A boy. Five years old. Laughing.
Sunlight through a window. His father's face, young and warm, lifted him onto broad shoulders. The world suddenly looks enormous from up there.
Then—
A training yard. Wooden sword. Summer heat. Sweat. "Again." The crack of wood against the practice dummy. "Better. Again."
Then—
A girl. Tiny. Red-faced and screaming. His father was holding her like glass. "Her name is Cecilia." Looking down at her, not understanding why everyone was crying.
Then—
A blue screen appeared at age ten. His father was reading it quietly. Something complicated crossed his face. "Lightning affinity. That's my son."
Then—
Faster now.
A banquet hall. Too-tight formal clothes. Nobles with practised smiles and eyes that slid right past him.
Faster—
His father coughing. Trying to hide it. Coins that were being counted late at night.
Faster—
A rift hovering like a wound in the sky. His father was strapping on old armour. "Stay inside." Not coming back.
Faster—
Rain. A funeral. Cecilia's hand was crushing his. He didn't cry. Someone had to hold it together.
Faster, faster, faster—
Training because they couldn't afford an instructor. Cecilia, beside him, air swirling around her fingers. "I'll catch up to you, brother."
The Academy entrance exam. Lightning crackled down his blade. The evaluator's bored nod. "Pass. Barely."
One week ago. This forest. Early morning. Alone. The rustle of leaves. Turning. Green eyes in the shadows.
Claws and teeth and—
Oscar lurched upright, gasping. His hands flew to his throat, checking, feeling. Whole. Alive.
The forest stared back. Moonlight. Cold air. Dead leaves under his palms.
He sat there, chest heaving, trying to remember how breathing worked.
'What the hell was that?'
Not his memories. Couldn't be his. He'd never held a wooden sword. Never had a sister. Never watched his father leave and not come back.
Except he had.
The memories sat in his skull as if they'd always been there. Seventeen years of someone else's life existing alongside his own. He could feel both. The orphanage cafeteria's smell and the Reinhart estate's library. His schoolbag's weight and a practice sword's.
Oscar pressed his palms against his eyes.
Two lives. One head. And they were already bleeding together at the edges.
Cecilia.
The name surfaced without permission. Arthur's sister. No, not Arthur's. His. The memory of her grinning up at him felt as real as anything from his own childhood.
"Stop it," he muttered. "Not real. Not mine."
But the grief in his chest didn't care whose grief it was.
He lowered his hands, forcing himself to focus. Sort through the emotional wreckage later. Right now, he needed to think.
'I'm in Chronicles of the Corrupted Age.'
The thought should've felt absurd. It didn't. The memories settled the question before his brain could argue. Arthur's memories confirmed what Oscar couldn't quite believe. This world was real. The Nova System was real. The five nations, the corruption, all of it.
And Arthur Reinhart had died here.
Oscar looked around at the trees with new wariness.
'Great. Transmigrated into a corpse. Fantastic.'
How long had he been out? The moon hadn't moved much. Thirty minutes? Forty? Long enough that whatever killed Arthur might've moved on.
Might've.
He tested his limbs. Arms, legs, everything working. No injuries despite the shredded clothes. The body was in decent shape. Well-fed, trained. Taller than Oscar had been, stronger too. Six-one, solid muscle. Not enough muscle, Arthur's memories whispered, but something to work with.
Oscar pushed himself up. Steadier this time. The body knew how to balance even when his head was still catching up.
'Okay. Think.'
He was in a forest. Unarmed. Something that killed people lived here. He needed to not die.
Standard isekai problems, really. Except that most protagonists got cheat abilities. What did he get? A dead guy's memories and a stick.
He scanned the ground. Dead branches everywhere. He grabbed one roughly two feet long and tested its weight. Garbage compared to a sword, but Arthur's hands remembered the motion of holding a weapon. That helped.
'Stick acquired. Basically invincible now.'
Now what?
He'd been walking toward thinner trees before he blacked out. Away from where the attack happened. That was good. Keep going in that direction, find the forest's edge and find a road.
Arthur's memories supplied fragments. This forest was maybe forty minutes from the Academy. Isolated but not remote. If he could find north...
He looked up. Stars between the canopy gaps. There. The North Star.
'At least Arthur paid attention during navigation lessons.'
He oriented himself and started walking.
The forest pressed in. Every shadow looked wrong. Every rustle of leaves sounded too loud. Oscar kept his breathing controlled, his footsteps quiet. Arthur's body knew how to move through undergrowth. He let the muscle memory guide him.
One foot in front of the other. Don't think. Just move.
This was real. Actually real. He was in Chronicles of the Corrupted Age. The story he'd been reading minutes before dying.
Lloyd Ashford was out there somewhere, probably training with that insufferable dedication the early chapters loved. Getting ready for his Academy year. Being the protagonist.
And Oscar was a dead extra stumbling through a forest.
'Plot armour really is something.'
He shook his head. Worry about Lloyd later. Survive first.
A twig snapped behind him.
Oscar froze.
Silence pressed down. That wrong kind of quiet where even the wind held its breath.
Then the smell hit.
Rotten meat and sulphur. Stronger than before. Much stronger.
His heart kicked into overdrive. Arthur's muscle memory moved before his brain caught up. Feet widening, weight dropping, the branch coming up in both hands.
The bushes to his left shivered.
Oscar didn't breathe.
A low sound built from the darkness. Not quite a growl. Like breathing through something broken. Like whatever was making it had forgotten how lungs worked.
A green light flickered between the leaves.
Two points of it. Low. Getting closer.
Oscar's hands tightened on the branch.
'It followed me.'
The corrupted monster that killed Arthur wasn't gone.
It had been hunting him the entire time.