Misaki woke with a violent gasp as if the planet itself had punched air back into his lungs. The sky above him glowed a sickly violet, bruised and pulsing like a wounded cosmic eye. Twilight—or something pretending to be twilight—hung over the forest.
His head throbbed. Every bone felt heavier than it should.
He forced himself upright.
His wrecked ship, Hikaru-09, sat half-buried in mud, metal bent like softened clay. Sparks flickered from a broken panel, weak and pitiful, like the last breaths of a dying animal.
Misaki staggered to it.
The hull groaned when he touched it, as if complaining about its own existence. He managed to pry open a scorched console and accessed the emergency data logs. The screen crackled, then projected distorted footage.
Static.
Then a whirl of spiraling light.
Then blackness.
Then—
A tearing sound.
Reality folding inward.
Shapes like tendrils of dark matter.
A tunnel of impossible geometry.
The wormhole.
His ship shaking violently.
Misaki himself flipping upside down in the cockpit, limp.
The ship being spat out like a toy into an unknown sky.
Then the feed ended.
Misaki swallowed. "Okay… okay. I'm not dead. I'm not… gone. I'm somewhere."
He closed the panel.
That was when he heard it.
A screech.
Not an animal's call.
Not a machine's whine.
Something raw. Ragged. A throat that had forgotten how to be alive but still tried to howl.
It echoed across the trees, vibrating his ribs.
Misaki froze.
Another screech answered it.
Closer this time.
His instincts surged before reason. He ducked behind the ship wreckage and quieted his breath.
Footsteps.
Not one pair.
Dozens.
No—hundreds.
The ground trembled as if a stampede of soldiers marched toward him.
Shapes emerged between trees—at first gray smudges, then silhouettes, then full, terrifying clarity.
Not soldiers.
Not people.
Zombies.
But not the slow, rotting fiction from Earth's horror movies. These moved with a terrible purpose, a marching rhythm. Their bodies were gaunt, pale, eyes blackened voids. Some wore remnants of armor. Others carried broken blades or rusted tools. Their movements were jerky yet coordinated—an army of dead marionettes pulled by an unseen puppeteer.
Misaki's throat closed.
"What… what is this place…"
The horde was massive—hundreds, maybe thousands—stretching far beyond what he could see. Their groans filled the woods, a rising chorus of death.
When the first row got within thirty meters, Misaki's survival instincts overrode paralysis.
He ran.
He didn't look back. He didn't breathe. He sprinted into the thickest part of the forest, branches whipping his face, thorns tearing at his suit.
The creature screeches grew louder behind him—relentless.
His lungs burned. His legs begged for mercy. He didn't give any.
He crashed through foliage until the woods thinned—opening into a barren stretch of unknown terrain. Alien soil cracked beneath his boots. Strange black shrubs grew in coils, like vines strangled in the dark.
Misaki stumbled.
And that's when it happened.
A flashing overlay appeared before his eyes—floating, transparent, glowing faint blue.
A HUD.
Like something ripped straight from a VR game.
HP: 100
LVL: 0
EXP: 0
STAMINA: 50
WEAPONS: NONE
SHIELD: NONE
Misaki blinked, shook his head. "Helmet glitch… I must've hit my—"
But the display didn't vanish.
Every time he moved, the numbers shifted slightly, as if tracking his vitals.
"Not possible," he whispered. "This tech doesn't exist. It—this must be the concussion."
Another screech behind him.
Misaki snapped back into survival mode.
He scanned the barren landscape and spotted a narrow ditch—a natural trench carved into the ground, maybe formed by running water once upon a time.
Without thinking, he crawled into it, pressing his body flat, chest heaving.
The marching of the undead grew louder. Shadows passed overhead. Dozens. Hundreds.
He kept perfectly still.
One minute.
Two.
Three.
The sound began to fade.
Misaki exhaled shakily. Relief washed through him. His entire body trembled in the aftershock of fear.
"I survived. I… actually—"
A hand burst through the soil beside his face.
Rotten. Pale. Fingers like broken twigs.
Misaki choked on his breath.
Another undead face peeked over the edge of the ditch—jaw unhinged, flesh cracked like old porcelain, eyes empty.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The ditch wasn't a hiding place.
It was a trap.
Misaki tried to scramble out, but a cold hand clawed his ankle. He kicked, panic overwhelming training.
The HUD flickered.
HP: 100 → 92 → 87
More arms grabbed him.
He screamed and tore free, scrambling up the ditch wall—but another undead creature lunged over the edge, slamming into him, teeth snapping inches from his throat.
He punched it. It didn't flinch.
More piled in.
Hands grabbing.
Teeth gnashing.
Rotting faces pressing close.
The HUD flickered violently.
HP: 87 → 66 → 49 → 22
Misaki's screams echoed.
He felt his flesh tear.
Felt the weight of bodies crushing him.
Felt cold fingers digging into his ribs.
HP: 11… 5… 2…
"No—no—no—please—!"
A final claw raked across his chest.
HP: 0
The world turned black.
Pain dissolved into nothing.
His last thought wasn't fear.
It was:
I don't want my story to end here.
Then the world went silent.
And Misaki Haruto died.