The void didn't end with a tunnel of light; it ended with a name.
Before the wet, heavy thud into reality, there was only the sound. A rhythmic, vibrating hum reached me through a wall of cold fluid, pulling me out of the nothingness. Kael... Kael... It was a soft, haunting call, a tether in the dark. I didn't know what it meant, but I followed that voice, grasping at the sound until I woke up screaming in a new body.
I opened my eyes, expecting the sterile white of a hospital or the familiar peeling wallpaper of my apartment. Instead, I was hit by a riot of suffocating emerald and bruised purple. The air wasn't just air; it was a humid, physical weight that tasted like damp earth and rotting flowers. I tried to scream—to ask what kind of twisted joke this was—but my lungs felt like tiny, half-inflated balloons. All that came out was a pathetic, high-pitched wail I know nothing, only the heavy, leaden memory of a life already lived and a death already tasted. I didn't want a "redo". I wanted the silence of the grave, the peace of the unmade. But the world, in its infinite cruelty, had other plans.
I looked up through watery, unfocused eyes at her. I didn't know who she was. In those first hazy weeks,I was being held by a woman. Her skin was the color of deep, sun-beaten mahogany, slick with sweat and the purple sap of the trees. She was built of corded, functional muscle, her long black hair tied back in a messy coil with strips of dried vine. To my infant eyes, To me, she was merely the first obstacle in my quest for total apathy.
I did not try. I did not struggle to crawl, nor did I reach for the trinkets the women of the camp offered me. When the warm milk hit my tongue—sweet and cloying—I drank only because the body demanded it. I watched the world through a veil of indifference. If I was to die someday—and in this harsh, muddy realm, death seemed a constant companion—then why bother with the labor of living?.
Where am I? I thought. Round two? Why bother? It all ends in the same dirt anyway.
By the third week, my vision clears enough to realize I'm not in a palace. The "Prince" fantasy dies the moment I see the ceiling . I'm in a tent, not a castle.
Then a cold realization washed over me. Everyone around me looked colossal. They towered like giants, or perhaps... I was the one who was small. I managed to lift a hand, and the sight of it confirmed my fears. It was tiny, pudgy, with translucent skin and miniature fingernails. My mind reeled. Had I shrunk? Or had I been Isekai'd into this world? If that were true, was this beautiful woman holding me actually my mother? I felt a surge of hysterical panic—if she was my mother, that effectively ruined any hope of her being part of a harem. I tried to suppress the thought, feeling a sudden wave of shame; I didn't want to be a weirdo so I wanted to ask them who they were.
But when I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out. Instead, a thin, piercing wail erupted from my throat in place of my word. I heard a cry come out .
The beautiful woman gasped, her face softening with a desperate kind of love. She pulled me closer, she kissed me many times even so i enjoy it but that was not thing i want it right now so my complement continue or should i say my cry she look to the other woman around her say some world i did not understand then.
When the warm milk hit my tongue, the "wrongness" of the world faded for a moment. It was sweet and rich, and as I drank, I decided that whatever this place was, I wanted to stay in her arms forever. She did something I did not know I needed but it felt good she offered me life.
I only learned her name by accident. It happened during the chaotic midday hours in the Great Fork, where the tribe gathered to eat pulpy, neon-blue fruits that made the tongue numb. As she moved through the crowd with me strapped to her back in a sling of cured leather, a worker barked a sharp command.
"Elara!" the man snapped, pointing to a heavy crate of obsidian.
She hadn't flinched, but I felt the tension in her powerful shoulders. Elara. The name felt solid, a secret treasure I tucked away. She never called herself anything to me; to the tribe, she was a resource, but to me, she finally had a shape.
Our village was a vertical labyrinth. Tents were woven into the branches using a silk-like spider webbing that hardened into leather, looking like giant, dark cocoons hanging in the canopy. The walls of our own hollow were lined with soft, glowing moss that hummed with a low frequency, providing a dim, greenish light.
I spent my days watching the Innate work alongside the humans, their skin-patterns flickering like dying coals. But my gaze often drifted to the Beastmen lounging on the high branches. Especially Vargus.
He was what we call alpha male he have all woman in his finger order rest of male in village
To make my harem I need to beat him so i think if this was another world it is possible i have magical power right ?
So I try to summon a Status Screen. I stare into the empty air, waiting for a blue HUD to pop up. I search for a Health Bar, an MP gauge, or even a simple level indicator. There is nothing. No magic. Learning is slow. Their language is a thicket of sounds I can't cut through. But I listen " Word by word, the world begins to have labels.
In my previous life, I was an Otaku So i know how fantasy work or i thought i know
I spent weeks trying to "circulate mana" or ignite a firefly with my mind. I held my breath until I turned purple, praying for a spark. But I eventually realized the "moving vines" were just pulleys and the Beastmen's "aura" was just static electricity.
There is no magic here, I told myself, watching the firelight. Life is just a biological accident, a brief spark between two eternities of nothingness. This world is just a prettier treadmill than the last one.
Every week, I sat in Elara's lap and watched the men batter each other. As the sun dipped below the horizon each evening, a new rhythm took hold. Every night, finish the day with night gatherings where the Elder tells a story that I never understood. She was an ancient woman with skin like parched, wrinkled bark and a shock of silver hair that looked like hanging moss. Her milky, clouded eyes seemed to see right through me . I spent the night of the gathering clinging to Elara, stubbornly refusing the Elder mashed grubs she tried to feed me. At the time I didn't know that my refusal to eat was the only thing keeping
But On the last night of the Selection, the cycle broke.
The winner of the morning's brawl stood in the firelight. His name was Vargus, a Beastman standing nearly seven feet tall. He had rounded tiger ears that twitched at every sound. His massive chest was etched with charcoal stripes, and a jagged scar ran from his forehead down to his jaw, giving him a terrifying, predatory look.
Elara tried to pull me away, her voice rising in a desperate plea.She stepped forward, her voice rising in a sharp, jagged sequence of clicks. She was arguing, gesturing toward me, then back to the Elder.
The Elder let out a low, vibrating hum that silenced the plaza. He is too old, she rasped.
As my awareness grew, I observed the brutal social structures of the pack. For a long time, my hollow had been a quiet sanctuary because I was still drinking my mother's milk. In this tribe, a nursing mother is "off the market"
She pried me from Elara's arms. At the same time, she gestured to Vargus. The brute stepped forward, his corded muscles rippling. He reached out a massive hand and gripped Elara's wrist.
Now, I thought. It has to be now. If I'm a protagonist, my power has to show up!
I strained every fiber of my soul. I reached toward Vargus's hand, trying to summon lightning or fire. Break! Burn! Stop! I screamed in my mind.
Nothing happened.
There was no light. No system. I tried to shout for him to let her go, but the only thing that came out was the weak, pathetic cry of a baby.
I watched from the Elder's hip as she carried me away toward the nursery tree. As Vargas dragged her toward his tent, her mahogany skin disappeared into the shadows .
It's a machine that breaks you, I thought, my world turning to ash. I am alone.
I didn't speak. I just cried as the Elder's serpent-skin robes rustled in the dark, carrying me into a life where I no longer had a mother.