It was so cold it hurt.
That was the very first thing he felt. It wasn't just a normal chill. This cold felt like icy needles poking into his skin, trying to freeze his blood. It was hard to breathe. The air felt like sharp glass in his throat.
Where am I? he thought. His brain felt slow and fuzzy.
He tried to remember what happened. The last thing he remembered was his boring office job. He was sitting at his desk, staring at a computer screen full of numbers. He remembered a sudden, sharp pain in his chest. Then, everything went completely dark. A heart attack. He had died working a job he didn't even like.
So, why was he freezing in the snow right now?
He slowly opened his eyes. His eyelashes were stuck together with ice. When he finally forced them open, all he could see was blowing white snow and dark, scary mountains. There was no sun. It was just a giant snowstorm.
He was lying on his back in a deep pile of snow. He tried to move his arms, but they felt heavy. He heard the sound of metal clinking. He lifted his head up, pushing through the pain in his neck, and looked down at his body.
He wasn't wearing his nice office suit anymore.
He was wearing thick, heavy armor. It was gray and black, with a lot of cheap fur that wasn't keeping him warm at all. He had big metal gloves on his hands. Strapped to the middle of his chest was a strange metal circle. Inside the circle was a dull, green stone. The stone was glowing with a weak, sickly light.
Fear hit him hard. He tried to push himself backward, but his heavy boots just slipped in the deep snow.
This is not my body.
The thought didn't come slowly. It hit him all at once, along with a rush of memories that were not his own. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on his brain.
Ilya. His name was Ilya. He was an eighteen-year-old boy from a freezing country called Snezhnaya. He had joined the army—a group called the Fatui—because he had to. His mother had been very sick, and they owed a lot of money to bad people. His mother died anyway.
Now, Ilya only had one person left in the world: his little sister, Katerina. She was only six years old. She loved sweet candies and playing in the snow. If Ilya didn't send his army paycheck home every month, the bank would kick Katerina out of their tiny house. She would freeze on the streets.
He grabbed his head with his big metal gloves. It hurt so much. He was a grown man who worked in an office. But he was also an eighteen-year-old soldier. Both sets of memories were fighting inside his head.
His stomach twisted, and he leaned over to throw up. But nothing came out. Ilya's body hadn't eaten real food in two days.
"Get up, you lazy rat!"
A loud, angry voice yelled through the howling wind.
He—Ilya—jerked his head up to look. Standing a few feet away was a huge, scary man. The man was holding a giant, heavy hammer that was sparking with purple electricity. The man wore a heavy mask over his face, but Ilya could tell he was furious.
"Did you trip on a rock and decide to take a nap?" the big man yelled. His voice sounded deep and robotic through the mask. "We are in the middle of Dragonspine mountain! If the cold doesn't kill you, the monsters will. Get on your feet!"
Dragonspine. Fatui. Electro hammer.
Suddenly, his old memories clicked into place. He knew those words. He used to play a very famous video game after he came home from his stressful office job. The game was called Genshin Impact.
He knew this world. But a terrible feeling washed over him.
He looked at the green stone on his chest again. It was an Anemo Delusion. It was fake magic given to the lowest, weakest soldiers in the bad guy's army.
He wasn't the hero of this story. He wasn't the brave traveler with special powers. He was just a weak, nameless bad guy. In the game, players beat up guys exactly like him just to get some cheap coins. His chances of surviving this frozen mountain were almost zero.
"I said, get up!" The big man with the hammer stepped forward. He grabbed Ilya by the heavy coat and pulled him up. The man was incredibly strong. It was a scary reminder that this world was real, and the people here were much stronger than normal humans on Earth.
As the big man held him in the air, something strange happened to Ilya's eyes.
The world seemed to change. The blowing snow wasn't just frozen water anymore. Ilya could see glowing lines of energy floating in the air. He saw bright blue lines of ice magic—Cryo energy—swirling all around them like a hungry ghost.
He looked at the big man holding him. The man's giant hammer wasn't just sparking. Ilya could actually see the raw, wild purple energy inside the hammer. He could see how fast the energy was moving. He could even see a weak spot in the hammer where the magic was getting stuck.
It was a special power. He could see the magic lines of the world.
But it was more than just seeing. His brain, which had spent years looking at money, patterns, and numbers, started to read the magic. His mind started fixing the problems he saw, just like fixing a broken math problem.
He looked down at the green stone on his own chest. The fake magic stone. He could see dark, dirty energy leaking out of it. It was slowly poisoning his blood.
Numbers flashed in his mind. Power output: 12 percent. Poison leak: 4 percent every minute. The stone is broken. It was so easy for him to understand.
"I'm up," Ilya gasped. His throat was dry, and he noticed he had a slight accent now. "I'm up, sir."
"Get in line. Now," the big man grunted, dropping him back into the snow. "The Captain wants us at the camp before it gets dark. Move your feet!"
Ilya quickly got in line behind three other young, scared recruits. The snow crunched loudly under his heavy boots. He was shivering, but his mind was racing.
He had taken a young boy's body. He felt terrible about it. But if he gave up and died right now, little Katerina would be thrown out into the cold back home. She would die.
He didn't have special armor. He didn't have a magic fairy to guide him. He had a broken, poisonous stone on his chest and a mountain that was trying to freeze him to death.
But as he watched the glowing lines of magic flow through the air, he made a promise to himself. He felt a fire start to burn inside his chest, fighting back against the cold.
In his past life, he was an expert at fixing broken businesses. He knew how to read numbers, save resources, and win the game.
This new world had rules. It had magic. And any rule could be bent if you were smart enough.
Ilya squeezed his hands into tight fists. He was not going to be a weak punching bag for some hero. He was going to use his smarts to fix his broken magic, get stronger, and climb to the very top of this army. No one was ever going to hurt him or his new little sister again.
His new life had just begun.