A young man lay on a narrow bed, curled slightly under a thin blanket. The room around him was quiet — the kind of silence that didn't come from peace, but from stillness, like the world was waiting for something to move first.
The bed creaked lightly as he stirred. Against the dull sheets, his figure shifted. He brought a hand to his head, groaning softly.
I try to wake up... but I feel oddly heavy today.
The thought formed slowly, dragging itself through a fog of discomfort.
Maybe I didn't sleep well...
His eyes fluttered open, but the darkness around him made it hard to tell if they were open at all. No sunlight. Just shadows. He blinked again, trying to focus.
Weird. Did I wake up too early?
Still groggy, his gaze moved slowly across the ceiling, following the faint outlines of pipes snaking around the room. They ran from one end to the other like veins in an old, iron body, converging at a lamp in the corner. A steam lamp — copper-topped, with dark brass coils and a glass cylinder, like something repurposed from the Iron Age. It hummed faintly, its pilot flame a ghost of amber in the gloom.
His eyes drifted toward the window. A table sat just beneath it, and on that table were books. Lots of them. Stacked with purpose, not clutter. Their thick, dull covers didn't belong to stories or novels. They were academic — heavy with ink and expectation.
Beside them lay a yellowed notebook, half-covered in scribbles and bent at the corners, as if someone had passed out on it mid-sentence. A pen rolled slightly as a breeze pushed through the cracked window.
This was a room someone lived in. Someone methodical. Someone... alone.
He blinked again. Right. Me.
He forced himself to sit up, but the motion felt strange — off-balance. As if his body didn't quite respond the way it should. His feet found the ground, but when he stood, the floor tilted unexpectedly. His knees buckled, and he grabbed the edge of the bed just in time to stop himself from falling.
What... the hell?
He stood there for a moment, trying to get his bearings.
The room wasn't that dark. The moonlight streaming through the window was soft, clear enough to paint gentle silver shadows along the floorboards. The walls were bare except for more of those pipes, coiled and clamped. The drawer near the corner was closed, the handle glinting faintly in the moonlight.
He took a few unsteady steps toward the table, pressing a hand to the edge to steady himself.
Where... is this?
His breath came slow, shallow.
Where am I?
And then the question twisted, folding inward like a reflection in a broken mirror.
Who am I...?
The words barely left his mouth before the pain hit.
It came without warning. A stabbing, splitting agony that tore through his skull like a spike driven through bone. His vision shattered. He dropped to his knees with a strangled gasp, hands clawing at his head as if he could rip the pain out with his fingers.
It wasn't just pain. It was something being forced in. Memories. Names. Faces. Dates. The ache of something once known being shoved back into a place that had forgotten it.
He groaned. Then screamed.
And then, silence.
He lay there for a while, on the floor, unmoving. Slowly, the pressure in his skull ebbed, leaving behind a sharp coldness and a sense of displacement. He rolled to his side, eyes blinking at the underside of the table.
His mind was quiet now, but filled.
He knew his name.
Millet.
Seventeen years old.
An orphan of the United Sovereign Empire — USE.
A scholarship student in the National University, second-year commerce. Admitted by luck, really. His entrance exam scores were good, but not extraordinary. Still, they had caught someone's attention.
The emperor's.
Velyun the Third (III).
That name rang like a bell in his memory now. The ruler who had overturned centuries of closed gates, who had thrown open the halls of learning to the commonborn. A radical, some said. A savior, others whispered.
Millet had been lucky. In another era, he would never have touched a book, let alone held a scholarship scroll with the imperial seal. Now he had a room. Books. Classes. A future.
He lived alone, in an apartment just outside the city limits of Aerith — the shining capital of USE.
But none of that explained the feeling in his chest.
He sat up slowly. The cold of the floor had seeped into his skin, but he barely noticed. His eyes turned toward the table, then the window.
He pushed himself to his feet and walked to it.
The horizon was faint now, lit by the first brush of dawn. Across the outskirts, he could see sparse lights in other houses. Some already awake, some still asleep. Streetlamps flickered faintly near the edge of his vision, dying embers of the night.
And then... he looked up.
He froze.
In the sky above, two moons hung silently.
Not reflections. Not illusions. Real. One slightly larger, glowing with a soft blue hue. The other, dimmer, casting a pale silver like ash on snow.
Two moons.
He stared.
This wasn't Earth.
This wasn't the world he knew — or the one he thought he knew.
Wait... so did I transmigrate?
The thought came slow, almost reluctant.
Why can't I remember who I was... before here?
His hands gripped the edge of the windowsill as if grounding himself in the wood would anchor him to something real. Something certain.
I know I'm not of this world...
The breeze pushed gently through the window again, carrying with it the scent of iron and old smoke. Millet looked out one last time, watching the quiet city beyond the fields, the silent buildings, the blinking stars.
And above it all — the twin moons of the Mythborn World.