A soul drifted alone through an endless void of absolute darkness.
It was peaceful here—unnaturally, impossibly peaceful.
There was no sound. No crushing weight of overtime deadlines looming over a cramped cubicle. No gnawing anxiety about pathetic salaries that barely covered mounting debts. No soul-draining corporate machine grinding him down day after miserable day.
No existential dread creeping in during sleepless nights, whispering questions about the meaning of it all. No responsibilities. No expectations. No disappointments.
Just... stillness.
'Is this what true peace feels like?' the soul wondered, suspended in the infinite black.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity—or perhaps mere moments, time had no meaning here—the soul simply existed without burden, without pain, without the endless cycle of work and worry that had defined his previous existence.
But peace, as always, was fleeting.
Suddenly, the soul sensed something—a disturbance rippling through the void like a stone dropped into still water. Two presences, violent and primal, clashing somewhere nearby. He couldn't see them, couldn't hear them, but he felt them with an inexplicable certainty that transcended normal perception.
The soul's attention turned toward the conflict.
One presence felt human—or at least humanoid—fighting with bare hands, raw and desperate. The other presence was something else entirely: bestial, savage, predatory. A wolf, perhaps, or something far worse wearing the shape of one.
The battle was brief and brutal.
The wolf-like figure lunged with terrifying speed, its massive jaws opening impossibly wide. In one horrifying moment, it consumed the humanoid presence whole, devouring it completely as if it had never existed at all. Then, slowly, deliberately, the beast turned its attention toward the soul.
Even without eyes, the soul could feel its gaze—hungry, ancient, and utterly merciless.
Panic exploded through the soul's consciousness like wildfire.
'Move! MOVE! I have to—'
But the formless existence couldn't respond. It was frozen, helpless, paralyzed by an invisible force as the beast approached with predatory intent, closing the distance between them with each passing heartbeat.
The wolf lunged—
And then, without warning, something inside the soul erupted.
Reddish-black lightning burst forth from the soul itself, crackling with raw, chaotic energy. The violent discharge struck the beast head-on, and the creature let out a soundless howl of rage and agony before beginning to shrink rapidly, condensing and compressing into something smaller, denser, purer.
Within seconds, the massive beast had become nothing more than a small orb of pulsing crimson light.
The orb shot forward like a bullet and plunged directly into the soul, merging with it completely. Power flooded through the soul's essence—wild, untamed and primal. The sensation was overwhelming, like being struck by lightning and swallowing the sun simultaneously.
Before the soul could process what had happened, it was yanked.
An invisible force hooked into its very essence and pulled with overwhelming violence. The void blurred into streaks of color and shadow as the soul spiraled forward, hurtling through dimensions, through time, through the fabric of reality itself—
Toward a body.
A flash of brilliant white light consumed everything—
GASP!
His eyes snapped open.
He lurched upright from the bed like a drowning man breaking the surface, his body moving on pure instinct. His chest heaved as he gasped for air, dragging oxygen into lungs that felt like they'd been starved. Sweat beaded his forehead and rolled down his temples in cold rivulets. His heart pounded so violently against his ribcage that he could feel each individual beat reverberating through his entire body.
His gaze darted frantically around the unfamiliar space.
'Where... where am I?'
Wooden walls lined with aged panels surrounded him. A flickering oil lamp cast dancing shadows across the ceiling, its warm glow doing little to comfort him.
The heavy scent of old whiskey and pine lingered in the air, mingling with other smells he couldn't quite identify—leather, tobacco, sweat, and something else... musk? The furniture was sparse but sturdy: a worn dresser against one wall, a chair with clothes draped haphazardly over its back, a window showing the faint pre-dawn light creeping through tattered curtains.
He looked down at his hands.
No shirt. Muscular arms. Broad chest covered in light hair.
These weren't his hands.
His hands trembled as he stared at them, turning them over slowly as if they might suddenly transform back into the soft, office-worker hands he remembered—the hands that had spent years typing reports and spreadsheets, not throwing punches or tearing through flesh.
"W-What the hell...?" he muttered, his voice emerging deeper, gruffer, rougher than he'd ever heard it before. The sound startled him. That wasn't his voice. That was someone else's voice coming from his throat.
Panic surged through him like a tidal wave threatening to drown everything in its path.
'Where am I? What is this place? Whose body is this?! These hands... they don't belong to me. This voice isn't mine. What the fuck is happening?!'
"You're awake," a woman's voice purred from beside him, calm and sultry, dripping with satisfied amusement.
He froze completely, every muscle in his body locking up simultaneously.
Slowly—very slowly—he turned his head toward the source of the voice, almost afraid of what he might find.
A blonde woman lay beside him in the bed, her body barely concealed beneath a thin white sheet that did more to accentuate than hide her curves. She was incredibly beautiful—the kind of beauty that belonged on magazine covers or movie screens, not in dingy motel rooms.
Golden hair fell in tousled waves around her shoulders, mussed from sleep and... other activities. Her green eyes sparkled with mischief and satisfaction as she regarded him with a teasing smile that suggested she knew exactly what effect she had on him.
His mind went completely, utterly blank.
'Who the hell is this woman?! What happened last night?! Why is she in bed with me?! Why am I—'
Before he could finish the thought or formulate any kind of response, she leaned in with casual confidence and pressed a soft, lingering kiss against his lips. Her mouth was warm and tasted faintly of mint and something sweeter.
"Good morning, Victor," she whispered against his mouth, her breath ghosting across his skin.
'Victor?!'
The name hit him like a physical blow, reverberating through his skull and triggering something deep in the recesses of his consciousness.
But before he could grasp what that meant, the woman stretched lazily like a satisfied cat, arching her back in a way that made the sheet slip dangerously lower.
Then she stood up without a trace of shyness or hesitation, letting the thin white sheet slide off her body entirely as she moved through the room with confident, unhurried grace.
She was completely naked now, utterly comfortable in her own skin as she began picking up her scattered clothes from various locations around the room—jeans draped over the chair, a bra hanging from the doorknob, a shirt crumpled near the foot of the bed.
He could only stare, caught somewhere between shock, confusion, embarrassment, and... something else. Something primal that his body responded to even while his mind was still trying to catch up with reality.
"I can't believe we did all those things," she chuckled while pulling on her jeans, her tone light and playful, tinged with genuine amazement. She glanced over her shoulder at him with a wicked grin. "You're a beast in bed, Victor. I'm still sore in places I didn't even know could get sore."
'WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS GOING ON?!'
His brain screamed in panic while his face flushed hot with embarrassment. He tried to speak—to say something, anything—but no words came out. His throat felt dry, his tongue heavy and useless. His heart raced even faster now, if that was possible.
'I'm not... I mean, I don't even... I've never...'
He wasn't some confident playboy or smooth-talking Casanova who picked up beautiful women in bars. He was an introvert.
An average guy from Earth who'd spent most of his adult life behind a computer screen in a corporate hellhole, working overtime for a company that saw him as nothing more than an expendable cog in their machine.
He could barely hold a conversation with a woman for more than fifteen minutes without sweating nervously and stumbling over his words.
How the hell did he end up here? In bed with a woman who looked like she'd stepped out of a lingerie commercial? After apparently having the kind of wild, passionate night that people wrote romance novels about?
'How did I—when did I—what the hell happened?!'
And then—
Memories.
They slammed into his consciousness like a freight train derailing at full speed.
Images, sensations, emotions—all flooding in at once like watching a movie on fast-forward while someone kept randomly pressing skip. Memories of wars stretching back over a century. The acrid smell of gunpowder and the metallic tang of blood. The feeling of bone claws extending from his fingertips and tearing through flesh and bone with horrifying ease.
Pain—so much pain, beyond anything a normal human could survive. But also... family. A brother. Arguments that turned into fistfights that turned into years of bitter separation.
His head throbbed as the memories poured in faster and faster, overlapping and intertwining with his own.
World War I. World War II. Korea. Vietnam. Dozens of smaller conflicts in between. Faces of comrades and enemies alike, all long dead now. The taste of violence. The thrill of the hunt. The loneliness of immortality.
And a name—his name, or at least the name of the body he now inhabited.
Victor Creed.
Also known as Sabretooth.
Half-brother of James Logan Howlett—better known as Wolverine.
'Oh no... oh no...'
The realization hit him with the force of a sledgehammer to the skull. He wasn't just in any random body. He was in the body of one of Marvel Comics' most infamous mutant villains. A killer. A monster. Someone who'd murdered countless people over the span of more than a century.
But as more memories filtered through, he realized something important, this wasn't quite the same Victor Creed from the movies he remembered.
In this timeline—this universe—Victor and Logan had never encountered William Stryker. There had been no Weapon X program, at least not yet.
After fighting together in World War II, the two brothers had simply parted ways due to philosophical disagreements. Logan wanted to find peace, to try being something other than a weapon. Victor... well, Victor had embraced what he was.
After that separation, Victor had lived as a mercenary for years—decades, really—selling his skills to the highest bidder, killing for money and occasionally for the pure savage joy of it. He'd fought in wars, toppled governments, assassinated targets across every continent. But eventually, even that had grown boring. Repetitive and Empty.
So a few weeks ago, Victor had decided to take a break. He'd wandered into the wilderness for some solitude, hiking through remote mountain ranges far from civilization.
And during that journey, he'd been attacked by something—a giant wolf, far larger than any normal animal, with eyes that gleamed with unnatural intelligence and hunger.
The beast had bitten him. Actually bitten Victor Creed, whose healing factor should have made him immune to such minor injuries. But this was no ordinary wound. Whatever venom or curse the creature carried, it had made Victor sick for the first time in his extraordinarily long life.
He'd spent days in the wilderness, feverish and weakened, his healing factor struggling to fight off whatever infection the bite had introduced into his system.
He'd only made it back to civilization yesterday, still recovering but functional enough to want a drink. Several drinks, actually. So he'd gone to a bar, ordered whiskey, and tried to forget about the strange encounter in the mountains.
That's where he'd seen her—Clara Reeds, the beautiful blonde woman currently pulling on her shirt. One thing had led to another, fueled by alcohol and mutual attraction and Victor's need to feel alive again after his brush with mortality. They'd ended up back here for a rough, passionate night together.
The memories of that night flashed vividly through his mind now—far too vividly for comfort—making his face burn with embarrassment.
'I was a virgin in my past life,' he thought, mortified beyond words. 'I couldn't even talk to a girl without stuttering like an idiot... and now I have these memories... memories of...'
He couldn't even finish the thought without wanting to bury his face in a pillow and scream.
But there was more. Something else lurking at the edges of his consciousness, just out of reach but growing stronger by the moment.
The wolf that had bitten Victor in the forest... and the wolf-like beast from the void... they felt the same. He was certain of it now. That creature hadn't just went inside him—it had somehow brought him here. Or perhaps something else had used the wolf as a vessel, as a bridge between worlds and souls.
'Is that what happened? Did that thing pull me from my world into this body?'
He'd read countless fanfiction stories about people transmigrating into Marvel and other universes, living out life with action and adventures with superpowers and knowledge of future events. So, he knew how things normally will go for transmigration.
He'd always wished he could be one of those lucky souls, escaping his miserable reality for something more exciting, more meaningful.
He just hadn't expected it to actually happen.
While his mind raced through these thoughts, trying to process the impossible situation he found himself in, Clara—now fully dressed in her jeans and a loose tank top that showed off her figure—walked over and kissed him gently on the cheek.
"I like you," she whispered, her breath warm against his skin and carrying the faint scent of the mint gum she must have popped while getting dressed.
She pulled a napkin from her pocket and scribbled something on it with a pen before pressing it into his hand. Her fingers lingered against his palm for just a moment. "Keep in touch, okay? I wouldn't mind a repeat performance sometime."
She winked playfully, blew him a kiss with exaggerated flair, and walked toward the door with a confident sway in her hips.
"See you later, Clara," he muttered automatically, the words coming from Victor's muscle memory rather than his own conscious thought.
The door clicked shut behind her with a soft finality, and suddenly he was alone.
He collapsed back onto the bed with a heavy thud, arms spread wide as he stared blankly at the wooden ceiling above. Dust motes danced in the shaft of early morning light streaming through the window.
"...I still can't believe I'm Sabretooth now."
The words hung in the air, sounding absurd even to his own ears. But they were true. Somehow, impossibly, ridiculously true.
After a long sigh that seemed to carry the weight of two lifetimes, he sat up again and pulled off the blanket. His gaze traveled downward, and he looked between his legs with a mixture of shock and... pride?
'Well,' he thought with faint amusement despite everything, 'at least that's an upgrade from my old body.'
A hint of excitement sparkled in his eyes—the first genuinely positive emotion he'd felt since waking up—as he quickly got dressed. He pulled on dark jeans and a plain white t-shirt that stretched tight across his muscular frame, then walked into the small bathroom attached to the room.
He flicked on the light switch, and the single bulb above the mirror flickered to life with a faint buzzing sound. He stepped up to the sink and stared at his reflection.
A man in his mid-twenties stared back at him.
Sharp jawline dusted with dark stubble. Broad shoulders and a powerful, muscular build that looked like it belonged on a professional fighter or soldier, not an office worker. Short dark hair styled roughly but naturally handsome in its dishevelment. Piercing blue eyes that seemed to carry both danger and depth, like staring into deep water where predators lurked beneath the surface.
His hands were rough, the hands of someone who'd spent a lifetime fighting and killing rather than typing reports.
'Holy fuck,' he thought, stunned by his own reflection. 'I look like Henry Cavill if he spent a century as a mercenary and developed a taste for violence.'
(Insert Image of Victor Creed)
He reached up slowly and touched his face—his new face—as if expecting it to melt away like an illusion or a dream. But the skin felt real beneath his fingertips.
"...This is insane."
Then—because every fanboy would do exactly this, because he couldn't resist, because he had to know—he held up his right hand in front of his face and slowly opened his fingers wide.
SNIKT.
Five sharp bone claws extended smoothly from beneath his fingernails with a sound like blades scraping against stone. They emerged quickly, instinctively, as natural as breathing.
He stared at them in awe, moving each claw individually with newfound control. They were pristine white bone, honed and sharpened by decades of use into natural weapons more deadly than any knife.
"Damn... they're real." A grin tugged at his lips despite everything else swirling in his mind—the confusion, the fear, the uncertainty about what came next. "And it's kinda awesome."
I mean... who wouldn't want superpowers? Who wouldn't want to be able to extend claws from their hands like some kind of predatory animal?
But the grin faded quickly as reality settled back in, heavy and unavoidable. His gaze softened as melancholy crept into his expression like shadows spreading across a sunny room.
"...I wonder what happened to my family back home."
He tried to remember their faces—his mother's smile, his father's voice, his sister's laugh—but the images slipped through his mental grasp like water through cupped hands.
Even his own name from his past life refused to come clearly into focus now. All that remained were fragments, school days filled with boredom and daydreams; late nights working overtime for a company that didn't care if he lived or died; jokes shared with friends over cheap beer; watching movies until dawn broke outside his apartment window...
His last clear memory surfaced like a body floating to the top of a dark lake, crossing a street late at night after drinking with friends.
They'd tricked him into downing several shots of alcohol disguised as fruit juice ("Come on, man! Don't be such a lightweight!"). His head had spun violently afterward; the world had tilted sideways; everything had become blurry and disorienting. He'd stumbled outside for fresh air, trying to steady himself—
And then two blinding headlights had rushed toward him out of the darkness before everything went dark.
His eyes widened suddenly as realization struck him like lightning.
'Was that... was that fucking Truck-kun?!'
He almost laughed out loud despite himself—a slightly hysterical sound that caught in his throat. The absurdity of it all was almost too much to process.