In a remote corner of the southeastern continent, beneath the weary breath of early March, an unknown consciousness stirred.
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A dull ache throbbed within Grey's skull. It started slow, then grew heavier, like a distant drumbeat echoing from within his bones. He could not recall why he felt this pain, nor even why he was conscious, and the inability to remember settled over him like a suffocating blanket.
For a long, silent moment, he floated in darkness without beginning or end.
A darkness so complete it felt ancient.
"…Why can't I move?"
The thought rose weakly through the haze. He tried to lift a hand, or perhaps a leg, he could no longer distinguish them, but his body responded like stone. His limbs were there, faintly familiar yet completely foreign, as though he had borrowed a body never meant to be his.
"What happened to me?"
He tried again, gathering what little strength he had, but the effort only sharpened the pain in his head, sending a cold shiver down his spine. After a while, he surrendered, letting his breath settle into the void.
"Is this a dream…? If so, why does it hurt so much?"
Time trickled by. Maybe seconds. Maybe an eternity.
Then, slowly, the darkness began to peel away.
At first, faint color leaked through, like water seeping under a door. Then the black retreated completely, and the world revealed itself with slow, deliberate cruelty.
A blood-red sky greeted him.
Not crimson from sunset, nor tinted by smoke or flame, but truly red, an oppressive, suffocating red that seemed to stain even the air. Clouds hung low, swollen with an unnatural glow, drifting like silent omens of disaster.
Grey exhaled shakily and turned his head to the side. The motion alone left him panting, but what he saw stole the breath from his lungs.
Ruins stretched before him.
Broken buildings twisted into grotesque shapes.
Steel supports jutted from shattered concrete like exposed ribs.
And weaving through the desolation was a forest, wild, hungry, and unrestrained, its vines strangling what little remained of human civilization.
Beyond the ruins lay a lake, wide and still.
Its surface was a smooth mirror of crimson, reflecting the red sky until water and heaven became indistinguishable.
"…This isn't my room," he murmured. His voice scraped out like rusted iron dragged across stone.
The lake rippled once, as though disturbed by an unseen presence. But aside from that, the world remained eerily still. No wind. No birds. Only silence.
Grey stared at the reflected red sky, dazed.
The pain felt too real...
He tried to rise, but the moment he strained, memories tore into his mind like knives.
Grey Reynolds.
Fourteen years old.
A student of Moon Walk Academy in Griffin County, Kamui, southeastern continent.
His parents were Jack and Lilly Reynolds, a doctor and a nurse in this world.
But they were both erased two years ago… not by disease or human hands, but by divine power when God descended upon the world.
His breath trembled.
His siblings... an older brother and younger sister floated at the edges of his memory like smudged ink, as if someone had erased their faces and names before he could fully grasp them.
More memories followed, belonging not to him, but to the body he now inhabited. The final memories of a boy who survived alone inside a corroded zone touched by divine power… until he finally succumbed.
Grey swallowed hard.
"…I died?"
He spoke in a horror-stricken voice. He was not sure if he was truly the one who had died. But the strange familiarity he felt was very real.
In fact, he did not feel like he had died. He felt as if his body had been switched.
Eventually, another conclusion formed in his mind.
"So I really… transmigrated. Or did I?"
His laugh was bitter and empty.
"Even my name stayed the same. How considerate."
Grey forced himself upright, pain radiating through every joint. His leg felt fractured, barely able to support him, but he gritted his teeth and endured.
"I need to see myself…"
Dragging his damaged body, he crawled toward the lake. Every movement was a battle. Arms trembling. Leg burning. Sweat dripping into his eyes. But he refused to stop.
Inch by inch, he approached the blood-red water.
When at last he leaned over the surface, the boy from this world stared back.
Pale skin smeared with dust and dried blood.
A face marred by cuts and bruises.
Clothes torn to shreds.
Grey hair fell messily over grey eyes devoid of warmth, empty from years of suffering, carrying a quiet deadness that felt too familiar.
"Still… not terrible," Grey whispered with a faint, humorless smile.
The world around him darkened as more memories poured in.
A purple light had fallen from the heavens days earlier.
The boy had chased it, whether from curiosity or desperation, he could no longer remember. Before reaching it, however, a minotaur beast had emerged from the ruins and crushed him beneath its charge.
Grey's gaze lifted toward the far side of the lake.
The faint shimmer of purple still flickered there.
He drew in a long breath, clenched his jaw, and crawled.
The journey felt endless. His broken leg screamed with every drag. Sweat soaked through his tattered clothes. His fingers dug furrows into the dirt as he pulled himself forward, driven by instinct and stubbornness.
When he finally reached the light, it was brighter than before.
His hand trembled as he reached for it.
His fingers brushed rough crystal.
And then…
Purple radiance engulfed him.
The ruins around him glowed. The red lake shimmered, turning violet beneath the spreading light.
"I… am so tired," Grey whispered as the crystal's warmth wrapped around him like a forgotten embrace.
Then the impossible began.
Wounds that had festered closed slowly, as if time itself were reversing.
His cuts sealed and his bruises slowly faded. The deep gash at the back of his head stopped bleeding.
His fractured leg knit itself back together with a warm, tingling sensation.
Grey stared, stunned.
"The crystal… healed me?"
Not completely. His muscles still ached, his bones still felt fragile. But he could stand. The weight of his body no longer crushed him. Even his breathing felt deeper and sharper, as if something buried within his core had awakened.
As foreign memories settled into place, the truth of the world pressed down on him.
This land was ruled by powers indifferent to mortals.
God's hand descended without warning, bringing destruction and miracles alike.
Zones tainted by divine power twisted beasts, cities, and even humans.
To live here was to live on the edge of life and extinction.
Grey tightened his grip on the purple crystal.
It pulsed once, quietly, as if acknowledging him.
Grey exhaled slowly, a long breath carrying the weight of two lives.
"…Then let me see," he whispered, eyes reflecting the red sky and violet light,
"just how far I can go in this new life."
The lake rippled.
The crystal hummed softly.
With the echo of death still clinging to him, Grey stepped forward into the beginning of his fate.
According to the memories etched into his soul, the land beneath him was no ordinary ruin.
It was a corroded zone a scar left wherever the blinding radiance of God's power had fallen.
In old histories, that radiance had been worshiped as divinity. Now, it was feared more than death itself. Wherever its light struck, life did not merely end, it was erased. Names, forms, and meaning vanished, leaving only desolation.
Those caught in its glow either died… or twisted into abominations.
Above it all, suspended in the heavens, hung a colossal hand.
A hand so vast that mountains looked like pebbles beside it. So still, yet so oppressive that even the sun seemed unwilling to shine beneath its shadow. It had appeared thousands of years ago, visible from every continent, its fingers curved as if holding the sky itself.
With its arrival came beings that defied logic and morality, creatures born from chaos and warped laws, nourished by corruption, terror, and whatever scraps of sanity mortals once possessed.
The cultivation world had never recovered. Sects that had stood for millennia fell within days. Masters who once moved mountains fled like frightened mortals, abandoning territories to God's relentless might.
Months ago, the radiance struck this city. Families dissolved in an instant. Children turned to ash before their screams could form.
Animals twisted into horrors, wandering aimlessly as if searching for memories they had lost. Even plants contorted into grotesque shapes... motionless yet alive.
Everyone died.
Everyone… except the boy whose body Grey now occupied.
Grey didn't know why he survived. Perhaps he was special. Perhaps survival itself was another punishment in a world this broken. In a place like this, living only meant feeling terror again and again.
The beasts in the corrupted zones were not simple creatures. Many had intelligence. Many bore grudges. And many fed not on flesh, but on fear, memories, and despair.
True horror lurked in the shadows, creatures that moved silently like hungry phantoms.
The original Grey had barely reached the second level of Qi Accumulation. In this world, that level was barely a candle against a storm, not enough to resist even a low-rank beast. And so, inevitably… he had died.
Now it was the new Grey who limped across the ruined land, the purple crystal clutched in his palm. Pain shot up his fractured leg, but he forced himself forward.
His memories warned him: beneath the blood-red lake lay a seventh-level mutated beast, patient and territorial. If he lingered, it would sense him.
The sky dimmed into shades of rust and purple, a warning that night was approaching. When night fully came, the bizarre existences would awaken. If they found him exposed… his second life would end before it truly began.
Twilight thickened. The forest clawed at the ruins like skeletal fingers trying to drag the dead back. Green foliage grew wild, but here even beauty felt wrong, as if life itself wore the mask of death.
Grey finally stumbled upon the shattered remains of a building. Three fractured walls leaned inward like weary guardians. It was not safe… but it was shelter.
He dragged himself inside and collapsed onto the cold floor, groping for debris, planks, stones, fallen beams, to block the doorway.
The barrier would not stop a beast, but it might misdirect one. In this world, illusions were often as valuable as walls.
Once he settled against the wall, he allowed himself a ragged breath.
"What kind of world did I wake up to…?" he murmured.