Pain was the very first thing I felt. It wasn’t the sharp, breathless agony of a knife sliding between my ribs on a cold, concrete prison floor. This was a dull, heavy, burning throb radiating outward from the center of my stomach.

​I forced my eyes open, gasping for air. I expected to see the sterile white ceiling of a prison infirmary, or perhaps the pitch-black void of the afterlife. Instead, my vision was completely consumed by the swaying, massive number of unfamiliar trees, their leaves shadowed against a fractured, star-filled night sky.

​I tried to sit up, but my body immediately screamed in protest, locking up entirely. I looked down, my vision swimming. I wasn’t wearing a coarse, orange prison jumpsuit. My body was draped in expensive, foreign-looking silk robes, though the fine fabric was currently ruined, soaked through with a massive, dark patch of crusted blood.

​A deep stab wound marred my abdomen. The edges of the blood pool were already dry and flaky, meaning I had been lying out here, bleeding into the dirt, for at least twenty or thirty minutes.

​What the hell is going on? I thought, panic fighting through the haze of pain. I died. I know I died. The assassin in the cell... he told me my family was going to die. How am I outside? How am I in a forest?

​Before the panic could fully take hold, the distinct crunch of dry leaves and breaking twigs snapped my attention to my right.

​Two figures emerged from the dense tree line. For one brief, desperate second, a foolish spark of hope flared in my chest. Saviors. Someone found me. I tried to force a word out, to beg for help, but my throat felt like it was filled with sand.

​As the two men stepped fully into the pale moonlight, my hope turned to absolute ice.

​They weren’t dressed like paramedics, and they certainly weren’t police. They wore dark, reinforced leather armor that looked like it belonged in a medieval fantasy movie. One had twin, wicked-looking swords strapped to his back, and the other was casually tossing a curved hunting knife from hand to hand.

​They looked down at me, and a cruel, creepy smile spread across the knife-wielder’s face. He pointed the blade at my bleeding stomach and said something to his partner.

​I didn’t understand a single word.

​The words were harsh and completely foreign. I strained my ears, but it was useless. I tried to push myself backward, scraping my bloodied hands against the dirt, but my strength was entirely gone. They stepped closer, their eyes gleaming with the unmistakable look of predators cornering a wounded animal. They hadn’t come to save me. They were the ones who had put the hole in my stomach. They were here to finish the job.

​I’m I going to die again, I realized, a wave of bitter helplessness washing over me. I reincarnated just to bleed out in the dirt of an unknown world.

​Then, the world around me seemed to freeze.

​The assassins were still talking, but their voices suddenly sounded muffled, as if my head had been submerged underwater. Right in front of my face, hovering in the thin air, a transparent, glowing blue screen flickered to life. I stared at it, my breath catching in my throat. I had read enough webnovels back in high school to know exactly what I was looking at.

​[SOUL ASSIMILATION IMMINENT.]

[Do you accept the Clan Cultivation System to be bound to your soul?] 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

​Directly below the glowing text, a glaring red countdown ticked away, measuring the seconds I had left to decide.

20... 19... 18... 17...

​I didn’t have time to question the logic. I didn’t care if it was a hallucination brought on by severe blood loss. I just needed to survive. I needed power.

​I mentally screamed, YES! Just as the timer hit zero, the assassin with the knife grew tired of playing with his food. He stepped forward, muttering something angrily in his foreign tongue, and drove his blade straight down into my thigh.

​I screamed. It was a raw, agonizing sound that tore through the quiet forest, startling even the two killers.

​But I wasn’t screaming because of the knife in my leg.

​The very second I accepted the system, an unimaginable, searing heat exploded inside my skull. It felt as though my very soul was being ripped out of my body, torn to shreds, and stitched back together with wires of pure, white-hot fire. It was a pain so profound, so absolute, that the physical stab wound in my leg actually acted as an anchor—a lesser, grounding pain that kept my mind from completely shattering into unconsciousness.

​As I thrashed wildly on the ground, a blinding, golden light erupted from my chest.

​It illuminated the dark forest like a second sun, casting stark, elongated shadows against the trees. The two assassins threw their arms up, shielding their eyes and stumbling backward in absolute shock.

​"We’ve got to kill him, now!" the first assassin yelled. To my shock, the system was suddenly translating his foreign words directly into my mind. "That light just exposed our location! It’s a beacon!"

​The second assassin hesitated, his face pale under the golden glare. "What about the Vice-Guildmaster’s orders? He specifically said to keep him alive! The employer paid us to kill this Baron’s nephew, but the boss wants to use the kid to blackmail the employer. He said a fake-noble’s family is a goldmine. If we keep him breathing, the boss can extort the employer for double the gold! We kill him, we lose the ransom!"

​"Look at that light, you idiot!" the first one spat, drawing one of the twin swords from his back. "The Barony Knights will see it! They are probably already on their way. If we get caught, there is no blackmail, only the death, The Vice-Guildmaster will just have to settle for the employer’s original payment. We end the kid now and run!"

​He didn’t wait for his comrade to reply. He lunged forward, swinging his heavy blade directly at my exposed neck.

​CLANG.

​The sword rebounded violently, sending a shockwave up the assassin’s arm and throwing him skidding across the dirt. He hadn’t hit me; he had hit the light. The golden aura surrounding my screaming body had solidified into a dome of pure, impenetrable energy.

​Desperate, the second assassin threw his hunting knife. It bounced off the light barrier like a child’s toy.

​"Dammit!" the first one cursed, grabbing his partner’s shoulder and pulling him back. "He’s wearing a high-tier protective artifact! We can’t break that. We have to go before the knights arrive!"

​With a final, deeply frustrated glare at my glowing form, the two assassins turned and vanished into the dark tree line, leaving me alone in the center of the blazing, protective dome.

​As the sound of their footsteps faded, the fire in my mind began to recede, replaced by the cold, mechanical chime of my new reality.

​[ASSIMILATION COMPLETE. WELCOME, HOST.]