"Argh, my head… I knew I shouldn't have taken that last shot at the company party. It's always so damn hard to say no… Still, this headache is unbearable."
Xianshi muttered miserably, his complaint slipping out into the silence as a sharp, dull ache pulsed through his skull, ringing again and again like a cruel bell.
When he forced his eyes open, a most peculiar sight greeted him: a desk littered with papers, each dyed red, their surface mottled with mushy, half-coagulated chunks. His hand, trembling, brushed against the mess.
"Ahh!" He recoiled violently, shooting upright in his chair. The realization struck him instantly—the red was blood. His hand came away smeared in it. He clutched at his head as fresh pain surged, fragments of memory crashing into his mind like broken glass carried on the tide.
"Wi… William James Moriarty. I… I'm a professor at Tingen University… What is this? Are these… memories?"
He forced himself to steady his breathing. Slowly, the storm subsided—though the pain lingered like a shadow at the edges of his skull, persistent but no longer blinding.
Lifting his gaze from the blood-soaked desk, he noticed the room in which he stood. A spacious chamber, lined with tall shelves burdened by books. The only light came from gas lamps affixed to the walls, their amber glow casting long, restless shadows across the floor. Beside one such lamp hung a circular mirror, its rim carved with intricate wooden engravings.
Compelled, he leaned closer. A stranger's face stared back at him—familiar, yet foreign. A man of Caucasian descent, with deep-set eyes glowing a strange, fiery red, tinged faintly with amber. Medium-length blond hair fell across his brow, swept to one side, though two distinct locks hung down past his chin, framing his face with uncanny precision.
He wore a once-white gown, its fabric marred by a deep scarlet stain spreading across his chest. At the very center of his forehead sat a small wound, freshly closed, though the edges were still tacky with blood. Strands of his hair were stiff with it, tangled with remnants of tissue and viscera.
Touching the wound lightly, he murmured, "Did I… transmigrate? This is certainly a new appearance for me. A wound to the head… Was I shot?"
His eyes fell back to the desk. The papers scattered there bore equations and formulas, though many were blurred and unreadable beneath the dark smears. Resting beside them was a pistol, ornate in design—too decorative to be common. Its barrel gleamed faintly in the lamplight, and its grip bore delicate engravings, doves in mid-flight etched across the surface.
"Was this… the weapon?"
He examined the scene more closely, his thoughts turning analytical.
"No… it couldn't be. If the victim—that is, I—had sought to end his own life, the most rational method would have been through the mouth. A bullet angled upwards at forty-five degrees would pierce the thalamus, ensuring instant death. Painless, efficient. The forehead is far less precise, though still fatal. But no… Moriarty would not have chosen such a crude method. Furthermore—the splatter."
His eyes swept over the room.
"Had this been suicide, blood would pool across the desk as the head collapsed forward. But look… the splatter patterns stretch across the wall in front, not behind the chair. There's no heavy pooling at the back. And the spread is too wide, too violent, for a self-inflicted shot delivered with calmness. No… someone else was here."
The realization sat heavily in his chest, chilling and inevitable. He fell silent, the weight of it pressing down upon him.
Slowly, he turned toward the window. The night sky greeted him, but it was not as he remembered. Beyond the glass, a crimson glow bathed the heavens—the moon itself burning red.
In his world, the blood moon was a rare omen. Here, it was mundane. The moon had always borne that crimson hue, and it always would.
Its light seeped through the parted curtains, washing over the chamber, drenching the bloodied scene in an even deeper shade of scarlet.