The darkness slowly faded, and a dull pain took its place. It was not sharp anymore, just a deep ache in his bones. Kael guessed he was in a hospital. After feeling that kind of shock, it made sense. He thought he would hear a monitor beeping, feel clean sheets under him, and smell of that strong hospital scent and antiseptics.
But none of that was there
The first thing he felt was cold, sharp and biting, coming from the hard surface under him. He was not on a bed. It was stone, rough, and a little wet. He moved a little, felt a sharp pain and groaned. His whole body ached, every muscle aches like he would been pulled apart. He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt too heavy.
The next thing he noticed was the sound. Everything was strangely clear. He heard a single drop of water falling onto the stone floor somewhere in the distance. It was so clear, he felt like he could guess how far away it was. He also heard quiet rustling maybe a rat moving inside the wall nearby. Underneath all that, there was a deep, constant beating. He paused and then realized with surprise that it was his own heartbeat, loud in his ears like a drum. He had never heard his body so clearly before.
Then came the smell. It was strong and made his stomach turn. There was a wet, dirty smell like an old basement that had not been opened in years. But mixed with it was something sharper, something worse, a sharp smell, he knew right away, an old dried blood. It hung in the air like a quiet reminder that something bad had happened there.
Kael struggled to open his eyes. When he did, the world around him was blurry but slowly came into focus. He was in a small, square room with dark, rough stone walls. There were no windows. The only light came from a pale green crystal in the ceiling, which made shadows move on the walls. The room was empty except for him. One wall had a heavy iron door, old and strong, with a small window with metal bars. This wasn't a hospital room, it was a prison cell.
Panic started to rise in his chest. Where was he? What happened after the shock? He pushed himself up, his arms shaking from the effort. His body felt different. The pain was still there, but beneath it, he felt a new strength he had never felt before. It was like his thin, weak body had changed into a strong, lean one full of energy. He wore simple, rough trousers and a thin, sleeveless shirt, both torn and dirty.
He staggered as he stood up, barely able to keep his balance. When he looked at his hands, his fear grew stronger. These weren't his hands. His real hands were pale and thin, worn from using a keyboard. But these hands were bigger, with lighter skin and thick nails that looked like claws. He kept turning them over, not wanting to believe what he saw.
He looked around the cell again, trying hard to find an answer. On the far wall, he saw a dark shape that shined in the faint green light. He walked slowly toward it, using one hand to hold himself on the cold stone so he wouldn't fall. When he got closer, he realized it was a mirror, though badly damaged and a little shattered. The glass was covered in cracks resembling a spiderweb, and dark spots stained it, but he could still see his image.
He looked in the mirror and saw someone he didn't recognize.
The face looked young, maybe around twenty, with a strong jawline and a more matured face. His hair was pure white, short, and messy. But what really caught his attention were the eyes. They were light silver and seemed to shine a bit in the dim light. The pupils weren't round, they were thin and upright, more or less like that of a cat's. As he kept looking closely, his mouth slowly opened in surprise, showing that his sharp teeth were slightly too long and sharp.
This wasn't him. It couldn't be, he froze in shock. Kael lifted his hand and touched his face. The person in the mirror did the same. He felt the sharp shape of his cheekbones and the rough feel of his white hair. It was real. This face, this body, was his now. A sharp wave of sickness and dizziness hit him, and he rested his head against the cold, broken glass. A scream rose in his throat, but he held it back, his mind felt lost.
This had to be a dream. A bad dream caused by the accident. Or maybe it was part of the game, a new, super realistic version. He tried to open the game menu, the one that should appear with just a thought. Status. Menu. Log out. But nothing happened. No screen showed up. No words showed in front of his eyes. There was only the cold stone room around him and the scary face in the mirror.
As the panic started to go away, he felt something strange, something familiar. His mind, trained from years of playing Aethelgard's Legacy, kicked in. He stepped away from the mirror and looked around the cell again not as someone afraid, but as someone used to exploring games. He noticed how the stones were shaped. He saw barely visible lines shaped into the iron door. He had seen this kind of design before, in an old, forgotten book inside the game.
He felt a sudden chill. This was the Blackwood Alchemical Laboratory, a famous and scary place in the game. It was where a crazy sorcerer tried to control everything. But that could not be true. The story said the lab was destroyed by holy knights and locked up hundreds of years ago. It was a tough part of the game that should not even be available on the game's first day.
Then everything suddenly made terrible sense. The strange strong body. The sharp senses. The new face in the mirror. He remembered the name of the sorcerer's most famous and forbidden experiment: the "Lycanfiend Project." It was a horrible try to make the perfect killer by mixing a vampire and a werewolf. The project was a total failure, and all the test subjects had been killed.
All except one, it seemed.
He looked at his reflection again, at the silver eyes and the sharp teeth. He was no longer Kael, the player, the champion who had won the game. The electric shock didn't just hurt him. It had ended him. Somehow, his mind had been moved into this new body.
He was an NPC, a Non-Player Character. A monster stuck in a forgotten prison, part of the game's darkest story. The world he knew, the world he loved, was about to be filled with millions of real players. But he wouldn't be one of them. Now, he was just part of the background, a monster locked in a cage. The thought hit him hard, taking his breath away and filling him with a deep, heavy sadness, like dying again.