"AAAAAAAGH!!"

Few things can make a seasoned soldier cry. Getting half of your face destroyed by a .338 Magnum round is one of them.

Gavin curled up into a ball and held the left side of his face. A terrible white-hot pain flooded his face and into his neck. Tears streaked down the side of his face as he began rocking back and forth.

Eventually, the pain subsided. Gavin laid flat on his back, trying to process what had happened. He couldn't tell how much time had passed, but the pain subsided to a dull throbbing, and was now tolerable.

There was only one thing that could have happened. Another enemy sniper got the drop on him while he tunnel-visioned on the hostile he’d found and eliminated. But probably not even 15 seconds had passed in the time it took Gavin to fire the two shots and begin packing up. A good sniper team could locate him from the sound of the gun and the muzzle flash. After all, Gavin and his spotter had done just that. But to do that, line up a shot, and fire in less than 15 seconds? Borderline impossible, yet plausible enough that he couldn't help but wonder.

The most likely scenario was that Gavin had already been spotted prior to firing his rifle. A slight mistake during setup could have already given away their position, or maybe they'd just gotten unlucky and got spotted quickly.

Unlucky? Actually, Gavin was very lucky to be alive. But how?

He regained his senses and sat up, touching his face. It was intact, but where the pain had been the most intense, there was a slight bump on the surface of his skin below his left cheekbone. A scar from the bullet?

He looked around and realized he was not where he expected to be at all. Instead of the white interior of a military hospital, he saw wooden beams. He was in a house, one with an older design, made of cobblestone and a darkish grained wood. It looked like walnut, but he wasn't sure.

Gavin breathed out sharply. He'd never been this rattled before, to the point where he completely lost track of his surroundings. After getting to his feet, he began walking around gingerly. He'd been lying on the floor of what appeared to be the dining area. Peeking around a corner, he saw a hallway with several doors and a staircase down at the end. He looked the other way and saw a kitchen. A couch faced a fireplace in the living room, and to the left of that was a window. Outside, the sun was shining, and Gavin could make out trees and grass.

Of course, he pinched himself multiple times. He couldn't believe his eyes. Things just didn't add up: by all means he should be dead, and even if he survived and allied troops recovered his unconscious body, he should be in a military hospital. Regardless, the left side of his face should not be untouched like this. So how in the world was he in one piece, despite feeling the pain from the bullet? Was the pain part of his imagination? Was it a dream? But he didn't feel like he was dreaming. Everything was too detailed. He'd had lucid dreams before, and they were nothing like this. Was he in the afterlife?

Gavin got lost in his thoughts for a moment. But as expected of a military elite, it didn't take him too long to recollect himself. If it was a dream, whatever he did here didn't matter. So, he should act as if it wasn't. First things first: he needed to find out where he was, and who brought him here.

"Hello? Anybody there?" Gavin's voice sounded raspier than normal, as if he had no water for days. For all he knew, he might not have. He didn't know how long he passed out for.

He figured that if he was still alive, anybody near or in the house wouldn't have hostile intentions towards him. If they wanted to kill him, he'd already be dead; he'd been unconscious on the floor at least a while. So, he felt comfortable making his presence known. But he had a gut feeling that he was alone in the building. There was only one way to confirm or deny his suspicion.

Gavin waited for a little while, then repeated his call. When no one responded a second time, he knocked on the first door down the hallway. Again, no response. He slowly pushed down the knob and opened the door, revealing a cozy but clean and well-kept bathroom.

The first thing that caught Gavin's eye was the ostentatious golden border around the mirror above the sink. The second thing that caught his eye was, well, his eye.

A familiar face, one that he had seen in a mirror many, many times before, stared back at him. But it looked off, and it took less than a second for him to realize what had changed. Gavin had brown hair and brown eyes. But now, his eyes were a deep, vibrant shade of blue. They didn't look like normal blue eyes - they were so intense they looked photoshopped, glimmering like quality jewels. They were enchanting, and he couldn't peel his eyes away.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

He would have probably stared at himself like Narcissus, but then his attention shifted to something else on his face.

Just as he had felt with his fingers, there was a scar on his face where Gavin assumed the bullet hit him, just under his left cheekbone. But his fingers couldn't detect the 3 thin line scars that spread out radially from the central scar, almost like a part of a spiderweb. One went down towards his mouth, one went back towards the hinge of his jaw, and the last went up to his left eye.

Gavin wondered again how the wound could have possibly healed this well. In fact, the line scars looked like a fracture pattern. Did his skull fracture along these lines after being hit by the large caliber bullet? This was another guess that he couldn't confirm.

"God damn," he breathed. "Disgusting shot."

The enemy must have been hundreds of yards away as well. At that distance, most snipers wouldn't even entertain the notion of a headshot and go for a body shot. There was no telling if the enemy had aimed for his head, or was trying to hit his body and hit slightly above his target. Either way, the enemy sniper was a top-notch marksman.

Gavin’s eyes wandered over the rest of the bathroom. It was a standard bathroom, with a bathtub, toilet, and sink. The differences Gavin saw were that the knobs were weird, and there were some jewels embedded in the faucets. Whoever the owner of his house was, they had deep pockets.

Looking at the bathtub, Gavin suddenly wondered about the state of his body. His gaze shifted towards his own body. His body was clean, and he was wearing a dark blue tunic with beige pants and no shoes, his bare feet on the tiled floor.

"The fuck? A tunic?"

Gavin had literally never seen a tunic in real life before, only on television shows and movies. He grew up in the suburbs of a city, after all. However, it was quite light and comfortable, and didn't limit his movement at all. He was pleasantly surprised.

Gavin exited the bathroom and raised his hand to knock on the next door down the hallway. No response came, as expected, so he opened the door and peered inside.

It was a relatively small room with a massive bed that looked like it belonged in a palace. Its decorations put the fancy mirror to shame: gold leaf carvings, a plush headboard, complete with an ornate nightstand. But except for the ridiculous bed, the room looked surprisingly normal. A plush rug covered most of the wooden floor, muffling the sound of Gavin's footsteps and breathing. A wooden rocking chair and a small coffee table in the corner made a nice place to open a newspaper or a book. Some weird tool that kind of looked like a lamp rested on the table.

It would have been really cozy, but the bed was insanely out of place. No one was here, so Gavin moved on.

"????"

A small staircase at the end of a led down to another small section of the hallway and to the third room, which was a home gym. That was the only way Gavin could describe it. The weights had unorthodox shapes and were not the dumbbells and barbells he was used to. There were no squat or bench racks either. Instead, there were training dummies. And most impressively, there was literally a gigantic boulder on a track, clearly designed to be pushed.

Gavin suddenly got scared again. That boulder must’ve weighted at a few tons. He did not want smoke from a person who could actually push that.

When he closed the door, it dawned on him that the gym was massive. How the hell was it built as part of this home? With more and more questions building in his mind by the minute, Gavin opened the last door at the end of the hallway, and his jaw dropped.

He thought the gym was big, but this blew it out of the water.

To the left was a massive library lined with bookshelves, filled with neatly organized books and scrolls. Gavin thought he was hallucinating, but some of them appeared to be glowing. Several large desks and chairs sat in the middle, covered with open books, writing utensils, and other miscellaneous items he couldn't recognize.

To his right, a couple of rows of tables filled the space. More shelves lined the walls, this time with jars filled with various materials. Gavin saw some metals, what looked like dirt, and purple whirlpool. In a jar. On the tables, various beakers sat, most of them cleaned and organized. More machines sat on the table, some of them with bubbling liquid inside of them, some of them empty.

The air inside the room felt powerful, for lack of a better word. Just standing in the doorway, Gavin felt an itch on his skin.

Again, there was no one in sight, but the room was so big, it was definitely possible someone was tucked away behind a bookshelf somewhere.

Someone, presumably the owner of the place, moved a desk and a chair to the front of the room, just in front of the doorway. Gavin could see a desk missing from the neat arrangement on his left-hand side. Obviously, it was intended to draw his attention. On the desk sat 2 books. The one on the left was relatively thin, but it was super reflective. The one on the right was thicker, but less flashy. Except for the cover being made of leather, it resembled a textbook.

He slowly approached the desk, extremely nervous and slightly terrified. In the end, his curiosity got the best of him. After taking a closer look at the books, Gavin saw they were both covered in symbols he couldn't make sense of at all. To his astonishment, the thin book wasn't actually reflective. It was glowing. And the luminescent patterns along the outside edge of the cover were moving.

Gavin reached a hand out to touch the thin, flashy book. Nothing happened. So, he did the natural thing and opened it to look inside. He regretted his decision immediately.