My head....
It hurts! It hurts too much!
Did I party too hard yesterday? Ugh, I'm totally entering the mood...
A dim, shallow dreamscape dominated Cassius Locke's worldview along with his murmurs — hazy, shapeless, like a wet painting bleeding into the dark. His consciousness floated somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, disoriented and frayed at the edges. A dull throbbing pulsed in his temple, as though someone had stomped on his skull and kicked it for good measure.
Such brutal agony... In this stupor, Cassius tried to shift his body, but soon found out he possessed no control of his motor functions whatsoever. Then, he tried to sit up but there was no luck on that end either.
I don't understand. Why can't I move? More importantly, it doesn't seem like I'm awake. A dream, is it? How cliche. Perhaps this is the point where I start thinking I'm awake along, huh?
The absurdity amused him briefly, but the confusion quickly returned, heavier than before. Cassius struggled to focus, to claw his way out of whatever this liminal void was, but even that effort was like trying to grasp mist. His thoughts splintered and scattered, disobedient.
No matter how tightly he clung to consciousness, his mind betrayed him — lost in drifting fragments, random memories and incoherent flashes.
And so he remained: trapped in that shallow dreamscape, will fading like fog in the morning light.
Okay, first of all, this is so not crash. Secondly, why can't I wake up from this dream?
I'm totally going to be late for class! Ms. Valentine is going to kill me! And what's worse is this damn headache!
And it's really painful!
Sh*t... Don't tell me I'm going to die young?
I need to wake up! Now!
Eh? Wait… why am I even trying to wake up to go to school? Couldn't this be the perfect excuse? I mean, technically, I don't have to hand in that homework… and no one's going to bug me about group projects.
The thought settled like warm tea in a cold stomach.
Actually… this might be great. Kinda peaceful, even. No alarms, no classes, no judgmental looks.
I've got all the time in the world now, don't I?
Somewhere in the background of his scatterbrained musing, the throbbing in his head eased. It no longer felt like someone was hammering his skull from the inside. The pain dulled to a quiet echo, almost unnoticeable.
But Cassius didn't realize it yet.
Moments later, he began to gather immaterial strength. Gradually, his awareness sharpened. Bit by bit, sensation returned. He managed to move his back, then peel open his eyes.
He had finally broken free from his reverie.
As consciousness took hold, the first thing he noticed was his surroundings or rather, what appeared to be his bedroom. A simple ceiling fan spun lazily overhead, creaking with each rotation. Faded posters still clung to the pale-blue walls. To the left of the room stood a cluttered desk pushed up against the window, bathed in sunlight. It was an organized chaos: stacks of unread books, loose sheets of notebook paper, and a half-finished cup of instant ramen.
An ordinary room for an ordinary young adult male.
But something felt… off.
Huh? What is... this? Cassius Locke was completely taken aback. The things laid before him were alien to him. It looked nothing like his room!
While feeling shocked and confused, he noticed the opened laptop sitting casually on the desk. Upon closer inspection, the PC was black in color and sleek in design, with a thin, matte finish that shimmered faintly under the warm morning light. Strangely enough, it felt familiar, yet completely foreign.
According to his memory, he never owned a laptop like that. In fact, he was pretty sure he couldn't even afford one.
Curiosity piqued, he tried to move from the bed to take a closer look, but stopped midway.
His eyes widened as he looked down.
Wrapped tightly around his right wrist was a white device, unmistakably advanced. At a glance, it resembled a digital wristwatch, but there was nothing ordinary about it. The faceplate was square rather than round, designed with a striking color scheme of black, blue, and white. Two glowing blue stripes framed the black faceplate, forming an hourglass symbol that looked eerily alien like something pulled straight from science fiction.
Nevertheless, it felt disturbingly familiar. Too familiar.
His breath hitched.
This is... an Omnitrix?
The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning. Multiple emotions surged all at once; shock, horror, and absolute dumbfoundment.
Why is this on me?
In a panic, Cassius lurched to his feet. But before he could fully straighten, a sharp spike of pain erupted in his head. His vision blurred.
His strength gave out.
With a heavy thud, he collapsed backward, landing hard on the cold floor.
Pa!
The pain did little. Cassius stood up again by propping himself up. He turned around in a fluster as he began, once again, to size up the environment he was in.
The room was modest in size, with two wooden doors. One of them led out of the bedroom and the other was the door to the bathroom.
Near the bed stood a wooden cabinet with its two doors ajar, revealing more disarray; clothes half-folded, wires tangled, and a few crumpled candy wrappers lodged in the corners. Below it, five drawers were built into the structure, some slightly open, hinting at more hidden mess.
To the right of the room, nestled between the bedroom door and the bathroom door, was a full-length dressing mirror. Two long cracks split across its glass, one jagged like lightning and the other trailing like a spider's web. The mirror's base was wooden, simple and undecorated, showing the grain of age and use.
With a sweep of his gaze, Cassius Locke noticed himself in the mirror — the present him.
Midnight blue hair, brown pupils, fair skin and skinny.
Though he had a bit of muscle here and there, it wasn't nearly enough to call him athletic. Currently, he wore a black T-shirt with a bold blue stripe running down the center and a white "10" printed over it. Additional blue stripes framed the sides of the shirt, and he paired it with simple brown cargo pants. His hair, slightly messy and unkempt, had grown long enough to brush the nape of his neck.
No matter how he looked at his current appearance, it felt almost identical to the original wielder of the Omnitrix; Benjamin Kirby Tennyson.
Well, maybe slightly more handsome, if he said so himself.
But that wasn't the most pressing thought running through his mind.
C-Could I have really transmigrated? Cassius wondered, his mouth falling slightly ajar in disbelief.
He had grown up reading web novels and often fantasized about scenes like this; being thrown into another world, waking up in someone else's body, the usual tropes. But now that he was living it, the idea felt absurd and hard to accept.
What was the term people used for something like this?
Yes, the term was "Reality in a fantasy."
A scenario that exists only in the imagination. In short, it was pure delusion of the mind.
How ridiculous...
If not for the still throbbing headache that made his thoughts high strung but clear, he would have definitely suspected that he was dreaming.
Okay. Let's calm down...
He took several slow, deliberate breaths, trying to ease the pounding in his chest.
And then, like a dam breaking, memories of his life before his transmigration flooded into his mind.
Cassius Locke, a citizen of Earth — specifically, the United States, and more specifically, a broke second-year college schooler who barely scraped by with half his homework done, had lived a completely unremarkable life. A plain existence filled with daydreams and deadlines. No girlfriends, a lousy part-time job with horrible pay, and no lucky encounters. The most thrilling thing that had ever happened to him was binge-watching a web novel adaptation until four in the morning while eating stale popcorn.
Just after finishing his usual shift, a few of his buddies had invited him to hang out at a nearby family restaurant. One thing led to another, and before he knew it, he was completely drunk. Being an orphan, he didn't have anyone waiting for him or any curfews to worry about, so he staggered home sometime after midnight.
But beyond that, everything was a blur.
He couldn't remember what happened after he collapsed into bed and let sleep take him.
As a man of science in the 25th century, Cassius didn't believe in the supernatural or anything remotely tied to the occult. To him, there was logic behind everything and every phenomenon could be explained through science, even the parts of the world that remained unexplored. After all, there was a time in history when fire, the stars, and even the solar system were considered incomprehensible mysteries.
That's why, despite what his mind and body were telling him, he still refused to accept that what he was experiencing was real. There had to be a rational explanation. Maybe he had been kidnapped by a secret organization with the means to trap him inside a highly advanced virtual simulation. A test subject for some experimental technology.
Yes… that made more sense than the alternative.
Hmm, what's that?
He turned his gaze to the table, where the opened laptop sat. On the screen, a message flashed rapidly; at first in strange, indecipherable symbols. Then, the characters began to shift, transforming from bizarre to utterly alien, until finally, they began to morph into something eerily familiar. Letter by letter, the script stabilized into legible text.
It was written in St. Christopher's Language.
And it read:
"Greetings, Mr. Locke. You have been selected to participate in the Game of Thorns... as a Hero!"
Cassius blinked at the screen before his face scrunched into a disbelieving scowl.
"Game of Thorns? Hero?"
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
He leaned closer, expecting the message to change, vanish, or maybe even glitch out, anything that might suggest this was just some elaborate prank. But the message remained.
Even so, that was not the end to the message.