The last thing Axel King remembered from Earth was the screech of tires and the sickening crunch of metal on metal. He'd been crossing the street, lost in thought about the quarterly report due Monday, when the truck ran the red light.
There should have been pain. There should have been terror. Instead, there was only a strange sense of detachment, like watching a movie where he was simultaneously the camera and the subject.
Then—nothing.
And then—everything.
Axel's eyes snapped open to a world that was wrong in every conceivable way. The sky was too blue, almost painfully vibrant. The air tasted different, cleaner somehow, with an electric quality that made his lungs tingle. And the sounds—birds he'd never heard before, rustling leaves that seemed too loud, too present.
He tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. His body felt strange, lighter somehow, but also weaker. His hands looked wrong—younger, less weathered. The suit he'd been wearing was gone, replaced by rough hemp clothing that scratched against skin that felt too sensitive.
"What the hell?" His voice came out hoarse, uncertain.
Panic set in slowly, then all at once. This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't anywhere he recognized. The trees around him were massive, ancient things that dwarfed any redwood he'd ever seen. Vines thick as his arm hung from branches that seemed to reach toward a sky that was just slightly the wrong shade.
Axel struggled to his feet, his legs shaking with weakness that shouldn't have been there. He was—had been—a healthy thirty-two-year-old man. He jogged three times a week. He shouldn't feel like a newborn learning to walk.
But as he stood there, swaying slightly, a memory that wasn't his own flickered through his mind. A village. A plague. A young man—this body's original owner—dying alone in the forest after fleeing the sickness.
"Oh god," Axel whispered. "I'm dead. I actually died."
And somehow, impossibly, he'd woken up in someone else's body. In someone else's world.
The realization should have broken him. Should have sent him into a spiral of denial and madness. But Axel had always been practical, almost to a fault. Denial wouldn't change reality. Panic wouldn't solve problems.
He was here. He was alive—or alive again, in a manner of speaking. And he needed to figure out what that meant.
Axel took a deep breath, trying to center himself, and that's when he felt it.
Something was different about the air itself. Not just cleaner—there was energy in it, a subtle vibration that he could almost taste on his tongue. When he breathed in, something more than oxygen filled his lungs. Something that made his skin prickle and his heart race.
He breathed again, deeper this time, and the sensation intensified. The energy—whatever it was—seemed to seep into him, flowing through his body in ways that made no physical sense.
And with that breath came knowledge, fragmentary and confused, from the body's original owner. Cultivation. Qi. Meridians. Words that meant nothing to his Earth-born mind but everything to the fading memories embedded in this flesh.
This world had magic. Or something like it. People here could manipulate energy, become stronger, live longer, bend reality to their will through sheer discipline and power.
The original owner of this body had known about it, had even attempted the first steps of cultivation before the plague struck. But he'd been weak, talentless, with barely enough spiritual roots to sense the energy around him.
Axel felt that weakness now. His body was frail, malnourished, operating on fumes. Days without food, maybe weeks. The plague had ravaged more than just the villages—it had ravaged him.
He needed food. He needed water. He needed shelter.
But more than any of that, standing in this impossible forest in this impossible world, Axel needed to understand the rules. Because if there was one thing his years as a project manager had taught him, it was that every system had rules. Every challenge had a solution if you could just identify the variables and constraints.
This world had cultivation. It had energy he could feel but not yet control. And if the fragmented memories were accurate, power here wasn't just about wealth or status—it was about survival itself.
The strong lived. The weak died. Simple as that.
Axel looked down at his trembling hands, at the body that was simultaneously his and not his. He'd been given a second chance, whether through cosmic accident or some purpose he didn't understand.
He wasn't going to waste it.
"Alright," he said to the empty forest, his voice gaining strength. "Let's figure this out."
He closed his eyes and tried to focus on that strange energy he'd felt in the air. The memories called it Qi—the fundamental force of this world, the building block of all cultivation. If he could learn to sense it properly, to draw it in, that would be the first step.
Nothing happened. The energy remained tantalizingly out of reach, like trying to grasp smoke with his bare hands.
Axel tried again. And again. Each attempt ended in frustration, the Qi slipping away before he could even begin to understand how to grasp it.
The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in shades of orange and red that were simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. Night in an unknown forest in an unknown world. That couldn't be good.
But still Axel tried, driven by a desperation he didn't fully understand. This was survival now. This was the difference between living and dying in a world where he had no safety net, no support system, no familiar ground to stand on.
Just as darkness began to fall in earnest, something shifted.
It was the smallest sensation, barely noticeable—a single mote of energy entering his body with his breath and actually staying there, settling somewhere in his chest instead of dissipating immediately.
Axel's eyes snapped open, his heart pounding. He'd done it. He'd actually done it.
The amount of energy was infinitesimal, laughable really. But it was there. It was real.
And if he could do it once, he could do it again.
As the last light faded from the sky and the forest filled with the sounds of nocturnal creatures, Axel King—formerly of Earth, now of this cultivation world—sat against a tree and began the first real meditation of his new life.
The energy came slowly, reluctantly, like coaxing a shy animal. But it came.
Each breath brought a tiny amount more. Each moment of focus strengthened his connection to the strange force that permeated this world.
He had no technique, no guidance, no master to teach him. Just instinct, desperation, and the stubborn refusal to die a second time.
The night deepened. The forest grew darker. And somewhere in that darkness, Axel King took his first true step into a world where power was everything.
He was weak. He was confused. He was alone.
But he was alive.
And that was enough to start with.