The first thing he noticed was the silence.
No alarm was ringing. There was no sound of cars from the street. The neighbor's stupid dog was not barking. It was not absolute silence, not quite. Perhaps there were footsteps outside, and the chirping of birds?
It felt as though he were in a detached house in a village far from the city.
When the young man awoke calmly, he turned toward the sunlight coming through the window. The first thing he noticed was that there were two suns. One was bright, the other noticeably dimmer. Even in his groggy state, he understood that something was wrong. The brighter one shone in pale, almost white tones, while the dimmer star carried the orange hues of a sun. Because the two were close to each other, their colors blended slightly.
"Did the sun split in two? Then why do they look different? Or am I dreaming?" he muttered as he pushed himself upright in bed.
He stood still for a moment. He became aware of his breathing; it was normal. His heart was not racing. There was no panic. That was the most unsettling part. He should have been panicking in a situation like this. Instead, his mind was registering his surroundings with an eerie clarity.
When he stood up, he noticed another oddity. The world felt smaller somehow. The windows seemed short, the furniture unusually low.
"The furniture?"
He looked around and realized that he did not recognize a single piece of furniture in the room. Everything was unfamiliar.
The wardrobes were not merely large; they were ostentatious, as if challenging the eye. The dark walnut wood looked deep and vivid, as though it had been polished for centuries. The reliefs carved into the doors seemed decorative at first glance, but with closer attention it became clear that each one depicted a different scene. Crowned kings, kneeling armies, dragons with wings spread wide, and gods whose names he did not know. This was not the imagination of a craftsman. It was a record of history.
The bed was not designed for the sleep of a man, but for that of a ruler. Columns rose at its four corners, encircled by gilded ornamentation. The fabrics were softer than silk, yet heavy all the same. When he sat down, the cloth did not sag. It supported him, almost as if accepting him with reverence.
The floor was marble. Cold, smooth, flawless. The carpet laid upon it must have been a fortune in itself. Its patterns were intricate; the longer one looked, the more new shapes emerged, and the eye was drawn, almost unconsciously, toward the symbol at its center. This emblem, bearing an unfamiliar double-ringed crest, felt strangely familiar to him. He could not remember it, but it did not feel foreign either.
The walls were not flat. Columns rose between them, and enormous tapestries hung in the spaces between. These tapestries depicted wars. Flames, steel, skies twisted by magic. In one of them, a figure surrounded by white light stood before entire armies. The face was indistinct, but the posture was unmistakable. The posture of someone accustomed to command.
"This isn't a bedroom," he murmured without realizing it.
"This is an extension of a throne."
When he heard his own voice, he froze again. This was not the voice he knew. It was calmer, deeper, more authoritative. It reminded him of those overly cool documentary narrators.
He immediately walked toward the nearest ornate mirror. At first, he thought this had to be some kind of joke. Then he thought he must be dreaming. But when he touched his body, he could feel it. When he pinched himself, it hurt. He turned back to the mirror and studied the man reflected there.
"This… is Areth?"
The character he had spent countless hours crafting in detail. The character he had controlled for hundreds of hours in the game BloodBanner. The man in the mirror was young, but not naïve. He had sharp features. High cheekbones, a defined jaw.
His eyes were not the color he was used to. Her eye colour, which should have been brown, was now a bright yellow, and in the dark it shone a golden colour. His hair fell to his shoulders, dark and neatly kept. Not disheveled. Never disheveled. His shoulders were broad, and his height was remarkable. He might have been the tallest man he had ever seen.
"Is this because of the dragon blood?" he muttered while looking at his height. "If that's the case…" he added, and turned his back to the mirror.
And there it was.
A dragon's tail, long and formed of hard scales.
The tail was not hidden behind him. It was neither shy nor concealed. Its presence was assertive. Starting at his waist like a natural extension of his spine, it stretched downward, dark metallic scales catching and refracting the light. Each scale fit perfectly with the next. Like armor. But not dead armor. It was alive. With each breath he took, it moved ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly.
He took a step back. The tail withdrew with him.
For a moment, he did nothing but stare at it.
"This can't be a joke," he said to himself. His voice was calm, but there was a suppressed intensity behind the words. "I added these myself… for God's sake, what is going on here?"
He remained in front of the mirror for a while longer. His logic tried to break down what he was seeing, to classify it. It was not a dream. It was not a hallucination. This level of consistent detail, this continuity, these vivid sensations… his mind would not allow it.
He raised his hand. The man in the mirror raised his hand at the same time.
He clenched his fingers. He felt the pressure beneath his nails, the tension in his muscles, the natural movement of his joints. Then, involuntarily, he moved his tail. The tail responded without the slightest hesitation, as if it had been his for years.
He took a deep breath. His chest was broad. As his lungs filled, a strange warmth spread through his body. As if the air carried not only oxygen, but something else as well. Power. Pressure. Potential.
He closed his eyes.
"Did I get reincarnated like in those anime and novels? But I don't remember dying…"
The last thing he remembered was setting his alarm and going to sleep in his bed. He stayed still for a while, eyes closed, counting his breaths. His mind was making a conscious effort not to panic. Logic was still standing, but the ground beneath it had cracked.
"I didn't die," he whispered.
"At least, I don't remember it."
In reincarnation stories, death is clear. Dramatic. A truck, a knife, a hospital room. There is an ending. But here, there was no ending. Only… a transition.
He opened his eyes.
The mirror was still there. Areth was still looking back at him. He was not running away. He was not fading.
He rolled his shoulders slightly. His muscles responded instantly. They were strong, but not cumbersome. His balance was perfect. The tail adjusted his center of gravity almost imperceptibly. The details he had optimized again and again in the game's statistics were alive here.
"If I've been reincarnated, then… where am I right now?" he wondered.
He approached the window, this time looking not at the sky but down below. When another shock hit him, he became certain of one thing. This was not the dull, cold world of metal and concrete he knew and despised.