The nausea was strange.
It did not surge up from his stomach.
It began somewhere far deeper, at the very bottom of his mind. A sensation like invisible claws tearing at his consciousness from within, then slowly spreading down into his chest before rising toward his mouth.
A sharp, metallic sourness coated his tongue, making Ren feel as if he were being slowly corroded by some unseen acid.
Without hesitation.
His hand immediately slipped into the suitcase beside him and pulled out a small silver-tinted glass vial, the last fragile anchor holding onto the scraps of lucidity remaining in his sparse belongings.
His trembling fingers flipped the cap open.
Ren hurriedly poured several ash-gray tablets into his palm. They rolled there dry and cold, like fragments of stone.
He swallowed them without water.
Bitterness burst instantly in his throat. A chilling sensation spread down his chest, as if a thin sheet of ice had just formed over the poison quietly spreading through his consciousness.
Ren exhaled sharply. His knees buckled.
He collapsed onto the floor, leaning his back against the cold steel frame of the train car, searching for some fragile point of support for a body slowly slipping out of control.
Beneath the wine-colored vest, Ren's chest rose and fell in disordered motion.
Each breath felt like a desperate act of resistance against the darkness slowly closing around him.
It took quite a long time before Ren finally felt his familiar clarity slowly returning.
The nausea subsided, leaving behind a hollow fatigue in his mind.
He raised his head.
Through the thick train window, the black-gray sky stretched silently outside.
Weak moonlight slanted through the glass. Ren shifted slightly, unconsciously avoiding letting that pale light touch his skin.
His gaze swept along the train car.
The passengers' luggage was still there.
Suitcases, bags, coats… everything remained at their owners' seats, untouched.
As if those people had left in terrible haste.
Or worse… they had never been given the chance to come back for them.
The carriage was terrifyingly silent.
At that moment, Ren understood he had only two choices left.
The first choice… was to stay.
Sit quietly in his train car and wait. Wait for someone to appear. Wait for the train to start moving again. Wait for the current situation to be resolved by someone with authority.
The second choice… was to get off the train.
Find the other passengers.
If they were still somewhere nearby, perhaps someone would know what had happened.
But that thought immediately sent a cold shiver down his spine.
The train had stopped right beside the edge of a forest.
A dark forest, shrouded in thick fog.
If he stepped down without thinking, Ren could easily run into wild beasts.
Or worse… other things.
True, ever since the creatures of darkness had been driven out of most human settlements, they had nearly vanished from sight.
But "nearly"… had never meant "completely."
There were always remnants.
Things that existed quietly after the decline of the gods of the new age, those who had once followed in the footsteps of the great gods of the earlier era.
It had been a long time since humanity received any blessings.
Or any answers.
Prayers rose into the sky… only to fall back again in silence.
And within that emptiness, other things had begun to grow.
Even though they had been driven from human lands, even though they now existed mostly in whispered stories and warnings told to children…
Ren knew.
Those stories were not entirely fiction.
Perhaps even now, somewhere out there… in the depths of the forest where no lights reached… they were still quietly hiding.
But staying here might be an even slower and crueler death sentence.
Ren did not know how long this stillness would last.
He had no food. No water.
But the most frightening thing was not material deprivation.
In this suffocating darkness and unnatural silence, the human imagination became the most dangerous weapon against itself.
Ren could feel his mind's frantic urge to fill the empty quiet with phantom sounds, distorted hallucinations.
If he remained here any longer, he would not die from hunger or thirst.
He would die from the collapse of his sanity, when invisible fears began to take shape and step out from the darkest corners of the train car.
Here, silence was not emptiness.
It was an entity gnawing away at the anchor of his reason.
Ren stood before the exit, his eyes reflecting the last pale light inside the carriage.
He smoothed the wrinkles on his wine-colored vest, carefully straightened the collar of his worn white shirt.
A vain gesture in the middle of despair yet it was the final anchor preventing his mind from sinking into chaos.
He slipped on his gray overcoat, its long tails hanging near his heels like broken wings.
Ren took a deep breath, tasting rust and the lingering chill of the sedatives at the back of his throat.
Clop.
Clop.
The sound of leather boots striking the wooden-and-steel floor echoed dryly through the carriage.
Each step Ren took seemed to fall against the reversed ticking of the pocket watch in his coat.
He no longer looked into the darkness with the fear of a victim...but with the cold composure of someone who had already accepted the will he had written for himself.
His hand touched the icy brass door handle.
Beyond this door lay the endless corridor, the silent forest, and entities hungry for the presence of a new "god."
Ren twisted his wrist.
A dry click sounded, marking the end of artificial safety.
Cold fog poured through the opening like invisible tentacles, wrapping around Ren's leather boots the moment he jumped down onto the gray dirt path beside the railway.
Under the pale moonlight, the mist was not white but murky gray—so thick it seemed determined to swallow every trace of light.
Ren could see barely three meters ahead; beyond that was only a threatening, illusory wall.
He stood still, breath held, ears straining to catch the slightest disturbance.
Aside from the wind whistling through the steel seams of the train and the branches clattering together like dry bones, there were no footsteps. No cries for help.
The disappearance of hundreds of passengers in an instant was a paradox that defied common sense.
Confirming no one was nearby, Ren began to move.
His gray coat fluttered with each step, occasionally brushing against dew-soaked weeds beside the tracks.
He headed toward the locomotive, where the massive steel engine lay motionless like a prehistoric beast that had breathed its last.
Ren walked a little farther, his leather boots sinking into soft mud.
Then suddenly, the invisible weight pressing against his chest eased slightly as raw human voices tore through the thick fog.
"Damned pile of scrap metal! I knew we should never trust those lunatic engineers from Berham. Should've taken a carriage instead, at least animals know how to fear a whip, not lie there like a bloody corpse!"
The crude shouting came from ahead, loud and irritable.
"Can you shut that rotten mouth for one second, Tarek?" another voice replied coldly, heavy with exhaustion. "You're inviting the unclean things in this forest to come eat us."
Ren moved closer, his gray coat shifting softly in the wind. He narrowed his eyes, making out two figures standing beside a freight car.
One was swinging his thick arms like a bear; the other leaned against the train, idly fiddling with something sharp.
"Marko, you think you can survive betraying the guild and still keep that noble look on your face?" Tarek growled, stepping right up to the other man.
"The boss didn't send me here for sightseeing. You should be grateful this 'steam machine' went on strike, otherwise your blood would already be mixed with Berham engine oil."
The crunch of Ren's leather boots on dry gravel announced his presence.
Tarek immediately spun around, his large hand settling on the hilt of a dagger strapped across his waist.
But when he saw the slender figure beneath the gray coat and the calm eyes of the young man, he did not attack immediately. Instead, a malicious smirk spread across his face.
"Oh, look what we have here…" Tarek said, his voice hoarse like rusted metal grinding together. He spat on the ground and looked Ren up and down.
"A little gentleman lost in the junkyard of those Berham engineers, eh? Look at that coat and vest. Let me guess....you're waiting for a hot cup of tea and a servant to escort you back to Rondon, right?"
Tarek stepped forward deliberately, using his massive frame to crowd Ren's space. His tone dripped with contempt for the upper class.
"Well then, Lord 'Duke' or 'Prince' or whatever, you've got some bad news. Out here in this foggy hole, noble blood won't stop monsters from chewing on your bones.
And look at you… pale as a corpse just dragged out of the grave. At this rate you might not even live long enough to see the gates of Rondon by sunrise."
Marko, who had been leaning against the train the whole time, narrowed his eyes slightly at Ren.
Unlike Tarek's crude hostility, Marko seemed to notice something wrong in the young man's unnervingly calm composure.