"STOP IT, PLEASE!"
A skinny man lay thrashing on a single-sized bed. He was shaking, sweating profusely, raising his hands to shield himself from a horror no one else could see.
"Ahhhh!" he screamed, kicking the blanket to the floor.
"NOOOO!" The scream tore from his throat, but outside, the world remained indifferent. If anyone in the old, shabby apartment building heard him, they didn't care.
The man snapped his eyes open, terror still lingering in his gaze. His breathing was ragged, soaking his faded undershirt and the sides of his face with cold sweat. He darted his eyes around, scanning the unfamiliar space.
The room was a suffocating box of peeling paint and stagnant air. A grimy glass window, caked with years of city dust, blocked out the clear view of the sky. Above him, a water stain bloomed across the ceiling plaster like a dark bruise, threatening to drip onto the linoleum floor where the edges curled up from the cold concrete beneath.
There was barely room to breathe, let alone move. Aside from the iron-framed bed, the only furniture was a three-legged wooden stool and a kitchenette that smelled of rust and ancient grease. Dust motes danced in the silence, undisturbed by his nightmare, settling on walls that looked untouched for a decade.
With a low groan, he forced himself upright. The rusty springs beneath the thin mattress shrieked in protest. He swung his legs over the edge, the soles of his bare feet meeting the gritty texture of peeling linoleum.
He looked down, and his breath hitched in his throat.
In the sickly yellow light, his arms looked like dry twigs. He rotated his wrists slowly, disbelief washing over him as he tracked the blue veins bulging against papery, pale skin. There was no muscle—only the stark geometry of bone. His gaze traveled lower to his knees, which protruded like jagged rocks, distinct and knobby against the wasted flesh of his thighs.
He gripped his own knee. It felt brittle. Wrong.
A sharp throb behind his eyes cut through the confusion, dragging a jagged memory to the surface.
Pitch black.
He remembered the weight of the mission—a simple snatch-and-grab. Important papers from a politician's safe. It was supposed to be his ticket up the ranks, a chance to stop being a lowly pawn, disposable cannon fodder for the Syndicate. But the alarms had screamed too early.
Then came the consequences.
The memory shifted to a haze of agony. The metallic taste of blood. The burning thirst. The gnawing cramps of a stomach eating itself. No food. No water. Just the cold, heavy hands of men who knew how to inflict pain without killing.
He gasped, the shabby apartment rushing back into focus.
"So, they didn't finish me off," he whispered, a bitter taste rising in his throat.
This must be where they dump the trash that doesn't rot fast enough.
Did I have a coma? He raised a trembling hand to his face. His fingers brushed against a coarse, tangled mass of hair that spilled well past his collarbone, matting against his chest. He looked at his hand again, really looking this time. It wasn't just the bones; the fingernails were long, yellowed, and curled over like animal claws.
"Fucking Santiago..." His voice cracked, dry and weak. "You should have killed me instead of letting me suffer like this! I served you for half my life!"
He tried to stand, but his legs gave way, sending him slumping back onto the mattress. Frustration boiled over. Sunlight filtered in, and the faint hum of vehicles suggested a road nearby, yet he was trapped by his own weakness. The door was ten steps away, but it might as well have been ten miles.
What was the point of waking up? To starve to death in a sunlit cage?
He tried to swallow, but his throat was so dry it felt like swallowing glass. A tear of pure frustration leaked from his eye, followed by another, until his chest began to hitch with dry, jagged sobs.
"J-just... kill... m-me."
The tears blurred his vision, turning the water stain on the ceiling into a shifting Rorschach test. For a second, the dark bruise of the damp plaster softened, curving into a silhouette he knew better than his own reflection.
Her.
The memory hit him harder than the hunger.
It was a Sunday morning. Not here. Not in this hell. They were in their old apartment, the one with the balcony that smelled of basil. She was standing by the window, the sunlight turning her loose hair into a halo of gold. She turned to him, smiling, one hand resting protectively over the heavy swell of her stomach.
He remembered the warmth of her skin under his palm. He remembered the faint, miraculous flutter against his hand—his unborn child, kicking, alive.
"Promise me you'll come back," she had whispered, her eyes dark with worry.
"Always," he had lied.
A fresh wave of agony washed over him, colder than the room. If he had been gone for years... that child was born. That child was walking, talking.
His mind, sharpened by misery, conjured a new image—one that hurt more than the beatings. He saw her, but she wasn't alone. She was smiling at someone else. A man who was there. A man who held her when she cried for the missing gangster who never came home.
She would have had to move on. She needed a father for their child.
Does he tuck them in? The thought spiraled, dark and poisonous. Does my child call him 'Dad'?
Maybe she had even more children now. A whole family. A perfect, happy portrait where he was nothing but a faded photograph on a shelf, or worse—a cautionary tale. A ghost.
"I lost... everything," he wheezed, the realization crushing the last of his spirit.
The room began to tilt. The image of her face dissolved into the peeling paint. The grief was too heavy to carry; his body simply gave up.
He swayed, and gravity claimed its victory.
His spine lost its tension, and he tipped backward. There was no resistance, no attempt to catch himself. His upper body collapsed onto the thin mattress with a dull thump, the rusty springs crying out one last time beneath his meager weight.
He didn't even have the strength to lift his legs.
While his torso lay sprawled across the disheveled sheets, his skeletal legs remained hooked over the side of the iron frame. His feet dangled uselessly in the air, toes pointing toward the cold linoleum they could no longer support.
His eyes rolled back, shutting out the mockery of the sunlight. His breathing leveled out into a shallow, fragile rhythm as the blackness took him, offering the only mercy he would find today.
Consciousness returned like a slap.
He gasped, his eyes flying open. The mocking yellow sunlight was gone, replaced by the bloody orange hues of sunset. Long, distorted shadows stretched across the peeling walls, turning the room into a cage of dark bars.
Time had passed. Too much time.
His body felt heavier than before, anchored to the mattress by a gravity that seemed to have doubled in strength. He tried to shift his weight, but his muscles refused to fire. He was a prisoner in his own skin.
Grumble.
The sound was loud in the quiet room—a hollow, guttural roar from his stomach. It wasn't just hunger; it was a void. A cramping, twisting emptiness that felt like it was digesting his spine.
"Ugh..."
He opened his mouth to breathe, to beg the air for strength, but the air didn't come.
Something else did.
A spark.
It started deep in his marrow, a sudden, searing heat that exploded outward. It wasn't warmth. It was raw, unbridled voltage.
"Gnnh!"
His eyes widened, bulging in their sockets. A bolt of invisible lightning detonated in his chest, surging through his withered veins like molten lead. It didn't care that he was weak. It didn't care that he was starving. It tore through him, claiming every inch of his nervous system.
He couldn't scream. He didn't have the breath for it.
His back arched off the mattress, his spine bowing like a drawn bowstring. His skeletal hands clawed at the sheets, tearing through the thin fabric. The iron bed frame rattled violently against the floorboards as his body seized, thrashing in a rhythm he couldn't control.
Too strong. It's too strong!
Froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth. The pain was absolute, a white-hot frequency that drowned out the hunger, the grief, and the room itself. He was being burned alive from the inside out.
Just as his vision began to fracture into static, the seizing stopped.
He collapsed back onto the sweat-soaked mattress, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Then, a sound cut through the silence. Crisp. Synthetic.
Ding!
It was the cheerful chime of a smartphone notification, absurdly loud in the grim apartment.
He blinked, his vision swimming. Hovering in the air directly above his face, glowing in a soft, ethereal blue light, were words that defied reality together with a woman voice
[ CONGRATULATIONS! ]
[ THE FRAGMENT OF Å IS SUCCESSFULLY MERGED INTO YOUR SOUL! ]
Am I hallucinating?
He stared at the glowing blue letters, his mind reeling. Or maybe it's a demon talking to me.
Yes. Obviously. Only something evil would come for a soul as corrupted as his. He had taken countless lives in his time—some innocent, but mostly the termites and leeches of society. But blood was blood.
He gathered all his remaining force, lifting his trembling arms toward the ceiling.
"Yes, take me!" he rasped, his voice raw. "End my suffering! I'm ready to atone for my sins."
He waited for the fire. He waited for the claws.
But nothing happened.
Minutes passed in silence, save for the hum of the blue screen. Then, a sensation began to bloom in his chest. It wasn't pain. It was a warm, vibrant thrum that spread outward to his limbs, like hot water rushing through frozen pipes.
His body was being charged by an unknown energy.
The blurriness in his vision sharpened into high definition. The gnawing emptiness of starvation faded, replaced by a strange, artificial fullness. Even the dizziness that had plagued him for... however long he had been here... evaporated.
He tried to stand up. Miraculously, he rose without a struggle. He looked down at his body; he was still a skeletal wreck, his limbs like twigs, but the weakness was gone. He felt powered by a battery that wasn't his own.
But with the return of his senses came the consequences.
His nose twitched. Now that his brain was firing correctly, the stench of the room hit him like a physical blow. It was a thick, cloying soup of rot, mildew, and ancient sweat.
"Ugh..." He gagged, clapping a hand over his mouth to stop himself from throwing up. How did I survive living in this filth?
He lifted his left foot to take a step. It felt foreign, mechanical. He couldn't remember the last time he had walked.
Step. Step.
No more shaking. He moved toward the door like a marionette pulled by strings, his movements stiff but functional. A surge of adrenaline hit him. He was excited, but terrified. Is there someone outside?
Please, I just want to get out of this rotting box.
He reached for the rusting doorknob. It turned with a cringe-inducing screech.
It's not locked.
He froze. He didn't pull it open yet. His instincts, dormant for so long, flared to life. If this was a prison, there would be guards. He needed a weapon.
He scanned the room, looking for something sharp. But as he really looked at his surroundings, confusion replaced his fear.
It didn't look like a cell. It looked like the apartment of a single man who had never heard the word 'cleanliness.' Trash littered the floor. Piles of dirty clothes, crusty dishes, and towers of takeout boxes for food that had long since decayed.
It was far from what he expected. Where were the chains? The torture tools? The blood drains?
I'm confused, he thought, his brow furrowing. Did I lose part of my memory? Why would they leave me in a dump like this without a guard?
Feeling a wave of disgust, he spotted a metal fork lying on the floor near the kitchenette sink. It was coated in grime, but the tines were sharp.
He snatched it up, gripping it tight. It was a pathetic weapon, but it was better than nothing.
He crept back to the door and pulled it open, bracing himself for a fight.
But there was no hallway. No guards. No Syndicate hitmen.
He was welcomed by the rustle of leaves and the fresh scent of pine.
He stepped out, blinking in the orange glow of the setting sun. He wasn't in an apartment complex at all. He was standing on the porch of a small, dilapidated wooden shack, hidden deep within a thicket of trees.
In the distance, the faint whoosh of cars on a highway reminded him that civilization was close, yet he felt entirely alone.
He lowered the fork, the cool evening breeze brushing against his skin. He was free. But the mystery of his imprisonment had only just begun.
"Where is this place?" he whispered, the question directed at the wind.
He dug through his mind, clawing for a map, a street name, a route—anything that explained how he went from a city apartment to a shack in the woods.
Nothing. Just a terrifying, blank wall of static.
Why can't I remember? He gripped the fork tighter, his knuckles whitening. My mission. The torture. Then... nothing. How did I get here?
Then, the voice returned. Not from the air, but from inside his own skull. Smooth. Cold. Artificial.
"This world is called Woolace."
He froze. The word felt alien on his tongue. World?
"Who..." He choked out the word, spinning around to face a presence that wasn't there, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Who are you?"