"Are you fucking kidding me?" Baekno Nuri muttered, staring at his hands. They were still his hands—pale, slightly calloused from late-night gaming sessions—but the world around them was decidedly *not* his world. One moment, he'd been scrolling through his phone in a Seoul café, absently tapping at a weirdly persistent ad for some fantasy mobile game. The next, he was standing in the middle of a sun-baked plaza, surrounded by towering figures with fur, claws, and eyes that gleamed like polished amber.
The beastmen didn't immediately attack. They *stared*. A low murmur rippled through the crowd, voices rough and lilting in a language that twisted in his ears like half-remembered dreams. One word kept repeating: *Zha'Thik*. Baekno had no idea what it meant, but the way their ears flattened and tails bristled suggested it wasn't "tourist."
A broad-shouldered wolfman with silver-tipped fur stepped forward, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air around Baekno. "No scent of magic," he growled, more to himself than anyone else. "No weapons. No armor. Just... this." He gestured at Baekno's oversized hoodie and sneakers like they were artifacts from another dimension. (Which, to be fair, they were.)
From the shadows of a marble colonnade, General Lyraeus Tharrak watched. His golden eyes narrowed. The legends spoke of Zha'Thik as omens—pale, blood-eyed specters who heralded ruin or rebirth. But this creature? It was shivering. It looked like a strong breeze could knock it over. Lyraeus had spent years purging Xeridia of superstition, and he wasn't about to let some trembling *thing* undo that work.
The first thing Baekno noticed—after the sheer impossibility of his situation—was the silence. Not true silence, but the heavy, prickling quiet of a crowd holding its breath. The wolfman's claws flexed, scraping against the sandstone tiles of the plaza. Baekno's pulse hammered in his throat. *Okay. Okay. Either this is the most immersive VR experience ever, or I’ve seriously fucked up my timeline.* His phone was still clutched in his hand, screen cracked from the fall. The lock screen—a stupid meme about coffee—glowed faintly in the shadow of a beastman's towering frame.
Then Lyraeus stepped into the light.
The general moved like a blade being unsheathed: deliberate, smooth, with an undercurrent of violence that made Baekno's stomach drop. His fur was the deep russet of old blood, streaked with gold along his shoulders and arms. Unlike the others, he didn’t sniff the air or bare his teeth. He just *looked*, golden eyes dissecting Baekno with the precision of a surgeon.
"Zha'Thik," someone whispered.
NovelToon got authorization from G.G Glam to publish this work, the content is the author's own point of view, and does not represent the stand of NovelToon.
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