Erik's eyes snapped open to utter chaos.
The first sensation was the smell, a thick, coppery reek of blood mixed with damp earth and something foully organic that clung to the back of his throat. Dim torchlight flickered, painting wet stone walls in dancing, distorted shadows. Shouts in a language he'd never heard echoed around him, punctuated by the percussive clang of metal on metal. He was on the ground, the stone cold and unforgiving, his hands locked around the haft of a massive, impossibly heavy axe, which still felt somewhat comfortable to hold.
A feral howl, sharp and close, cut through the sensory overload. A gnarled, green-skinned creature with yellowed fangs lunged, a rusted blade raised high.
There was no time for conscious thought. The body moved on its own. A roar, deep and guttural, tore from his throat, a sound he had never made, yet felt chillingly natural. He swung the axe upward. The heavy blade met the goblin's ribs with a sickening, wet crunch. The impact vibrated up his arms, a shocking jolt of power. Dark blood sprayed across the wall. The creature gurgled, its malevolent eyes wide with surprise, and collapsed. Dead.
Heart hammering against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the sudden quiet, he staggered to his feet. What is happening? The question was a single point of logic in a sea of madness. I died. The truck… the rain… The memory was a fleeting, painful flash. This wasn't the afterlife he'd have imagined. This was something else. Something horribly, viscerally real.
A shrill scream cut through the din. He whirled, his new body pivoting with a speed and grace that was utterly alien. His mind, accustomed to rapid assessment, took in the scene with a horrifying clarity. A young man in leather armor, Finn, a name surfaced from nowhere, was grappling with two of the creatures. Beyond him, an older man in dented plate armor, Darius, fended off a hulking goblin champion. To his left, a woman in tattered robes, Lyra, murmured words that made a wound on Darius's arm glow with golden light.
The names surfaced like fragments of a forgotten dream, whispers from a life that wasn't his. They were ghosts of memory, remnants of the body's previous owner. They were his companions. His team.
He shook off the cognitive dissonance as another goblin barreled toward him. His muscles reacted before he could issue a command, a beautifully efficient dodge that was a testament to a lifetime of training he did not possess. He felt a surge of something that wasn't adrenaline, but a wild, terrifying freedom. In his old life, he had pushed his body to its absolute limits in the gym just to feel a flicker of this. The gym had been a cage where he could rattle his bars. This... this was the wall breaking down. This body wasn't just in shape; it was a weapon. And for the first time, in this blood-soaked, reeking hell, he felt truly, horribly free.
The goblin snarled and jabbed with a spear. His arm, Erik's arm, moved, parrying the thrust with the axe's haft. He followed with a crushing kick to the creature's knee. Bone snapped with a clean, satisfying crack. With a fluid, almost poetic follow-up, he brought the axe down in a brutal arc. The goblin's head split open, and it crumpled to the stone. He observed the result with a detached horror and a flicker of something else: appreciation for the sheer efficiency of the action.
Across the chamber, Finn was losing his fight. "Get… off… me!" he growled, stabbing frantically. Erik launched forward. He didn't think about angles or force; the body knew. He shoulder-slammed the remaining goblin off Finn, then buried the axe in its back as it sprawled. Finn, chest heaving, flashed a brief grin. "Thanks, Erik! I owe you one."
The name still felt strange, a borrowed suit of clothes. So I really am Erik… Whoever that is now.
An angry roar drew their attention. Darius, the veteran knight, was being pushed back by the goblin champion. The knight was skilled, but fatigue was setting in. Blood dripped from a wound on his thigh.
Erik and Finn moved to flank the hulking creature. "On your left!" Erik shouted, the tactical call feeling as natural as breathing. Darius nodded grimly, feinting high. The goblin champion raised its club, leaving itself open. Erik lunged low, his axe carving through the creature's hamstring. Simultaneously, Finn darted in, his dagger slitting its throat with clean, professional precision. The champion gurgled, its wild, dying swing catching Darius on the shoulder and knocking him down, before it toppled forward with a final, earth-shaking thud.
Silence fell, broken only by their ragged breathing. The adrenaline began to recede, and the cold reality of the situation seeped back in. He was surrounded by gore, his hands trembling around the handle of an axe that felt both alien and perfectly familiar.
Lyra limped to Darius, a golden light glowing from her palm as she healed his wounds. Finn, his bravado returning, wiped his dagger clean. "Well, that got hairy," he quipped.
Erik managed a tense chuckle, but his mind was racing. He looked down at himself, at the scarred, muscular arms that were not his, at the battered armor. The memories of his past life, the sterile office, the quiet hum of the servers, the endless gray, felt like a dream from a thousand years ago. He was someone else, somewhere else. He had died, and been… repurposed.
A low, resonant chime pulsed faintly through his bones, not a sound, but a tremor, as if something ancient beneath the world had stirred. He stiffened. No one else seemed to notice.
Then the burning began.
Silver lines traced themselves along his forearm in curling arcs, glowing faintly as if written by an unseen hand. Smoke-like tendrils of rune-light shimmered upward from his skin, dancing briefly in the air before vanishing. Erik stared, not in confusion, but with a dawning, analytical understanding. This was a system. A different kind of system.
He knew what the mark meant.
Berserker's Rage.
The rune throbbed once, a pulse of contained heat, then sank deeper beneath the skin, its glow dimming to a barely visible ember. But the sensation it left behind remained, a storm crouched behind his ribs, a coiled spring of power. Not a gift. Not a spell. A truth written into his very flesh. He didn't need a voice to explain it. He knew: when blood spilled, when fear surged, that rune would answer.
"Erik! You with us?"
Darius's voice broke through his astonishment. The older man had gotten back to his feet, steadying himself on Lyra's shoulder.
Erik cleared his throat. "Y-Yeah. I'm fine." His voice came out deeper and rougher than he remembered. He stepped closer to the group, his gaze sweeping over them, assessing their conditions with a newfound, instinctual focus. "Is… is everyone okay?"
"Alive, thanks to you," Lyra said with a tired smile.
Finn flashed a grin from where he was crouched, prying gauntlets off the goblin champion. "Aye, our mighty barbarian was on fire! You were like a man possessed, Erik." He tossed the gauntlets into his pack and winked. "Though for a moment you looked a bit lost in the middle there. Took a nasty bump on the head, did ya?"
Erik forced a chuckle, a mask for the hundred calculations running through his mind. "Something like that. I'm… still catching my breath."
Finn straightened, rubbing a sore spot along his ribs with a wince. "Eh, sometimes pain's the best teacher. I'll take a bruise now over a wound later, learned that the hard way in the last dungeon crawl."
He shot Lyra a sideways glance. "Ain't that right?"
Darius sheathed his sword. "We shouldn't linger. We need to get back to Blackstone Outpost." His authoritative tone snapped everyone back to purpose. Erik felt a grudging respect for the man's command presence.
As they followed Darius out of the reeking tunnel, Erik fell into line at the back, his grip tightening on the axe. The weapon, he now saw, had a name etched in runes along its haft: "Erythrael." Another piece of the puzzle. Another mystery. He cast one last look at the darkness behind them. His old life was gone, a closed file. This new one was brutal, terrifying, and filled with unknowns. But for the first time since he could remember, he felt a flicker of something that had been rotting away in that gray office for years.
Purpose.