"I should probably sleep," Ash muttered, voice hoarse from too many hours spent whispering along with the pages.
The digital clock beside his mattress glowed a merciless 3:00 a.m. In four hours, he had to drag himself across the city for the first shift of the first real job he'd ever landed. Seventeen years old, no family, no safety net—just him and the mold that freckled the ceiling like a permanent constellation.
He let the thin copy of Ten Thousand Kingdoms; One Sky slip from his fingers. The paperback landed with a soft thud beside the thin pillow. Outside, the night had been quiet moments ago. Now it wasn't.
Rain hammered the single cracked window like fists. Then the wind rose—savage, sudden, wrong—shoving parked cars sideways with metallic shrieks. Ash cracked one eye open just as the first red drop slid down the glass. More followed, thick and dark as fresh blood.
A low growl rolled through the building, deeper than thunder. The single bulb overhead flickered, died, then flared white. Lightning clawed across the sky in colors that had no names—crimson braided with violet, gold laced through emerald, black veins pulsing inside pure azure. The separate strands twisted, merged, and became one impossible lance.
It struck the roof with a sound that erased the world.
White.
Nothing but white.
When it cleared the strange phenomenon had ended, peace in the world had returned. It was an event that would have every scientist and top organization scrambling to understand what happened. However, little did they know... that event was something that would change the very Earth as they knew it.
Not just that.... a single soul was lost in all of the madness. While sleeping soundly in his rundown apartment, Ash was struck with the mythical bolt of lightning.
------
Totally unaware of the things that had transpired Ash found himself floating inside of an endless void.
He floated bodiless, reduced to a faint flickering wisp of energy.
"Uhh, well this is a weird dream," he muttered, looking down at what little of himself remained. He couldn't move anything except what felt like his head.
"Haha, I bet this is what those transmigrators see once they die," he joked, the words echoing strangely around him.
The instant the joke left him, a voice answered. An emotionless female voice, flat and mechanical.
{Due to cosmic mishaps, you died while sleeping.}
Ash froze. Before he could respond, the voice continued.
{You will be reborn into a new world. The world will align with your memories.}
"W-wait! What do you mean reborn?!"
The voice paid no attention to his panic.
{Memory analyzed.}
{Suitable world found.}
"Wait dammit! This is all going too fast!"
{The world of Elaris has been chosen.}
The name slammed into him like a second lightning strike.
He knew that world. He had just been reading about it hours ago.
"H-holy Shi—"
{Brace yourself. You will now be reborn.}