The beaker trembled slightly in his gloved hand as he adjusted the flame beneath the distillation setup. The lab was quiet—almost too quiet for a late night at the facility. Everyone else had gone home hours ago, but he stayed, hunched over the workstation with the kind of obsessive focus that had defined his entire career.
He barely blinked as he watched the clear fluid begin to bubble, its consistency thickening as it passed through the makeshift condenser he'd rigged from borrowed parts and caffeine-fueled improvisation. On the whiteboard behind him, hastily scrawled chemical symbols framed a theoretical compound—one that, if synthesized properly, could revolutionize neural stimulation. Or possibly melt a human brain.
The scent of burning ozone tickled his nose, sharp and wrong.
He frowned.
Then everything went white.
There was no explosion he could remember. Just a high-pitched whine, like the world itself was being ripped apart at the seams. His vision collapsed into a tunnel of static. Heat surged through his veins, an unbearable pressure crushing his chest—and then nothing.
Silence.
A void.
Then—distantly, like through water—he heard someone scream his name.
"Sebastian!"
Everything went black.
—
Rainclouds brewed above the treetops.
The man lay still, face-up against damp soil, his clothes soaked through and his limbs splayed awkwardly across moss and underbrush. A light wind swept through the towering forest, tugging at leaves that shimmered faintly in unnatural hues. The sky grumbled in warning, but no rain had fallen yet.
He stirred.
A groan escaped his throat as his eyelids fluttered open. Pale gray light filtered through the canopy, casting dappled shadows over his face. He blinked, dazed, his body aching in ways that felt… disconnected. Wrong. Like a dream after a night of bad sleep.
His fingers twitched in the moss. He didn't recognize the texture—it was too soft, almost sponge-like. He shifted, sluggish and unsteady, as if gravity was unfamiliar. For a long moment, he simply lay there, eyes half-lidded, listening to the eerie stillness of the woods.
"This has to be a dream," he murmured hoarsely. His voice sounded different. Coarser.
But dreams didn't smell like this. The air was heavy with ozone and something deeply earthy, laced with a scent he couldn't identify—something floral, yet metallic. The world itself felt charged. Alive. Not just in the biological sense, but in some deeper, humming frequency that resonated against his skin.
Then it hit him.
The lab.
The compound.
The pain.
The scream.
"Sebastian."
The memory struck like a lightning bolt, and he sat up with a ragged gasp, heart pounding as the world around him snapped into sharper focus. Trees towered high above—bark streaked in blues and violets, leaves like sheets of living glass. Strange flowers pulsed faintly beneath the undergrowth, and the soil shimmered faintly with threads of bioluminescent fungi.
This was no forest he had ever known.
He scrambled to his feet, legs shaking, and spun in place. No sign of the lab. No sign of civilization. Just vibrant, alien wilderness stretching in every direction. His breath quickened.
"I'm not in the lab. I dont even know where on Earth I am."
The memory of the experiment played over again, sharper this time: He'd been working with a synthesized compound no one had ever attempted before—a molecule that pushed the boundaries of cognition and neuroplasticity. A potential game-changer.
Until it killed him.
"No. It didn't just kill me. I…"
He stared down at his hands—larger now, calloused, unfamiliar. His body felt different, stronger. Not like before. Not like Sebastian Knox.
"Did I reincarnate? This better not be one of those..."
The words sounded ridiculous in the open air, but they refused to leave his mind. He'd read stories—heard all the jokes online. People getting hit by trucks and waking up as heroes or demon lords in magical worlds. He had never believed in any of it.
And yet… here he was.
Lightning flashed in the distance, illuminating the forest in stark silver. The air buzzed with anticipation.
He was dead.
And yet, somehow, he wasn't.
Whether this was heaven, hell, or something else entirely, one truth settled deep in his chest:
He was alive again.
And this new world had just become his second chance.
___
Thunder rolled again, this time closer. The scent of rain hung heavy in the air, promising a downpour. He needed shelter—instinct said that much—but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the world around him.
The forest was a living anomaly.
He knelt beside a luminous cluster of fungi at the base of a nearby tree. Each cap was glassy and smooth, glowing softly with an amber hue. He reached out, hesitated, then pinched off a small piece between two fingers. It was warm. Moist. As he brought it closer to his face, the scent changed—like copper and wildflowers. Familiar and foreign at once.
His mind buzzed.
"Ishould be dead. I should've burned alive or had my insides liquified by that compound."
Instead, he was standing in a technicolor dreamscape, surrounded by flora that defied biological logic.
And for the first time since waking up here… he was fascinated.
His scientist's brain kicked in, as if slipping back into an old lab coat. The rules of Earth might not apply here, but this world had rules. He just had to find them. The chemical composition, the reactions, the patterns—they were out there. He could feel them in the weight of the air, in the way the plants breathed in time with the breeze.
And if this world had rules…
That means they could be studied. Exploited.