The cold asphalt of the grimy city and the brutal impact of that SUV suddenly vanished like smoke.
My mind, which had spent years being forced to endure the pressure of worldly responsibilities, had once believed that death was the end of everything.
An eternal darkness without beginning or end.
Yet when my eyelids slowly opened, the first thing that greeted me wasn’t hell or an empty void.
My eyes instead found themselves staring at an endless canopy of enormous ancient trees, their branches stretching so high that they seemed capable of piercing the unfamiliar sky above.
The stench of blood and Earth’s exhaust fumes had disappeared without a trace.
The air here was filled with the fresh scent of morning dew and the sharp fragrance of pine trees.
“Where… am I now?”
I flinched when I heard my own voice.
It had changed completely.
It sounded much deeper, colder, and lower than before, carrying a natural intimidation that could probably make anyone’s hair stand on end.
Instant panic slammed into my chest as memories of the fatal accident came rushing back.
I didn’t care about this new body.
My mind screamed only one name.
“Charlotte?!”
I quickly turned to the side.
The anxiety that had been strangling me loosened almost immediately when I saw a girl lying in the damp grass right beside me.
Charlotte was still there.
My beloved wife was still sleeping peacefully, her eyes tightly shut and her breathing calm and steady.
I released a long sigh of relief.
Only then did I slowly begin examining the changes to my own body.
When I raised both hands, I stared in disbelief.
My skin had always been pale from spending too many late nights hunched over my desk.
Now, however, it was as white as polished porcelain, carrying a faint, unnatural sheen.
I instinctively touched my mouth.
There, hidden behind my lips, was a pair of sharp fangs protruding unmistakably.
“Did I… become a Vampire?”
I was completely stunned.
And that wasn’t all.
Deep within my chest, I could feel a vortex of pitch-black energy swirling violently.
The amount of energy, or perhaps mana as this world called it, was massive.
That dark aura confirmed one thing.
My new body belonged to a Vampire.
The ancestor of all blood-drinking creatures.
And the moment I saw her, my vampire heart almost stopped from sheer amazement.
Back on Earth, my wife had always had jet-black hair, which I would often tie up carelessly whenever she cooked.
Now, everything had changed.
Her hair had transformed into shimmering silver, glowing beautifully beneath the sunlight as it spread freely across the green grass.
Both of her ears had grown long and pointed at the tips.
It was an unmistakable characteristic of the High Elf race, the rulers of nature’s purity.
Her face looked completely peaceful.
There were no traces of exhaustion anymore.
No dark circles beneath her eyes from endless nights of forced overtime.
And most importantly, there was no longer a false smile hiding the truth behind her beautiful face.
In this new world, she had truly been reborn as a goddess without the burdens of her old life.
I leaned closer, trying to examine Charlotte’s condition using my newfound instincts.
But the moment my soul reached out to sense the energy flowing through my wife’s body, my vision suddenly trembled.
The ancient instinct of the Vampire King within me awakened.
My eyes became capable of seeing the flow of life’s essence throughout the world around me.
The air, the grass, even the trees were releasing strands of pure mana that floated faintly through the atmosphere.
And when I looked at Charlotte’s body, I witnessed something both breathtakingly beautiful and terrifying.
Inside Charlotte’s chest was a vortex of sacred, silver-violet mana.
It radiated with incredible intensity.
There was no visible limit to it at all.
“What the hell… My wife’s mana is limitless?”
An enormous amount of magical energy, powerful enough to rival the ruler of the natural world itself, was swirling inside her tiny body.
The reason she was still sleeping so peacefully was because her soul was undergoing a process of natural synchronization.
Her body was adapting biologically to contain the overflowing divine energy, preventing her physical vessel from being destroyed.
I stared in awe before a faint smile formed on my lips.
Carefully, I brushed her smooth cheek with the tip of one of my sharp nails.
“Back on Earth, you always fought alone until you nearly broke yourself. But here… I’ll be your shield and your protector, Charlotte.”
“Eunggh…”
A soft sound suddenly escaped Charlotte’s lips.
Her beautiful eyelids twitched restlessly before slowly opening.
The black eyes that had once always carried a weary, melancholic look had completely changed.
They were now a clear, magical red.
At their centers were symmetrical, star-shaped pupils glowing faintly, exactly like the starry eyes I could feel within myself.
Charlotte blinked several times, staring in confusion at the enormous canopy above us.
Then her gaze shifted.
“R-Ryuu…?” she whispered hoarsely.
Her voice sounded incredibly beautiful, almost like a song carried through nature.
She instinctively touched her chest as it rose and fell steadily.
Then, with trembling hands, she hurriedly reached out and grabbed my arm.
“We… we’re not dead? You… you’re really here, right?”
“I kept my promise, Charlotte. Wherever you are, I’ll come.”
My answer was short.
Even my own voice sounded unfamiliar to me.
Much deeper.
Colder.
Low and resonant against the silence of the forest.
It made me feel slightly awkward.
Charlotte flinched when she heard how drastically my voice had changed.
She quickly pushed herself into a sitting position.
The moment she got a full look at me, her red eyes widened completely.
Skin as white as porcelain.
A pair of fangs protruding between my lips.
I looked like a deadly predator of the night.
“Y-You… you have fangs?! And why are my ears… so long?!”
Charlotte panicked, frantically touching the tips of her own pointed ears as her face flushed red from confusion.
“Ryuu! What did we turn into?!”
I let out a quiet chuckle, the low sound feeling strange in my throat.
I gently took her slender fingers in mine, trying to calm her down.
“I became a Vampire, and you became an Elf. But don’t worry about how we look. The important thing is that we’re still together and we’re alive again, right?”
The moment she heard those words, all the panic disappeared from Charlotte’s face.
She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes filled with deep emotion.
Then tears of happiness slowly rolled down her smooth cheeks.
Without warning, Charlotte threw herself forward and wrapped her arms tightly around my neck, as though she never wanted to let go again.
“Idiot… I thought I was really going to lose you…”
Her voice trembled between soft sobs.
I returned her embrace, holding my elf wife close as I breathed in the calming scent of her silver hair.
For several minutes, we remained silent.
We simply held each other and felt the warmth of our bodies, cherishing the fact that we had somehow been given back the lives that had once been stolen from us by the cold asphalt of Earth.