Pain.
That was the first thing he felt when his consciousness resurfaced. It felt as if he was still being burnt alive in his lab.
With a gasp, his eyes snapped open and breath returned to his lungs. It took a couple of minutes but he eventually calmed himself down and his brain realized he was not in the lab anymore.
Laying still on what felt like a bed, Alexis was faced with a roof made of wood.... Wood that bugs had eaten a bit too much.
This definitely isn't the hospital
He thought to himself.
No hospital he knew of carried this kind of aesthetic.... Except maybe he had been in coma for so long that civilization had rewinded back to using wood and stone.
But even then, the air didn't feel right.
The scent was not of disinfectant or bleach. The smelt of dirt, mud and other scents he couldn't descerrn.
Slowly, he tried sitting up only to be hit by another wave of pain, forcing him back down as he let out a wince.
There was pain coming from his palms so he slowly raised them to where his eyes could see and he realized that they were completely wrapped up in a white cloth from the fingers as the way to his wrist.
But the makeshift bandages were not what caught his eyes. It was his hands...or rather, it wasn't.
Unlike his pale white skin these arms looked tanned, rough and filled with scars... Scars, Alexis didn't remember having.
He blinked in confusion, his mind struggling to reconcile what his eyes showed him. These weren't his hands. They couldn't be. He had spent most of his life in labs and lecture halls, his hands were a lot more delicate than these.
"What… the hell?" he whispered, his voice hoarse. Even that sounded strange to his ears.
His heartbeat spiked. With a bit of effort, he shifted his head toward the side of the bed, where a polished bronze basin rested on a small wooden stool. Water sloshed faintly within it.
Summoning what little strength he had, Alexis reached out, dragging the bowl closer. He peeked into the still surface and immediately froze at the image being reflected.
His previous black hair and green eyes had been replaced by dark brown hair and silver eyes.
His clean white face looked a lot tanner as if he had been exposed to the sun his whole life and on his chin was a small collection of hair which contrasted Alexis's previously beardless face.
A thousand theories rushed through his mind, hallucination, brain trauma, coma dream, virtual reality experiment but all were shattered by the aching pain in his limbs, the undeniable smell of earth and wood.
This wasn't some dream or hallucination, it all felt too real to be. And if it was real, then there was only one plausible explanation,
"I....have been.... reincarnated?" The words sounded strange coming from his mouth, since he never believed in reincarnation or anything not scientifically proven but he couldn't deny the fact.
Alexis swallowed hard. If this truly was reincarnation, then… who was he now?
As if to answer his question, another wave of pain hit him like a freight train.
Moving his 'bandaged' hands, he clutched his head as images poured within, images of a life that wasn't his.
It was like he was living a whole new life through the eyes of someone else, a life that definitely wasn't his.
The flood of images was overwhelming. Faces he didn't know. Voices calling a name that wasn't Alexis. He saw through the eyes of a boy who excitedly looking at an older man pouring molten bronze into stone mold the shape of a dagger.
Alexis felt happiness swell up in the boy's heart, he felt a familiar fire light in the boy's heart as his love for blacksmithing awoke.
He watched as the boy grew into a man, chasing his dream of becoming a blacksmith, but life wasn't always fair.
His love for blacksmithing was not reciprocated which caused him, like his father, to be known as the failed blacksmith.
The visions switched again, faster this time, like a book being flipped through too quickly to catch every page.
The boy — no, the man now — stood before a forge, sweat pouring down his brow, hammer in hand. Sparks danced in the air as he struck glowing bronze, but the faces around him weren't filled with awe or respect.
They were filled with ridicule.
"Another warped blade?" one sneered.
"His father was useless, and so is he," another voice added.
"The gods put a curse on this family's hands."
The flame that blaze in his heart slowly fizzled out with each failure until there was nothing left but a hollow space where that love for blacksmithing had been.
Every strike of his hammer felt heavier with a constant reminder of his failure with every new item that came out his forge.
And that's when Alexis reached the most recent memory. The man had tried one last time.
Sweat drenched his back as he poured the liquid bronze into a mold — a blade he swore would redeem his name. His hands trembling, but from desperation.
Please, let this one work…
But fate had other plans.
A crack too little to notice appeared on the mold. The crack suddenly got larger and the molten bronze started spilling to the floor, setting the wood around them on fire and before he could react—
BOOM!
The last thing Alexis felt was pain again as the flames seem to engulf the man and he screamed in pain.
The images suddenly shattered, leaving Alexis who struggled to breathe and was now covered in his own sweat.
It all made sense now....well, kind of.
He was not on earth anymore, this was a world known as Orris, a medieval world stuck in the bronze age, an age of blacksmiths.
And professor Alexis found himself in the body of the failure blacksmith know as,
"Arven."