My body thrashed like a ship in a storm—rage and confusion crashing over me in waves. Then my eyes opened. Blurry and cold. A chill raced down my spine.

  Danger. It wasn’t a whisper—it was a scream. I spped my palm down, trying to rise—

  Nothing. My limbs were stiff and numb. My body colpsed back with a dull thud.

  What the hell?

  I tilted my head to scan where I was. It was a room—with ornate white walls, heavy silk curtains, and a bed big enough to bury a dozen corpses. Every corner reeked of luxury and secrets.

  It was unlike anything I had seen before, and that made my instincts fre. I needed to leave. Now. It wasn’t a thought but something deeper—survival screaming through my blood. After all, I was a syer. An apex one at that. But this body—

  —wouldn’t move. My breath caught as panic cwed its way up my throat. I blinked hard, forcing my vision to focus: velvet, silver, gilded edges…

  Where am I?

  The st memory I could recall was battle. Blood and steel. Monsters screaming like banshees. I was supposed to be knee-deep in corpses—or at least that’s what I remembered—not sunk into satin sheets.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. The thought was absurd. Did I really die? Killed in combat? Betrayed?

  Impossible.

  But maybe… yeah. It felt real. That sneer. The bombardment. The final strikes. The explosives. The stagnancy. Those voices. The void.

  I really did die.

  Still—no regrets. I had lived full-throttle, leaving behind a trail of a million sughtered monsters. I crushed the governments of rival nations. Burned corrupt officials to ash. Decimated syers and terrorists alike.

  They called me the Death Ishura.

  So be it.

  “SLAY! SLAY! SLAY!” I ughed, half-mad. “Cleanse the trash. Beware of traitors. Exterminate the betrayals!”

  The ugh caught in my throat—too sudden, too sharp.

  “…My dy? Are you alright?”

  The voice was smooth and low, refined with a calm restraint that made me turn my head without thinking.

  To my surprise, it was an Elf who stood at my bedside. Nineteen, perhaps. His silver hair cascaded like moonlight, framing an angur face too perfect to be real. Eyes like sliver—cold, detached, faintly curious.

  He wore double-ptinum robes, each thread glimmering with intricate embellishments. Magic shimmered faintly from their seams.

  He said nothing at first. Then, with a slight cough and those indifferent eyes still fixed on me, he spoke again.

  “I suppose you're fine if you can joke around so senselessly after just waking up.”

  He stepped closer. The back of his hand pressed against my forehead. Clinical. Not unkind. Just precise, like checking a mechanism. He sighed.

  “With that said, my dy, the Cn Leader requests your presence.”

  My brows furrowed. My dy. Again? I blinked. At first, I thought it was a mistake. A slip of the tongue. Or maybe I was dreaming.

  But no. This wasn’t a dream. And it wasn’t hell, either. I was awake—fully, terrifyingly awake.

  It was then—like a thundercp—that the memories smashed into me. Foreign names. Strange sensations. Echoes of a life that wasn’t mine. My skull pulsed with an alien weight.

  I was in another body. Yes, that was it. Was it possession? Transmigration? Karma’s twisted joke? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I was awake, and this wasn’t my body.

  I stared at the elf.

  He didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. “My dy? Is something wrong with my face?” That was all he said, standing there like a bde dressed in silk.

  I ughed—sharp, loud, a little unhinged. “Sons of bitches… to think I reincarnated.”

  Or at least, that’s how it was supposed to go. Instead, he simply raised a brow. There was no judgment. No reaction. Only silence, and the gentle hum of fluorescent beads overhead. Outside, the wind brushed against the walls.

  I screamed. Hard. The voice that came out was high, soft, unmistakably feminine.

  No.

  My hand dove beneath the sheets. Nothing but ft, unfamiliar terrain—muted, foreign. And just at the edge of my vision, something moved. No—some things bounced.

  No. No. No. It couldn’t be.

  Then the nosebleed hit. My vision blurred. The elf rushed toward me, voice sharp with concern, but already fading. Bckout.

  “Huuu—”

  When I regained consciousness, cold sweat clung to my back. The shock didn’t fade with crity, and reality remained just as disturbing as before.

  I was a girl. Not just any girl—a soft, fragile little thing.

  To be sure, I pinched my cheek hard, hoping it would snap me out of some surreal hallucination. Pain bloomed instantly, sharp and real. This was no dream.

  A frown tugged at my lips. Still, things could have been worse. At least I hadn’t been reborn as a squirrel—or something far more grotesque and impossible to digest.

  I exhaled slowly, the breath bitter against my teeth. “Despite being a girl… at least I’m alive.”

  “My dy, you mustn’t move. Your body is still weak.”

  The voice belonged to that elf boy. He sounded concerned, but his expression didn’t match the words. Emotionless, detached. I ignored him and turned my attention inward, focusing on the body I now inhabited.

  My heart was strong, but my lungs were weak. The muscles were thin, and untrained, and the joints creaked with the slightest shift. Fragile and unused.

  In short, trash-tier body features. But that didn’t matter.

  “If the ‘Sea of Consciousness’ is intact, I’ll still rise in three to four years,” I muttered to myself. “To the top.”

  “My dy, what are you doing? Why are you muttering to yourselves? Are you still drunk?”

  I didn’t answer. His tone was too calm, too unaffected, as if he didn’t actually care. His words were hollow.

  Another chill crept over me as I slowly pushed myself upright, resisting the ache in my limbs. The curtain beside the bed fluttered open slightly, and I turned my head toward the window.

  The sky was cobalt, rich and deep. Nothing like the bleeding red skies of Apocalypse Earth.

  There was no poison in the wind. No blistered skin. No distant howling of the infected echoing through hollow buildings. Just silence.

  But it was the wrong kind of silence.

  There were no monsters. No pressure in the air. No weight of dread looms over everything. Even the atmosphere felt wrong—lighter, cleaner. Too clean.

  There were no strands of Word Art suspended in the particles. No rippling signs of spellwork carved into the fabric of reality.

  This world wasn’t just different. It was governed by rules I couldn’t yet see—rules I didn’t yet understand.

  Just vague unknown and silence—so thick, so absolute—that even I, a cold-blooded Ishura, felt dread clench deep in my gut. It carved into me like a knife, precise and cold. The stillness was maddening. Restlessness crept in like mold, feeding on the antique furniture, the hollow quiet, and the absence of anything remotely technological.

  And my chest—bound tight in sarashi linen.

  No bras?

  Damn.

  A real damnation. A cruel joke from whoever gave me this second chance, wrapped in confusion and fear. I thought I’d buried the past. Left it to rot in the wake of what I survived. But now... I missed it. The ruined cities, the blood-stained camaraderie, the monsters, the chaos I ruled, and stly, Seraphine—I left her behind.

  All of it surfaced, uninvited, burning warmer than it ever had. Precious, even. I’d spent years pretending it never mattered. I gritted my teeth as the truth rose up, raw and sharp. One tear slipped free and rolled down.

  The first tear of a man reborn into a woman. Don’t judge. Even Ishura feels pain.

  I ignored the Elf’s words—I needed rest, he said—but I couldn’t obey. My eyes were fixed on the silver mirror opposite the bed.

  A stranger stared back.

  Delicate face. Cherry-red lips. Long shes. Crimson eyes—sharp, sultry, almost cruel. Hair bck as raven feathers, shimmering even in the dim light.

  It wasn’t just elegant—it was dangerous. Sharper than daggers. More exquisite than any noble’s grace. The kind of face people gawked at in breathless awe—then scowled at, as if offended by its passing.

  And I did.

  “Too pretty. I look like a damned flower vase. And my voice sounds like it sings lulbies.”

  In my past life, I looked like a man. A proper one. A trained Ishura—scarred, solid, all storm and grit.

  But now?

  I was beautiful. Sickeningly so. And just as that thought settled, something moved—cold and slow—at the edge of my mind.

  I flinched, and my gaze drifted to the back of my hand.

  There, faint but vivid, a tattoo—like a dragon coiled in silent pursuit of prey.

  Kyuubi.

  The name of the Fruit I sealed in a cube. An abomination, born of the Apocalypse’s sins. It had helped kill me. And now, somehow, it had followed me here.

  Had it brought me back? I didn’t know. But the thought wouldn’t leave. It stirred something like comfort. Or dread.

  I touched the tattoo.

  It pulsed. Lavender light shimmered across my skin. A low hum traveled through my bones. My head spun.

  Then, it vanished—sinking into my flesh like a whisper retreating into silence.

  Before I could think more—

  “My dy. I know you’ve been ignoring my concerns, but it doesn’t matter. I can see you’re well and good.”

  That persistent Elf again. Always composed.

  “The Cn Leader awaits.”

  I turned.

  He stood tall, immacute. Expression still, gaze unreadable—as if it didn’t matter what I’d done, what I’d seen.

  “What if I don’t feel like seeing him?” I asked, tone even.

  He inclined his head, exhaling as if he’d expected my answer.

  “Then I’ll inform him of your refusal. Though I suspect he won’t take kindly to it.”

  His lips curled—not quite a smile. Something colder.

  I leaned forward. Let silence stretch like a wire between us.

  Then I sat back, and—unintentionally—my body moved with unnatural elegance. My fingers ran through my hair, and even that simple gesture felt composed.

  “Tell him I’ll come when I damn well please.”

  He nodded, said nothing, and began folding the robes—too elegant to be undry, too pristine to be handled.

  I guessed they were this world’s version of fresh clothes.

  I sighed.

  Things were about to get worse.