Realizing that he was no longer in the same world — no longer on Earth — kept dragging Ash's thoughts back to a single question he could not get rid of.
Who brought me here?
That shadow.
The faceless creature standing beneath the streetlamp like something cut out of reality itself. The thing that stabbed him without reason, then vanished into the darkness like ink dissolving into water.
"What the hell was that thing?" Ash muttered quietly, more to himself than anyone else. "And why did the stab wound on my back just disappear?"
The questions drifted through the surface of his mind without answers.
Yet beneath all that confusion — in the deepest corner of his exhausted chest — there was something else.
Something small.
Something warm.
Relief.
Not happiness. Not joy. Just a faint sense of relief, like someone who had held their breath for far too long and was finally allowed to exhale.
A faint smile appeared at the corner of his lips. Tiny. Barely visible. But real.
No pneumatic drill for him to hold for fourteen hours straight.
No foreman screaming at him to move faster.
No body forced to stand when every part of him felt exhausted and wanted nothing more than to rest.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Ash had no obligations.
No alarm clock dragging him awake every morning while his body begged to collapse.
No one losing money if he failed to show up tomorrow.
In this world that did not know him, he owed nothing to anyone.
Or at least... that's what he thought right now
If this was a dream, he hoped it would never end.
And if this was death…
Maybe death was not as terrible as he had always imagined.
The wind struck his face.
Cold.
Sharp.
Real.
And suddenly, his body remembered where he was.
Ash looked down.
The cliff dropped deep into darkness, so far that his eyes struggled to measure its depth. The glowing forest below looked like a sea of tiny scattered stars resting at the bottom of the world. The wind that had felt comforting moments ago now pushed against his back in a way that made his stomach tighten.
If I fall from here… at least I won't have to worry about the 5 a.m. alarm anymore.
He took a step back from the edge.
Then turned toward the cliff wall behind him.
Creeping plants spread across the cracks in the stone, their roots digging stubbornly into the cliffside as though refusing to surrender to gravity. Above him, the top of the cliff vanished behind gray clouds slowly swallowing the alien sky.
Ash stared upward for a long time.
As though, if he waited patiently enough, the cliff would eventually reveal its end to him.
Nothing happened.
Of course it didn't.
He was still trying to figure out how to climb down when the pain struck.
No warning.
No sign.
Like a long nail being driven directly into the inside of his skull.
"Ghk—"
The sound escaped before he could stop it.
His hands immediately flew to his head, fingers digging hard into his dull hair as though he could stop whatever was crawling behind his eyes.
"Agh— shit— what is this—?"
His knees gave out.
His body collapsed onto the rocky ground. He nearly slipped over the edge if not for his hand reflexively grabbing a crack in the stone with panicked desperation while the pain inside his head swelled, like something was being forced into a space far too small to contain it.
He dragged himself away from the cliff.
His back slammed against the stone wall near the cave entrance he had crawled out of earlier.
There he sat curled up, knees pulled against his chest, waiting for the pain to stop.
But it didn't stop.
It worsened.
Every heartbeat carried another wave stronger than the last.
As though invisible hands were slowly prying open his skull and pouring something inside.
"Shit… shit…"
Ash's breathing became ragged. His teeth trembled against each other.
"What the hell is happening to me"
The edges of his consciousness began to tear apart.
Like a sheet of paper slowly burning from the corners.
And amidst the pain—
A voice appeared.
Not a human voice.
Not even a sound that was truly heard.
More like words materializing directly inside his mind with the cold precision of a machine incapable of doubt.
[Subject detected]
[Initializing synchronization program]
[Beginning information input]
[Beginning catalyst formation]
Ash wanted to ask questions.
Wanted to move.
Wanted to do anything other than lie there like a corpse while his head felt ready to split apart from within.
But darkness arrived faster than his will.
And he could do nothing except let it swallow him whole.
[…]
Time passed without him realizing it.
When Ash opened his eyes again, the sky above him had changed.
The two moons that once hung over the horizon had vanished completely. Gray clouds now smothered the sky, extinguishing the strange violet hue that had once seemed almost beautiful.
The world felt different now.
Colder.
Heavier.
More real in a way he did not like.
The pain in his head remained, but only as a faint pulse now, like a wound that had not fully healed.
"What the hell just happened…?"
There was no answer.
Of course there wasn't.
With a body that felt like a rag soaked and wrung out too violently, Ash slowly tried to stand. The movement was anything but graceful — knees first, then one hand against the stone wall, then rising in a way that resembled collapsing ruins stubbornly refusing to fall apart.
And just before he fully straightened—
Something appeared before him.
A screen.
He froze.
The screen floated in the air mere centimeters from his face. Thin as mist, transparent like glass that barely existed, emitting a dim blue glow that made Ash's face look pale within the darkness of the cliffside.
"What the hell is this…?"
He slowly reached out a hand.
His fingers passed straight through the screen without resistance.
No warmth.
No cold.
No texture.
Like trying to touch the reflection of light on water.
Ash pulled his hand back and stared at the writing displayed across the screen.
The language was unfamiliar.
Nothing he had ever seen before. Some symbols looked unnaturally sharp, while others flowed too smoothly, like a script never fully meant for human eyes.
And yet, somehow, he understood it.
Not because he translated it. Not because his brain recognized patterns.
He simply… knew what it meant.
Like suddenly waking in the middle of a dream and realizing he understood something that should have been impossible to comprehend.
"Why can I read this…?"
Agghhh—
Pain stabbed through his head again.
Brief.
Sharp.
Like electricity fired directly into the back of his eyes.
Ash grimaced and grabbed his head.
Then the pain vanished.
And left something behind.
Information.
Fragments of knowledge he had never learned, yet now existed inside his mind as though they had always been there.
"It feels like…" Ash blinked several times. "Some kind of information about this world was forced into my head."
He looked back at the screen.
[Welcome, Valuable Subject]
[You may be experiencing pain in your head. However, do not worry. It is merely a side effect of the extraction process conducted earlier.]
Ash stared at the message for several long seconds.
Do not worry.
"Don't worry my ass."
His voice was flat.
Exhausted.
Yet there was a faint sharpness beneath it.
"You almost killed me."
The screen did not respond.
Instead, new text appeared.
[You possess only one purpose in this world]
[You must ...]
Ash frowned.
The final portion of the sentence began to distort.
The letters twisted into colliding symbols, warping into something broken and unreadable.
"What exactly do you want me to do?"
No answer came.
The symbols continued to glitch until the entire message vanished.
Then one final sentence appeared.
[May you succeed, O Forgotten One.]
Ash fell silent.
Forgotten One.
The words felt far too fitting.
Far too personal.
As though whatever existed behind this screen did not merely know who he was—
But knew what he was.
The screen shifted once again.
This time its appearance became cleaner.
Colder.
More like a report than a message.
[Subject: Ash]
[Catalyst: Below]
[Progression: 0/99 + 0/1]
[Status: Exiled]
[Synchronization: 0.001%]
[Nature: Ashes]
Ash read everything slowly.
Then once again.
None of it made sense.
"Why is every important piece of information always incomplete…?"
Yet his eyes kept returning to three specific sections.
Catalyst: Below.
The lowest position.
Even without fully understanding this world's system, Ash could guess that it was not something good.
Status: Exiled.
Exiled.
From where?
By whom?
Had he been cast into this world?
Then the last one—
Nature: Ashes.
Ashes.
Ash stared at the word for a long moment.
In his old world, someone had abandoned him in front of a church with nothing but a scrap of paper bearing that name.
Ash.
Ashes.
The remains of something completely burned away.
And now, even in this unfamiliar world…
This world saw him the same way.
Ashes.
"I know my name is depressing," he muttered quietly. "But did even another world decide I'm only fit to be a pile of ashes?"
He let out a short laugh.
Dry.
Brief.
Closer to exhaustion than humor.
Then he looked away from the screen.
And the screen vanished as though it had never existed.
Ash exhaled slowly and looked back toward the cliff before him.
The most urgent problem right now was not the strange screen.
Not the distorted words.
Not his status as an exile.
The most urgent problem right now was the fact that he was trapped atop a gigantic cliff with no obvious way down.
His eyes scanned the rock surface carefully.
Left.
Right.
Upward toward a summit that could not be seen.
Then downward.
On the right side of the cliff, hidden behind a large stone outcrop, he spotted thick roots crawling down along the cliff wall.
They did not look reliable.
But they were the only option.
"It's this… or nothing."
He carefully moved toward the right side of the cliff, his worn shoes searching for footholds within cracks wide enough to support him. The wind now struck from the side, pushing his body toward the abyss with deeply unpleasant force.
Ash did not look down.
That became the first rule he immediately set for himself.
Foothold.
Hand moves.
Foot follows.
Slowly, with movements resembling someone desperately refusing to fall rather than someone intentionally climbing, Ash began descending.
Until he reached a point where the next foothold did not exist.
He stopped.
Looked left.
Right.
Nothing.
The crack beneath his feet was too narrow and slippery to continue. Meanwhile, the nearest root was just slightly too far away to reach without taking a risk.
There was only one option left.
Jump.
Ash stared at the roots for several seconds.
"There are only two things I'm hoping for right now," he muttered quietly. "First, I hope those roots are strong enough to hold my weight."
He took a short breath.
"And second… if they aren't, I hope I die instantly when I hit the ground."
Then he jumped.
"Got it!"
His hands successfully grabbed the roots.
For one second, his entire body weight hung there.
One second that felt painfully long.
Then the roots began tearing loose from the rock.
Not merely shaking.
Actually tearing out.
Small cracking noises echoed from the crevice where the roots had embedded themselves for years.
"No, no, no—"
Ash hurriedly shifted his grip to another section, trying to spread out his weight.
Pointless.
Gravity could not be negotiated with.
The roots kept ripping free.
And Ash began sliding downward.
His hands grabbed at anything within reach — jagged stone, thin roots, narrow cracks in the cliff wall.
The skin on his palms tore open immediately from the rough stone.
The pain was sharp and real.
Blood began making his grip slippery.
Then—
His hand slammed against a large protruding rock.
And he grabbed it with all his strength.
His body stopped sliding abruptly.
For several seconds, Ash simply hung there with heavy breathing and bloodied fingers trembling violently.
"Shit… that hurts."
He looked down.
And realized something.
He had already slid far enough from where he started. The ground below no longer looked like a bottomless abyss. It was probably only another ten to twelve meters down.
Still far too high to simply fall safely.
But no longer certain death.
Then his eyes noticed something else.
A small tree grew from the side of the cliff several meters below him. It stood perhaps around three meters tall, with a thin trunk and fragile branches that looked entirely incapable of supporting the weight of a human body.
Ash stared at the tree for a long moment.
"This is a terrible idea."
Slowly, he adjusted his position.
Bent his knees.
Shifted the direction of his fall.
Then released his grip.
Gravity took over.
Ash's body crashed through the branches one after another.
Krek.
Krak.
The branches snapped beneath his weight, but slowed his fall enough to keep him from smashing straight into the ground like a stone.
Then his left foot hit the ground first.
And Ash immediately knew what had happened even before the pain arrived.
Broken.
The bone beneath his knee had snapped.
His body collapsed sideways, shoulder slamming against the hard earth, and he lay there among broken branches and scattered leaves.
Pain pulsed from his left leg in a slow, merciless rhythm.
His torn fingers throbbed alongside it.
Yet Ash simply lay still, staring at the gray sky above him.
His expression was not merely pain.
There was exhaustion there.
An exhaustion that had lived on his face for so long it looked like a natural part of him.
"I got injuries like this several times back when I worked on construction," he muttered quietly between uneven breaths.
Then after a long silence, he added:
"But seriously… what kind of lunatic sends someone to another world right on top of a damn cliff?"
No answer came.
The glowing forest surrounding him remained silent.
Yet the silence here was different from the silence of the city.
Not empty.
Rather, it felt like something was watching from far away and had not yet decided whether he was worth noticing.
And Ash lay there upon that unfamiliar ground — with a broken leg, bleeding fingers, and a head still filled with fragments of information forced into it without permission.
A man who had already died once.
And apparently had not been lucky enough to stay dead.
In a world that did not even know he existed.