"...ugh."
Ryuu groaned.
His eyes fluttered open. Light, too warm to be sunlight and too weak to be comforting, filtered through cracked wooden blinds. The ceiling—yes, there was a ceiling again—greeted him with its familiar pattern of stains and cobwebs.
For a moment, he just lay there. Motionless.
Then—he shot up.
The dream.
The skyless world. The throne. The whispers that weren't whispers.
His hand went instinctively to his chest. His heart thudded beneath his fingers. The air was heavy, yes, but it was the heavy of bad ventilation—not mind-crushing cosmic presence. No red clouds. No reversed gravity. No throne.
Just… mold, dust, and one extremely suspicious cockroach staring at him from the wall.
"…Just a dream," he muttered, voice dry. "Just a dream. Obviously."
A lie he wanted to believe.
Still, he let himself breathe. One inhale. Two. Three. He looked around the room, searching for anything to anchor him to this reality, even if it sucked.
The same room from before.
Rotted floorboards, one-legged chair in the corner like it had given up on standing, a bucket that might've once aspired to be a bathroom but failed, and a candle stub burned down to waxy regret.
Yeah. Welcome to luxury.
But the dream… it still clung to him. Not like fog, more like oil—thick, sticky, impossible to scrub out of memory.
He shivered and rubbed his face.
"No big deal," he whispered to no one. "Just a stress dream. A really, really weird stress dream."
Pause.
"…You don't transmigrate, Ryuu. That's not real. That's something you read at 2 AM because you're avoiding taxes or your mother's texts."
But as he said that, his eyes trailed across the wall.
A language he didn't know—and yet understood—was scribbled there in chalk. Faint, almost erased.
His breath hitched.
He stood.
"No. Nope. No. I'm not—this isn't—I didn't—"
He knocked his fist against his own skull. Not hard, just enough to hurt.
"Snap out of it. You're not in a fantasy world. You're sleep-deprived. You read too many webnovels. Maybe this is a lucid dream! That's a thing, right?"
He hurried to the window and yanked open the wooden shutters.
Three moons.
Still there.
Just… hanging in the sky like they belonged.
Silver. Blue. Red.
One of them winked.
He slammed the shutters shut.
"FUCK!"
He paced.
Back. Forth. Back again.
His thoughts fought each other like cats in a sack.
"I have parents! A sister! A life! I had a date with unemployment and job applications next week!"
"I don't belong here!"
"What if I got possessed? Is this like a coma thing?"
"Maybe I'm hallucinating in an alleyway somewhere, and this is all just a death dream before I croak from caffeine overdose and fried chicken!"
He stopped. Exhaled.
The silence wasn't helpful. It made him feel too aware of how real everything felt.
His fingers reached up and pinched his cheek.
"Ow."
Again.
"OW."
Yeah. That felt real.
He looked at his hands. His nails were shorter than he remembered. His skin slightly paler. His reflection in the broken mirror showed his face—but… wrong. Slightly sharper features. The kind of face you'd expect on someone who used words like "fuck and shit".
And the name in his head?
Still Ryuu Goch.
Still twenty-two.
Still dumped into this nightmare with no save point.
He sat down. Hard.
"…Shit."
No other word seemed to fit.
It took him over an hour before he stopped fighting the truth.
Not because he accepted it—hell no. But because reality didn't care if he accepted it or not.
It just… was.
He stared at the cracked wooden ceiling and whispered to himself, "Okay. Fine. Let's say I am in another world. Let's say this isn't a fever dream or a gacha-induced psychosis. Then what?"
He stood again. Walked to the water jug in the corner, lifted it, sniffed—decided he didn't want to cry—and set it down.
His stomach rumbled.
"Okay, Hunger. I hear you."
He scanned the room. If the previous occupant had any food, they didn't leave it behind. The apartment, if it could even be called that, consisted of:
A warped desk with one drawer that didn't open.A cracked window that let in more bugs than air.A chamber pot whose contents Ryuu refused to inspect.A wobbly stove powered by—what, soot and regret?
And of course, the bed: lumpy, creaky, and probably cursed.
He rubbed his eyes and moved to the window again, opening it slower this time.
The three moons were lower now. Dawn approached.
And beyond the window, the city began to stir.
Myrian Vox.
City of Rings.
Now that the sun was creeping in like a thief, Ryuu could see it properly.
From his window in the Sixth Ring—far out, near the edge—he could see the other rings like ripples in a pond, buildings stacked concentrically toward the glittering center. The architecture was strange, a blend of Victorian charm and arcane excess.
Cobbled roads curved like serpents, flanked by narrow townhouses with leaning chimneys and glyphs carved into every stone. Colored smoke curled out from alchemical shops. Streetlamps pulsed with soft, glowing runes. In the distance, floating carriages weaved between towers wrapped in silver ivy.
And above it all, the spires of the First Ring—piercing the sky like the city's answer to the moons.
He could feel the social stratification just by looking.
The further in, the cleaner, brighter, more magical.
Here in the Sixth?
Broken fences. Water-stained bricks. Stray cats fighting over old boots. Drunks still asleep under lamp posts. A man in a cloak trying to sell "authentic phoenix toenails" to a half-blind beggar.
This was the outermost ring—the slums.
It felt like someone had built a grand city, then remembered poor people existed, and slapped this ring on as an afterthought.
Still… it was kind of pretty.
In the way alley graffiti sometimes looked better than museum art.
He dressed quickly—his new clothes were simple: brown slacks, off-white shirt, thin boots with cracked soles. He still had no idea what the local currency looked like. The body's memories didn't include a bank account.
But he had legs.
And questions.
And a desperate need for answers.
So he stepped outside.
The streets of the Sixth Ring were alive now.
Children ran barefoot, tossing pebbles and laughter between them. A baker shouted out cheap bread prices. A woman in a cloak muttered to a glowing orb that looked suspiciously like a shrunken sun. Vendors displayed wares of questionable origin: potions that smelled like vinegar, scrolls written in invisible ink, and cages full of creatures Ryuu wasn't entirely sure were legal.
Every so often, a Harmonist walked past—recognizable by their glowing eyes, floating sigils, or the way the air shimmered around them. People gave them space. Reverence mixed with fear.
He passed a mirror seller hawking "truth-reflecting glass" and a man who claimed his cabbage could sing opera if properly watered.
"Fresh centaur milk! Guaranteed 40% centaur!" another vendor cried.
Ryuu tried to keep his expression neutral.
"This is so stupid," he whispered to himself.
And yet—he couldn't look away.
There was something addictive about it all. Like watching the world's weirdest anime convention—except it was real, messy, and slightly unsanitary.
He found a bench, surprisingly not broken, and sat.
For the first time that morning, he allowed himself to breathe slowly.
Okay. Reality check.
What did he know?
He was in a world called Elynthe.The city was Myrian Vox, the City of Rings.He was living in the outermost ring.Magic was real. So were Harmonists.The concept of Wi-Fi was a myth.
He had no job. No powers. No money. And no idea what triggered this transmigration in the first place.
"…So what now?"
He leaned back, staring up at the sky.
The moons were fading, but their ghostly outlines still lingered.
He felt… displaced.
Like a page torn from the wrong book.
Could he even survive?
He didn't know swordsmanship. Didn't have magic. Didn't have plot armor—unless you counted his sarcastic monologue as a superpower.
He could maybe fake being a scholar. The original Ryuu had graduated law school.
"Maybe I could scam my way into a clerkship," he muttered. "Or write laws for some sketchy noble. 'Yes, Lord Flaytongue, that tax is absolutely legal.'"
The idea didn't comfort him.
Still…
He was alive.
And if the dream last night had taught him anything—it was that something in this world had noticed him.
That presence.
The one behind reality.
The one that recognized him.
He shivered despite the sun.
Was it still watching?
Was it part of the city?
Was it the city?
His eyes drifted toward the center ring. Toward the tallest tower that scraped the sky like a needle.
And the throne.
He could still see it in his mind.
Still feel its pull.
He stayed there for a long while, watching people go by.
Vendors haggled, kids laughed, a man screamed about oranges being a government conspiracy. Life, as weird as it was, continued.
Eventually, his stomach grumbled again.
He stood.
"…Alright. First, find food. Then find information. Then… figure out how not to die."
He took a deep breath and looked around at the sprawling slum that now counted him among its citizens.
"Okay, Ryuu. You're in another world. You're probably stuck. So suck it up."
He gave one last look at the sky.
"No going back now."
Then he walked into the crowd, disappearing into the strange, vibrant rhythm of a city that didn't care who he was — only what he would become.