Julius opened his eyes to find himself drenched in water, and then he realized it was raining as droplets of water fell on him.
His mind seemed to go blank as he looked at his hands to see that they were indeed real and then shook his head.
'Nah. I must be dreaming. I clearly just... died.' His thoughts seemed to waver as he stared behind him to see a grave, which seemed like something had crawled out of it.
In fact, he was surrounded by what seemed to be dozens of graves, and then he quickly looked around for his wheelchair.
'If what I'm thinking is correct... No, it's not confirmed.' He shook off the thought that came to his mind instantly.
It was safe to keep his novel reading life separate from reality, and reality was cruel. Reincarnation wasn't real...
He breathed heavily, and then... his legs moved.
"Huh?" Julius looked at his extremely long legs, which had their lower portion revealed as he was wearing jhorts.
'Impossible.' Julius thought as he moved his legs again, and a frown appeared on his face.
He calmed his raging mind and then stood up fully. He raised a leg and put it back on the wet grass, and he felt it, he felt it all.
He could walk!!
Despite the shocking revelation, he still had a calm face. He wanted to shout, but it'd just be disturbing.
He quickly looked around for shade and went over to the building immediately.
The building had a small balcony in front with light bulbs illuminating the small balcony.
As he reached it, he let out a breath, and a frown appeared on his face as he took a step back.
The black window in front of him showed a reflection, and what he saw wasn't pleasing at all.
He had a face similar to the one he had on Earth, with a pointed nose and clear skin. However, there was no exhaustion or tiredness showing on his face.
He was wearing a white shirt and a yellow jacket with a pair of jeans shorts.
The only problem now was that there was a fist-sized hole in his chest, right where his heart was supposed to be.
He immediately turned around as he heard footsteps, and he didn't see anybody there behind him.
"What the fuck is going on? This body is definitely not mine." He had made that conclusion a while ago, but he had to confirm.
He sat down on the white tiles of the balcony and quietly let his thoughts rage.
'This... This isn't happening.'
'But then it is. Seems like I've reincarnated, as a corpse no less.'
'Now if I've reincarnated, I'll have to find a way to gather information about my situation.'
'Is it possible for humans to keep living without their hearts in this world?'
'Scientifically, that's not possible.'
Julius' mind was in disarray, and he kept on contemplating his situation, but then he felt a sharp pain in his head, and he suddenly winced and fell to the floor, fainting instantly.
...
Julius finally woke up to see that the rain had stopped.
He sat up and observed the surroundings once more, and he was indeed in a cemetery.
But that wasn't important right now.
"These memories... They aren't mine," he mumbled.
In that moment of pain, he was bombarded with all sorts of information, and he fainted instantly.
But due to the memories of the owner of the body, he finally realized his current situation.
He was in the body of a gravedigger who worked at this cemetery. Two days ago, he received a message to run away from the kingdom of Midgard, and he ignored the mysterious letter. The next day, he was just doing his work when his world went black.
So in that moment, he was killed, but by what?
Julius shook his head as he didn't want to think too much about it. One thing that made him excited, though, was that the world wasn't the same one he lived in.
There were other intelligent races on this planet: the elves, the demons, the beastmen, or rather beastkin as they call themselves, and the dwarves.
'Crazy shit,' Julius thought and shook his head.
Despite the fact that the sun was high in the sky, the air was still as cold as it had been in the rain.
That was because the world was actually 'cursed' with the Evernight. This world hadn't seen the sun in more than a hundred years since the invasions of the Nether creatures.
In summary, it was a world at the brink of destruction at the hands of strange and powerful monsters who just wanted to devour the races of this world.
Julius didn't want to think too much about it, and then he walked over to the grave. He frowned as he saw three things in front of the grave.
A black cloak, a ring, and a notebook.
He quietly took the coat and used it to cover the hole in his chest, and then he looked at the ring and the notebook, his eyes wandering around their surfaces.
'These things should be magical items. The book isn't wet, and it just rained.' That was the first observation he made.
He quickly put them into his coat and began to cover the grave with the sand around it. He wouldn't want people to suspect that the gravedigger crawled out of it, or more absurdly, crawled into it.
After doing that, he smoothed the grave with a shovel and quietly left the graveyard gates.
A smile formed on his lips as he looked at the buildings around and the cars.
"I saw it in the memories, but seeing it for real is another thing," he mumbled as he looked at the cars.
They looked like carriages that moved on their own.
Julius began walking on the pedestrian way, and he soon saw a car stop a few meters away from him. This allowed him to look at it very well.
The machine coughed out thick puffs of steam from the brass pipes jutting along its sides. It looked less like a carriage and more like some beast of iron and fire, stitched together with gears and bolts by a mad inventor.
The body gleamed under the magical sunlight — all polished copper and dark iron, patched with plates that bore swirling Victorian engravings. Great wheels, wrapped in thick, riveted metal, turned with a slow hiss, and every few seconds a piston somewhere beneath the chassis let out a sharp, rhythmic chug. The engine wasn't hidden like in the models he saw in the gravedigger's memories; no, here it was proudly on display — a mass of spinning gears, belts snapping in time, and glass tubes glowing faintly with some sickly blue fluid.
The front was dominated by two enormous lanterns — not electric lights, but honest-to-goodness empty glass which seemed to light up in the dark.
Smoke coiled up from a slender smokestack near the back, staining the air with the acrid scent of oil and coal.
As Julius walked by, he could see the interior through the open door: seats of dark, cracked leather, a dashboard bristling with pressure gauges, brass levers, and a mess of delicate clockwork spinning in endless, hypnotic circles.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't smooth.
The wonders made in the time of the 90s were before his eyes.
Noticing a young woman coming out of the car, Julius simply lowered his head and walked past the car.
Soon, he arrived at his home, or rather, what he called one.
He lived in a rather under-developed region of the Midgard kingdom.
What he was looking at was a small, overturned vehicle that resembled the one he saw earlier.
Its brass-plated frame gleamed faintly beneath grime, its shattered windows revealing exposed gears and delicate inner clockwork. One wheel was missing; the rest clicked faintly, as if trying to turn. A tarp had been thrown over it in a makeshift attempt to shelter from the rain.
Julius climbed through the broken front window.
Inside was a miniature home: a worn blanket, an empty bottle, a small torch, a quill… and two white envelopes.
He frowned as he searched his memories. That envelope wasn't there when he went to work.
He quietly grabbed it and opened the envelope; the message written inside came with a shock.
[Surrender by dawn or face immediate execution.
~Warden's Sanctuary]