien room, trapped in a body utterly foreign, Archilles—no longer, but Oliver—stood paralyzed. His mind swarmed like disturbed bees, stinging every attempt at comprehension. Everything felt blurred, beyond reason. He couldn't accept this—thrust into a reality not even his wildest nightmares could paint. If this was a new body… did it mean Archilles was dead? Then… who was Oliver? And the cruelest cut: Why had he hijacked another's flesh? Was this… transmigration? A cliché straight from fantasy novels—Wait.
Fantasy world.
The phrase echoed. Transmigration—impossible on Earth. But… if God willed it, anything could happen. Why, though? Why extend this mercy to him? A sinner unworthy of breath? His life as Archilles was already thorned with regrets buried deep—Audrey. The name stabbed, piercing two souls at once: the lost soul of Archilles and the stolen soul of Oliver. This body was a new prison. How could he ever face Audrey wearing another's face? The guilt was Oliver's too—the original soul likely erased by his uninvited presence. A double sin, choking him.
Shitty fate! His inner voice raged, chaos consuming him. Denial was futile: his escape had birthed a transmigration. Fingers brushed his temple. Dried blood crusted like burnt caramel, flaking when touched. No wound. No puncture, no pain—just frozen, dried theater, a grotesque mask. Everything was intact, as if this body had been stitched whole from shattered fragments.
He shut his eyes, drawing a shaky breath. The room's air—once merely cold and foreign—turned oppressive. Damp cold crept over his skin like living moss, seeping through pores, freezing sweat at his temples. He felt watched, as if invisible eyes lurked in every murky corner.
Oliver rose, joints stiff as wooden puppetry. His gaze scoured the derelict hut: creaking floorboards, cobwebbed table, the oil lantern's pallid flame—and there, hidden beneath the table's shadow, a dagger lay coiled like a sleeping serpent. He crouched slowly, knees popping. Fingers traced the rough, sticky wooden hilt… Lifted it. The blade reflected the dim light—entirely sheathed in dried blood, black as starless night. Oliver's blood. Blood that flowed when this wolf-fanged steel pierced his temple, ending the original soul's torment.
He gripped the death-bringer until his knuckles whitened. Lips trembled, imagining that cold steel tearing flesh, stabbing bone, and—in an instant—draining life like spilled wine. Again, the question haunted: How was this corpse-body whole? As if his presence had magicked the mortal wound shut with new flesh.
Trembling, he stood.
The crushing silence shattered—
CRACK!
—like a thick branch snapping right outside the window!
Oliver flinched as if whipped, heart hammering like a caged bird. His eyes darted wildly, scouring breathing shadows… Nothing. But instinct screamed: Wrong.
With a panicked motion, he snatched the ancient lantern from the table. Its wavering orange light danced across cracked wooden walls like wrinkles on an old face. The blood-crusted dagger remained clutched in his right hand—grip so tight the wooden handle groaned.
Cold, wet dread slithered down his spine—ghost fingers tracing bone. He stepped slowly, letting the dying light scour the darkness. Flickering tongues of illumination revealed a dust-choked room veiled in cobwebs. A rotted wooden door loomed ahead, but primal instinct screamed danger. The air there hung colder, fouler—a grave's open maw. As the lantern swung left, the room's right corner plunged into thickening shadows, swallowing the bloodstained bench—silent witness to death's embrace.
His knuckles whitened, dagger-grip turning vicelike. Amidst the panic, a memory fragment struck like lightning:
SREEK!
A door slams open. Naive Oliver—face corpse-pale—stumbles in, clutching the same dagger, still gleaming clean. A broken voice rasps: "Forgive me, Brother… It ends here… Don't seek me. I'm… worthless trash… unworthy of our name." Tears stream down hollow cheeks. He sinks onto the corner bench, stares at the dusty ceiling—final preparation before driving the blade home.
The memory snapped—like torn film. One stark fact remained: Oliver's elder brother. Rage detonated in his chest. "Ahhh, vile!" he roared. Blind fury propelled his dagger-clenched fist—BRUUK!—into the wooden door! Splinters exploded. The impact shuddered up his arm, rattling the lantern in his other hand to his very ribs.
In that shattered moment, the door became a time-warped window. The memory offered bitter truth: this hijacked body wasn't an empty vessel—it held wounds, sorrow, and… harmony? with an abandoned brother. Now, that legacy was his curse—the seed of a gnawing need to uncover Oliver's story.
He felt dragged into Oliver's whirlpool of identity. This was the only path—while his mind clawed for a way home to Audrey, his flesh and blood. His mouth gaped, drawing a breath like inhaling glass shards. He wrenched his fist from the ruined door. Through the jagged hole, night's thickness seeped in—a sliver of moonlight swept his face, cold and accusatory.
Consciousness reeled. Wild emotion had drowned fear, burying it in dark waters. Now, he stood stranded on bitter reality's shore.
His resolve crystallized. He accepted it—he was merely a thief. A thief who'd stolen another's flesh—Oliver's flesh; a naive man shackled by fate. He would bear that burden. He must unearth this body's identity. He must accept Archilles' death: He was Oliver now.
Archilles Amande was gone.
Only scorching longing for Audrey remained—the last harbor for a lost soul. Audrey was home. Not merely a destination, but a sacred responsibility, the final legacy of Archilles' remorseful spirit—no vengeance toward his family, only the crushing weight of his own failure.
Now, to be unite with Audrey Amande.
But this time… he might approach as a stranger—unrecognizable. A body not his own. A voice not his timbre. No hatred lingered for the family that exiled him—that expulsion was consequence, not injustice. The failure was Archilles' alone. Now, this new Oliver bore the weight of two shattered souls.
It began here, beneath the moon's gaze, yet trapped within wooden walls: thumb and forefinger gripping the door handle, other fingers locked white-knuckled around the dagger's blood-crusted hilt. The door opened with a long, ghostly screech, freeing him from the wooden tomb where Oliver died. The derelict hut faded behind—a grave for Archilles, a cradle for this reborn Oliver.
Bare feet met trembling wet grass. Frost-dew stabbed his skin, cold climbing his calves like phantom claws. Helpless grassy blades hissed against his soles—thousands of unseen fingers trying to halt him. The forest swallowed him: trees loomed like natural prison bars, leaves rustling in a dark tongue. The stench of wet earth and rotting fungus choked him—the scent of a living grave.
At the forest's edge, a broken branch lay beneath a leafless, gnarled tree—likely the source of that earlier snap. His gaze lingered. The darkness behind it… breathed. As the old adage warned: stare into the abyss, and it stares back.
He shook his head slowly, steeling himself. The lantern in his left hand fought back drowning shadows; the dagger in his right—still lethal beneath its carapace of blood—felt like an extension of his bone.
Cold from the grass seeped into him, root-deep. When he raised the lantern, its light split the night: left and right, colossal trees stood sentinel like hell's guardsmen, their leaves whispering in dead languages. But ten paces from the hut—silence fell. No crickets, no wind, only stillness sharp as a blade at his throat.
Primal instinct whispered: this hush heralds the unwanted. The forest had gone mute, its ethics shattered by something… superior.
He forced a step. Feet dragged like chained weights. Then—he felt it. Something watched from the night's veil—a cold gaze clinging to his spine like a venomous slug. Every hair stood erect; blood froze in his veins.
He turned, staring back at the grass-trampled path.
Two pale-yellow eyes ignited in the dark—unblinking—nailed to him like spikes. A wolf, black as damned souls, fur devouring light like a void. Sleek as a husky, yet vibrating with predatory grace. Not a pack hunter. Not a forest guardian. Alone—a living tombstone. A toxic contradiction: no wolf should be blacker than sin, braving solitude in this silent night, radiating the calm menace of a little deity.
Oliver froze. The lantern trembled. Instinct screamed to flight—yet his muscles halt. In the beast's eyes, he saw his own fate mirrored: hurled into an alien world, alone, unwelcomed by nature's laws.
Yet—why did fear dissolve?
He drew breath deep into his lungs—scenting wet earth, dried blood, and the inevitable musk of destiny—then exhaled slow as a dirge. His feet did not retreat. His dagger did not rise. He simply stood, accepting the night-guardian's presence like one accepts a storm. This was no encounter. It was surrender to reality—an embrace of fate carved in shadow.
The blood-crusted dagger remained in his grip, but its hold was no longer born of terror—
It was an oath.
An oath that this darkness was the soil of his new path. That the wolf before him might be the compass in his void.
He did not step back. Did not advance. Only stood rooted, letting the dying lantern paint both their faces—the wolf's and his own. Two castaways on destiny's shore, measuring the abyss between them. In the killing silence, Oliver's lips curved into a smile bitter as iron filings.
Audrey…
His pilgrimage to her began here—
In dialogue with the night.