Arcane: I have Plasmids F*** YEAAAAAAH!!!

He groaned, pushing himself up from the grimy, uneven ground. The smell hit him next. A pungent mix of rust, rot, and something sickly-sweet that he didn't want to identify.

"The fuck…?" His voice came out hoarse, weak. That wasn't right. He was eighteen, his voice had dropped years ago—why the hell did he sound like a kid?

Lukas blinked rapidly, his vision blurry. As he slowly adjusted to his surroundings, the realization set in. He wasn't in his gaming chair, surrounded by empty energy drink cans and the comforting glow of his monitor.

No. He was in a dark alleyway, the walls lined with corroded pipes, neon lights flickering overhead, casting an eerie greenish glow. The ground beneath him was wet, a shallow pool of murky water reflecting the sickly lights above.

Something told him to look down.

He did.

And then, he froze.

A boy stared back at him from the water's surface. No—he was staring at himself.

Lukas sucked in a shaky breath, leaning in closer. His reflection rippled slightly in the dirty puddle, but the details were still painfully clear.

His face was different. Younger. Smaller. His skin was pale, his messy brown hair unkempt, sticking out in uneven tufts. He wore cracked, wire-framed glasses—one of the lenses fractured, a jagged line splitting through the glass. His clothes were tattered, stitched together from whatever scraps he could find.

He looked like shit.

A sudden, sharp pain lanced through his skull, making him gasp. Memories.

Memories that weren't his.

Flashes of a life lived in the shadows of Zaun. A boy with no family, no home. Parents lost in the bloody March on the Bridge of Progress, crushed beneath Piltover's iron grip. A nobody in a city that swallowed nobodies whole.

Street rat. Thief. Orphan.

His breath hitched.

"This… this has to be a dream."

He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head.

No.

No, this wasn't real.

It couldn't be.

But the cold was real. The hunger gnawing at his gut was real. The filthy water soaking into his ragged clothes was real.

And the memories?

They were real too.

Lukas pressed his hands against his temples, gritting his teeth as the headache continued to drill into his skull. The more he resisted, the worse it got, like someone was hammering his past life and this new existence together by force.

He saw flashes—fragments of this body's life before his soul hijacked it.

Running. Stealing. Hiding. Surviving.

He saw himself—or rather, the boy he had replaced—ducking under rusted pipes, weaving through crowds of tired workers, snatching a loaf of bread from a distracted vendor's stall before bolting into the maze of Zaun's underbelly. He felt the rough cobblestone under bare feet, the sting of a whip when he was caught, the hollow pain of hunger after a day without food.

And then, the worst memory of them all.

The boy had parents. Once.

A mother who used to hold him close when the world outside grew too harsh. A father whose calloused hands were steady as he worked, Mining on the fissures, building a future he thought would last.

They weren't fighters. They weren't criminals. Just simple people who wanted better.

And that's why they died.

Zaun had always been a city on its knees, crushed beneath Piltover's boot, but some had still dared to hope. Vander had led them, his voice like a storm, his fists like iron, and the people followed him with fire in their hearts.

The March on the Bridge of Progress.

He saw it through the boy's eyes. The chaos. The shouting. The way his mother clutched him close as his father argued with a Piltovan enforcer, desperation in his voice.

Then the gunshot.

His father fell first, blood pooling at the boy's feet. His mother screamed. The enforcers kept shooting.

By the end of it, he was just another orphan in Zaun.

The memory faded, and Lukas was left gasping for air, his hands clutching at his chest like he'd been shot himself.

He sat there, shaking, staring at his reflection again. The boy was dead. But Lukas was alive.

And now?

Now he was fucked.

He clenched his fists, his breathing ragged.

No home. No money. No family. No safety.

His body was weak, malnourished. He was a child in a city that chewed up the vulnerable and spat them out as corpses. This wasn't a game. This was survival.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit—"

He slammed his head against the damp wall behind him, hoping—praying—that he would just wake up back in his old room, back in front of his PC, back in a world where dying meant respawning.

But he didn't wake up.

The pain was real. The cold was real. The hunger was real.

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, but he forced them down.

Crying wouldn't do shit.

If he wanted to live, he needed a plan.