In an office lined with rows of desks cluttered with computers and stacks of documents, the overhead lights cast a steady glow across the room. Through the window, a silver moon hung high, nearing the center of the sky. Behind it trailed a crimson moon, and farther still, a barely visible black one. They seemed on the verge of aligning.
"Lucien, have you seen this month's financial report?"
A man in his late twenties asked the question while scratching his head in confusion at his desk. "I'm sure I left it here," he muttered.
Beside him sat a young man in his early twenties, his attention fixed on the laptop resting atop his workstation. He glanced briefly at his coworker before sweeping his tired eyes across his own desk, spotting a document. Without a word, he picked it up and tossed it over.
"There. I borrowed it earlier. I wanted to double-check it, but it looks fine to me."
His coworker, Neil, caught the papers with a slight frown. "You sure? I don't want to get chewed out by the old hag again over a misplaced comma."
Lucien snorted, leaning back in his chair as he rolled his stiff neck until it cracked. "Relax. I checked her payroll calculations three times. Unless someone's getting paid in Monopoly money, we're good."
Neil sighed, straightening the papers into a folder. "If we still get yelled at, don't blame me."
"The only one I'm blaming is whoever came up with this insane deadline." Lucien exhaled as he turned back to his work, the bluish glow reflecting beneath his weary eyes. It was 11:47 p.m.
His work computer had already been shut down. On his laptop screen, Adobe Photoshop displayed a half-finished commission logo. If not for the client insisting it be completed before midnight, he would have left long ago.
'This client and the old hag must share the same villain origin story… If they underpay me, I'm becoming the story's sequel.'
Lucien cursed inwardly, keeping his true feelings from showing on his face.
"Pulling another all-nighter?" Neil asked as he packed up his bag.
"No, I'm almost done too." Lucien's fingers glided across the drawing tablet, fine-tuning the gradient. "Got a commission due at midnight. I'll head home right after this."
"Man, you keep this up and you're going to burn out," Neil said, slinging his messenger bag over his shoulder. "When was the last time you actually slept properly?"
"A while," Lucien replied with a weary smile. "But don't worry about me. Just go home. Hug your wife and enjoy your sweet dreams of this life."
Neil lingered at the edge of the cubicle, hesitating. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then let out a quiet sigh. "Alright, see you Monday. Don't die of exhaustion in here, okay?"
"I'm not making any promises."
The office door clicked shut.
Silence swallowed the room, broken only by the occasional mouse click and Lucien's muttered curses.
After a while, he exported the final file, uploaded it to the client portal, then slumped back in his chair with a heavy groan.
"Finally done with it." He rubbed his eyes. "At this rate, I might be able to pay off Mom's medical debt by the time I'm forty… Honestly, she'd probably hang herself if she knew how messed up this country's healthcare system is."
The only small relief was that the debt collectors weren't as aggressive as the media had led him to believe. If anything, they were surprisingly polite. Still, that didn't make the burden any lighter. A debt was a debt, and his was far from small.
His gaze drifted toward the printer. His previous work in offset and screen printing had paid fairly well, but it still couldn't compare to what he earned now as a junior accountant.
Lucien let out a quiet sigh and rose from his desk. He grabbed his jacket and dragged himself toward the elevator.
At this hour, the building felt like a tomb. There was supposed to be a security guard stationed here, but in Lucien's experience, the man was usually asleep at the front desk.
He stepped into the elevator and pressed the ground floor button. His reflection stared back at him from the polished metal doors. His face was narrow, with a slightly defined jaw and faintly pronounced cheekbones. Dark circles hung beneath his tired eyes, and his gaze looked distant. Strands of unkempt hair fell across his forehead, doing little to hide the exhaustion in his features. His shirt was wrinkled from fourteen hours hunched over an office chair.
'Look at that... I'm twenty-two and I already look like I've lost custody of my own happiness.'
'Give it a few more years and I'll forget what it even looked like.'
He shook his head. Wallowing in sadness wasn't going to help anything.
The doors slid open to the lobby. He gave a half-hearted wave to the sleeping guard, who did not stir, then pushed through the glass doors into the cool night air.
The streets were empty, though the streetlights cast dull orange circles across the deserted sidewalk, lending the place a faint sense of life. Along the way, he spotted a convenience store.
'I haven't eaten since morning,' he muttered. 'Maybe I should grab some instant noodles.'
As he walked toward it, he couldn't help but imagine how disappointed his mother would be if she saw what her beloved son was doing to himself.
The thought left a bitter feeling in his chest, so he pulled out his phone to distract himself from it.
A string of notifications popped up, alerting him to new anime episodes, fresh manga chapters, and updates from the web novels he had been following. Just seeing them was enough to lift his mood.
'The internet really is amazing. Why fix your life when you can just not think about it?'
Among them, however, one unfamiliar notification stood out.
"Eclipse of the Century! Where to Watch, When to Look, What to Expect!"
He raised his brows.
It came from a browser that tended to throw out random pop-ups. He had forgotten to disable this one.
'Well... this is an interesting news, though.'
Lucien glanced up at the sky, curiosity getting the better of him. He didn't have any deep fascination with celestial objects, but he knew a thing or two about them. Normally, the moons followed a fixed arrangement. Vortuna, the silver moon, held the highest position. Astrofale, the crimson moon, trailed behind it, while Nirotis, the black moon, lingered farthest, often barely visible.
Right now, though, the only one he could clearly see was Vortuna. Astrofale and Nirotis were nowhere in sight.
'Has it already happened…?'
He narrowed his eyes, searching for anything unusual. It would be underwhelming if this was all there was.
At first, nothing seemed out of place. The silver moon hung where it should, quiet and distant. But as he kept looking, his vision began to adjust, and something beneath the surface of that light came into focus.
'What the hell is that...?'
Faint patterns surfaced across it. They're not quite lines or symbols. If he had to describe them, they looked like interlocking rings that refused to stay circular, folding into sharp angles before smoothing out again. Grids stretched and compressed without breaking, as if space itself were being bent and recalculated. Fractals layered over one another, repeating without ever being identical, branching outward only to collapse inward at the same time.
He narrowed his eyes further, trying to make sense of it.
'Is that some kind of optical illusion?'
The patterns shifted again, more noticeably this time.
'…No, that actually moved.'
A faint chill crept up his spine.
Suddenly, a mild dizziness hit him. It felt like he was falling, even though he wasn't moving.
'What's happening to me?'
His thoughts began to slow, like they were dragging through something thick.
He tried to blink.
Nothing.
He tried to move his hand.
Nothing.
A spike of panic shot through him.
'Why can't I move?'
He forced himself to look away.
His eyes didn't budge.
'Why can't I look away?!'
His breathing hitched—at least, he thought it did. He couldn't even tell anymore.
The patterns shifted faster now, folding over each other, expanding in a way that made it feel like something was opening behind them.
'What the hell is happening to me—'
A translucent screen snapped into his vision.
[Initializing Cycle…]
'Oh, come on, what kind of bullshitery—'
[Soul Detected: Match Confirmed.]
'Match confirmed?! With what?! I didn't sign up for anything!'
The pulling sensation intensified. It was no longer subtle. It felt like something had latched onto him—not his body, but something deeper—and was dragging it upward.
'No. No, no, no—this is bad.'
[Analyzing… Analyzing…]
'Stop analyzing me and let me move!'
His thoughts stuttered as panic seeped in.
The patterns expanded, or maybe he was being pulled toward them. He couldn't tell anymore, and that somehow made it worse.
'I don't like this—I really don't like this—'
[Transmigration Protocol Underway.]
'Trans—what?!'
Cold dread flooded him.
'Wait, wait, hold on—I'm not ready yet!'
The sensation only intensified.
[Initiating…]
'At least give me a second to—'
His thoughts snapped apart.
The patterns swallowed everything as darkness took him.
***
A/N: So, what do you think about this chapter? It's still just the prologue, though, and I get if it comes across as a cliché.
The setting is an alternate Earth. If people end up liking this story, I'm planning to keep the focus there in another story entirely.
Anyway, if you have any thoughts about this chapter, feel free to drop them in the comments. If you want, you can rate it from 1 to 5 stars and include your reasoning too.
I'm also participating in WSA 2026, so your Collections, Reviews, and Power Stones would really help motivate me to keep putting out more chapters.