THE TRANSMIGRATOR

John woke to the sound of a woman screaming. Not the startled cry of someone who had seen a snake.

This scream carried terror. It was raw, desperate, and close enough to make his heart pound before he even opened his eyes.

“Run!” The warning was followed by the crash of collapsing wood. John's eyes snapped open.

For a moment, he could not understand what he was seeing.

Orange flames filled the darkness. Thick smoke rolled across the sky, swallowing the stars. A wooden house less than twenty meters away groaned beneath the weight of its burning roof before collapsing into a shower of sparks.

A woman ran past him with a child pressed against her chest. “Please! Someone help us!” John pushed himself upright.

His head exploded with pain. He gripped his skull and nearly fell back to the ground.

“What the hell...?” His voice sounded wrong. Too weak. Too rough. Before he could process that, three armed men charged through the smoke at the far end of the narrow street.

They wore crude leather armour reinforced with pieces of metal. Each carried a long spear, and their faces were hardened by something that looked far more serious than ordinary banditry.

One of them kicked open a wooden door. “Search the house!” Another shouted, “Take the grain! Leave nothing behind!”

John stared at them. His mind struggled to connect what he was seeing with reality. Where am I? He looked down at himself.

The clothes hanging from his body were filthy and patched in several places. His arms were frighteningly thin. His hands were covered with small cuts, and his ribs were visible beneath his loose shirt.

He tried to stand. His knees immediately buckled. John caught himself against a wooden wall, breathing heavily.

“This isn't possible.” Another scream erupted nearby. Someone shouted for help. A child began crying. Then the smell reached him.

Smoke. Burning wood. Blood. And beneath all of it was something sour and rotten that John could not immediately identify.

He looked toward a nearby doorway. A woman was crouched beside a dead man, shaking his body while begging him to wake.

John's stomach tightened. This was not a movie. Not a dream. Not some bizarre hallucination. People were actually dying.

A man sprinted past him. “Blackstone is under attack!” John caught the name. Blackstone. His confusion deepened.

He had never heard of the place. Then a sharp pain tore through his skull. John staggered. Images flashed through his mind.

A small wooden house. A tired woman. A stern middle-aged man. A little girl laughing beside a dry well.

Fields of dying crops. Empty bowls. A bitter piece of bark being boiled in a clay pot. Then another image came.

A young man lying weakly on a straw bed. That man looked exactly like John.

The memory vanished as quickly as it had appeared. John's breathing became shallow. “What... was that?”

He pressed his palm against his forehead. More memories surfaced. The name of the village. Blackstone Village.

The name of the father. Marcus. The name of the mother. Elena. And the name of the little girl whose face suddenly felt strangely familiar. Lily. John's eyes widened.

“No.” A terrible realisation settled over him. The body he was standing in had belonged to someone else.

He had not woken up in his own world. He had not even woken up in his own body. He had transmigrated.

The thought would have sounded ridiculous under any other circumstance. But there was nothing ridiculous about the burning village surrounding him.

A spear struck the wooden wall less than a meter from his face. John flinched. “Found another one!” Three soldiers turned toward him.

One pointed. “That boy! Take him!” John's heart slammed against his ribs. Take me? He looked around.

There was nowhere to hide. His body was weak from starvation, his head was still spinning, and he had no weapon.

The soldier approached. “Get on your knees.” John stared at him. The man raised his spear. “Did you hear me?”

John's instincts screamed at him to run. He turned. His legs moved. Then collapsed. He hit the dirt hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.

The soldier laughed. “Look at him. He can't even stand.” John clenched his teeth. The laughter around him blurred.

He had survived difficult moments before. He had known fear, uncertainty, and failure. But this was different. There were no police coming.

No ambulance.

No emergency services.

No familiar streets.

No one who knew his name. He was completely alone. Then a voice tore through the smoke.

“John!” His head snapped around. A broad-shouldered man was fighting two soldiers near a burning house.

He was older, perhaps in his forties, but the exhaustion in his face made him look much older. Marcus. John knew him without understanding how. His father.

Marcus struck one soldier with a wooden club, but the second soldier drove the butt of his spear into his stomach.

Marcus dropped to one knee. “Dad!” The word escaped John's mouth before he could stop it.

Marcus looked toward him. For one brief moment, surprise crossed his face. Then fear.

“John! Get away from here!” Another voice cried out from somewhere behind the burning houses. “Lily!”

Elena. John's mother. She was stumbling through the smoke, desperately searching between the burning homes.

“Lily! Where are you?” John's chest tightened. A memory surfaced. A little girl with tangled hair.

A child who often waited for her brother beside the village well. A sister who had almost nothing, yet still smiled whenever John brought her anything edible.

Then John heard it. “Brother!” The cry came from the left. He turned. A wooden beam had fallen across the entrance of a small house.

Behind it, Lily was trapped. Flames were climbing the walls. John froze. Every rational thought told him to leave.

He barely knew these people. He had only been in this body for minutes. The village was being overrun.

Soldiers were everywhere. He had no strength. Going inside that house could kill him. Then Lily screamed again.

“Brother!” John looked at the burning building. Something inside him changed. The original owner of this body might be dead.

His memories might be incomplete. His entire life might have been stolen from him. But the people inside those memories were still alive.

And they were calling him family. John grabbed a fallen wooden pole. He forced himself upright.

His legs trembled violently. “John!” Marcus shouted. “Don't!” John ignored him. He ran toward the fire.

Heat struck his face. Smoke filled his lungs. He lowered his head and pushed against the fallen beam.

Nothing happened. He pushed harder. His muscles screamed. The beam barely moved. “Come on...” His arms shook.

He thought about the body he had inherited. The starving child. The empty bowls. The bark soup.

The little girl waiting for her brother. John gritted his teeth. “I'm not leaving her.” With a final burst of strength, he shifted the beam enough to crawl beneath it.

Lily was curled against the wall, coughing violently. “Brother!” John grabbed her. “Hold on.”

“But the house”

“I know.” He pulled her against his chest and crawled back. A burning section of the roof collapsed behind them.

John threw himself forward. The two of them rolled into the dirt as flames swallowed the doorway. Lily clung to him.

John struggled to breathe. For several seconds, neither spoke. Then Lily whispered, “You came back.”

John looked at her. The words struck harder than they should have. He did not know this girl. Not really.

Yet something inside him hurt at the thought of abandoning her. John tightened his arms around her. “I'll always come back.”

The promise left his mouth before he had time to question it. Then a horn sounded from the northern end of the village.

Every soldier stopped. John lifted his head. A mounted officer emerged through the smoke.

Unlike the others, he wore proper metal armour. He looked across the burning settlement with cold indifference.

“Search every house,” he ordered. One soldier hesitated. “My lord, the village is nearly empty.”

The officer's expression hardened. “Then search harder.” He pointed toward the remaining homes.

“We were ordered to collect grain and conscripts. I don't care how many peasants die.” John's eyes narrowed.

Conscripts? This wasn't a raid. The soldiers weren't here simply to steal. They were looking for young men.

People like him.

The officer raised his voice. “Any household hiding an able-bodied male will be punished.” John slowly stood.

Lily remained behind him. Across the street, Marcus was struggling to rise. Elena finally reached them and pulled Lily into her arms.

For the first time since waking, John saw his entire new family together. His mother. His father. His sister.

They were terrified. Starving. Weak. And completely defenceless against the world surrounding them.

John looked at the burning homes. Then at the soldiers. Then at the endless darkness beyond the village.

He had lost his old life without warning. He had no idea why he had been brought here. He did not know how this world worked.

He did not know whether he would ever return home. But one thing was becoming clear. If he ran now, these people would probably die.

John looked at Marcus. His father met his eyes. Neither man spoke. They did not need to. John tightened his grip around the wooden pole.

The world had thrown him into a dying village. Perhaps it expected him to become another victim. Perhaps it expected him to run.

But John had spent his entire life believing that survival meant finding a way forward when every path seemed impossible.

He looked toward the soldiers advancing through the smoke. His fear remained. So did his weakness. But beneath them, something harder had begun to form.

Resolve. John took one step forward. Then another. He had awakened in a world that was already burning.

And before he could even begin to understand it, the soldiers had come to his doorstep. The next order came from the armoured officer.

“Take that young man.” Every spear turned toward John. Marcus immediately stepped in front of him.

John's eyes hardened. For the first time, he understood the true meaning of his second life. If he wanted to survive, he would have to fight for it. The soldiers charged. And John raised the only weapon he had.