Earth – Hospital
Tim woke to the rhythmic, insistent beeping of a machine and a pounding headache that felt like a nail being driven between his eyes.
His eyes snapped open, expecting the purple sky and the smell of ozone. Instead, he was met with the aggressive whiteness of acoustic ceiling tiles and the sharp, sterile scent of antiseptic.
He gasped, his hands flying to his chest, searching for the hole the meteor must have punched through him. There was nothing but a thin cotton gown and the sticky residue of EKG patches.
"Mr. Jones, please try to stay calm," a voice said, firm and professional.
Tim turned his head, wincing as the movement sent a fresh spike of pain through his skull. A nurse stood by the bed, adjusting a drip. She didn't look impressed.
"You took a nasty spill," she said, checking the monitor. "A passerby called the ambulance. They found you face-down on the pavement with a bag of broken beer bottles next to you."
"I... what?" Tim croaked. His voice was raspy, but it was his. Deep. American.
"We found a significant amount of alcohol in your system," the nurse continued, her tone bordering on a scold. "The doctor believes you were intoxicated, tried to run, tripped, and slammed your head on the concrete. You have a mild concussion and some facial lacerations, but the CT scan came back clear. You're lucky you didn't crack your skull open."
Tim stared at his hands. They were large, slightly hairy, and callous-free. His hands. He reached up and felt a bandage on his cheekbone.
I tripped?
The memories of the meteor, the white void, the agony of his soul tearing apart—it felt like a vivid, terrifying hallucination. A whiskey-induced nightmare brought on by a mental breakdown and a blow to the head.
"I'm alive," he whispered.
"You are," the nurse confirmed. "Dr. Tanaka recommends keeping you overnight for observation. Head injuries can be unpredictable, and given your... condition when you arrived, we'd prefer to monitor you."
Tim sat up, fighting a wave of nausea. The thought of a hospital bill—even with insurance—made his stomach turn. He had overdraft fees. He had nothing. He couldn't afford a night in a private ward.
"No," Tim said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "I can't stay. I have classes to teach tomorrow. I just want to go home."
"Mr. Jones, we strongly advise against it—"
"I'm signing out," Tim insisted, his stubbornness rising to mask his panic. "I'm lucid. I know who I am. I just fell down. Please."
The nurse sighed, realizing she wasn't going to win this argument. "I'll get the doctor. If you leave, it's against medical advice. You'll need to sign a waiver."
She turned to leave. As soon as the door clicked shut, a frantic, irrational paranoia seized him. The dream—the nightmare—had been so visceral. He remembered the sensation of changing. He needed to be sure. He needed to know that everything was still there.
He yanked the blankets back and pulled up the hospital gown.
"Thank god," he muttered, sagging back against the pillows in genuine relief. "Everything is where it's supposed to be."
The door clicked open again.
"Mr. Jones, I forgot to check your—"
The nurse froze. Tim froze, his gown still hiked up to his waist.
They stared at each other for three agonizing seconds. The nurse clutched her clipboard like a shield. Tim slowly, carefully, lowered the gown.
"I was just... checking for other injuries," Tim said, his voice cracking. "From the fall."
"Right," the nurse replied, her eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling tiles. "Well. Everything appears to be... functional. I'll bring the paperwork."
She retreated quickly. Tim covered his face with his hands and let out a long, shaky groan. If this was his second chance at life, he was already screwing it up.
By the time Tim signed the release forms and was discharged, the sun had fully set. The mountain town was quiet, the air cool and humid.
He walked home slowly, clutching the plastic bag of painkillers they had given him. He tried to force his mind to accept the doctor's explanation: intoxication, a stumble, a concussion. It made sense. It was logical. The meteor had probably just been a streetlamp flaring in his vision as he fell.
But as he walked, the world began to tilt.
It wasn't the concussion dizziness. It was... intrusion.
His vision seemed to twist, as if a second transparency had been laid over his eyes. He blinked hard, rubbing his temples, but the sensation didn't fade. It sharpened.
Then, without warning, his perception split open.
The sensation was violent, like a sledgehammer to the skull. Two distinct realities crashed into his consciousness simultaneously, fighting for dominance.
A: The dark asphalt road to his apartment, the chirping of crickets, the smell of pine.
B: A jagged stone ceiling, the crackle of thunder, the metallic taste of old blood.
Tim dropped to his knees on the pavement, retching dryly as vertigo overwhelmed his nervous system. He was seeing two places at once, overlaying each other in a chaotic mess. A streetlamp in Japan was superimposed over a glowing purple rune in the other world; the silence of the mountain town was drowned out by the phantom roar of a storm.
He couldn't see where he was walking. He tried to take a step on the pavement, but his other legs—Lia's legs—were curled up on a stone floor, sending conflicting proprioceptive signals to his brain.
"Stop," he gasped, clutching his head. "Too much."
He couldn't function like this. He was going to pass out again right here on the street. He needed to cut the feed.
He tried to squeeze his eyes shut, but that only plunged his Earth vision into darkness. The other vision—the purple nightmare—remained crystal clear, burning behind his eyelids.
It's not a hallucination, he realized with terrifying clarity. I am actually there. I have eyes there.
"Close them," he commanded himself. Not his Earth eyes. Her eyes.
It took a supreme effort of will, like trying to flex a phantom limb. He focused on the sensation of the cold stone and the heavy eyelids of the body far away.
He squeezed Lia's eyes shut.
Instantly, the purple landscape vanished from his mind's eye, replaced by a velvety blackness on that "channel." The sensory overload receded to a dull roar. He could still hear the thunder and feel the cold stone against her skin, but with the visual input cut off, his human brain could finally process the street in front of him.
Shaking violently, Tim hauled himself to his feet. He kept his mental focus locked on keeping Lia's eyes squeezed tight, using the darkness as a shield against the madness.
He stumbled the rest of the way to his apartment like a drunkard, navigating by the streetlamps of Japan while the sounds of another world echoed in his ears.
He fumbled with his keys, practically falling through the door and collapsing onto his couch.
Safe in his apartment, Tim let out a long, shuddering breath. He grabbed a throw pillow, anchoring himself to the texture of the fabric.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay."
Slowly, hesitantly, he allowed his concentration to slip. He let Lia's eyes open.
The double vision returned, but now that he was sitting down, it was manageable. He stared at his beige living room wall, while simultaneously staring out from a rocky alcove into a wasteland.
He analyzed the second view. He wasn't just somewhere in the cultivation world. The landscape was broken, floating in a void of purple nebula. It was a Shard—a fragment of space torn away from the main reality, likely created by an ancient battle or a powerful technique.
Lia is trapped in a pocket dimension, he realized. A cage.
He turned the head of the other body—a disorienting sensation that made his Earth stomach lurch—and looked behind her. There, shimmering against the ruin of a collapsed wall, was the spatial rift. It was a tear in the fabric of the Shard, crackling with unstable energy. Through the haze, he could just barely make out the familiar green of a forest on the other side.
That rift was the door. He had entered the Shard through it, and the only way back to the main world—back to the Sect—was to go back through it.
But the Shard wasn't empty. Between the cave and that rift lay a graveyard of broken stone and fresh corpses.
Tim felt the panic rising again. The disconnect between his male mind and the female body in the cave was maddening. Every time he thought 'I need to move,' his brain glitched, unsure which 'I' he was referring to.
If I try to be Tim in a girl's body, I'll go insane, he thought, gripping the pillow until his knuckles turned white. I can't pilot her like a drone. I have to BE her.
He took a deep breath on Earth.
I am Tim here.I am Lia there.
He repeated it like a mantra. He had to compartmentalize. He had to accept the identity of the vessel, or the cognitive dissonance would kill him before the monsters did.
"I have to get her out," he decided. "I have to get Lia out."
He closed his eyes in Japan, shutting out the safe, boring apartment. He pushed his awareness across the cosmos, surrendering his identity to the girl shivering in the cave.
Cultivation World – The Ruins
The transition was jarring. One moment he was splitting his focus; the next, he was fully present in the nightmare.
The muted sounds of the apartment dimmed, replaced instantly by the crackle of ozone and the distant howl of wind. The beige walls of his living room were gone; now, his vision was filled solely with the jagged stone ceiling of the alcove.
Lia looked down at herself. The red sect robes were torn and stained with dirt. She raised a hand—slender, pale, calloused from sword practice—and flexed the fingers.
She tried to stand, and nearly launched herself into the ceiling of the cave.
"Whoa!" Lia gasped, her voice high and musical.
The power in this body was terrifying. It felt like her muscles were made of compressed springs. A simple twitch of her thigh muscles, which would have just shifted Tim's weight on Earth, sent Lia lurching forward with explosive force. She grabbed a jagged rock to steady herself, and the stone crumbled to dust in her grip.
Foundation Establishment, the memory whispered. Bones like steel. Muscles like hydraulic pistons.
She was driving a Formula 1 car, but she only knew how to ride a bicycle.
Okay, Lia, she thought, forcing the identity to stick. Focus.
Her stomach growled, a sharp, twisting pain that cut through the adrenaline. It wasn't just hunger; it was a ravenous, metabolic demand. A body this powerful burned energy like a furnace. She needed food. She needed water.
She shifted her weight to crawl toward the cave entrance, but her hand brushed against something that wasn't stone. It was fabric. Rough, brittle fabric.
Lia froze. She turned her head slowly.
She wasn't alone in the alcove.
Huddled in the back corner of the cave, shrouded in shadow, was a figure. It sat in a meditative lotus position, perfectly still.
Lia scrambled back, her heart hammering, waiting for an attack. But the figure didn't move.
She squinted through the gloom. The robes weren't the red of her sect, nor the green of the killers. They were a deep, dusty blue, styled in a fashion centuries out of date. The fabric was tattered and covered in a thick layer of grey dust.
It was a corpse. A desiccated husk of a cultivator who had died here long ago, perhaps when this Shard was first created.
Ancient, Lia thought, the fear slowly ebbing into curiosity. He's been here for a long time.
She crept closer. The corpse was practically mummified, skin drawn tight over bone. But on the skeletal fingers resting on its knees, silver glinted.
Rings. Three of them.
A stroke of destiny, Lia realized.
She reached out. She hesitated for a moment—a flash of Tim's earthly morality questioning the desecration of the dead—but Lia's pragmatic survival instinct overrode it. He doesn't need them. I do.
She tugged the first ring off the bone finger. It was cold silver.
Inject Qi.
The instinct kicked in. She pushed a wisp of the energy in her gut into the metal. Suddenly, a space opened in her mind—like having a window into another dimension pop open in her brain.
The sensation was extraordinary: she could perceive a pocket of folded space containing roughly five cubic meters of storage area. Inside, she found a small stash of supplies: spare clothing, medicinal herbs, three healing pills that could mend most mortal wounds, preserved meats and dried fruits, plus a small jug of water. There was also a leather pouch containing coins and spirit stones .
"Thank you, Senior," she whispered, her voice trembling.
She took the second ring. Inside, she found spare robes, cultivation tools, a well-crafted sword, and an ornate staff.
She took the third ring. This one held two books written in an unfamiliar script.
She strapped the staff to her back. She had food, water, money, weapons, and manuals. She was ready.
She crept to the mouth of the cave, intending to make a run for the rift.
Suddenly, a voice echoed from the darkness nearby.
"Check the perimeter. Leave no survivors."
The sound triggered a violent spasm in Tim's mind. A memory that wasn't his flashed white-hot behind his eyes.
Green robes emerging from the shadows. The rustling of fabric. The cold laugh as she tried to defend herself. The sensation of an invisible blade bypassing her flesh and shredding her soul.
Lia gasped, pressing herself flat against the cold stone wall of the alcove. Her heart hammered against her ribs, the phantom pain of her death throbbing in her chest.
They are still here.
The realization turned her blood to ice. The killers—the Corpse Cleansing Sect—were still hunting. If she walked out there, she wouldn't just be killed; she would be erased again.
Quiet. Be quiet.
Lia sank into a crouch, letting the fear sharpen her senses. She didn't run. Instead, she crept to the edge of the alcove, moving with agonizing slowness, peering out from the shadows.
Fifty yards away, near the shimmering tear of the spatial rift, she saw them.
Figures in green robes were moving among the ruins. But something was wrong. They weren't hunting anymore. They were panicking.
"Retreat!" one of them screamed. "They're here!"
Stepping through the rift to meet them was a nightmare in silver and blue armor.
The figure was tall, imposing, and radiated an aura that made the air vibrate. Lightning crackled along the length of a massive spear in his hand. Behind him, dozens of armored cultivators poured out of the rift, their faces hidden behind visors.
Enforcement Elder Lei, Lia's mind supplied instantly. The Thunder Spear.
He was salvation, but he looked like death.
One of the fleeing scavengers lunged toward the rift, hoping to slip past. The armored leader didn't even break stride. He flicked his spear—a casual, almost bored motion—and a bolt of blue lightning vaporized the man's head.
The headless body tumbled to the ground, smoking.
"Annihilate them," Elder Lei commanded. His voice sounded like grinding stones. "Leave none alive. These rats will learn the price of trespassing in Flowing Water territory."
Lia watched from her hiding spot, trembling as the systematic slaughter unfolded. It was brutal, efficient, and merciless. Bolts of lightning tore through the ruins, hunting down the green-robed killers who had murdered her only hours before.
If I go out there, will they kill me too? Tim wondered, the violence overwhelming him.
No, Lia's memory answered, firm and certain. Those are Sect colors. He is here for us.
She waited until the screams died down and the armored squad began to fan out, checking bodies. The rift was still open, pulsing erratically. It was going to close soon.
She had to risk it.
Lia stepped out from behind the pillar, raising her delicate hands in the air.
"I'm a disciple!" she shouted, her voice cracking. "Don't shoot!"
The armored leader spun around, his spear tip leveling at Lia's throat before she could blink. The speed was terrifying.
The visor stared at her. Lia held her breath, sweat trickling down her back.
"Disciple Lia?" the leader said. He sounded surprised. "You're alive?"
Lia nodded frantically. "I hid. I survived."
The leader lowered the spear. "You have the devil's own luck, girl. The rift is destabilizing. We're sealing it." He jerked his head toward the glowing tear in reality. "Run. If you aren't through in two minutes, you stay here forever."
Lia didn't need to be told twice.
She drew on the strange energy in her gut—the qi—and ran. This time, she let the instinct take over. Her body responded, bursting forward with a speed that made the wind roar in her ears. She wasn't running; she was flying across the ground, clearing ten feet with every stride.
She hit the shimmering surface of the rift and dived through.
The purple sky vanished.
She rolled onto soft green grass. Above her, a normal blue sky stretched out, dotted with fluffy white clouds. The air smelled of pine and wildflowers.
She was back in the main world.
Lia rolled onto her back, gasping for air, staring up at the sun. She was safe. She was alive.