"Ouch!
It hurts so much!
My head… it's killing me!"
The strange dream filled with faint murmurs shattered in an instant. Zhou Mingrui, still half-asleep, felt a violent throbbing in his skull — as if someone were hammering at it again and again. No, it was sharper than that, like a blade twisting deep into his temple.
"Ugh…"
He tried to roll over, clutch his head, and sit up, but his limbs refused to obey. His arms and legs felt heavy, lifeless — as if they no longer belonged to him.
Am I...Still dreaming…?
Maybe I'm half-awake. Maybe I think I'm awake, but I'm still asleep…
Zhou Mingrui had experienced strange, lucid dreams before, so he tried to gather his will and break through the haze of darkness that bound him. But his thoughts scattered like mist, impossible to hold together. The moment he tried to focus, they slipped away, replaced by random flashes of memory and nonsense.
Why does my head hurt so much?
Did I get sick? A hemorrhage?
Am I going to die like this?
No, I have to wake up. Now!
The pain slowly dulled from stabbing to grinding — like a dull knife sawing through his brain.
Forget sleep. There's no way I'm going back to bed after that. How am I supposed to work tomorrow…?
Then, absurdly, he thought, With a headache like this, I should just take the day off. Let the manager nag all he wants.
A weak laugh escaped him. Not the worst deal, I guess.
Gradually, the pain gave him something to cling to — a thread of awareness. With effort, Zhou Mingrui straightened his back and forced his eyes open, tearing himself free from the darkness.
His vision blurred, then turned faintly red.
Before him stood a wooden desk. An open notebook lay at its center, its coarse, yellowed pages filled with neat handwriting. A line written in deep black ink that caught his attention but couldn't understand.
To the left of the notebook sat a stack of eight books, worn but carefully arranged. On the wall behind them ran grayish-white pipes leading to a small, Western-style wall lamp — glass interior, black metal grid on the outside.
Beneath that lamp rested an ink bottle, faintly glowing red in the light. Its embossed surface showed the blurred outline of an angel. Next to it lay a dark pen with a round body and a brass revolver — the kind you'd only see in movies.
A gun? A revolver? Zhou Mingrui froze. None of this looked even remotely familiar.
He glanced around. The desk, the notebook, the gun — everything was bathed in a faint crimson light seeping in through the window. His pulse quickened. Slowly, he lifted his gaze toward the source.
Outside the window, high in the sky above a curtain of endless black, hung a blood-red moon — silent and vast.
"What…" Zhou Mingrui whispered. Terror surged through him. He jumped up instinctively, but pain exploded in his head again. His legs buckled, and he crashed back into the wooden chair.
Thud.
Grimacing, he forced himself upright again, gripping the table for support. His eyes darted around the small room.
There was a brown door on either side, a wooden bunk bed against the far wall, and between them a tall cabinet — its upper doors open, its lower drawers slightly crooked. Next to it, pipes connected to a strange mechanical contraption of gears and bearings he couldn't name.
In the corner by the desk stood a small coal stove surrounded by pots and cooking tools. Across from the right-hand door was a cracked mirror with a plain wooden frame.
His reflection caught his eye — black hair, brown eyes, thin build, a linen shirt. Average looks, but a deeper, sharper outline than before.
"Wh—"
The words caught in his throat.
A revolver. Western furniture. A crimson moon that wasn't Earth's.
There was only one explanation.
C-could I have… transmigrated?
He had read plenty of web novels like this — waking up in another body, another world — but when it actually happened, his mind refused to accept it.
A long minute passed before he could even move. Finally, he muttered, half-laughing, "So this is what it means to love fantasy, huh?"
If not for the dull ache in his head, he might have believed he was still dreaming.
Calm down. Breathe. Calm down.
He took several deep breaths, forcing the panic down — and then, like floodgates breaking, memories began pouring in.
Klein Moretti… citizen of the Loen Kingdom, Awwa County, City of Tingen… recent graduate from Khoy University's Department of History…Fluent in the ancient Feysac language—considered the source of all languages in the Northern Continent—and dabbles in Hermes, the language often found in ancient mausoleums related to rituals and prayers.
Father: a sergeant in the Imperial Army, killed in a colonial war. The compensation money sent his son to school…
Mother: a devoted follower of the Evernight Goddess, passed away the year Klein entered university…
An older brother, a younger sister. The family struggling to survive on his brother's clerk salary…
The information filled his mind, crystal clear yet foreign. A single name echoed through the torrent more than any other — Klein Moretti.
He pressed his fingers to his temple. "So… that's who I am now?"
As he steadied himself, his gaze drifted back to the notebook on the desk. The words on the yellowed page shifted in his vision — strange symbols morphing slowly into legible text. He realized with a chill that it was written in Hermes, the ritual language Klein had studied.
The sentence read:
"Everyone will die, including me."
A shiver ran down Zhou Mingrui's — no, Klein's — spine. He stumbled back, heart pounding. The air itself seemed to waver, filled with faint, ghostly whispers that pricked at the edges of his mind.
Just an illusion. Just nerves, he told himself, gripping the desk for support. His breathing steadied, and his eyes fell upon the revolver again — polished brass glinting faintly under the red light.
Wait. With a family this poor, how could Klein afford a gun like that?
His brows furrowed. He leaned closer — and froze.
A red handprint smeared across the edge of the table. It wasn't moonlight. It was blood.
A bloody handprint?!
Instinctively, he turned his right hand palm-up. It was covered in dark, sticky red.
The pain in his head returned, dull but insistent. His pulse pounded in his ears as he stumbled toward the cracked mirror.
A figure stared back — a young man with black hair and brown eyes, scholarly but pale.
Klein… Zhou Mingrui… whoever he was now.
He leaned closer under the dim crimson glow, tilting his head to see the side of his temple.
There it was — a grotesque wound, ringed with burn marks. Blood stained his skin, and beneath the torn flesh, grayish-white matter twitched faintly.