The night was colder than usual. The kind of cold that slid under jackets, slipped between bones, and crept straight into the heart.
Klein walked alone along an empty street, the distant buzz of city life swallowed by the mist rolling off the wet pavement. His breath clouded in the air like fading spirits, his footsteps echoing off graffiti-stained walls. It was the sort of night where nothing should happen—and yet everything was about to change.
A whisper brushed his ear.
He turned—no one.
Then the ground cracked beneath him.
A low hum filled the air, like the world had taken a breath it couldn't release. In a blink, a jagged tear in reality opened beneath his feet—a swirling vortex of dark crimson and shadow, like a bleeding wound in space.
He didn't have time to scream.
He fell.
And fell.
Through the dark, through something colder than death itself, through a void that felt alive. It clawed at his skin, pulled at his soul.
Then—
Pain.
White-hot, soul-flaying pain.
Like every memory he had was being burned, peeled, and rewritten.
He tried to cry out, but there was no mouth, no voice, no body—only a presence, floating in agony.
Until, suddenly, it stopped.
Klein opened his eyes.
The first thing he noticed was the silence.
Then the wooden ceiling above him—old, stained by time, lit by a soft golden glow. He blinked a few times. The light stung. His vision was blurry, his head pounding like war drums.
He sat up.
The room was small, lit by a single lantern hanging from a wooden beam. Books lay scattered across a crooked desk, a half-burnt candle still flickering nearby. The floor was uneven, and the window was shut tight with thick curtains.
And in the corner—an old, tall mirror stood.
Something felt wrong. Not just unfamiliar—wrong.
Klein stumbled to his feet, legs shaky. As if pulled by some unseen force, he walked to the mirror.
Then he froze.
The person staring back wasn't him.
The man in the mirror looked around nineteen or twenty, lean and pale like moonlight. His black hair fell messily over his forehead, and his features were sharp—too sharp, almost unnatural. His expression looked too calm… like someone who knew things he shouldn't.
But it was the eyes that held Klein's breath.
Each eye shimmered silver, like molten mercury. But in the center of his right eye, embedded in the iris itself, was a strange mark:
A half-crimson moon, inverted like a dying eclipse, with the crescent curving upward.
It pulsed faintly with light—not a reflection, but something alive, something watching.
And below it, three thin black lines spiraled outward in a sigil-like pattern, like veins or threads, or perhaps cracks in a glass orb.
His heart pounded. That's not normal.
He reached toward the mirror—but the reflection moved slightly before him, just a fraction of a second ahead. Not copying him—anticipating him.
He staggered back in horror.
"What… what is this…?"
Then the flood came.
Not of water—but of memories.
Images poured into his mind—memories not his own. Foreign thoughts. Strange names. Symbols he had never seen before. Ancient rituals whispered in dead languages. A boy kneeling before a black monolith under three moons. A city built on top of its own grave. A name spoken like a curse: "Veritas."
The sensation was like drowning in someone else's life.
Ten minutes passed. Or ten hours. Time lost all meaning.
When it ended, Klein dropped to his knees. His breath was shallow, his body trembling, his thoughts—fragmented.
"I'm… not on Earth," he whispered. "I transmigrated..."
He looked down at his trembling hands. His skin was paler now, thinner. His heartbeat felt strange—not faster, but deeper, like it was echoing from somewhere far beneath his chest. Something was beating with it, like a second rhythm. Faint. Hollow. Alien.
"And this body..." he whispered, staring at the mirror again.
It was also called Klein.
Why?
Coincidence? Fate? Or something darker?
He glanced back at the mirror one more time, and for just a second, he thought the eye in the reflection winked at him—though he hadn't blinked.
The crimson crescent shimmered.
And somewhere, faint and distant, a voice—not human—laughed.