Adam was lying in bed when it started.
No warning. No sound. The wall to his left simply bent. Not cracked. Not collapsed. It bent, like someone had grabbed the edge of reality and pulled it sideways.
He sat up. The ceiling above him warped next—folding inward, peeling away from the corners of the room like a page being turned.
The floor under his feet tilted. His desk slid two inches to the right on its own. The air itself felt wrong, like the space between objects was shrinking and expanding at the same time.
Adam opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His body locked in place. He couldn't move his legs. He couldn't even turn his head.
The room folded again. This time, all four walls collapsed toward each other in a way that should have crushed him. They didn't. They passed through each other. The space twisted one final time—
And everything went black.
---
Silence.
Then smell of wood and Earth. Something stale, like air that hadn't moved in days.
Adam opened his eyes.
He was lying on his back. The surface under him was wooden plank, not his mattress. Above him, a low ceiling made of uneven planks. Some of them had gaps where light filtered through.
He sat up fast. Too fast. His head spun for a second. He gripped the edge of the cot he was lying on and waited for it to pass.
He looked around.
The room was small. About the same size as his bedroom. But that's where the similarity ended. The walls were made of old wood, cracked and splitting in places.
Patches of dried mud filled the gaps. A single window—if it could be called that—was just a square cutout in the far wall with a torn cloth hanging over it.
There was no furniture except the cot and a low wooden stool. The floor was packed dirt.
Adam stood up. His first thought was clear: This isn't a dream.
He knew what dreams felt like. They were blurry at the edges. This was sharp. Every crack in the wood, every grain of dirt on the floor—he could see all of it.
He raised his hands in front of his face. They were Smaller, Thinner. The fingers were bony. Dirt was wedged under the nails.
Then the pain hit.
It came without warning—a spike that drove straight through the center of his skull. His knees buckled. He grabbed the side of the cot and sank to the floor, pressing his forehead against the wood frame.
Memories poured in. Not his.
They came in fragments, out of order, but each one carried weight.
A narrow street. People walking shoulder to shoulder. A man pulling a cart loaded with grain.
A woman scrubbing clothes in a basin. Her hands were rough and cracked. She was saying something, but the words were muffled.
A boy—him—carrying a sack of coal across a yard, his back aching.
A city skyline in the distance. The capital of the kingdom.
This same wooden shack. The cot. The stool. Home.
The memories settled. The pain thinned out, leaving a dull pressure behind his eyes.
Adam stayed on the floor. He put the pieces together.
The body he was in belonged to a boy. Also named Adam. He lived in the slum district of a small town that sat along the main road to the capital. His family was poor. His father did labor work—hauling, lifting, cleaning. His mother washed clothes for a few coins a day. They barely ate twice.
Adam knew what this was. He'd read enough. He'd seen enough.
Transmigration.
He stood up slowly. His legs steadied themselves. The body was lighter than his old one, weaker, but it responded. He walked to the door. It was a single wooden plank held by a rusted iron hinge. He pushed it open.
Daylight.
The slum stretched out in front of him. It was exactly what the memories had shown.
Cramped wooden houses packed tight against each other. Paths of hard mud wound between them. People moved in every direction. A woman carried a basket of vegetables on her head.
Two men argued next to a stall made of stacked bricks and a tarp.
Children ran barefoot between the houses, dodging a cart being pulled by a thin, tired-looking animal.
No one looked at Adam. No one cared. This was just another morning in the slums.
Adam stepped off the low wooden porch. His bare feet pressed into the packed dirt. He stood there.
He looked at the rooftops. He looked at the sky—clear, pale blue, no planes, no wires, no buildings of glass and steel. He looked at the people and their clothes. Rough fabric. Leather straps. No zippers. No plastic.
This was real.
He crossed his arms and exhaled.
He had no money. No skills. No knowledge of this world beyond the scattered memories of a boy who did odd jobs in the slums. He didn't even know what existed beyond the capital in the distance.
All he knew was this: he was here now, and he needed to figure out what to do next.