The thing about waking up in a murder-swamp as a seven-foot-tall ash-grey demon with pink hair is that nobody prepares you for waking up in a murder-swamp as a seven-foot-tall ash-grey demon with pink hair.
Three months. That's how long I'd been in Shadowfen, and I still wasn't used to the way my horns caught on low-hanging vines. Or how my clawed fingertips made delicate work a fucking nightmare. Or the fact that approximately seventy percent of everything here wanted to kill me, ten percent ran screaming from my face, and the remaining twenty percent was just... weird.
Case in point: the floating goldfish with tiny arms currently doing what I can only describe as the breaststroke through the air above my head. It took one look at me, squeaked, and paddled away faster.
"Yeah, that's fair," I muttered, ducking under another vine. My left horn—the slightly longer one, because asymmetry is apparently my aesthetic now—scraped against bark with a sound that made my teeth ache. "I'd run from me too."
My trap line ran along the eastern edge of what I'd mentally dubbed the "slightly-less-murderous zone"—a stretch of semi-solid ground between the deep swamp and the crystal arachnid territories. I'd spent two weeks mapping safe paths, marking them with notched branches and piles of stones that probably looked like random debris to anything else.
The first three traps were empty. The fourth had something in it.
Something big.
I crouched low—which at seven feet tall still put me at most people's standing height—and approached carefully. My spear was lashed together from swamp-hardened wood and a shard of obsidian, crude but effective. The trap was shaking, whatever I'd caught still very much alive and very much pissed about it.
Great. I hate it when they're still alive.
[NOTIFICATION: Hostile Creature Detected - Marshfang Serpent, Level 12]
The System helpfully informed me I was about to have a bad time. Thanks, System. Really earning your keep.
I could see it now: six feet of scaled muscle, toxic green with black stripes, thrashing against the wire snare around its midsection. Its head whipped toward me, jaw unhinging to reveal rows of needle teeth and a distended venom sac that pulsed like a grotesque heartbeat.
Then it saw me.
The serpent froze. Its eyes—too many eyes, because normal snakes weren't fucked up enough apparently—locked onto my face. Onto my black sclera and ember pupils. Onto my horns.
It hissed, but the sound was uncertain. Afraid.
"Yeah," I said quietly, adjusting my grip on the spear. My clawed fingers scraped against the wood. "I get that a lot now."
The serpent lunged anyway—fear or hunger overriding survival instinct. I sidestepped and drove the spear down through its skull in one smooth motion. Three months of nearly dying teaches you to move before you think, even when your body is seven feet of ash-grey muscle you're still getting used to.
The obsidian point punched through scale and bone with a wet crunch.
[COMBAT COMPLETE: Marshfang Serpent Defeated]
[+340 EXP]
[Level Up! You are now Level 9]
The notification flickered in the corner of my vision. I'd stopped celebrating level-ups around Level 4, right about when I realized that "stronger" just meant "qualified to fight slightly worse things."
I yanked the spear free and wiped it on the moss. The serpent's body was already dissolving into motes of light, leaving behind scales, a venom sac, and a small mana crystal. I pocketed all of it with clawed fingers that were still too sharp, still too foreign.
Waste nothing. Rule number one of living in a place that actively hates you.
I caught my reflection in a pool of standing water and stopped.
Still not used to it. Probably never would be.
Ash-grey skin that looked like cooled volcanic rock, complete with subtle veining that ran along my arms and neck. Right now the veins were dim, barely visible, but when I used magic or got emotional they'd light up with that same ember glow as my eyes. My face was still recognizably mine—same bone structure, same features—but the black sclera and ember pupils made me look like something out of a horror game.
And the hair. Fuck, the hair.
Vibrant pink. Thick and curly, falling past my ears in an uneven mess because I'd been hacking at it with my knife whenever it got long enough to be a liability. There were streaks of darker pink and violet running through it that caught the light.
I looked like a raid boss. A final-dungeon, prepare-your-party, check-your-equipment-twice raid boss.
"Cool, cool," I said to my reflection. "Very normal. Very human. Definitely won't traumatize any villagers if I ever find civilization."
My horns curved back from my temples, smooth and black and definitely demonic. The left one was slightly longer than the right, giving me a lopsided devil look that would've been funny if it wasn't attached to my fucking head.
I'd woken up like this. Three months ago, I'd been pulled from Earth—from my shitty apartment and my shittier life—and deposited in Shadowfen. And somewhere between "normal human Knox" and "welcome to your new nightmare," I'd been transformed into... this.
Seven feet of ash-grey, pink-haired, demon-horned, ember-eyed this.
The System had been real helpful about it too:
[NOTICE: Transformation Complete]
[New Race: Demonic Variant - Ember-Touched]
[Physical Attributes Significantly Enhanced]
[Mana Capacity Increased]
[Affinity: Shadow/Ember Hybrid Detected]
No explanation. No warning. Just "congratulations, you're a demon now, please don't die immediately."
I'd spent the first week trying not to break things with my new strength. The second week learning how to move without my horns catching on everything. The third week coming to terms with the fact that I was never going back to normal.
By week four, I'd stopped giving a shit and focused on not dying.
The scars helped with that. My arms and torso were covered in them—thin white lines from crystal arachnid claws, puncture marks from things with too many teeth, burns from plants I'd thought were safe. Some of the marks weren't scars at all but tattoos, arcane symbols I'd carved into my own skin during particularly bad nights when the loneliness got too sharp.
Survival symbols. Protection runes. Reminders that I was still here, still fighting, still refusing to lie down and let the swamp take me.
I looked like a monster. Felt like one too, some days.
But monsters survived. And survival was all I had left.
I reset the trap and moved on, my too-tall body moving through the swamp with a grace I was still getting used to. The clawed tips of my fingers made fine work difficult, but they were useful for climbing, for fighting, for tearing through tough plant matter.
Everything was a trade-off.
My base was a generous term for what amounted to a reinforced lean-to built into the hollow of a massive dead tree. I'd had to expand it twice already because I kept forgetting how much space seven feet of demon took up. The entrance was low enough that I had to duck—my horns scraped the top every single time—but inside it was dry, defensible, and far enough from major predator routes that I could sleep for more than two hours at a time.
I dumped my haul on the flat stone I used as a workbench: serpent scales, the venom sac, two handfuls of edible tubers, and a cluster of glowing mushrooms that the System labeled as "mildly nutritious and only slightly hallucinogenic."
Dinner sorted.
I started a small fire and skewered the tubers on a green stick. While they cooked, I pulled up my Status screen.
[STATUS]
Name: Knox Ashford
Level: 9
Race: Demonic Variant - Ember-Touched
Class: None
HP: 440/440
MP: 280/280
Stamina: 67%
Strength: 24 (+6 Racial)
Agility: 22
Endurance: 25 (+6 Racial)
Intelligence: 24
Wisdom: 16
Luck: 8
Skills:
Survival Instinct (Passive, Lv. 4)
Trap Crafting (Lv. 3)
Spear Combat (Lv. 2)
Mana Sensitivity (Lv. 1)
Foraging (Lv. 3)
Ember Affinity (Passive, Lv. 1)
Titles:
Otherworlder
Survivor
Transformed
I dismissed it with a thought. Numbers on a screen. They meant I wasn't dead yet. That was about it.
The tubers were done. I ate them mechanically, my clawed fingers making the process awkward. The mushrooms were worse—slimy and faintly sweet—but I choked them down anyway.
Calories were calories, even when you looked like something that should be eating adventurers instead of questionable fungi.
I sat there in the firelight, watching the veins in my arms pulse faintly with the ambient mana. They glowed brighter when I was using magic or when my emotions spiked—anger, fear, the sharp edge of loneliness that never quite went away.
Right now they were dim. Steady. I was too tired for strong emotions.
One year and three months.
That's how long it had been since Emma died. Since I found her on the bathroom floor, needle still in her arm, eyes open and empty.
I'd stopped counting days after the funeral. Stopped doing a lot of things. And then I'd been pulled here, transformed into this, and given a second chance I never asked for.
Ironic, really.
I got my second chance. Got dropped into an actual fantasy world with magic and monsters and a System that turned life into an RPG.
And I was still just... surviving. Still just going through the motions. Still empty.
Just taller now. And grey. With pink hair and horns.
"Cool story, Knox," I muttered to myself. "Real inspiring. You should write a memoir. Call it Still Depressed, Now With Horns."
A notification pinged.
[ALERT: Unusual Mana Signature Detected]
[Distance: 2.3 km, Southwest]
[Stability: Critical]
I frowned and pulled up the expanded readout. The System had started giving me these alerts about a week ago, after my Mana Sensitivity skill hit Level 1. Most of them were false alarms—ambient mana fluctuations, territorial disputes between magical creatures, that kind of thing.
This one was different.
The mana signature was massive. Dense, chaotic, and pulsing with a rhythm that felt almost... organic. Like a heartbeat.
And it was unstable. The readout showed fluctuations spiking into the red.
I should ignore it. Smart money said anything that unstable was a death trap.
But.
But.
I'd been in Shadowfen for three months. Three months of scraping by, of eating questionable mushrooms and sleeping with one eye open. Three months of surviving but not living.
And I was so fucking tired of it.
Maybe this was stupid. Maybe this was suicidal.
But if there was even a chance that whatever was causing that mana signature could give me an edge—a real edge, not just another level or a slightly sharper stick—then I had to check it out.
I doused the fire, grabbed my spear, and checked my gear. The veins in my arms pulsed brighter with anticipation, ember light flickering under ash-grey skin.
The swamp was darker now, bioluminescent plants casting everything in shades of purple and sickly green. I moved carefully, my seven-foot frame surprisingly quiet, my horns scraping occasionally against low branches.
The mana signature pulled at me like a compass needle, a sensation I was still getting used to. It felt like pressure behind my eyes, a low hum in my chest that resonated with the ember core of my new body.
I'd gone maybe a kilometer when I felt it.
A presence. Not hostile, exactly, but... aware.
The air shifted. The trees seemed to lean in, branches creaking softly. The water rippled without wind.
I stopped, spear raised, my ember eyes glowing brighter in the dark.
Nothing.
But the feeling didn't go away. If anything, it got stronger. Like something vast and ancient had turned its attention toward me, just for a moment.
[NOTICE: You are being observed.]
"Yeah, no shit," I whispered, my voice rougher than it used to be. Deeper. More gravelly.
The presence faded, but not entirely. It lingered at the edges of my awareness, watching.
Aetheria. Had to be. The world-spirit that had been... helping? Watching? Fucking with me? All three, probably.
I'd felt her before. Subtle things—winds that pushed me away from danger, plants that grew just right to mark safe paths, the occasional feeling of being seen.
She was watching now. I could feel it.
"If you're gonna help," I said quietly to the empty swamp, "now would be great."
The wind shifted, blowing southwest. Toward the mana signature.
"Right. Cryptic and unhelpful. Love that for me."
I kept moving.
The mana signature led me to a part of Shadowfen I'd never seen before. The trees here were older, thicker, their bark blackened and twisted. The ground was solid stone, slick with moss and carved with channels where water had flowed for centuries.
And in the center of it all was a cave.
Not a cave. A wound. The entrance was a jagged tear in the earth, surrounded by crystalline growths that pulsed with sickly light. The mana radiating from it was so thick I could taste it, metallic and sharp.
My veins flared bright, ember light running up my arms and neck in response to the density. My eyes burned brighter, pupils dilating.
[WARNING: Extreme Mana Density Detected]
[Recommended Level: 15+]
[Proceed with caution.]
I stared at the entrance, my seven-foot frame casting a long shadow in the crystal light.
Level 15. I was Level 9.
This was a terrible idea.
I took a step forward, my clawed hand tightening on my spear.
The mana surged, and for just a second, I felt something else. Something beneath the chaos and the danger.
Loneliness.
I knew that feeling. Knew it intimately.
"Alright," I said quietly, my ember eyes fixed on the darkness ahead. "Let's see what you've got."
I ducked low—horns scraping the entrance—and stepped into the dark.
Behind me, the wind whispered approval.
Aetheria was watching.
And something in that cave was waiting.