GENRE
Isekai
Dark Fantasy
Psychological
Anti-Hero
Survival
Gore / Grim Worldbuilding
SYNOPSIS
When Kael Verdan, a terminally ill man abandoned by both family and faith, dies on a hospital bed, he expects oblivion.
Instead, he awakens in a world where death is currency, souls are harvested, and gods are predators.
This new world—Erebos—runs on a cruel truth:
Those who die well are reborn strong. Those who hesitate are consumed.
Kael is reborn not as a hero, not as a noble, but as a Hollowborn—a failed reincarnation destined to be devoured by monsters within days.
Except something went wrong.
Kael remembers every death he experiences.
And every time he dies, the world grows afraid of him.
WORLD SETTING
World Name: Erebos
System: Soul-Weighted Ascension
Power is gained through meaningful death, not experience.
Killing alone is worthless—intent and despair matter.
Gods manipulate reincarnated souls like livestock.
Resurrection exists, but each revival erodes sanity
MAIN CHARACTER
Name: Kael Verdan
Age (Earth): 24
Reincarnation Status: Hollowborn (Defective Soul Vessel)
Unique Curse: Echo of Finality — retains memories, pain, and fear from all deaths.
Personality:
Calculated, numb, observant
Not heroic
Not cruel—but willing to become cruel
Fears becoming a monster more than dying
CHAPTER 1
The Day I Failed to Die
Death was supposed to be quiet.
That was the lie they told me.
The machines screamed first.
A sharp, continuous sound drilled into my skull as my chest failed to rise for the third time. I remember the taste of iron in my mouth. Blood pooled somewhere I couldn't see. Nurses shouted my name like it mattered.
It didn't.
I was already gone.
The pain faded before the fear did. Fear clung to me like wet cloth, heavy and suffocating. Then even that vanished, replaced by—
Cold.
Not the absence of warmth.
But something hungry.
I opened my eyes.
I wasn't in the hospital.
I lay on cracked black stone beneath a red sky that pulsed like a beating heart. Ash drifted downward, slow and deliberate, as if the world itself were shedding skin.
I tried to scream.
No sound came out.
My body felt wrong—lighter, fragile, unfinished. My hands were pale, veins faintly glowing with a dull gray light.
[Soul Integration Failed]
A voice echoed inside my skull. Not loud. Not emotional.
Administrative.
[Classification: Hollowborn]
[Estimated Survival Time: 3 Days]
I laughed.
It came out broken, wet, and hysterical.
"So this is hell," I whispered.
The ground trembled.
Something moved in the distance—shapes crawling across the ash plains. Too many limbs. Not enough faces.
A shadow passed over me.
I looked up.
A colossal silhouette hovered above the clouds, its form shifting between angelic and monstrous. Thousands of golden eyes blinked open along its wings.
"Another defective soul," it said, voice layered with countless others.
"Dispose of it."
The pressure crushed my chest.
Bones shattered.
Pain exploded—
—and then darkness swallowed me whole.
I woke up screaming.
Back on the black stone.
Whole.
Breathing.
[Resurrection Detected]
[Error: Unauthorized Return]
I froze.
My heart pounded violently as the pain from my death replayed itself in vivid clarity—every break, every tear, every second of terror.
I remembered it all.
Every. Single. Moment.
I wasn't supposed to come back.
Slowly, I stood.
My legs shook. My stomach twisted. Tears streamed down my face, uninvited and uncontrollable.
Then I smiled.
A thin, terrified smile.
"If death won't take me," I said to the empty world,
"then I'll make it regret trying."
In the distance, the monsters stopped moving.
And far above, something ancient shifted uncomfortably in its throne
(END OF CHAPTER ONE)