Sunday, 3:00 p.m. — Arin City
February 2nd, 1452
The heat that day was unnatural.
Even though the sun had begun its slow descent toward the horizon, the air still hung heavy and breathless — weighed down by the warmth that had gathered over the cobblestone streets through long hours of daylight. Waves of heat shimmered upward, trembling against the fading sky, as if the earth itself was exhaling its exhaustion.
A strange stillness blanketed the city, as though Arin had slipped into a brief slumber. Only the distant echo of hesitant footsteps disturbed the silence. At this hour, most of the townsfolk had gone to pray, leaving the streets nearly deserted — save for a few weary souls. Those who remained were either officials bound by rigid duties that tolerated no delay, or the poor, chasing their meager living with desperate persistence, unwilling to waste even a single minute.
The quiet stretched thick, like a heavy carpet laid across the streets, broken only by the faint, tired chirping of birds hopping from branch to branch, searching for a patch of shade to shield them from the relentless sun.
From one of the elegant houses nearby came a dull, rhythmic thud. It wasn't loud enough to alarm, yet it carried a persistence that gnawed at the air — the kind of sound that might come from something heavy being dropped again and again, or a hand striking a wall with grim insistence. A rhythm born not of accident, but of intent.
Then another sound joined it — human this time. A low groan, raw and trembling, seeped through the stillness. It wasn't a scream that split the silence, but a wounded whisper — a sound woven from pain long suppressed, from anger turned stale, from hatred that had festered in the dark. It was the kind of sound that wished to stay hidden, yet betrayed itself with every trembling breath.
Ren Yuan heard it clearly, as if the distance between him and the voice was no more than a few steps. He could make out every sharp intake of air, every muted impact that followed — steady, deliberate, haunting.
He lifted his head, straining to see, but the darkness around him was suffocating — so dense it seemed to swallow the very air. He reached out his hand… and found nothing. Only emptiness.
The space around him felt endless — no walls, no ceiling, only an abyss that stretched in every direction. It was as though the world had been erased, leaving behind nothing but him… and the sounds. Those muffled thuds reverberated through the void, drawing nearer, then fading away, only to return again — like the pulse of something wicked that refused to die.
He tried to move, but his body wouldn't obey. The ground felt unreal beneath him, or perhaps it was gone entirely — as though the air itself had solidified into an unseen barrier, trapping him in place.
He wanted to scream.
To call out for help — or even whisper.
But nothing came out.
Silence. Absolute, crushing silence.
Ren Yuan tried to stay calm, though fear was already creeping through his veins. Something deep within him urged him to resist — a primal instinct refusing to surrender.
He struggled to breathe, clinging to the fading edges of his consciousness until, slowly, his senses began to return. That was when he saw it — a thin thread of light glimmering faintly in the suffocating darkness. It was barely visible… yet it pierced through the endless void like a single crack in reality itself.
He stared at it in disbelief.
And the moment his eyes focused on that fragile beam, something shifted — a strange realization struck him. He hadn't smelled anything since he'd arrived here. The air had been empty, hollow, stripped of life — as if he'd been trapped inside a vacuum where even breath had no place to exist.
But now… something had changed.
A sharp scent sliced through the stillness — acrid, metallic, unmistakable.
He didn't need time to recognize it.
It was the smell of blood.
Ren Yuan narrowed his eyes, focusing on the faint light ahead. Within that dim glow, he could just make out the silhouette of a man — striking himself over and over with grim determination.
Startled, Ren Yuan wanted to speak, to question the horrifying sight aloud — it was the first thing he had seen since falling into this void.
A thought echoed inside his mind:
' Can't he see me? Why does he keep doing that?'
He looked down at his own hands…
He wasn't sure if he was still human.
He felt like a ghost caught between nothingness and reality, standing silently in the corner of the room, watching. Each time the broken man hit himself, pain flared through Ren Yuan's own body — a strange, mirrored agony that bound them together by an unseen thread of suffering.
For a moment, he felt as though he'd been dragged back into his own personal hell.
Every blow sent a shock of pain through his limbs. Every time the man's head struck the ground, a piercing headache tore through Ren Yuan's skull.
"This… is strange," he whispered to himself, barely audible.
When he looked down again, he noticed something carved into the floor — a ritual circle, drawn with precision, its lines intricate and tangled in patterns he couldn't comprehend.
Ren Yuan watched in utter silence, unable to identify the disfigured figure before him. The man's bones jutted out beneath torn skin; his face was nothing more than a mangled mass of flesh. Yet still… he spoke. Or perhaps he screamed — his hoarse voice breaking under despair.
"Who would believe what happened to me? No one will! No one—who would ever believe it?!"
He didn't take long before he began drawing symbols with his own blood, muttering an incantation under his breath. The words were foreign — ancient, maybe — but to Ren Yuan, they sounded like pure madness.
A charlatan, he thought bitterly. Should I just go back to therapy? Why does my mind insist on torturing me like this?
Moments later, the man collapsed to the ground. His breaths were ragged, skull shattered from the blows. Slowly — disturbingly slowly — he rose again, defying death itself, and staggered toward a chair that seemed to have been waiting for him.
Before Ren Yuan's horrified eyes, the man looped a rope around his own neck… and let his body fall.
The only thought that stuck in Ren Yuan's head was how impossibly strong this man was — someone who could rise after crushing his skull, only to hang himself with such cold precision.
Ren Yuan stared at the hanging body. The rope bit deep into the flesh, tearing through skin until dark bruises bloomed across his neck, as though death had branded him for eternity.
He took a few hesitant steps closer.
With a quiet, bitter chuckle, he muttered,
"And why are you dragging me into your murder scene? Someone might think I just killed you myself."
But before he could move another inch, an invisible force pressed down on him. It was as though something had reached inside and yanked his soul from his body. His vision blurred, then vanished.
He collapsed — lifeless.
When Ren Yuan opened his eyes again, his chest felt heavy, his lungs straining for air, as if he'd awakened from a nightmare that had lasted a lifetime.
He sat up slowly, trying to gather his thoughts. His skull throbbed, his throat was parched, and his limbs ached like they'd been frozen for centuries.
Cautiously, he lifted a trembling hand to his neck. Then, step by step, he moved toward the curtains. Each movement sparked a dull ache through his body, but he ignored it, like a soldier ignoring an old wound.
He gripped the heavy fabric and pulled it aside.
Golden light burst into the dim room, washing over his face.
A faint smile touched his lips — one of relief, not joy.
The brightness stung his tired eyes, yet he didn't blink. He welcomed the warmth like a long-lost friend.
Turning slowly, he faced the mirror.
One step. Then another.
Every motion reminded him how fragile his body had become, but the thought no longer frightened him.
He stopped before the mirror and stared.
For a moment, he froze — because the reflection staring back wasn't his.
Or at least… not the one he remembered.
"Who… is this?" he whispered, voice barely audible.
He tried to think — to make sense of what he was seeing — but his mind was a blank void, stripped of answers. A suffocating weight pressed against him, as if he'd quietly slipped into someone else's miserable life… and gotten trapped there.
The room tilted around him. The edges blurred. Everything spiraled into that same dreadful sensation — the feeling that death itself was just another turn in an endless loop.
He dragged a chair toward the mirror and sat down, his voice unsteady as he began speaking out loud, just to hear what he sounded like now.
"At first… there was nothing but darkness. Then I lost all my senses. Does that mean I was slowly taking control of this body's perception? I really was like a ghost."
He looked at his weary face in the mirror and continued,
"After that, I saw the light… and the whole suicide. It's disturbing. Why—why did you decide to kill yourself now, you fraud?"
"You were the one who died first… weren't you?" he murmured, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
"Hmm… and then my soul just settled into your corpse."
Rational thought began to seep into his mind again — logic reshaping madness into something he could almost believe.
Yet deep inside, he knew it wasn't that simple.
This wasn't mere possession.
He had died. He had felt it — every agonizing second, every heartbeat fading into silence.
Death had carved its memory into his bones… and refused to let go.
He exhaled a long, heavy sigh — one steeped in both sorrow and despair — then sat in silence for a while.
The unsettling truth was that he no longer knew who he was.
He rose and began to look around the room. It was barren to the point of melancholy — stripped of life. Nothing but a decaying wooden chair and a single bed. The walls were bare, as if they refused to hold on to any memory.
Standing in the middle of the room, he spoke aloud — as though addressing someone unseen.
"So… what's your name, mister?"
He waited, eyes fixed on the empty corners, half-expecting an answer to whisper out of the darkness.
Then, hazy fragments of memory flickered through his mind — what that charlatan had done. His gaze dropped to the floor. Strange markings were drawn there, their crooked lines forming a disturbing pattern. They were messy, crude even, but the words written around them made Ren Yuan's spine crawl.
Moving cautiously, he stepped out of the room and wandered through the house. His eyes darted over every surface, full of an odd childlike wonder.
"Your home is quite impressive, you fraud… so many artistic drawings on the walls—"
He stopped mid-sentence, his breath catching.
They weren't drawings.
They were paintings. And not ordinary ones — these looked as though they'd been born from fevered dreams. Trees whose roots reached toward the sky. Human faces melting into nameless colors. Shapes twisting and merging like a story with no beginning and no end.
"You have strange taste," he muttered.
For a fleeting second, he felt as if he were sinking into a sea of memories that weren't his — fabricated, yet eerily familiar. Shaking his head, he pressed on, unwilling to lose himself in illusion.
He entered the kitchen… and froze.
"..."