"Huh?"
The sound escaped his own lips, yet it felt foreign to his ears. It was not the voice of Johann Reth, but a smoother, higher-pitched voice, with an accent he hadn't heard since… since when? Time had lost its meaning for him.
Johann looked at his hands. These were not the hands he had known for the last several hours, not the hands scarred by the previous battle, skin roughened from fighting the undead, with short nails caked with dirt and dried blood. These were different hands. Slender, with longer fingers, smoother skin, and not the typical Western Caucasian skin. This was… Asian skin, he thought, recognizing the term from somewhere deep. The skin tone was fair, with a warm undertone that made it seem alive even without makeup. These hands were not unfamiliar. These hands had typed on a laptop keyboard, held a mouse, signed contracts. These were his own hands from before.
He looked around the room. Cold, white neon light emanated from the ceiling lamp, illuminating a living room that was… clean. Too clean. No dust, no blood, no stench of rot or gunpowder. Only the neutral smell of floor cleaner with a hint of lavender from an electric diffuser in the corner. There was a large grey sofa covered in fine wool fabric—not the rough, deep blue Imperial wool, but something synthetic, soft. In front of it, a glass table held a TV remote, a few magazines, and a closed MacBook laptop.
A television. A large, flat screen attached to the wall like a window to another world. Johann stared at it, his eyes struggling to comprehend. Beside it, a soundbar emitted a small, slowly pulsing blue LED light. In another corner, a shelf held books with colorful covers, a few anime figures, classic European novels, and a typical Chinese painting. Things that meant nothing to him, yet triggered a strange, eerie feeling in his mind.
He was in an apartment. His apartment? Perhaps. But nothing felt truly his. It all seemed like a well-designed stage set.
He rose from his seat; he had apparently been sitting on a softly carpeted floor, a sensation he had never felt in Fort Thares. His legs felt light, not broken, not in pain. He took a step, and his stride was light, not hobbled by wounds or exhaustion. He walked towards the window, a large floor-to-ceiling window with thick black curtains tightly drawn.
With a trembling hand, he pulled the curtain cord.
And the world opened up.
Marina Bay. Johann recognized it instantly, though only from pictures in magazines or perhaps memories not his own. The dark water reflecting the city lights, bridges like illuminated ribbons, skyscrapers with blinking light patterns. In the distance, a giant observation wheel turned slowly. And in front, iconic: the Merlion statue spewing water into the night sky. Changi Airport? Not visible from here, but he knew it was somewhere out there.
The night sky. Not a sky with a strange purple moon. This was an ordinary moon, pale yellow, half-covered by thin clouds. Its light bathed the city in a normal, unthreatening, unremarkable way. Just the moon.
Johann pressed his forehead against the cold windowpane. His breath created a faint mist on the glass. He stared, his eyes scanning every detail, searching for flaws, for inconsistencies. Was that building too symmetrical? Were those lights too bright? Was the water in the bay moving too slowly?
No. Everything was perfect. Everything was normal.
"Huh?" he vocalized again, this time more like a sigh. He turned, leaning back against the window, gazing at this brightly lit room. His mind spun, trying to arrange a chronology. He remembered the fortress. Remembered the corpses. Remembered the rain. Remembered… his leg being broken? He looked down. His leg was intact, clad in grey cotton pajama pants. And unlike his previous body, this one was clean.
Was… it all a dream?
The idea surfaced like an intoxicating wave of relief. A dream. Yes, of course. It couldn't have been real. Corpses rising? Torrential rain in the dry season? Himself lying in the damp Imperial jacket on the underground floor? It must have been the product of a stressed mind. He'd been overworked. Under too much pressure. Perhaps he'd collapsed in this apartment, and his brain had created an elaborate fantasy to escape.
But how realistic it had been. He could still feel the cold pressure of the bayonet in his hand. The smell of blood and exposed entrails still seemed to cling to his nostrils. The fear jolting his spine as those corpses approached…
He felt nausea rise in his throat. He bent over, hands on his stomach, hoping to vomit and expel all those sensations. But nothing came out. Only dry heaves, an internal tremor.
He walked to the sofa and collapsed onto it. The fine wool fabric felt alien against his skin. He picked up a phone from the table, a slim device with a black case. He pressed the side button, and the screen lit up, dazzling his eyes for a moment.
Time: 03:17 AM. Date: March 31, 2025.
The year 2025. That… was right. That was the year it should be. He remembered. He had an important meeting on April 1st. A presentation for a client from Zurich. He'd been preparing PowerPoint slides for a week. All of it came flooding back into his memory, like files being unzipped in his head. An orderly world, a predictable world.
He scrolled through notifications. A message from a coworker: "Alex, are you okay? You missed the meeting today." A message from his manager: "We need to talk about this quarter." A message from his younger sister, Mei Tan: "Bro, don't forget dinner this Sunday."
Alex. They called him Alex. Yes, that was his name. Alex Tan. Not Johann Reth. Johann Reth was… a character from a dream. A hapless soldier from another world whose body he had dreamt of inhabiting.
He put the phone down and stared at the ceiling. The white neon light had a pattern of small dots. He unconsciously counted them, trying to find calm in the routine. But his mind kept returning to the fortress. To Luke Anderson's face as the bayonet pierced his stomach. To Frederich's choked gurgle. To the stiffly moving corpses…
Soon after sitting on his sofa, he turned on his Android TV and immediately searched for a news channel to calm himself from the previous nightmare. He pressed the buttons on his remote until he stopped on a station, Equator News Service, on channel 5.
"The United States government has reported the discovery of certain rocks in California currently under investigation by several researchers," the news anchor said briefly before moving to another topic.
"Enough," he muttered aloud. His voice still sounded strange. "I need… a shower. To wash all of this off."
He stood and walked to the bathroom. His steps were still hesitant, as if expecting the floor to turn into wet stone at any moment. But the floor remained cold laminate wood.
The bathroom was small, clean. He turned on the light, and bright yellow light illuminated the white tiles. He took off his pajamas and looked at himself in the large mirror above the sink.
The face staring back was not Johann Reth's face. Not the face of a twenty-year-old man with green eyes and disheveled black hair, skin pale from living in a cold climate, with a small scar on his chin from training. This was an older face, perhaps late twenties. An Asian face with black eyes, neatly cut short black hair, no scars. His body was slender, not muscular like a soldier's.
He gazed at himself for a long time, trying to recognize the person in the mirror. Alex Tan. A Singaporean citizen. Not a soldier. Not a killer.
He took a deep breath and turned the tap. Warm water flowed, and he splashed his face. The water felt real, pleasant. He took a towel from the rack, a soft grey towel, and dried his face. As he lowered the towel, his eyes were drawn to the wall beside the mirror.
There, hung a painting.
The painting was small, in a simple dark wooden frame. And its content froze his blood.
It was a painting of Therion.
Not exactly the same as the fresco in the fortress—smaller, more refined, perhaps a reproduction. But the figure was unmistakable: a slender man in simple robes, with a calm yet weary face, hair falling to his shoulders. The background was empty, devoid of the complex religious symbolism. But the expression in those eyes… the same eyes he had seen in the fortress corridor, the eyes that had followed him as he ran.
Johann stood frozen, the towel clenched in his hand. His breath caught. Why was a painting of Therion in the bathroom of his apartment in Singapore? It made no sense. That was a god from the dream world, from Johann Reth's world. Not part of his world.
But there it was. Real. Oil on canvas, with fine brush details around the eyes.
He reached out, his fingers almost touching the surface of the painting. But before he could touch it, the towel clutched in his other hand suddenly slipped, falling to the floor with a soft sound.
Plop.
And the world changed.
The sensation was not like being thrown or shifted. It was more like… a previously focused image suddenly lost its sharpness, then refocused on something else.
Johann blinked. The yellow neon light of the bathroom was replaced by the warm, flickering light of a candelabra on a wooden table. The smell of lavender and floor cleaner was replaced by the scent of burning wood, beeswax candles, and something sweet, perhaps a cooking stew.
He was no longer standing in the bathroom. He was sitting in a wooden chair near a small, slowly burning fireplace. In front of him was a simple dining table with a worn white linen tablecloth. And across the table, a young girl was looking at him with wide, bewildered green eyes.
The girl was perhaps sixteen. Her blonde hair was tied loosely in a messy bun, a few strands escaping. Her fair skin looked very beautiful, even by modern standards. She wore a simple light blue dress with long sleeves, with a white apron over it. In her hand, she held a wooden spoon, as if she had just been stirring something in a pot over the fire.
"What's wrong, Brother?" said the girl, her voice light, young, with a familiar accent, a Selevian accent from Südsea State. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."
Johann could only stare. His mind went blank, then flooded with a painful rush of recognition.
Christine. His sister. Christine Reth.
Not the sister of Alex Tan in Melbourne. But Johann Reth's sister, the sister he had left behind in Selevia, the sister he had joined the infantry to protect from family debts.
But… this was impossible. He had just been in Singapore. He had just seen the painting of Therion. And now…
He looked down. His hands were no longer Alex's smooth hands. These were the hands he knew: Johann Reth's hands from before the regeneration. Hands with scars on the knuckles, short nails, rough skin, and on the palm, a fresh wound—a burn mark from a falling ember in the fortress. The wound was still red, still fresh.
He touched his chest. Beneath the simple linen shirt he wore, he could feel the strange texture of the new skin where the bullet hole should have been. It was there. It was real.
"Brother?" Christine put down her spoon, her face beginning to show concern. "Johann? Are you alright? You look… pale."
Johann opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked around the room. This was a simple farmhouse—a single room serving as kitchen, dining area, and living room. The walls were wood and plaster, with cracks in the ceiling corners. The fireplace radiated genuine warmth. On the small window, simple cloth curtains were drawn, but through a crack, he could see orange twilight light.
This was not Singapore. This was not a modern apartment. This was Johann's world. The dream world he was supposed to have left behind.
Or… was it the other way around?
"I…" he finally spoke, his voice hoarse, the deep, heavy voice of Johann Reth. "I'm… not sure."
Christine stood and approached him. She placed her cold hand on his forehead. "You don't have a fever. But you're sweating cold sweat. Did you have another nightmare?"
Nightmare. The word hung in the air. Yes, perhaps that was the explanation. Perhaps everything he had just experienced—Singapore, the apartment, the TV, the phone—was a nightmare. A fantastic escape from the reality that he had gone mad, that the experience in the fortress had shattered his mind, and now he was hallucinating an absurd other world.
That made sense. More sense than actually shifting worlds.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "Perhaps," he said. "A strange… dream."
Christine nodded, her face full of sympathy. "You're home now, Brother. You're safe. The rebellion in the north has been suppressed. You're back." She offered a small smile, a smile trying to be comforting. "I made soup. With potatoes and carrots, the way you like it."
Johann nodded, a false sense of relief beginning to creep in. Maybe this was real. Maybe he was indeed home. The experience in the fortress was real, but he had survived, been evacuated, and sent home. And all the Singapore stuff… it was just a trauma-induced dream.
Yes. That must be it.
He forced a smile. "Okay. I'm hungry."
Christine returned to the fireplace, took a wooden bowl, and filled it with soup from an iron pot. She placed it in front of Johann along with a piece of black bread. Johann picked up the spoon and began to eat. The soup was simple, salty, warm. It tasted real. The sensation of warmth flowing into his stomach was real.
They ate in silence for a moment, the only sounds the crackling fire and spoons against bowls. Johann looked around, trying to find comfort in this simplicity. This was his family home. He remembered, or at least Johann Reth's memories told him, that they lived on the outskirts of Selevia, near the port. Their parents had died in a trading accident. Christine had lived alone while he was away at war.
"How is… the debt?" asked Johann, trying to sound natural.
Christine shrugged. "Paid off. We're economically free now. I actually really want to invest in colonial exploration, but of course we have to think about it seriously." She replied while fiddling with her spoon. "You don't need to worry, Brother. Focus on recovering."
Johann nodded. He kept eating, his eyes unconsciously roaming the room, taking in details. There was a shelf with a few old books. A broken wicker chair in the corner. A small bed behind a curtain on one side of the room. And near the door, on a simple wooden coat rack…
He froze.
Hanging there was the dark blue Imperial uniform jacket he had taken from the soldier's corpse in the fortress. Still dirty, still with dried bloodstains on the chest. And leaning against the wall beside it: a musket. Not a new musket, but the one he had used at the fortress, with its long iron barrel, dark wood, and clear signs of use.
The soup in his mouth suddenly tasted like mud. He swallowed with difficulty.
"Christine," he said, his voice flat. "That jacket and musket… where are they from?"
Christine glanced at the coat rack, then back at Johann. Her expression was confused. "What do you mean? That's your jacket and weapon. You brought them home."
"But…" Johann stood up and approached the rack. He grabbed the jacket. The coarse wool was heavy with dirt and blood. The familiar smell of sweat, gunpowder, and blood filled his nostrils. "But this… this is from the fortress. From Thares."
Christine frowned. "Thares? Weren't you stationed in the capital state of Auster, in Ngobrolsburg? That's what you said in your last letter."
Johann stared at her. Clashing memories. Did he remember writing that letter? Or was that Johann Reth's memory? But he knew, he knew for sure, he had been at Thares. He had died at Thares. He had risen at Thares.
"I… maybe I'm confused," he murmured, releasing the jacket. But his eyes were fixed on the musket. He picked it up. Its weight was exact, its shape familiar. On the base of the stock was a small scratch, a scratch he had made himself while trying to clean it during the battle.
It was the same weapon.
"You brought it home in that condition?" asked Christine, her voice now worried. "Your jacket is so dirty. I'll wash it tomorrow."
Johann didn't answer. He held the musket, his fingers tracing the flintlock mechanism, the frizzen, the body. Everything was real. Too real.
Then, from memory, a sound surfaced: the sound of Luke Anderson screaming in pain as this musket's butt struck his ankle. The sound of Frederich choking as a bullet from this weapon tore through his chest.
He dropped the musket. The weapon thudded on the wooden floor.
"Johann!" Christine stood up and approached. "What's wrong? You're scaring me!"
But Johann didn't hear her. He looked at his hands, the hands that had held the weapon, pulled the trigger, thrust the bayonet. The hands of a killer.
He had killed them. That wasn't a dream. It was real. And if that was real, then he wasn't here. He couldn't possibly be home. Because he remembered clearly: he had passed out in the fortress basement, with a broken leg, surrounded by corpses. He didn't remember being evacuated. Didn't remember the journey home.
"This isn't right," he mumbled.
"What isn't right?" Christine tried to grasp his arm, but he jerked away.
"This isn't… I shouldn't be here." Johann retreated until his back hit the wall. He looked around the room again, but now everything seemed… thin. Like painted scenery on a stage. The fire in the fireplace didn't radiate enough heat. The smell of soup was too strong, like cheap perfume. And Christine… her eyes were too green, too glassy.
"Brother, calm down," said Christine, her voice suddenly flat, devoid of the earlier worried tone. She tried to hug him. "You're home. You're safe…"
But Johann shuddered. He remembered something else. When he was in Singapore, in the bathroom, looking at the painting of Therion. A painting that existed in a world that shouldn't know Therion. And now, in this home, on the wall above the fireplace… was a strange cross with a circle above it. A symbol of the Religion in Indropa.
"Who are you?" asked Johann, his voice trembling.
Christine blinked. "I'm your sister. Christine."
"No." Johann shook his head. "I… I'm not Johann. Or… I shouldn't be here. This is a dream. Or this… this isn't the real place."
He didn't fall into darkness, but into a brutal physical sensation: pain.
The pain came first, sharp, throbbing, in his right leg, in his hand, in his chest. Then sounds: the rustle of cloth, the rhythmic drip of water, the sound of breathing—his own breathing, ragged and heavy.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above was not a modern apartment ceiling, not a wooden one. It was a white plaster ceiling with fine cracks forming patterns like rivers on a map. Old, dark brown wooden beams crossed it, stained by time.
He was lying on a bed. The mattress was hard, but not as cold or rough as a stone floor. A coarse wool blanket covered him up to his chest. He turned his head and looked around.
The room was small, with white plastered stone walls. There was a small window with poor-quality glass that distorted the outside light into abstract shapes. Next to the bed stood a simple wooden table with a half-burned candle in a metal cage. On the table were a ceramic bowl of water, a washcloth, and a few small glass bottles containing colored liquids.
The dominant smell: antiseptic. The smell of alcohol, herbs, and beneath that, the smell of sickness, sickly sweat, urine, and flesh decaying slowly. But there was also another scent: the scent of simple soap, candles, and fresh air coming from the slightly open window.
It was like… a hospital. But not a modern hospital. No beeping machines, no oxygen tubes, no electricity. Just a clean, medieval-era room.
The seventeenth century? Perhaps. But he remembered, from Alex's memories, that hospitals as modern institutions began to develop in Europe around the 18th century. But in this world, Indropa, perhaps development was different.
He tried to sit up, but the pain in his right leg made him groan. He looked down. His right leg was wrapped in clean white linen bandages, though it didn't feel broken anymore. His left hand was similarly bandaged.
He had survived. Truly survived. And he had been evacuated. He wasn't in Singapore. Not in his family home. He was somewhere… in Johann's world. In an Imperial military hospital, perhaps.
Then, a voice.
"Ah, you're finally awake."
The voice was feminine, young, but with a strange tone—not the worried tone of a nurse, not a sympathetic one. More like… scientific interest. Like a researcher seeing her subject finally showing signs of life.
Johann turned his head toward the voice.
In the corner of the room, on a simple wooden chair, sat a girl. She wasn't wearing a nurse's uniform or a medic's robe. She wore civilian clothes: a white blouse with a simple ruff at the neck, and a long dark blue skirt. Her hair was brown, neatly tied back, a few strands loose and clinging to her pale cheeks. She was perhaps in her early twenties. Her eyes—their color a pale grey like winter clouds—gazed at him with an intensity that made Johann uneasy.
On her lap was a thick leather-bound notebook, and in her hand, a quill pen. She seemed to have been writing something when Johann awoke.
"Who… are you?" asked Johann, his voice raspy like sandpaper.
The girl closed her notebook, placed it beside the chair, and stood up. She approached the bed with quiet, almost silent steps. She didn't smile, but her expression was soft, filled with an almost childlike curiosity.
"My name is Rozemary Dornfels," she said, her voice clear and measured, with an Auster accent. "And you are Johann Reth, the Imperial infantryman who survived Fort Thares."