A kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind Julien's eyes, each hue sharp as a blade. Incessant chanting echoed through his mind—rhythmic, alien, relentless.
"Aghh..."
He tried to move, but it felt like every bone in his body was shattering under an invisible weight.
"So painful... Someone... help me..."
He had no arms to lift, no head to turn, no mouth to scream. He was trapped inside himself.
Julien fought to gather his thoughts. Just moments ago, he had been asleep in his bed.
Now he was drowning in agony.
If he'd had time to think, he might've believed he was dead—and this was hell.
"Fuck..."
Am I having a stroke?
Am I being crushed in a blender?
"Pain" was too weak a word for what he endured.
There was nothing around him—only the distant chiming of bells and soft whispers. Whispers that felt both impossibly close and hauntingly distant, brushing against him like a lover's ghostly caress.
"Give her your fear, devour her whisper,
Lust upon the great mother's blackened flesh.
Relish in her impartial torment,
Desire the agony she breathes."*
"In her embrace, bones crack sweetly—
In her kiss, we taste the void.
Blessed be the pain that binds,
Blessed the madness that swallows."*
"Crawl into her womb, let the black tendrils take—
Let them hollow us out, let them fill us anew.
In her cold flame, we find rapture,
In her silence, our endless scream."*
"O Mother of Shadows, Mother of crawling night,
We are but flesh in your caress."*
The chanting dissolved into a rising tide of screams and guttural sounds—inhuman and distorted, each note making his skull throb as if it were about to split.
"What the fuck is going on?"
Only one thought clawed its way through the chaos: he'd been kidnapped—tortured, blinded, and offered up in some profane ritual.
He tried to move a finger, but agony blurred the line between body and pain.
"Fuck!"
"Aghhhhh!"
"You little bastards... If I get out of this, I'll kill you myself."
What kind of lunatics would abduct a burnt-out sales manager and offer him to some god?
This is the real world, he thought bitterly. If gods existed, why would he be trapped in a 9 to 5 job?
He wanted to scream, to curse every last one of them—but he had no mouth to do it with.
Listening closely, he tried to piece together what surrounded him, but there was nothing to grasp. The vivid world he once knew had faded into whispers—near and far, real and unreal.
He couldn't locate himself.
When he tried to feel his body, it was as if he were nothing more than a pulsing, formless mass—broken, blended—yet somehow still aware.
Maybe it was an illusion.
Fighting through the skull-splitting pain and the muttering voices that shredded his clarity, Julien summoned every ounce of willpower to force himself awake.
I've never been religious,* he pleaded inwardly, *but please—God, or whatever cruel force governs this hell—have mercy. Let it end. Let me wake up in my bed. Let me go back.
Silence followed—thick and oppressive, as if the void itself paused to listen. His heart drummed in his ears, each beat echoing like distant thunder. A high-pitched ring began to swell, filling every corner of his mind with its relentless pitch. Time itself seemed to stretch, each second drawn out into an eternity of anticipation.
Then—finally—it happened. Like a pane of glass under impossible tension, the world **fractured** around him.
Darkness splintered into jagged shards of flickering light.
Pain, once a roaring inferno, shrank to a dull ember at the edge of his awareness.
The whispers, unruly and suffocating, unraveled into drifting tendrils of smoke that vanished on the breeze.
For the first time in what felt like forever, **hope** surged through him—fragile and brilliant, illuminating the shadows of his despair.
**Had it worked?**
Was it just a dream? A terrible nightmare?
He braced for the familiar tug of waking. But even after the pain vanished completely, nothing came.
"Hello?"
No answer. No bed. No world.
Just endless darkness—and his drifting, unanchored consciousness.
What the fuck?
Why him? Had he really died?
He reached out with what little sense of self he had, trying to feel the world around him. But this wasn't like the novels he was familiar with, there was nothing. No qi, no Divine Sence, no answers—just the void.
Is this what waits for us after death?
Am I really stuck here… forever?
Time became meaningless. Seconds dragged like centuries.
Fuck you.
Fuck your mother.
I'm going to strangle you, god—or whatever sick thing did this.
Was he forgotten?
Was this punishment?
Was this abandonment?
The only thing that remained was the bell's toll—slow, steady, eternal.
A cruel metronome.
At least I have you, he thought bitterly.
That sound, relentless as it was, became his only companion. It marked the hours, days, years—whatever they were now.
He clung to memories: laughter, sunlight, the smell of rain on pavement. But one by one, they faded—swallowed by the dark.
His mind began to fray.
Shapes flickered at the edges of his perception—shadows, glimpses of something just beyond understanding. Hope? Hallucination? He couldn't tell anymore.
Then, something shifted.
A new sound emerged—faint at first, almost not there. A whisper, softer than the rest. Different.
"..."
His pulse jumped.
He had long since lost count of time, of bells, of dreams. But this was new.
"Hello? Help me... I'm here. Please. I'm right here."
Had he gone mad?
Probably.
But he wasn't stupid.
The sound was real. Another bell—but not like the first.
He reached for it, whatever it was, pouring every last shred of will into that motion.
And for the first time, the darkness trembled.
A flicker of light broke through.
Yes.
I'm going to devour whatever trapped me here.
The second bell rang again—louder now. Brighter.
Not the lifeless drone of the first, but something alive. It cut through the void like a blade of sound, tearing the silence apart.
And then—light.
It wasn't gentle.
It seared.
A blinding white and gold brilliance sliced through the darkness. It didn't warm—it scorched.
Something yanked him upward, dragging his consciousness from the abyss. For a moment, the pain returned—sharp, soul-deep.
But with it came ecstasy. Bliss so intense it almost broke him.
He could feel again. Arms, legs, spine, face—he was real.
"Yes,"he whispered hoarsely, tears falling from eyes he wasn't sure he had. "Yes. I'm going to live."
But something was wrong.
Even as the light grew, a deep, guttural hum rose beneath it. Not the bells. Not the whispers. Something ancient. Massive.
Julien's joy faltered.
His heart stumbled.
The light began to fracture.
And then—vision.
At last, his world came into focus.
A moss-covered stone table stood at the center of a vast chamber, its surface pitted and worn by time. Cobwebs clung to the ribs of a vaulted ceiling. Deep cracks marred the flagstone beneath his feet.
Despite the eerie surroundings, all Julien felt was pure, overwhelming bliss.
He was free.
Julien, despite the pain, took a moment to breathe and feel—sensations he hadn't experienced in what felt like an eternity. His breaths came slow and steady, each inhale a small victory after so long trapped in silence and torment. The air was cold and damp, carrying the faint, musty scent of stone cellars he had once read about in old books. Tiny dust motes drifted lazily in the pale light filtering down from cracks far above, casting fragile patterns in the stillness around him.
His body, though weak, felt real—solid beneath his skin. He flexed his fingers, testing movement, and they obeyed. The ache in his limbs was deep but familiar.
He looked around the chamber more carefully. The walls were made of rough, dark stone, cold to the touch. Shadows stretched long, twisting in the flickering light. There was a faint scent of mold and earth. The cobwebs quivered slightly in a breeze he couldn't see.
The stone table in the center caught his eye again. It was old, ancient even, stained with dark patches that told stories he didn't want to imagine. Something lay on the table—a cloth, thin and worn, covering an object he couldn't yet see.
Julien's heart quickened. Was this where he'd been held?
Gazing down at his body, he was shocked, it wasn't his body.
Long ebony hair cascaded into his view, framing delicate, slender female features.
He had become a woman.
What the fuck?
Something was very, very wrong.
Julien's breath caught in his throat. His hands—small, pale, unfamiliar—trembled as he reached up to touch the face staring back at him. The skin was soft, smooth, and utterly foreign.
Although he had been trapped in that strange void for who knew how long, Julien could still piece together a timeline.
First, he had come home from his job, taken a bath, eaten a cup of ramen noodles, gone to sleep—and then… dragged into some endless void. Now, he had woken up in a strange place, inside a strange body.
But what was even more unbelievable was how, as time stretched on, it felt as if his very soul was being stitched anew. The insanity he thought had consumed him was slowly replaced by faint but familiar emotions—family ties, grounding feelings he had long forgotten.
His mind was still somehow intact.
No bells. No whispers or chanting. Just himself, trapped in an unfamiliar body, within a cold, stone dungeon.
Had he really… transmigrated?