Freezing.
That was the first sensation.
Bone-deep, skin-stinging cold that bit at his flesh like a thousand invisible needles.
Millet's eyes flew open.
He gasped, breath catching in his throat — a cloud of steam blooming from his mouth as he exhaled. The ceiling above was not his room. Not plaster. Not shadowed wooden beams.
The sky.
Vast and ink-dark, scattered with stars — endless, chilling.
And no moon.
Just a sky full of silent stars… and a pale orange smear crawling over the distant edge of the horizon, like paint bleeding from the sun before it fully woke.
Millet jolted upright.
His hands dug into powdery snow.
Snow?
His breath hitched. The cold stabbed into his lungs like knives. He was sitting in it — in thick snow piled over cracked stone. His fingers were already going numb.
Millet's heart slammed against his chest.
The silence screamed.
He shot to his feet, arms wrapped tight around his torso, and staggered back a step. His boots crunched against the frost. Snow fell in slow sheets from the sky, pale and quiet and endless.
He turned in circles, eyes wide.
Where is this?
The mountains rose like dead titans around him — black cliffs laced with white. Wind screamed between the rocks, fierce and sharp and wild. The narrow path he stood on looked barely intact, a ruined trail snaking along the side of a steep cliff. To his left, a jagged wall of stone. To his right…
Millet crept closer.
He looked down.
Mist. Thick, churning. It rose in swirls from below, swallowing the drop in a blanket of pale vapor. He couldn't see the bottom.
Couldn't even guess how high he was.
His breath was unsteady. He stepped back quickly, his foot slipping slightly on ice. He pressed himself against the cliff wall, chest heaving.
How… how did I get here?
His voice trembled in the freezing wind.
"I was just…"
He swallowed hard.
"I was just in bed. Sleeping…"
The wind didn't answer.
"I was in the apartment. I remember it. I… I ate fruit. Wrote in the notebook. Then I went to sleep."
Millet gripped his arms tighter. The cold had gotten into his bones. His jaw trembled as his teeth chattered.
"I'm… still wearing the same clothes. Same coat."
He looked down. The brown overcoat was already soaked in snow. His trousers were damp at the bottom.
"This isn't… another transmigration. It can't be."
But even as he said it, doubt crept in.
Because nothing made sense.
First, he had awoken in a world he didn't recognize — with fragments of another life, playing the part of a man he wasn't sure he was. And now, barely a day later, he woke up again…
Somewhere else entirely.
No explanation. No message.
Just… cold.
Millet pressed his back tighter against the rock wall. He couldn't feel his fingers anymore. His nose burned. The wind howled louder — rising, sweeping snow into his face. He squinted through it, trying to find shelter, a cave, anything—
Then he heard it.
BANG!
It wasn't thunder.
Not wind. Not stonefall.
A sound like something heavy slamming onto the broken trail ahead.
Millet's body snapped toward the noise.
His heart skipped.
Down the path — maybe twenty meters ahead, at the bend where the trail curved around the mountain — something was there.
Something big.
At first, all he saw was a white shape.
But then the shape moved.
Millet squinted, eyes darting.
The light was dim — just enough from the rising sun to bleed soft gold into the mist and snow. The thing stood three meters tall, maybe more. It was covered in thick white fur, rippling slightly in the wind. But along its flanks… green.
Green liquid-like streaks.
Like glowing veins or… wounds?
Two massive, trunk-like tusks jutted from either side of its face, long and cracked at the edges. Its shoulders were wide, its arms thick as tree trunks. Snowflakes steamed as they touched its fur.
And then Millet saw its eyes.
Blank. White. Lidless.
They glowed faintly, like two frozen stars locked in a monster's skull.
They were staring at him.
But Millet didn't see that.
Not yet.
His mind was too busy breaking apart, trying to understand the shape before him.
"What… what is that?"
His voice was quiet. Fragile.
He stepped back once, slowly.
The creature didn't move.
He stared at it. Searched his memories — not just from this world, but whatever scraps of the other life lingered in his mind. No beast like this. Nothing even close. Not in books. Not in history. Not even in nightmares.
His breath caught in his throat again.
Snow swirled around them.
And then it moved.
No warning.
No roar.
The thing just leapt.
Its feet crashed into the stone, exploding frost in every direction, as its massive body surged forward with impossible speed — a blur of white and green and monstrous weight.
Millet's eyes went wide.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Only instinct remained.
Fight or flee.