The world was a smeared oil painting, colors bleeding into a haze of pain.
Stan's head throbbed like a rotted tooth, each pulse a hammer blow against the soft meat of his brain.
"Where the hell am I?" he croaked, voice raw, like he'd been screaming in his sleep. "Did that bastard trick me? Shit!"
His eyes, gritty and reluctant, cracked open to a world that didn't make sense.
The air felt wrong—too thick, too warm, like breathing through a wet rag.
The last thing he remembered was that guy on the corner of Route 17, a scarecrow in a tattered coat, with eyes like chipped obsidian and a grin that didn't belong on a human face.
"This'll light up your aura, man," he'd said, holding out a baggie of something that shimmered like crushed fireflies.
"Make you glow in the dark of the real world." Stan, fool that he was, had handed over a crumpled twenty and shuffled back to his dingy apartment, the kind of place where the walls seemed to lean in and whisper when you weren't looking.
He'd popped the pill—small, slick, and unnaturally warm—chased it with a swig of flat beer, and waited for the cosmic high the guy promised.
Instead, the room had spun, the shadows in the corners stretching like taffy, and then—nothing. Blackness.
Now here he was, sprawled on a floor that felt too cold, too smooth, like polished bone. The buzzing in his skull wasn't just pain; it was alive, a swarm of angry wasps burrowing through his thoughts.
The pain in Stan's head didn't let go so much as loosen its grip, like a bully tiring of its game.
After what felt like an hour of his skull being squeezed in a vice, the world snapped into focus—not clear, not yet, but sharp enough to make him swear a blood oath to himself:
No more strange drugs. Never again. The words tasted like ash in his mouth, bitter with the kind of promise you make when you've already stepped off the cliff.
He blinked, slow and deliberate, and the room came into view.
Except it wasn't a room, not like any he'd ever known.
No peeling wallpaper, no flickering TV static, no sour reek of his apartment's mildewed carpet.
He was in a hut, small and round, its walls caked with dried mud, the ceiling a sagging weave of thatched straw that seemed to breathe with the wind outside.
No windows, just a single lamp in the corner, its flame guttering like it was afraid of the dark.
The light threw shadows that didn't match the shapes they should've come from—long, spindly things that twitched when he wasn't looking.
Stan was sprawled on a straw mat, scratchy against his palms, and beside him sat a clay water pot, its surface cracked like old skin, and a small wooden box, plain but heavy-looking, like it held secrets it wasn't ready to spill.
He reached for the box, then froze as another spike of pain lanced through his skull—not the brain-crushing agony of before, but sharp, precise, like a needle threading memories that weren't his own.
Images flooded in, vivid and wrong: a sky too red, mountains that pulsed with light, men and women moving like ghosts through the air, their hands weaving patterns that shattered stone and boiled rivers dry.
Faces, names, a life that wasn't his but felt as real as the ache in his bones.
Stan, the memories whispered, same as his name back on Earth, but this Stan was different—a kid, barely eighteen, with calloused hands and a hunger in his gut that wasn't just for food.
This Stan lived in a world where people didn't just walk; they flew.
They broke mountains with a thought, turned rivers to dust with a glance.
A world of martial arts cultivation, where power wasn't a dream but a blade you honed inside your soul.
"Holy shit," Stan muttered, his voice sounding too loud in the quiet hut.
"I've been transmigrated." The word felt ridiculous, like something out of those dog-eared novels he used to read under the covers with a flashlight, tales of losers waking up in new worlds with godlike powers and systems that whispered cheat codes in their ears.
He wasn't in his body anymore—too fat, too young, the hands too smooth despite their calluses.
His consciousness had been slung across the void, dumped into this other Stan, in this other world.
He sat up, straw crackling beneath him, a frown carving deep lines in his borrowed face.
His heart thumped, not just with fear but with a spark of something else—excitement, raw and reckless.
"I've read about this," he said to the empty hut, half-expecting the shadows to answer.
"If this is like those books, I've got to have something. A power. A system. Right?" His eyes glinted, bright with the kind of hope that teeters on the edge of madness, the kind that makes you laugh when you should be screaming.
Because if this was real—if he was really here, in a world where thoughts could break mountains—then maybe, just maybe, he wasn't just Stan anymore. Maybe he was something more.
But the hut stayed silent, and the lamp's flame flickered, as if it knew something he didn't.
Outside, the wind howled, and for a moment, it sounded like a voice, low and guttural, calling his name.
Stan ran his hands over his new body, half-expecting it to dissolve like a dream under his touch.
Back on Earth, he'd been a scarecrow of a man—skinny, all elbows and knees, the kind of guy who'd blow away in a stiff breeze.
But this? This was something else. His arms were thick as tree trunks, corded with muscle that bulged under skin stretched tight.
His chest was a barrel, heavy with fat and power, like one of those strongmen he'd seen on late-night TV, heaving boulders and bending steel bars for a cheering crowd.
He stood, wobbling a little, and realized the ceiling of the mud hut was too close—way too close. "I'm at least seven foot three," he murmured, voice thick with shock, the words echoing in the dim, straw-scented air.
He flexed his hands, meaty and calloused, and felt a raw, animal strength coiling in his bones.
It was like his body was a loaded gun, ready to fire.
I could punch a hole in the ground, he thought, and a wild grin split his face, the kind of grin you wear when you're half-drunk on power and half-terrified of it.
"Hahaha," he laughed, the sound too loud, bouncing off the mud walls.
"I always wondered what it felt like to have a body like this. Feels damn good."
He took a step, then another, and on a whim, jumped.
The straw mat crunched under his weight, but his body—big as it was—moved with a grace that made his breath catch.
He wasn't just strong; he was athletic, light on his feet like a cat, not the lumbering ox he'd expected.
His heart thumped, a drumbeat of possibility.
"System!" he called out, voice sharp with hope, picturing those novels he'd devoured, where glowing panels popped up like video game menus, handing out powers and quests.
A harem system would be amazing, he thought, licking his lips, a flicker of greedy excitement sparking in his gut.
But nothing happened.
No glowing screen, no robotic voice, just the flickering lamp and the shadows that seemed to lean closer, watching.
His grin faltered, and his heart skipped, a cold stab of fear cutting through the thrill.
"Will I have no powers?" he whispered, the words tasting like bile. In a world where people flew and shattered mountains with their thoughts, muscles were as useful as a paper umbrella in a hurricane.
He swallowed hard, throat dry, and called again: "System!" Nothing. Just the faint howl of the wind outside, sounding too much like laughter.
"Shit," he muttered, pacing the tiny hut, his massive frame making the space feel like a cage.
"I need a power to survive in this world." The words hung in the air, desperate, and then—something answered.
A coldness bloomed in his chest, sharp and burning, like a shard of ice lodged in his heart.
He froze, hands fumbling to his sternum. "What is this?" he gasped, clawing at his skin, expecting to find a wound, but there was nothing—just that freezing fire, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
His mind flashed to that roadside hustler, the scarecrow with the obsidian eyes.
This'll surround you with an intimidating aura, he'd said, his grin sharp as a razor. No one'll mess with you.
Stan had thought it was just drug-dealer bullshit, but now… He took a deep breath, the air tasting of dust and straw, and focused on that cold light in his chest.
It stirred, like a beast waking up, and then it moved.
A dark aura seeped from his skin, curling around him like smoke, heavy and alive, making the lamp's flame shrink and sputter.
The shadows in the hut didn't just twitch—they recoiled, as if afraid of what he'd become.
Stan's grin returned, but it wasn't just excitement now.