Ugh…
My whole body hurts like hell…
It's killing me!
The bizarre dream filled with strange mercurial symbols shattered in an instant. Arthur, still asleep in a half-dazed state, felt an excruciating throbbing pain throughout his body, as if someone had taken a metal bat and hit him without any mercy again and again.
No. That wasn't accurate.
It felt more like he had experienced a form of physical death itself, however strange that may sound. Yes… That was the only way he could describe it.
In that strange state, he tried to turn over and sit up, but no matter what, his limbs refused to budge. They felt like lead, heavy and useless, leaving him completely paralyzed and helpless.
Panic flared in his chest. It had been years since he had suffered from sleep paralysis, but it had never been as dire as this one. Disoriented and confused, he struggled to focus and break free from the invisible restraints.
While still trapped in that half-awake delirium, he tried to focus his will, which felt as feeble as a small kindling flame—flickering constantly, threatening to be snuffed out by the overwhelming tide of agony.
What's happening…?
Fuck, why is it so painful?
Am I having a stroke? A seizure?
No! That can't be it, these are not the symptoms.
Am I going to die?
His chest felt heavy as if encased in concrete. The sheer thought, the terror of being trapped inside a dying body threatened to pull him under. He tried to thrash, to shout for help, but his voice was locked tight, leaving him drowning in the chaos of his own mind.
No! That's not right. I can't die.
I still have so much to do.
I want to live.
I… need to wake up! Now!
But how was he supposed to wake up when he couldn't see or hear anything?
I can't even feel…
No, that's not true. I feel something.
I am lying down… on something soft. My bed?
I think my eyes are closed.
That wasn't so bad. All he had to do was open them. Why hadn't he thought of that sooner? He sent the command—
Nothing happened. Just like his limbs, his eyelids refused to respond.
Why can't I open my eyes?
Open.
Open!
Open, damn it!
There. Something moved. His eyelids had twitched, even if only a fraction.
A desperate, soundless scream echoed in his mind.
Open!
Pushing through the pain, he gathered enough immaterial strength to finally open his eyes.
His vision swam; it was blurry at first, tinged with a faint crimson hue. The surface above him was pale cream, almost off-white, and far too high.
This was not the ceiling of his room.
Where am I?
He tried to turn his head, but just like earlier, it refused to respond. For several long seconds nothing happened. But then with a grinding effort that sent fresh spikes of pain through him, he managed to shift his head slightly.
He stared at the two broad windows partially covered by some odd-colored curtains. The most striking thing about it, however, was the unique moonlight shining through the windows covering everything in a layer of crimson veil.
Outside, beyond the archaic-looking hipped rooftops and smokestacks, against the backdrop of a beautiful black velvety night sky, a crimson moon hung high, watching silently.
Wh—Arthur felt an unnatural terror grip his heart.
The sheer impossibility of that blood-red satellite shattered the last remnants of his fragile composure. In that moment all he wanted was to sit up and run; to put as much distance as he could between himself and the thing that had no right to exist.
He didn't understand why the sight filled him with such dread, only that it was profoundly and viscerally wrong, making his brain writhe as if it wanted to burst out of his skull like a chestburster.
Heh… heh.
It looks like the moon from Bloodborne.
'The nameless moon presence beckoned by Laurence and his associates. Paleblood.'
Arthur started giggling. His still somewhat restricted vocal cords turned the sound into a wheezing, hyena-like laugh. He didn't know why he was laughing.
Haha… I am going crazy.Maybe I'm still dreaming.
Yes, that has to be it. I remember having a similar dream to this the day before yesterday.
Arthur's eyebrows scrunched in confusion.
I can't remember.
Ahh… it's so painful to think. The right side of my head hurts so much.
Hah… nhh… hhahh…
I remember vaguely in that dream there was a lonesome evil moon, watching from between tall dark trees, transforming into a humanly alien thing…
There was also a form…
Ahh…
A quiet scream of agonizing pain tore through his throat.
Hah…Shh…hah… something about clay?
The details unfortunately kept slipping the more he tried to reach for them.
What's happening?
Does the dream have some kind of correlation to the phenomenon I've found myself in?
He took several short, shaky breaths, trying to calm his turbulent mind. The pain in his head spiked again. Instinctively he tried to grab his head and roll onto his side, but his body was still stiff and uncooperative. The half-formed movement threw him off balance.
He fell hard off what he now realized was a sofa, crashing onto the cold wooden floor.
Ugh…
Fuck!
The impact sent fresh waves of agony through his ribs and skull, making him rock back and forth a little, but the sheer force of it was hard enough to jolt a little more control back to his limbs. And with it, the sensation returned stronger than before.
Arthur curled in on himself, arms wrapped around his midsection in what appeared to be a half-formed fetal position, breathing through his gritted teeth.
After a few moments, he braced himself as he used his right arm against the floor to lift himself a little and then used his left arm to push himself upright. His arms trembled under his own weight. The motion was clumsy and painful as he managed to get himself into a sitting position, back propped against the side of the sofa, but the hidden wooden corner of the sofa dug into his spine, sending another wave of fresh agony through his body.
Hiss…
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Fuck the world!
Arthur breathed sharply, cursing the world for his agony. As he raised a hand to rub his face, he noticed another oddity.
His hands.
They were thin, long, elegant, and pale white in color.
Nothing like his olive skin.
Wha—
No way.
The thought landed heavily. He had already half-formed several conclusions in the chaos, but this one was still very difficult to accept.
This can't be true, right?
Transmigration is a fictional concept.
Yeah… this can't be true.
But no matter how much he tried to dismiss it, the evidence kept stacking up in a cold, relentless sequence.
A different hand attached to a different body, an impossible crimson moon, an unknown place that he knew nothing about.
There was only one conclusion that fit all of them without contradiction.
He had grown up reading web novels and had often fantasized about such scenarios. But now when it finally happened, he found it very hard to accept.
For several minutes, Arthur sat in silence as he forced himself to look around, scrutinizing his surroundings under the red light.
The room was large, clearly both a bedroom and a study based on the layout. Near the bay windows the floor was slightly raised; the cyan sofa he had fallen from and was resting at faced them directly. A queen-sized bed stood against one wall on the far south. A cold fireplace sat a few paces away from him. A study table, a small personal library of neatly arranged books, an unfinished canvas on an easel, and a violin resting on its stand completed the furnishings. Grayish-white pipes ran along the upper walls, connected to classical gas lamps with transparent glass inners and black metal grids. Everything had the same slightly outdated, well-kept Victorian vibe.
It was the only logic that was making any sense now.
He had left his own world behind and had woken up in someone else's.
"Heh, transmigrated into some Victorian world. This feels so cliché. Next, you're going to tell me I have a cheat item on me—some old grandpa in a ring, or a system," Arthur lampooned as he let out a low, humorless laugh.
But the moment those words left his mouth, something shifted at the edge of his vision.
Faint, translucent lines of text made up of an unknowable language flickered into existence. They were unreadable yet understandable at the same time and seemed to exist in some form like a stereogram that only resolved when he stopped trying to look at it directly. When he focused too hard, they blurred; when he let his gaze soften and let his pupil dilate, they sharpened into perfect clarity, sitting impossibly close, as if engraved on the inside of his eyes.
[Player Profile]
Character Name: Arthur Sturridge
Age: 19
Sparks Held: 0
Overall Attributes: Constitution Lv. 4, Strength Lv. 1, Dexterity Lv 2, Spirituality Lv. 3
Sanity: 88
Blood Potency: 0
Overview: You are an amateur sleuth, who has woken up as a Duskborn.
Arthur was stunned. He had never seen anything like this before. Sure, he had used smart glasses with a HUD to track his biometrics, and he had played VR, but never anything like this. This was just plain unnatural and seemed to threaten his sanity—which it promptly did as he watched his sanity drop:
Sanity: 88 → 86
And it didn't even have any notification that warned him, just that it dropped.
"What—" Arthur stopped himself from completing the sentence, shook his head, and slapped himself.
Good to know my mental decline is quantifiable now. Very convenient.
I should get my act together. I can't be stunned and fascinated by everything I see all the time.
But this system interface is quite interesting.
Especially the overview part. It says that I am an amateur sleuth, which can only mean one thing: the body I inhabit now belongs to a detective.
But the problem is: why did I transmigrate into this body? Did it die? If so, how? Because even though my whole body is in pain, it's more of a muscular ache rather than pain from an injury. Especially now that I am checking my body, there don't seem to be any marks of injury. So, what killed him?
Arthur couldn't help but ponder as he tried to remember stuff about being a detective. It was as if he had flipped a switch while wandering in a dark room. A sharp, splitting headache assaulted him.
The room vanished.
Everything was drowned in crimson red light.
The moon hung larger than he had seen before, far larger than it had any right to be.
A dark figure stood over him. He couldn't make out any of their features because of the hood, only the vague outline of someone looking down on him.
"... y#^: s÷;o^ld have stayed out of this, dear detective."
The fragment shattered.
Arthur was left gasping, clutching his head as the pain faded.
What was that? A memory of the past, hinting at what might have happened to the owner of this body? Was it a murder, then? Felt like it based on the villainous monologue there, but why was the moon so large? An effect of the dying owner having his perception warped?
Hah…
I need to get my shit together fast.
Thinking this, Arthur—having finally recovered some motion in his limbs—tried standing up. His legs trembled, but he managed to stay upright for a long while. Dragging one unsteady step after another, he crossed the room toward the tall dressing mirror standing near the wardrobe.
He stopped in front of it.
A stranger stared back at him.
"Hah… so this is what the detective—I mean, what I look like now."