Sam's POV

  A rotund man with a long, waxed mustache—sweating bullets and wearing a fancy cape embroidered with intricate star patterns—walked into my peripheral vision. Something felt off about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Breathing was more important right now, so I focused on that instead.

  He started talking to someone, and though their language sounded vaguely familiar—like someone had mixed all the words of Europe into a single tongue—I couldn’t make sense of it. Am I in Europe?

  He and the woman from before started conversing. They seemed confused, but their words were a blur. This was definitely a new language—one I’d have to learn from scratch. They argued for hours before the man left.

  Two days passed. The pain was constant—like my soul was being shoved into the sun. The woman never left my side. Maids came and went, bringing her things now and then. I couldn’t eat, drink, or move anything but my eyes. I was trapped in a prison of eternal suffering.

  Well… that sounds about right for my kind of luck.

  On the third day, the man returned—with someone else.

  This new guy exuded prestige and authority. His clothing was pristine, embroidered with enough gold to make the coat a few pounds heavier. His eyes met mine… and I saw it.

  Authority, yes—but no honor.

  There was something twisted behind those eyes: greed, dangerous and all-consuming.

  He and the woman beside me exploded into a full-blown shouting match while I had the pleasure of convulsing in the background.

  After about an hour, the pompous man stormed out, leaving the rotund one behind.

  The fat man extended a hand toward my head and touched me.

  Immediately, I saw threads of light emerge from his hand, weaving through my body like my clothes didn’t exist. They wrapped around me, explored me—inside and out. I could see them, but thankfully, I couldn’t feel them.

  He found something. I didn’t know what—but the moment he did, he turned pale and bolted from the room like death itself had whispered in his ear.

  The next four days blurred together. Nothing changed, except now only one maid entered the chamber. The woman—my caretaker, my lifeline—seemed exhausted. She tried everything: remedies, spells, rituals… working tirelessly to figure something out.

  It was like she could feel my pain.

  Night fell. I was blacking out so often I had no clue what day it was anymore.

  I came to, my throat dry as dust. Only one candle lit the room. At the desk, she was slumped over, asleep, a cup of tea still in her hand and an open book before her.

  Something moved on the opposite side of my vision. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could feel it—something was wrong. A new pain.

  Then I saw it.

  The tip of a dagger pushing through my chest.

  I’m being assassinated.

  Was the woman dead? I couldn’t tell—not that it mattered anymore.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw him—the fat bastard—with a bright smile stretching his face, his eyes gleaming with pure malice.

  I don’t want to die.

  That was all I could think, over and over, as the world around me turned to black.

  A single wish—looping endlessly. A will so strong it tried to bend reality.Then, there was darkness.

  And the pain—was gone.

  But in his mind, something still raged. He could feel his body—burning and freezing all at once. A war waged deep within his soul, two forces clashing like titans.

  One sought order—rigid, structured, absolute.

  The other craved freedom—wild, untamed, boundless.

  Two ideals that could never coexist. Two energies that tore at each other, tearing him apart in the process.

  Then, in the heart of the storm, something shifted.

  The battle moved inward—into his heart.

  And then… everything stopped.

  The fighting.

  The pain.

  Even his heartbeat.

  A single instant of eternity passed before his eyes snapped open.

  Gone was the room. Gone was the guardian angel.

  He was standing in a trench now. The air was cold. The moon hung overhead, casting pale light across a battlefield soaked in blood and bile. The stench of guts, gunpowder, and rot clawed at his nostrils.

  His body felt different—taller, stronger, faster. There was a tension in his muscles, a coiled energy he hadn’t known in years.

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  In his hand, he held an absurdly large axe. The shaft was a thick metal pipe, comically oversized even for his now-larger hands.

  What kind of idiot designed this piece of crap?

  Then he spotted the grips. Wait—was that a trigger?

  He blinked.

  No way.

  Was this a damn gun-axe?

  What kind of weeb lunatic thought this was a good idea?

  He turned it over, inspecting it. The thing looked ridiculous. Impractical. Recoil from a shot would probably break your wrist—and reloading it mid-fight? Yeah, good luck with that. Maybe one shot in this thing, if it was even loaded.

  Still grinning in disbelief, he wrapped his fingers around the single-hand grip and gave it a swing.

  He laughed—loud and unrestrained.

  It felt like a foam prop. Maybe a pound in weight, tops. Too light to be real.

  Curious, he placed his hand on the blade.

  No foam.

  Cold steel. Sharp as hell.

  Far in the distance, a screech pierced the silence of the night—like a million barn owls and death whistles playing a symphony of pure hatred. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I looked over the edge of the trench, an eerie calm washing over me. For the first time in a long while, my thoughts stopped racing. Everything was quiet.

  That’s when the real surprise began.

  I wasn’t staring at anything I’d ever seen before.

  Across the battlefield stood an army that stretched to the horizon—twisted things, mockeries of life. Monsters, half-something, half-utter abomination. Some looked human… if you peeled their skin off, left them to rot for a few days, and taught them to scream like they were gargling acid.

  The longer I stared, the less sane I felt.

  This wasn’t a battle.

  This was war against hell itself.

  Spell formations flared over the trench, lashing out with blinding waves of arcane energy. Arrows rained from behind me, loosed by the thousands. But against those numbers? It might as well have been kids throwing rocks into the tide.

  I had to do something. Tip the scales. Make numbers irrelevant.

  I looked down at the absurd axe-gun-thing in my hands, raised the barrel toward the enemy line, and made a small prayer to whatever god dropped me into this world.

  "Please don’t let this blow up in my face."

  Then I pulled the trigger.

  The axe came alive with a scream of metal and hate, unleashing a beam of raw power that roared across the battlefield—like a 30mm Vulcan cannon fueled by spite and bad decisions. For about eight seconds, I carved a trench through the enemy ranks, turning abominations into red mist.

  Then the magic ran dry.

  The gun clicked uselessly. I let go of the trigger.

  Silence returned, broken only by the sound of my own breath.

  And then I heard footsteps.

  I turned, still catching my breath, and saw three strangers approaching from behind. They wore uniforms similar to mine—though I couldn’t tell if that made them allies or just better-dressed corpses waiting to happen.

  My attention quickly screamed at me to keep my eyes on the battle. I wanted to pull that trigger again so bad. Well—only one way to know, right?

  And damn, magic is beautiful.

  The beast started spitting hate like it hadn’t just shut down on me a couple seconds ago. Maybe it was a “burst” of about a hundred mad Red Bull cans per second flying at mach fuck on a mission of pure destruction and mayhem.

  I was starting to really like that gun-axe thingy.

  Then the stench hit.

  Putrid. Burning. With a sour and salty taste of rotten meat that somehow coated my tongue. An aura of madness made physical rose from the enemy ranks—vision warping, pressure rising like a migraine building in the air itself. But I would not fall. Not now, not yesterday, and not tomorrow.

  I would bathe the soil in their blood. Erase them. Genocide their existence from the face of whatever planet this was.

  After that? Maybe I could finally rest.

  I blinked.

  Gone was the battlefield.

  But my hands remembered the axe. My nostrils still burned with the smell of festering meat. I looked around—my body was back to the one filled with pain… but the pain was gone. So was the mansion.

  Confusion started brewing like a storm in my gut. I tried to move, but my muscles were unresponsive. All I could do was scan the area with my eyes. Dead bodies. Everywhere.

  But they didn’t look like they died in battle. Some looked old and sick, others so decomposed it was hard to tell. This was no battlefield—it was a pit. An open grave.

  In the distance, I heard a soft voice. A woman, singing gently to the dead.

  I tried to yell, but only a croak came out of my dry throat. I tried again—my arm twitched. Barely. But it was enough.

  She stopped singing.

  Footsteps approached.

  I want to live!

  I felt my body being turned, and then I saw her.

  And for a second, I forgot how to breathe.

  I hadn’t expected this. The maiden standing over me didn’t look like any woman I’d ever seen. She wore some kind of nun-like outfit—white and black, modest but oddly elegant. Her silhouette was mostly human… but parts of her skin were covered in a short, soft-looking fur. And there were the horns—graceful, curling back from her head like a ram’s.

  A… ramgirl?

  Her smile was gentle. Ethereal. Her bright yellow eyes caught the moonlight, glowing just a little too brightly to be natural. And the way she smelled—fresh-baked bread and something clean, like lavender and mountain wind. After everything I’d been through, that scent alone made my chest ache with something like… peace.

  She whispered something in a hush I couldn’t understand. Then, without warning, she stood, picked up a mace, and ran off into the night.

  About an hour passed. I lay there, clinging to consciousness, until she came back—this time with a burly man in priest robes and a wheelbarrow.

  At that point, all I had left was hope. And faith.

  The man had a nervous smile plastered across his face, the kind you wear when you're not sure if you're about to save a life or trigger a curse. But when his eyes landed on me, something shifted. That jittery tension melted into something calmer—a small, reassuring smile took its place.

  He left the wheelbarrow and walked over without saying a word.

  Then he knelt beside me and placed his right hand over my heart. A golden light bloomed in his palm, soft and warm, wrapping his hand in a glow that felt both holy and weirdly familiar. I could feel the light seep through my skin, and honestly? I didn’t resist.

  Not like I could even if I wanted to.

  Then it happened—I felt my heart mend itself from the inside out, and with a sudden thump, a single pulse shook my entire body like I’d been jump-started by divine jumper cables.

  The man blinked, clearly floored. Mouth slightly open, eyes wide. But he didn’t say a word. Instead, he just scooped me up like I weighed nothing—like I wasn’t a six-foot, pain-riddled Canadian pancake—and gently laid me in the wooden wheelbarrow.

  Then the young maiden stepped forward. She rested her hand on my shoulder, and I swear—warmth bloomed inside my chest like sunlight creeping in after a storm. Just being near her felt… safe.

  Like maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t completely screwed after all.