Blood rushed through my veins as I run with all my might.

Adrenaline was the last energy source I had left after hours without food, constant running and endless fighting for survival.

Conflicting memories swelled inside me. I tried to ignore the pain in my head and body. I wasn't sure what happened but my experience as an addicted fiction novel reader allowed me to guess one thing — transmigration.

That was my only guess.

Transmigration was a common phrase used in the many novels I used to read that meant the soul moving from one body to another. 

From the memories that were invading my head, I conjectured that I transmigrated into another world. The main reason for my conjecture was the fact that this new world only had one continent.

Screams of pain and loud beast growls behind me, brought my thoughts back to reality as my already overworked body pushed into sprinting even faster.

I was sure that I had never run this fast before. I still didn't understand what was going on. 

I hadn't even had time to rest before I had to run because beasts had attacked. 

I finally breathed a sigh of relief as I reached a large forest. The foreign but familiar memories had led me to this forest. Before the beasts had attacked we had planned to leave the town and hide in the forest before leaving towards the city. 

Our cars were too loud and would be destroyed. The only way to survive was to leave the town quietly. That's exactly what I did as I cautiously run into the large forest.

Alerting the beasts of my location would be the death of me so I ran slower and more cautiously but just as I slowed down, pain — immense pain, forced me to a complete stop.

Without the adrenaline running through me, the pain had completely surfaced. I had to rest. My eyes blurred from the pain. I forcefully willed my body to climb a weirdly large tree that I had found after minutes of searching.

With one last push, I had reached a large branch that was thick enough to allow three men on. My legs failed to keep me up any longer and my body fell.

Thankfully, I wasn't free falling and could feel the painful wood of the tree's large branch right under me.

'I never thought sleeping on a tree would feel this great.'

My vision blurred one last time before my consciousness and the sound of the multiple footsteps following behind me faded into darkness.

***

I was half-awake before the sun had risen. Considering the fact that I fell unconscious during the day yesterday, then I had slept for a pretty long time. 

My consciousness hadn't fully awoken as I tried to digest the many, many things that had happened during the last few hours.

My death, my transmigration. A lot of it didn't make sense for now and the one thing I desired was answers. I sighed as I thought about my current circumstances. 

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It was hard to think about or explain, the fact that somehow I felt like I had lived two lives. The memories that had made my head sore were felt like they were my own. 

I was sure that I had experienced both lives. It was a hard to explain concept and I didn't feel like I got to this body yesterday. It felt like I had lived in this town as Blake, an orphan since birth.

Maybe I somehow got memories of my past life or maybe I transmigrated, who knows?

There was no doubt of either of my lives being a dream or illusion because if that was the case then my life itself would be an illusion. At that point, I would doubt life itself.

A sigh involuntarily escaped my mouth as the vivid sound of the screams, of those at the orphanage who I had left to die out of the selfish desire to live, rang in my head.

Being an orphan wasn't so bad in our small town. We were taken care of pretty well and my only issue was the occasional bullies at school. 

Still, this was nothing big as I had many 'siblings' who looked out for me and I did the same.

Who would've thought that the world as I knew it would crumble. 

My body shuddered as I thought of the unimaginably powerful vicious beasts that had fallen from the sky, literally. Meteorites had fallen from the sky one day with no warning. The government had not even predicted that something like this would happen and I remember us watching the news and seeing how the scenes of meteorites and beasts were shown everywhere around the world.

The earth from my past life wasn't so much different to this one except for one vital fact. The continents, while the earth I previously lived in had multiple continents this one only had one. Many different races still existed but they were more united with all countries being less strict about their border rules and migration being more simple.

After that chaos ensued. Thousands of people in our town died from just the meteorites. The beasts that came out of the meteorites made the astonishing nightmare even worse.

Contact with the outside world was immediately eliminated. Everyone's first thought was to run away to the city or somewhere safer. But I still remember the miserable expressions of everyone when we hit the barrier at the end of the road leading to our small town.

A large number of beasts found our location because of the noise our relocation made. Many people died from just trying to find a way out. 

This led to us running back to the town where we were basically wiped out.

I watched everyone I knew die right in front of me. The few lucky survivors I was part of stayed in a large house which we made our temporary base as we waited for help any kind of help.

We knew our deaths were inevitable if we stayed there and just waited so we decided to fight when the beasts had finally found our location.

My selfishness and fear of death caused me to run away at the sight of the vicious beasts leaving my 'siblings' and friends to die. 

This is when my previous life memories or my transmigration had taken place. A hopeless life with the only possible outcome being my death. 

I wondered if things would have been different if I had awoken my memories earlier. The experience from my past life could have made things much better.

'My death was already horrible enough. I never thou—'

A loud yet somehow weak growl woke me up from my rampaging thoughts.

My body, out of instinct, reacted with a jump. This caused me to fall off the branch I had been sleeping on. I could feel my body in freefall and before long I had hit the ground hard.

I didn't even have time to tolerate the pain on my back and buttocks from the impact of the fall as I heard the beasts growl grow nearer.

I jumped once more out of instinct as a claw swept past my previous position.

My eyes adjusted to the morning light as they opened gradually.

My eyes widened, my heart raced and I felt weak when looking straight into the eyes of the famous predator.

The lion. I was hopeful because this lion looked different. Its red fur stood out but what gave me hope wasn't its appearance.

It was its pitiful state. It was apparent that this beast had been fighting recently since it was half-dead. Not only that, the lion was young. I wouldn't call it a cub but I was sure that it wasn't fully grown.

'I guess this will be a fight between teenagers.' I couldn't help but chuckle at my bad joke as our eyes locked on each other. I knew we both thought the same thing.

One of us needs to die for the other to live!