The Forest of Awakening
The forest stretched out as an infinite sea of darkness. Ancient trees stood like cathedral pillars, their canopies interwoven so closely that even moonlight fought to penetrate. Moss crept thick upon the roots, bent and wrenched like serpent coils buried in the ground. The quiet was oppressive, shattered only by the sporadic rumble of far-off beasts—deep, guttural, violent. The noise reverberated across the night like thunder, shaking leaves and warning everyone who heard it: this was not a place for the faint of heart.
At the foot of one giant tree—its trunk so massive that it could have hidden an entire family—a body was twisted around the roots.
It appeared to be a corpse at first sight. The body was shrunk in on itself, twisted horribly, limbs curled unnaturally as if from poison. His chest did not move. His lips were gray, his eyes sunk. The skin was pulled too tightly over the bones underneath. Anybody who came across him would have muttered a prayer and gone away, believing he was dead for days.
And yet—
A great gush of golden light burst forth from the body.
It flowed outward like liquid dawn, engulfing the contorted form and driving the dark shadows of the forest away. The radiance shook the branches above, made leaves tremble as if in reverence. The form rose from the roots, arms slack, head thrown back, buoyant.
The golden cocoon pulsed, alive, each throb ringing like a heartbeat. His body remained suspended, trapped between death and something much worse.
Minutes ticked by.
Then—slowly, like a feather dropped by invisible hands—the cocoon let him settle back into the earth. The glow faded, hanging on to his shape for one final heartbeat before seeping away into nothing.
Silence wrapped itself around the forest once more.
The body remained still once more. Shrunken. Dead.
Until—
His eyes flew open.
His lips ripped apart in a gasp of violence, his arching chest, his clawing lungs as if he had drowned.
"Hhhhaaaahhh—hahh—hhhuuhhh!" His breathing was in violent jerks, wild, desperate.
Victor's eyes widened wildly, his trembling pupils, his entire body shaking with the sudden rush of air. His hands grasped his chest, then scrabbled feebly against the tree root behind him. He thrust himself up, still shivering, sweat slicking his pale forehead.
The trees around him stood quiet once more, waiting.
He looked left and right, panic shining in his golden eyes. The gnarled roots, the mist that curled down between trees, the shadows that seemed to move when he wasn't looking—everything was foreign.
"Fucking…" His voice broke, raw, rasping from hurt. "…Where the fuck am I?"
He got to his feet, steadying himself against the tree. Palm against the bark, fingers shaking. His head pounded with disorientation. Memories pushed forward, broken and jagged.
A hotel room. The heat of a woman's flesh. The door bursting open. Fists, boots, blood. The ravine. The girl. The blood.
Victor's lips curled, a worried laugh escaping them.
Right. right. I was with that woman. Her husband appeared with his dogs afterward. They half-killed me and threw me off a cliff."
He swallowed hard, his throat dry as ash.
"And then… that girl." His face scrunched up, pushing against the fog of memory. "She asked me if I could live. If I could be powerful. I… I consumed her blood." He looked into the darkness, as if the trees themselves could tell him something. "And then… nothing."
His breathing grew more ragged. His hands tightened in his hair.
"What the hell is happening to me?"
As if taunting him, agony burst through his body.
A sudden, burning pain ripped up his spine and imploded in his skull.
"AAAGHHHH!" Victor's yell shattered the quiet, so raw and ferocious that birds screamed from the canopy, scattering like darkness. He dropped to his knees, palms grasping his temples.
His vision broke. Images poured in to him—faces he had never seen but somehow remembered. Names that rolled on his tongue like ancient prayers. Places that blazed with colors his world never knew. Memories piled atop memories, a thousand lives cramming into one skull.
He saw happiness. He saw treachery. He felt love, heartache, fury. All of it drowning him, choking him.
Minutes ticked by—seven awful minutes when he thrashed on the floor, grinding his teeth together until a single gout of blood trickled between them. The woods observed. The pain consumed him.
Then, gradually, the tide receded.
Victor leaned against the tree, sweat running down his jaw, chest rising and falling in ragged gasps. His breath rattled like splintered glass.
"What… the fuck just happened?" His whisper was frayed, hardly a whisper of sound.
But even as he questioned, his heart already knew. The visions weren't dreams. They weren't illusions. They were memories.
The body he now occupied—the shattered husk he had just crawled out of—was Victor Lionheart. Prince of the Lionheart Kingdom.
The truth opened up inside him like a sadistic play.
This Victor Lionheart was good-looking, respected for looks if not for ability. Gifted in nothing. No physical strength, no great conquests. But privilege shielded him—royal birth kept foes off. He even had a fiancée, betrothed by politics.
But he had not lived cleanly. He recalled the shape of his own smile in this body's mirror. Women attracted to it. Forbidden tips. A hidden affair with his bodyguard's wife.
And then—betrayal.
The bodyguard's voice echoed in his head.
"You think I never knew what you and my wife did behind my back? I already killed her. Now it's your turn."
The memory struck like poison. He saw it: the brothers' trust, broken. The tainted water flowed into his hands. The innocent sip. The icy laughter as comprehension came too late. His body seared from the inside out.
And then—the vision of his so-called brother disappearing into the distance, leaving him to perish among the roots.
Victor sat immobile, those last minutes burning themselves into his heart.
"So… you died the same way too," he grunted. His voice was low, near-pitying, near-bitter.
A hesitation. Then he laughed—a harsh, fractured sound. He rubbed blood from his lips with the back of his hand.
"What a fucked-up joke… your story, your ending—it's the same as mine."
He leaned his head against the tree, breathed shakily. But his sigh warped into a smile. A crooked, sinister smile.
"Don't worry, Victor Lionheart," he whispered to the forest. "You couldn't take your revenge. But now…" His eyes gleamed, hard and golden. "This brother will finish it for you. I'll avenge you. And I'll avenge the woman he killed. That bastard won't die easy."
His chest burned—not with pain this time, but with fire. His hands trembled with it. His heart pounded.
He had transmigrated. Into a cultivation world.
The very world he used to fantasize about, consumed in books. Now it existed. Now it was his.
Victor's smile stretched. He laughed, hoarse and amazed. "Heh… this is real. This is actually fucking real."
He leaned in, attempting to calm his mind, thoughts racing with possibilities.
And then—the forest itself responded.
A noise wafted from the darkness.
A hiss. A wet, monstrous slurp.
"Shhhhlup… shhhhlrrp…"
Victor stiffened, his body immobile. All his muscles were locked. His ears strained. His eyes flicked towards the black between trees.
The noise came once more, nearer. Louder.
Slurp. Slurp.