The last thing he remembered was a bright red traffic light, the sharp screech of tires, and the sensation of time collapsing into itself. Metal crunched. Glass shattered. His ears rang like a broken bell, then silence devoured everything. When he opened his eyes again, he was somewhere else entirely.
He lay on his back beneath a sky he did not recognize — not blue, not gray, but a dusky lavender swirling around a massive, unmoving orange planet that loomed like a god. It hung so close he could almost see the ridges along its surface, and it filled him with unease. A dry wind passed over his face, carrying the scent of ash and unfamiliar flowers. He sat up.
The ground was coarse, packed with pale gravel and dotted with thorny shrubs. Ahead of him stood a lonely tree, short and crooked, its black bark cracked like burned skin. Beyond that, hills rolled into a distant forest, its trees colored a deep rust-red that looked diseased under the eerie sky.
He blinked, touched his chest, his face, then his legs. Everything felt intact. That was wrong. He had been shattered. A truck had hit him — no, obliterated him. He had seen pieces of himself that should never be seen by any living man. So how?
Before the panic could settle into his lungs, something moved nearby. A rustle — too deliberate to be wind. He turned toward the sound and froze. A creature emerged from the underbrush. It looked like a boar, but leaner, hairless, its skin a shade too pink, its eyes milky white, and its tusks black as coal.
The boar sniffed the air and let out a low grunt. It charged.
He had no weapons, no armor, not even shoes. The gravel stabbed into his soles as he stumbled backward. The boar came fast — impossibly fast for something so ugly. At the last second, instinct kicked in. He sidestepped, barely, and the creature barreled past him, missing by inches.
Pain shot up his leg. A sharp stone had split the skin open.
The boar wheeled around with animal fury. It lowered its head again.
"I don't even know where I am!" he shouted. "Come on, man!"
The beast didn't care. It came again.
No time. He reached for a thick branch from the crooked tree and braced himself. When the boar lunged, he dodged left and swung with all his weight. The branch cracked against its side with a meaty thump, then snapped in two. The beast howled, half in pain, half in rage.
It turned slower this time. Blood leaked from its side. But it wasn't done.
Neither was he.
He picked up the sharper half of the broken branch. The next time the boar charged, he crouched low, waited, and drove the jagged point upward into its throat. It screamed. Warm blood sprayed over his arms and chest. He held the weapon tight, even as the weight of the creature collapsed on top of him.
The boar twitched once. Then it stopped moving.
He didn't. He shoved it off and rolled away, coughing and panting. His heart thrashed in his chest like it wanted out. The world smelled of sweat and gore and something sour he couldn't name. He sat there for a long time, staring at the dead thing and shaking.
Finally, he spoke.
"…So. This isn't a dream."
The words tasted stupid in his mouth, but saying them made it real. He was alive. And somewhere very, very far from Earth.
Eventually, he stood and wiped his hands on the dry grass. He couldn't stay here. The forest might have more creatures — or worse. He looked at the horizon and picked a direction. Toward the rust-red forest. Shelter, maybe. Water. Answers.
His legs hurt, and his foot bled with each step, but he moved forward anyway.
He didn't know how long he walked before he saw the first sign of people. A road — not paved, but worn dirt marked with deep wheel grooves. Nearby, an old wooden post stuck out from the earth with a tattered cloth fluttering from it — maybe a banner or a sign. It had faded to nothing recognizable. Still, the road was a path, and paths meant people.
He followed it.
Sometime later, just as the sky began to dim into a deep purple and the orange planet brightened in eerie contrast, he came upon a cart stopped in the road. A single mule stood hitched to it, chewing lazily at some weeds. A man — middle-aged, short, with a thick beard and a worried look — knelt beside one of the wheels, cursing softly.
He hesitated.
Then the man looked up and spotted him. His eyes widened.
"Hells! Boy, you look like you danced with a boneboar!"
"…Is that what that was?" he said hoarsely. "Big. Ugly. Angry."
The man chuckled, then frowned. "You're not from around here, are you? What kind of fool walks barefoot through the Northshard Pass bleeding like that?"
"I got… lost."
The man gave him a strange look, then motioned toward the cart. "Name's Toren. I'm a trader. If you're not planning to rob me, you can ride along till the next town. Got some bandages in the back too."
He didn't hesitate. "Thanks. I owe you."
"Damn right you do. Climb in."
Toren handed him a rough cloth and a flask that tasted like burning herbs. He wrapped his foot and settled among sacks of grain and some strange vegetables shaped like horns. The mule clopped forward slowly as the stars began to blink awake overhead.
"So," Toren said after a while. "You didn't just get lost. You're not from here. Not from this continent. Not from this world."
He stared. "What makes you say that?"
"You didn't ask where the nearest city is. You didn't curse like a local. And no one in their right mind fights a boneboar with a stick unless they're either suicidal or stupid. You? You're confused."
Silence. Then: "You're right."
Toren nodded. "I knew it. You're one of them."
"One of what?"
"Isekaied. Spirit-thrown. World-tossed. Whatever the old monks call it. Doesn't happen often, but it's happened. Some god decides to stir the soup and tosses in someone from far away. Always starts the same — confused eyes, weird clothes, don't know how to hold a blade, but still alive."
"…What happens to them?"
"Some die. Some change the world."
He looked away.
Toren grinned. "What's your name, stranger?"
"…Kazuki."
"Well, Kazuki, welcome to Erudio. You're in the East. The West belongs to the demons. If you're smart, you'll stay far from the border. If you're dumb, you'll get yourself killed. But if you're lucky…"
Toren trailed off.
"If I'm lucky?" Kazuki asked.
"You might just be exactly what this cursed world needs."
The cart rolled on through the night. Behind them, the sky darkened. Ahead, the orange planet glowed brighter than any moon.
They reached the town by morning.
Toren called it "Cindel's Hollow," though Kazuki saw no hollow and doubted anyone named Cindel still lived. The place was surrounded by a squat wooden palisade, logs sharpened to points, manned by a handful of bored-looking guards wearing dull iron breastplates. They watched the cart approach, spears in hand but eyes half-lidded. One of them yawned.
"Business or trouble?" the guard on the left asked, scratching a scar on his chin.
"Bit of both, maybe," Toren replied. "Got grain for the baker, spices for your mother, and a bleeding lost lamb I picked up on the road."
The guard looked past Toren, spotted Kazuki slumped against a bag of potatoes, and raised an eyebrow. "That one doesn't look local."
"He isn't. But he's harmless, and he killed a boneboar with a stick, so maybe give him a break, yeah?"
"Fine. But no chaos. You bring trouble, you sleep in chains."
Kazuki said nothing as they rolled into the town.
Cindel's Hollow was a patchwork of wood and stone — one-story buildings with slanted roofs, uneven roads crisscrossed with dry gutters, open market stalls being set up by yawning vendors. People milled about, wearing simple tunics and leather aprons. A blacksmith's hammer rang in the distance. Children chased each other between carts. Chickens squawked beneath the hooves of lazy donkeys.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
Toren dropped him near a small inn called The Bent Feather, promising to return in two days if Kazuki survived that long. Kazuki stood there a while after the cart rolled away, staring up at the sign — a crooked wooden carving of a bird with one wing missing.
The innkeeper was a wiry woman with gray hair tied in a knot, arms dusted with flour, and a voice like sandpaper. She glanced at Kazuki's bloodied foot and bruised arms and grunted.
"Trouble, I see."
"I can pay," he lied.
She squinted. "No, you can't."
"…I could work."
Her face didn't change, but she motioned him inside. The interior was dim, warm, and smelled like bread and something vaguely burnt. She gave him water, a crust of bread, and a place to sit.
"I'm Salvi," she said. "You clean, you chop wood, you don't touch the guests. In return, you sleep in the loft and eat what's left after dinner. Deal?"
"Deal," he said.
He stayed.
For the next two days, Kazuki worked. He scrubbed floors, carried buckets, split logs behind the inn with an old hatchet whose handle was more splinters than wood. His muscles ached in places he didn't know existed. His foot healed slowly. Salvi didn't speak much, but she nodded at him on the second night, and that felt like praise.
Every evening, he listened.
The inn was busiest at dusk. Travelers, mercenaries, traders, and a few cloaked strangers passed through, trading stories for ale. They talked of demon patrols near the western ridge, of vanished caravans, and of a burned village no one dared name. One man spoke of a blade made from obsidian that could cut mana itself. Another whispered of a girl who could melt steel with her breath.
Kazuki listened to it all.
He had no sword. No magic. Not even the barest knowledge of this world's rules. But he learned.
Magic, as he'd guessed, was real — but unreliable for beginners. Everyone was born with mana veins, invisible channels inside the body. The more you strained them, the wider they grew. Meditation, pain, fear — all forced growth. Magic wasn't cast so much as pulled, like rope from a burning well. Most people never advanced beyond sparks or minor elemental tricks.
He also learned of Arts — weapon disciplines that blended physical mastery with mana enhancement. Swords, spears, shields, bows — each had its own schools, often tied to family lines or guilds. A swordsman could learn to slash faster than the eye could follow. A spearman could extend a thrust with mana like a second spine. True warriors were rare, and most served lords, kings, or high guilds.
On the third day, Toren returned.
He came with a bundle wrapped in cloth and a serious look in his eye. Kazuki met him in the alley beside the inn.
"I asked around," Toren said. "You've got no identity. No papers. You shouldn't exist. That's dangerous."
"I didn't ask to come here."
"Doesn't matter. People go missing every week. A stranger with no past? Easy scapegoat."
Kazuki said nothing.
Toren handed him the bundle. "It's not much. Spare boots. A cloak. A knife. Old, but sharp. Also got you this—"
He produced a thin book with cracked leather binding. The title was faded, but inside were diagrams of stances, techniques, and breathing forms. "The Beginner's Path: Sword and Soul."
"A training manual?"
"Written by a madman monk from the Eastern highlands. Most people say it's useless."
Kazuki flipped through the pages. The drawings were rough, but the instructions were detailed, even poetic. One section read:
"To cut with power is to breathe with intention. If the body does not listen to the breath, the blade will not listen to the hand."
"I'll take it," he said.
Toren grinned. "Figured you would. You've got the stupid look of someone planning to do something noble and suicidal."
"I want to survive."
"You'll need more than that."
Kazuki trained. Not publicly — he wasn't ready for that. But every morning before dawn, while the town still slept, he crept behind the inn to the narrow dirt yard and practiced the forms from the book. His arms trembled, his stances wobbled, and the blade — little more than a long knife — felt wrong in his grip. But he kept going.
Each night, he collapsed into the loft, muscles screaming. But the pain began to feel like progress. And sometimes, just before sleep took him, he imagined the boar again — the rage in its charge, the wildness in its eyes — and remembered the moment he stood his ground.
On the fifth morning, while practicing the third breathing stance, he felt it.
A flicker.
Tiny, almost imperceptible. Like a string pulled inside his chest. The knife in his hand shivered, the blade glowing faintly blue for less than a second. Then it died.
He dropped it. His breath came fast.
That night, he didn't sleep. He stared at the cracked ceiling and thought: It's real. I can grow.
The next day, trouble arrived.
A rider entered town fast — too fast for safety. The guards barely managed to halt the horse before it plowed through the gates. The man in the saddle was pale, his armor scorched, his leg soaked in blood.
"Demon scouting party," he rasped. "North border. Smoke over Delvine."
The inn went quiet. All the travelers stopped talking. Salvi stopped chopping onions mid-slice.
A boy — maybe sixteen — stepped forward. "My cousin's in Delvine."
"Then pray for them," the rider said. "Or take up arms."
That night, for the first time, Salvi didn't serve stew.
The town prepared. Shields were mended. Arrows were counted. The old guards were reinforced with hired swords who smelled of rotgut and bloodlust. Kazuki watched them — real fighters, scarred and lean, checking their weapons with methodical calm.
He didn't sleep.
Instead, he sat alone behind the inn, clutching his practice knife. He looked at the glowing orange planet above and whispered, "I'm not ready."
But readiness didn't matter anymore.
The world was burning. And he was here now.