His head hurt.
Not the dull ache he was used to from staying up too late writing, but a sharp, throbbing pain that made thinking difficult. He lay still for a moment, eyes closed, trying to piece together what had happened.
The last thing he remembered was the space heater. The gas hissing into the room. Joel lunging forward too late. Then white light and heat and nothing.
He opened his eyes.
Trees, leaves and sunlight filtering down through branches overhead. The air smelled like dirt and old leaves, musty and damp.
He blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. This wasn't his apartment. Wasn't a hospital either. He was outside somewhere, lying on the ground in what looked like a forest.
Slowly, carefully, he tried to sit up. His body moved easily, no resistance or pain except for the headache. That was strange. He should be hurting everywhere. The IV line should be pulling at his wrist. His joints should be aching from weeks of sitting at that desk.
But he felt fine. Better than fine, actually. His muscles responded smoothly when he shifted his weight. His lungs drew breath without effort. No trembling in his hands. No exhaustion weighing him down.
Just the headache pounding behind his eyes.
He pushed himself up to sitting and looked down at his hands. They looked wrong. The proportions were off. Fingers a bit longer than he remembered. Calluses in different places. He touched his face and felt features that were similar but not quite the same. The jawline sharper. The nose sitting differently on his face.
This wasn't his body.
The realization should have made him panic, but the headache made it hard to feel much of anything except confused. He looked down at what he was wearing. A rough cotton shirt, torn at one shoulder and stained with something dark. Pants that didn't fit quite right. Boots that were scuffed and worn.
Not his clothes. Not his body.
Then the memories started filtering in. Not his memories. Someone else's. They came in fragments, disjointed and incomplete.
A name: Finn Porter.
Age: Eighteen.
Orphan. Lived in the outer districts of Bastion Seven.
That last part made him pause. Bastion Seven. He knew that name. Had written it dozens of times. One of the fortress cities in his story. The seventh one built after the Swarm invasion pushed humanity to the brink.
More memories surfaced. Finn had been part of a hunting party. Five people total, heading out into the Outlands to track mutated beasts. The cores they dropped could be sold for decent money in the city. Enough to cover rent and food for a month if you were high caliber cores.
They'd been out for two days when they'd run into trouble. Signs of Razorwolves in the area. The group leader, a man named Garrett, had said they could handle a couple if they were smart about it.
But they'd found more than a couple. A whole pack. Maybe eight or nine of them. Garrett had screamed for everyone to scatter and run.
Finn had been the slowest. The others had disappeared into the trees and he'd been left behind. He'd fallen down from a height and that was it.
The memory ended there. Just darkness.
He looked around the forest more carefully now. From where he got up from and the surrounding. Whatever was chasing them probably missed him but he could see where this person, Finn had fallen from.
The ground was covered in dead leaves and soil that smelled old and stagnant. Trees grew in thick clusters around him, their bark dark and rough. No signs of the hunting party. No blood trails or bodies. Just trampled undergrowth leading off in one direction where people had run through in a hurry.
They'd left him here to die.
The thought drifted through his mind without much emotion attached to it. The memories he'd inherited were so shallow. There was barely anything there. Just the basics of a life. No deep relationships. No strong feelings about anything. No real sense of identity beyond waking up each day and trying to survive.
An extra. That's what this was. A background character. The kind he'd written hundreds of times to fill out the world. People who existed for a scene or two, said a few lines, then disappeared forever because they didn't matter to the story.
He'd never bothered giving them detailed backstories. Why would he? They weren't important.
And now he was one of them.
The realization settled over him slowly. He looked at the trees again. At the way the bark had those odd growth patterns he'd spent time researching. At the undergrowth with plants that looked almost normal but not quite. At the quality of light filtering through the canopy, dim and filtered in a way that felt familiar because he'd described it before.
This was the Outlands. The corrupted wasteland between the Bastion cities where the Swarm's presence had twisted everything. The place he'd written about for five years.
He was in his story.
Actually in it. Not reading it or writing it. Living it.
"Haha~"
The laugh started small. Just a quiet sound in the back of his throat. Then it grew louder, harsher. He doubled over, clutching his head as the headache spiked, but he couldn't stop laughing.
The sheer absurdity of it. The cosmic joke.
He'd died trying to escape three psychotic fans who'd held him prisoner and forced him to rewrite his own story. And now he was here. Actually here. In the world he'd created. In a body that didn't matter. Playing a character who wasn't supposed to have a story.
The laughter turned hysterical. His shoulders shook with it. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes and he didn't know if it was from the humor or the headache or just the overwhelming wrongness of everything.
"I'm in my own book," he managed to say between gasps. "I'm actually in my own book."
The words echoed in the quiet forest. He laughed harder, the sound bouncing off the trees and coming back to him. It was funny in the darkest possible way. Of course this would happen. Of course the universe would be this twisted.
He'd died in an explosion. Woke up in a different body. In a world that shouldn't exist outside his imagination.
And now he was Finn Porter. A nobody. An extra who was supposed to die in the background and never be mentioned again.
The laughter died slowly, fading into ragged breathing as he tried to get himself under control. The headache pounded worse now, making his vision swim slightly. He pressed both hands against his temples and forced himself to think.
Okay, he was here. He was alive. He was in a body that worked better than his original one had in years. And he knew this world because he'd built it from the ground up.
He knew the Outlands. Knew what lived here and how dangerous it was. Knew that staying in one place was a death sentence because the mutated beasts would find him eventually.
He needed to move. Needed to figure out where he was in relation to Bastion Seven and start making his way back before something decided he looked like an easy meal.
He pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly as another wave of pain rolled through his skull. The headache was fading though. Slowly. The sharp edges dulling into something more manageable.
His body felt good. Strong. Responsive in a way his original body hadn't been since before the diabetes diagnosis. He flexed his hands, testing the muscles. Everything worked smoothly.
At least he had that going for him.
He took a few experimental steps, getting used to the different proportions and weight distribution. The boots fit well enough. The clothes were uncomfortable but functional.
That's when he spotted it. A few feet away, half-buried in the undergrowth. Metal glinting in the filtered sunlight.
A blade.
He walked over and pulled it free from where it had fallen between the roots of a tree. It was a cheap thing, the kind of weapon civilians could afford. A short sword, maybe two feet of dull steel with nicks along the edge from heavy use. The handle was wrapped in worn cloth that had started to fray. Not something who had Awakened would ever carry, but for someone like Finn hunting beasts in the Outlands, it was probably the best he could manage.
'Finn's weapon,' he realized. 'Must have dropped it when he was running.'
He gave it a few test swings. The weight felt awkward in his hand at first, unbalanced and heavier than he expected. The blade wobbled slightly with each movement. But it was better than nothing. Better than trying to fight with his bare hands.
The forest around him was still too quiet. That bothered him more than anything else. In a healthy forest there should be birds and insects and small animals making noise. But here there was nothing. Just the occasional rustle of leaves and the sound of his own breathing.
'That's how it works in the Outlands,' he thought. 'The Swarm's presence drives away normal wildlife. What's left are the mutated beasts. Things that adapted to the corruption.'
Things that would kill him without hesitation if they found him.
He needed to move. Now.
He picked a direction that felt right based on the angle of the sunlight and started walking. The Bastion cities were usually east or southeast of major Outlands regions. If he could find a landmark he recognized, something he'd written about, he could orient himself properly.
The undergrowth was thick but manageable. He pushed through it carefully, trying not to make too much noise. Every few steps he paused to listen, but the forest stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
Something was wrong. Predators didn't just leave an area empty like this unless there was a good reason. Either they'd claimed this territory and everything else had fled, or something had scared them off.
Neither option was comforting.
He kept walking, sword held ready, eyes scanning the trees and undergrowth for movement. The headache continued to fade, leaving behind a dull ache that was easy to ignore.
That's when he heard it. A low sound, barely audible. Like something breathing.
He froze, every muscle tensing.
The sound came again. Closer. Off to his left.
Slowly, carefully, he turned his head.
Yellow eyes stared back at him from the shadows between two trees. Low to the ground. Unblinking.
A Razorwolf.
He'd written these things. Described them in detail across dozens of chapters. Six feet long from nose to tail, built like wolves but covered in chitinous plates instead of fur. The plates were a dark gray color, layered and overlapping to provide protection. Their claws were retractable but when extended they looked like curved blades designed for tearing through flesh.
Fast. Strong. Smart enough to hunt in coordinated packs.
D-rank threats at minimum. A single one could kill an unprepared civilian easily.
And he was very much an unprepared civilian right now.
The wolf took a step forward, its claws clicking softly against something hard beneath the leaves. Its head lowered and he could see rows of teeth designed for tearing meat. The musty smell in the air got stronger, mixing with something else. Something that smelled like wet fur and blood.
'It's deciding if I'm worth the effort,' he thought. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat. 'Evaluating. Hunting instinct.'
He adjusted his grip on the sword. At least he had a real weapon this time.
The wolf growled, a sound that vibrated in his chest. It was making up its mind.
Then it lunged.
He barely had time to react. The wolf moved faster than he expected, crossing the distance between them in a heartbeat. He brought the sword up instinctively, more defense than attack.
The blade caught the wolf across the side of its head as it came in. Not a clean hit, just a glancing blow, but enough to make it yelp and veer off course. It hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up snarling.
Blood dripped from a cut above its eye where the sword had connected.
They circled each other now, both more cautious. The wolf's yellow eyes never left him, tracking his every movement.
'The plates are weakest around the joints,' he thought, trying to remember everything he'd written. 'Belly and throat are vulnerable. Head shots work if you can land them clean.'
The wolf lunged again, this time going low for his legs.
He jumped back and swung down hard. The sword bit into the wolf's shoulder where the plates didn't quite overlap. The wolf screamed, a sound that was more human than it had any right to be, and scrambled away.
It was hurt now. Favoring that front leg. But it wasn't backing down.
The wolf changed tactics, circling wider, trying to get behind him. He turned with it, keeping the sword between them. His arms were already starting to ache from the impacts. The blade had transmitted every bit of force up through his hands and into his shoulders.
This wasn't like writing a fight scene. There was no pause to think about the next move. No time to plan. Just reacting to whatever the wolf did and hoping he was fast enough.
The wolf feinted left, then darted right. He saw through it, swung to meet the real attack. The sword caught the wolf across the snout, opening another cut. The wolf yelped and backed away, shaking its head.
It was bleeding from multiple wounds now. The cut above its eye. The shoulder. The snout. None of them deep enough to be fatal, but they were adding up.
The wolf made a decision. It turned to run.
He didn't let it.
He lunged forward, closing the distance while the wolf's back was turned, and brought the sword down on the back of its neck. The blade cut through chitin and flesh and bone. The wolf collapsed, legs giving out completely. It twitched once, twice, then went still.
He stood there, breathing hard, sword still raised. Waiting to see if it would somehow get back up.
It didn't.
His arms were shaking. His whole body was shaking actually. Adrenaline making it impossible to stand still. Blood dripped from the sword blade, it was dark and thick.
He'd just killed a Razorwolf. One of the creatures he'd created.
The fight had been nothing like what he'd imagined when writing those scenes. It had been chaotic and desperate and absolutely terrifying. No elegant choreography. No clever tactics. Just panic and instinct and swinging the blade as hard as he could.
That's when he noticed something strange.
Floating in the air above the wolf's corpse, there was text. Glowing faintly, like a hologram. Like something from a video game.
[+50 EXP]
He stared at it. Then he blinked. The text was still there, hovering about chest height.