Chapter 1: Survival Tastes Like Swamp Water
The thing about dying and waking up in a murder-swamp is that nobody prepares you for the after.
Not the dying part, that was over quick. One second, I was crossing the street with a coffee I didn't even want, the next, there was a truck, a sickening crunch, and then... nothing. Clean. Final. Almost a relief, if I'm being honest.
The waking up part? That's where things got complicated.
I came to face down in mud that smelled like rotting vegetation and broken promises, with something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle echoing through the trees. My first coherent thought was: Great. Hell has a sense of humor.
My second thought, as I pushed myself up and got a look at my hands, was significantly less coherent.
Gray. My skin was ash-gray, like someone had Photoshopped me into a black-and-white film but forgot to finish the job. Claws, actual, honest-to-god claws, tipped each finger, black and sharp enough that I accidentally gouged the mud when I tried to stand.
I touched my face. Felt the ridges where horns curved back from my temples, still small but undeniably there. My teeth felt wrong, too many, too sharp.
"Okay," I said out loud, my voice rougher than it should be. "Okay. This is fine. This is... definitely not fine."
A translucent blue box flickered into existence in front of my face, damn near giving me a heart attack I apparently no longer needed.
[WELCOME, TRANSMIGRANT]
[RACE: DEMON (LESSER VARIANT)]
[LEVEL: 1]
[STATUS: ALIVE (CONGRATULATIONS)]
[CURRENT LOCATION: SHADOWFEN MARSHLANDS]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 12%]
[GOOD LUCK!]
I stared at it. Blinked. Stared some more.
"A System," I said flatly. "Of course, there's a System. Because why would I get isekai'd and not get the full LitRPG experience?"
The box cheerfully dinged and disappeared.
I'd spent the last year and three months of my Earth life drowning in light novels and isekai manga. It was easier than thinking about Emma, easier than facing the empty apartment, easier than admitting I'd stopped wanting to be alive somewhere around month six. I'd read every power fantasy, every reincarnation story, every "loser gets a second chance in another world" narrative I could find.
Apparently, the universe had been taking notes.
"Could've at least given me the 'reborn as an overpowered noble' route," I muttered, trying to stand without falling over. My center of gravity was wrong, my legs too long, everything foreign. "But no. Demon. In a swamp. With a 12% survival rate."
Something howled in the distance, a sound that was part wolf, part dying saxophone, all wrong.
"Make that 11%," I amended.
I spent the first hour just trying to walk without tripping over my own feet, the second hour trying not to think about the fact that I was actually, genuinely dead on Earth. The third hour was spent looking for anything that wouldn't kill me on sight.
Shadowfen, as I was learning through trial and extremely painful error, was aggressively hostile to new arrivals. The trees moved when you weren't looking. The water glowed faintly purple at night, and drinking it was apparently an express ticket to "fun" hallucinations and possibly death. The wildlife seemed personally offended by my existence.
I'd already been chased by something that looked like a cross between a frog and a bear, a "Marshfang Ravager" according to the helpful System notification that appeared while I was running for my life. I'd barely escaped by climbing a tree and praying the thing didn't realize demons apparently weren't great at upper body strength yet.
By the time the sun started setting, casting everything in shades of sickly green and deep purple, I'd found what could generously be called shelter: a hollow in a massive dead tree, big enough for me to squeeze into if I didn't mind feeling like I was being swallowed alive.
I sat there in the dark, knees pulled up to my chest, claws digging grooves into the wood, and let myself feel it. All of it.
The fear. The confusion. The desperate, hollow ache that had followed me from Earth and apparently decided to set up permanent residence in my chest.
Emma was gone. Had been gone for over a year. And now I was gone too, ripped away from whatever pathetic half-life I'd been living and dumped into a nightmare that made Shadowfen look welcoming by comparison.
I should've been panicking. Should've been crying, screaming, having a complete breakdown.
Instead, I just felt... tired. And weirdly, almost calm.
"Alright, Knox," I said to the darkness. "You wanted an escape. You got one. Let's see if you can actually survive it."
The System pinged:
[QUEST RECEIVED: SURVIVE THE NIGHT]
[REWARD: +50 EXP, SKILL UNLOCK]
[FAILURE: DEATH (AGAIN)]
I laughed, a sound with absolutely no humor in it. "Thanks for the motivation, asshole."
The swamp didn't care about my commentary. Something splashed in the water nearby. Wings fluttered overhead, too many wings, from the sound of it. The tree itself creaked ominously.
I pulled up what the System called my "Status," because if I was going to die (again), I might as well know what I was working with.
[STATUS] Name: Knox Ashford
Level: 1
Race: Demon (Lesser Variant)
HP: 180/180
MP: 90/90
Stamina: 45%
Attributes:
Strength: 12
Agility: 10
Endurance: 11
Intelligence: 16
Wisdom: 14
Luck: 5
Skills: None
Titles:
Otherworlder,
Dead But Not Really
"Five luck," I said, reading the screen in the dimness. "Five. Out of what, a hundred? A thousand?" I shook my head. "Yeah, that tracks."
The rest was... not great, but not terrible. I'd apparently been given a demon body that was stronger and tougher than my old human one, but I was still level one in a place that clearly expected me to be much, much more prepared.
I dismissed the screen and closed my eyes, listening to the symphony of things that wanted to eat me.
Emma used to say I had a talent for gallows humor. "You could find a joke at your own funeral," she'd said once, laughing at some dark comment I'd made about her latest relapse.
Turns out she was right. I'd just never expected to test the theory quite so literally.
I must've dozed off at some point, because I woke to something scratching at the entrance to my tree-hollow. Something with claws that made mine look like manicured fingernails.
The System helpfully pinged:
[ALERT: HOSTILE CREATURE DETECTED]
[SHADOWFEN PROWLER - LEVEL 4]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: HIDE OR FLEE]
"Yeah, no shit," I hissed, pressing myself deeper into the hollow.
The scratching continued. I could see its shadow in the moonlight, something low-slung and reptilian, with too many legs. It sniffed at the opening, and I caught a glimpse of bioluminescent eyes that glowed sickly yellow.
Don't come in. Don't come in. Don't come in.
The prowler's head pushed into the opening. Scales. Teeth. Breath that smelled like death and swamp gas.
My claws dug into the wood hard enough to hurt. My horns scraped the inside of the hollow. Every muscle in my body screamed to run, but there was nowhere to go.
The prowler sniffed again. Closer. So close I could feel its breath.
Then, from somewhere outside, something else roared, bigger, angrier, wronger.
The prowler's head snapped up. It hissed, backed out of the hollow, and bounded off into the darkness toward the sound.
I sat there, shaking, for what felt like hours.
The System pinged:
[QUEST COMPLETE: SURVIVE THE NIGHT]
[+50 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 2]
[SKILL UNLOCKED: SURVIVAL INSTINCT (PASSIVE, LV. 1)]
I laughed, actually laughed, high and slightly unhinged. "I didn't even do anything. I just... didn't die."
[SURVIVAL INSTINCT: THAT'S THE POINT.]
"Oh, good, the System has sass. That's exactly what I needed."
But as the first gray light of dawn filtered through the canopy, turning the swamp from nightmare to merely horrifying, I felt something I hadn't felt in over a year.
Not happiness. Not even hope, really.
Just... possibility. The sense that maybe, just maybe, I could actually do this.
I crawled out of the hollow, stretched muscles that ached in new and interesting ways, and looked at the swamp that was apparently my new home.
"Alright, Shadowfen," I said to the trees, the water, the things still howling in the distance. "Round two. Let's see what you've got."
The swamp, predictably, did not answer.
But somewhere, deep in my chest, something that had been cold and dead for a very long time flickered.
Not warmth. Not yet.
But not nothing, either.
And for now, in a murder-swamp where my survival odds were in the single digits, that was enough.