"Ahh—fuck, my head!"
Pain like a hammer to the skull ripped through him.
On a creaking, dust-choked bed, a young man with black hair and darker eyes jolted upright, gasping and drenched in sweat. His heart pounded like it was trying to punch its way out of his chest.
"Where… where am I?" he murmured.
The room was unfamiliar. Old wooden beams, flickering candlelight barely clinging to life, and air thick with mildew. Just as he tried to stand, a flood of memories slammed into him like a tidal wave.
"AHHH—!"
He grabbed his skull and screamed. Names, cities, sensations, pain—memories that weren't his, now were. After a few chaotic minutes, the pressure eased, leaving behind a cold realization.
"So… I really transmigrated into another world, huh."
He stared blankly at the wooden floor beneath his feet, breathing slow, shaky breaths. Emotions churned in him—confusion, disbelief, and above all, rage.
"Why me?! Of all the people in the world… why me?" he growled.
"There are people who would kill for this kind of fantasy crap. I'm not even some orphan chosen by fate. I had a normal life! A mother, a father, a sister. Not rich, not poor. I was fine!"
He stood and roared at the moldy ceiling.
"Just yesterday I was playing Umamusume and yelling at Golden Ship to hurry the hell up! Now I'm in medieval Hogwarts or some crap!"
From the ceiling above, a raspy, sleep-deprived voice thundered down like divine retribution.
"SHUT UP, YOU ASSHOLE! SOME OF US WORK TOMORROW!"
Ryuu froze.
Silence.
He coughed awkwardly, then glanced around. The room was small, bare-bones, and smelled like wet socks and moldy books. A candle on the corner table flickered like it was about to die of exhaustion. The wooden furniture looked like it had survived multiple plagues.
He sat back down slowly.
"Okay. Deep breaths. Calm down. Analyze."
Fifteen minutes of steady breathing later, Ryuu began sorting through the mess in his head.
"All right. Let's try logic. Why the hell did I get transmigrated?"
Aside from playing a gacha game all night and maybe swearing at the devs for bad RNG, he hadn't done anything stupid. No cursed artifacts. No god-bashing. No edgy rants about wanting to be a villain.
"I didn't even insult any webnovel authors recently…"
Nothing came to mind.
With a sigh, he stood and peeked out the window.
What he saw made him stop breathing.
Three moons hung in the night sky—one silver, one blue, and one red. They hovered together like silent judges watching a condemned man.
"…This is stupid," he muttered. "I already miss my home. I don't want any of this isekai suffering crap."
Crystal tears shimmered in his eyes before he wiped them away quickly, almost angrily.
"Second point. Identity. I'm… Y. Ryuu Goch. Twenty-two years old. Just graduated law school. Was living alone after refusing to marry some ugly girl my family picked."
He sat on the bed again, whispering to himself as he pieced everything together.
"This body's name is Ryuu Goch too. Lucky coincidence or cosmic joke. I'm in a world called Elynthe. This country is the Concord of Vaeldrun, somewhere in central-eastern Elynthe. The city I'm in is Myrian Vox — also called the City of Rings."
He looked back out the window.
Despite the hour, the city was far from asleep. Glistening with gaslamps, magical glyph lights, and faint violet auroras, the streets bustled with carriages drawn by horse-dragon hybrids. Robed figures walked beside armored guards, and metal airships hovered far above like sharks gliding in moonlight.
It looked like someone had taken Victorian London, added fantasy, and sprinkled in just enough madness.
"…Cool aesthetic," Ryuu admitted. "Still not worth losing my Wi-Fi for."
He sighed, scratching his head.
"Okay, so there's mana here. Magic. Supernatural forces. From what I can tell, people who use that stuff are called Harmonists or Vein-Binders—not totally sure, memory's fuzzy."
He frowned.
"Original Ryuu wasn't one of them. Just a regular guy with a law degree. Lived in the Sixth Ring, where normal folks live—those who couldn't form a pact with an Eidolon."
He remembered something else then—how the City of Rings worked.
Six concentric rings, each a district stacked in hierarchy. The closer to the center, the greater the power and privilege.
First Ring: Royalty.Second Ring: Nobles.Third to Fifth: Merchant lords, renowned Harmonists, scholars, guilds.Sixth Ring: Commoners, day laborers, outcasts.
He, of course, was living in the filthiest ring of them all.
"This place is a shithole," Ryuu muttered as he looked at the broken ceiling beam. "No internet. No running water. And this blanket smells like despair and piss."
He flopped back down.
"Forget it. I'll think more tomorrow. My head still hurts. I'll sleep, and when I wake up… maybe this'll all be a stupid dream, and I'll go back to yelling at anime horse girls."
He wrapped himself in the smelly, hole-ridden blanket, turned on his side, and closed his eyes.
…
Wait.
Why is it so quiet?
Why is it so… wrong?
I open my eyes.
There's no ceiling above me.
No roof. No stars. No sky.
Just this… seething, blood-colored cloudmass, pulsing and twisting like a living wound stitched together with veins of black lightning. The bolts flash in directions I didn't even know existed — sideways, inward, upward, inside-out.
My lungs freeze.
There's no sound. Not even silence. Just… this thick pressure, like the world is thinking too loudly.
And they aren't my thoughts.
They're broken fragments.
Angry. Whispers. Screams. Prayers. Laughing. Apologies. A chant in a language I don't know but understand anyway.
I try to sit up — but I'm already standing.
The ground beneath me isn't a floor. It's a patchwork of a thousand things: cobblestone… swamp water… metal grates… bones… and then—nothing at all.
I take a step and the stone beneath me squelches like meat.
I step again, and suddenly it's glass that shows me a reflection of myself — except it's not me. Not quite.
I blink.
Now the streets fold upward, like paper crumpling into the sky. Lanterns float in the air, glowing in colors that hurt to look at. They hum — not with light, but with… guilt. My guilt.
"You will fail her."
"You will lie again."
"You already have."
I stagger backward. "What the fuck is this?"
But my voice comes out as a feeling, not a sound.
I can't hear my own scream.
I try to run.
And find myself already there, wherever "there" was.
My heart is racing. My thoughts are slippery, dissolving in my head before I can hold onto them. My name flickers.
Ryuu.
Y.
Law student.
No—criminal, fugitive, Emperor, pretender—what?
I clutch my chest, breathing heavy. My hands are shaking.
Then I feel it.
Something vast. Immense. Not above me, not around me — behind everything.
A presence.
An Emperor.
Not one who rules with armies or crowns. One that undoes.
Unmakes.
And it sees me.
No—worse.
It recognizes me.
Like I've been missing from its puzzle for a long time, and now that I'm here, the picture's complete. I'm not intruding.
I belong.
I scream — or try to — and the air turns it into a memory of fear.
It tastes it. It likes it.
The air doesn't carry sound here. It carries meaning. Emotion.
I look around, desperate for anything familiar.
Then I see it.
A throne.
Just standing there in the distance. Not golden. Not ornate. Just there, waiting, as if someone had been sitting on it a moment ago. As if someone will be again.
I don't want to get closer.
But my feet are already moving.
Something inside me whispers:
This isn't the first time you've been here.
You forgot. That's all.
Welcome back.