"Am I going to die?" Liam whispered. Blood poured from the gashes across his chest and arms, warm and slick against the dirt. His body was mangled in too many places to count. Each breath dragged shards of broken ribs deeper into his lungs.
His knees buckled. The forest tilted. As his vision blurred to a tunnel of gray, a cold blue glow burned across his sight.
*[Host has reached level 10]*
*[Host has met requirements]*
*[Starting transfer]*
Then Liam's body went limp. His heart stuttered once, twice, and stopped.
---
"Interesting." The voice was smooth, ancient, and bored. "I never thought this one would make it here."
Darkness swallowed Liam, but it wasn't empty. It pressed. It watched. When his body materialized, it wasn't flesh at first. It was fragments of light stitching themselves into the shape of a boy, strand by strand, in a realm where the sky was black glass and the ground pulsed like a heartbeat.
Liam gasped. Air that wasn't air filled his lungs. He staggered, clutching at wounds that no longer bled, but still ached in memory.
"Where am I?" His voice cracked. "Is this hell? It's way different than I imagined."
The answer was pressure. It slammed down on his shoulders like a mountain had decided to sit on him. His knees hit the ground before he knew he was falling. Bones creaked. Blood that shouldn't exist anymore beaded on his lips.
"Took you long enough," the voice said. It came from everywhere. From the ground. From inside his skull.
Liam forced his head up, teeth gritted. "Who are you? And where am I?"
The pressure doubled. His vision sparked white. "I will tolerate this sin of you talking to me without my permission this once," the voice said, each word a hammer to his spine. "You don't have much time left, so let me bring you up on details."
Liam couldn't speak. He could barely breathe.
"As you already know, your world is not real." The voice was almost amused now. "But it is not even a dungeon. I just told the system to tell you that. Even that Reynolds guy was not a cultivator from outside."
The weight eased by a fraction, enough for Liam to suck in a ragged breath. The black glass sky rippled, reflecting a thousand versions of his own broken face.
"So here is how things are going to be," the voice continued. "You are going to go to the real world and stuff, and your main mission is to get stronger. And I mean really strong. Don't worry. I have a surprise for you."
A pause. The pressure shifted, curious.
"I am telling you this because I don't want you to stop for a second and think of resting. Unless you are injured gravely, of course." The amusement sharpened. "Okay. I give you permission to ask me two questions. Be quick."
Liam's mind raced. His tongue felt like lead. He chose the one that had gnawed at him since the word 'real' was spoken.
"Why are you doing this?"
A chuckle that made the realm tremble. "Let's just say you are a necessary piece for my plan."
One left. Liam swallowed. His throat was dry as ash. He looked at his hands. They were whole here, unscarred, but they didn't feel like his.
"Am I real?"
Silence. For the first time, the voice hesitated. When it answered, the boredom was gone. Only something heavy, almost solemn, remained.
"Yes."
The word settled into Liam's chest like a stone.
"Okay, boy. It's time for you to go."
Before he could ask anything else, his body started crumbling. Not rotting. Not burning. Crumbling, like dry clay flaking away from a core. Flesh to dust. Dust to light. Light to a single, small red ball that hovered in the air, pulsing with a heartbeat that wasn't his.
"Your soul never seems to amaze me," the voice murmured, closer now, almost fond. "I wonder why you were locked up."
Then the ball vanished.
---
Sensation returned wrong.
Liam couldn't move. Couldn't open eyes he didn't have. He was warm. Wet. Confined. A steady _thump-thump, thump-thump_ surrounded him, vast and encompassing. It was louder than Reynolds' gale arts. More constant than his own heartbeat had ever been.
He tried to stretch. Something soft pressed back from all sides. He tried to breathe and felt liquid instead of air, but he wasn't drowning. He wasn't panicking. A deep, primal part of him understood: this was how it was supposed to be.
Memories flickered. The fight. The system. The voice. The crumbling.
He tried to curse, but he had no mouth. The thought echoed anyway, formless and furious.
Then it hit him. The rhythm, the warmth, the walls that flexed and held him. The muffled voices, distant and distorted, speaking a language he almost recognized.
_No._
_No, no, no._
"Am I in a fucking womb?"
The thought had no sound, but it roared through him with such clarity that the world—the warm, dark, living world—seemed to shudder in answer.
Outside, beyond the flesh and blood and bone that caged him, a woman hummed. Her hand rested on her stomach. And for a second, the child within kicked, hard.
Liam was alive. Again.
And somewhere, in a realm of black glass, a voice was smiling.