Under The Veil Chapter 3: Chapter - 3: Am I Transmigrated?

Read chapter 3 of Under The Veil by Phoenixfly_steller on NovelPedia.

Chapter - 3: Am I Transmigrated? Agastya opened his eyes. A sharp, suffocating pain struck his chest immediately, as if a jagged railway spike had been driven through his sternum and left to rust. His breath hitched, breaking into uneven, shallow gasps as his lungs fought to expand against the crushing pressure. It was dark around him, wrapped in the heavy, sultry heat of the city night. He couldn’t clearly see where he was, but his senses, honed by decades of survival in the smog-choked alleys, went immediately to work. The air smelled foul—a thick, metallic stench of iron and copper that tasted heavy on the back of his tongue. It was mixed underneath with the faint scent of coal smoke, damp earth, and stale flour. Blood. And it was nearby. His clothes felt dry and stiff against his skin, yet his tactile memory screamed that his heavy, dark coat and the shirt beneath it had been soaking wet only moments ago. Moving with agonising deliberation, he placed his palms flat against the cold teakwood floorboards and slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. Gravity felt wrong. Every minor movement dragged against a profound, unnatural weight inside his body. His muscles felt heavy, sluggish, and entirely stiff, as though the steam had been let out of his own biological engine. They ached with the deep, cellular exhaustion of tissue that had endured something it was never meant to survive. Suddenly, the agony in his chest intensified. It grew exponentially, expanding far beyond what his disciplined mind was prepared to endure. It was a sharp, overwhelming spike of pure torment—something he could neither ignore nor compartmentalise. It pressed outward from deep within his ribs, as if a rusted gear were trying to violently grind its way out of his flesh. The pain tore through him in blinding, hot waves. His body trembled violently. His breath broke into a jagged hiss as the primal urge to scream surged up his throat. He clenched his jaw until his teeth ground together, barely holding the sound back, trapping the weakness behind his lips. In the dim, soot-stained light, his right hand dropped to the floor, searching blindly for support. His fingertips brushed against a puddle of something thick, sticky, and uneven. It felt half-congealed and half-wet. He paused, his breath shuddering, and slowly brought his stained fingers closer to his face. The metallic smell was overpowering. It was undeniably human blood. ‘What is inside me?’ he thought, his mind racing as his left hand hovered over his agonising chest. At the lightest touch against his sternum. His fingers met something hard, round, and metallic protruding from the torn flesh. It was moving. The object was physically pushing itself out of his chest cavity, forced upward by an impossible internal pressure, like a piston firing in reverse. The tearing sensation grew sharper, burning like a branding iron with each passing second, until suddenly—with a sickening, wet pop—it breached the surface. A broken, ragged scream finally escaped him. The sound filled the cramped space around him, echoing off heavy brick walls. His hand moved on pure reflex, catching the bloody object as it tumbled from his chest. For a long moment, he could do nothing but sit there in the dark. His chest heaved as he tried to regulate his breathing, battling the overwhelming shock that still radiated from his sternum to his fingertips. Slowly, his fingers tightened around the small, heavy object. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, tracing its smooth, cylindrical form, sliding along its length toward the blunt, heavy tip. His blood ran cold. It was a bullet. A perfectly intact, lead round from a heavy mechanical revolver. The realisation settled over him with the weight of a collapsing bridge. He knew the calibre. He knew the heavy, brutal weight of the iron. It was the exact type of ammunition he loaded into his own custom cylinder. Before he could process the impossibility of the situation, t