I had no reason to live.
Not anymore.
The words weren't a plea for sympathy; they were a simple, cold statement of fact, like observing that the sky was blue or that water was wet. My family—gone. My mother, the only person whose love had ever felt like a shield rather than a cage, had given her life protecting me from a world that seemed determined to crush us. The memory of her final smile, a fragile, beautiful thing in the face of oblivion, still haunted my waking hours and ambushed me in my dreams.
Friends? They were seasonal storms, passing through my life with sound and fury, leaving behind nothing but the quiet debris of forgotten conversations. Names and faces blurred together, a meaningless collage of people who had seen my surface but never bothered to look at the rot beneath. None of them ever stayed long enough to matter.
A girlfriend? I never had the luxury. Affection was something I observed from afar, like a museum artifact: fascinating, unreachable, and never mine to touch. I watched couples in the hallways, their easy laughter and casual touches a language from a foreign land I would never visit.
My life was a quiet tempest of silence and survival, each day bleeding into the next with a monotonous grayness that suffocated the soul. I wasn't truly living—I was simply existing, a ghost haunting the corridors of my own life. I was a machine of flesh and bone, programmed for one purpose: to endure. I held onto a foolish, flickering hope that one day something would change, that I'd finally escape the hellish, spiraling drain of this world. But change never came gently. It came like lightning striking a barren tree.
I didn't expect that change to come so suddenly.
"Kai, you know you're a genius," Vincent said one afternoon, his voice slick with the false camaraderie he reserved for people he wanted something from. He fell into step beside me in the crowded university hallway, his expensive cologne an assault on my senses. "Why don't you let me join you in prep? A study partner maybe?"
I didn't even spare him a glance, my eyes fixed on the cracked linoleum floor. "I don't have time to babysit," I replied coldly. "So don't waste yours. Just f*** off."
"Tch," Vincent frowned, the easy smile faltering for a moment, a flicker of irritation crossing his handsome face before he smoothed it over. "Fine. At least give me your notes, you bastard."
I smirked, a humorless twist of my lips. "I don't have any. I don't need any."
Vincent stared at me in disbelief, his expression a comical mix of outrage and envy. 'Damn this bastard,' I could practically hear him thinking. 'How can a transcendent freak like him exist in the same world as us?' He saw my intelligence as an effortless gift, not the desperate tool it was—the only thing that kept me from sinking completely.
As he walked away in a huff of frustration, he pulled out a small, crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and tossed it toward me. "In case you change your mind, take this."
His voice echoed faintly as he was swallowed by the throng of students. I let the paper flutter to the ground, its purpose as meaningless as everything else. Whatever petty bargain he hoped to strike, I wasn't interested.
Classes were over. My schedule was empty. And my soul felt heavier than ever.
I wandered aimlessly through the college garden, a manicured space of vibrant flowers and sculpted hedges that felt alien to my monochrome existence. I was trying to escape the crushing monotony of my routine when I noticed it… something strange.
A golden light.
It shimmered softly in the air, pulsing like a gentle heartbeat, suspended right in front of me. It was a perfect sphere of impossible warmth, like sunlight captured, condensed, and given form. It didn't cast a glare; it simply was light, pure and absolute.
My eyes widened. My breath caught in my throat.
I'd read enough manga and web novels, devoured enough stories of other worlds to escape my own, to recognize the trope. A mysterious light. A sudden pull. A grand teleportation into a world of magic and adventure. Was this really happening? To me?
"Maybe this is God's way of apologizing," I muttered, a bitter laugh escaping my lips. "Took Him long enough."
But I wasn't naive. This could be a trap, a cruel trick of a dying mind. If this was a trap, there was a very real chance I'd die if I touched it. Not that it mattered. I was already worse than dead, a hollowed-out shell waiting for the tide to wash it away. A body could still breathe, move, and eat, but a soul broken beyond repair? That was worse than any physical wound.
So, without another moment of hesitation, I reached out and touched the light.
The pain was instantaneous and absolute.
It wasn't a burn or a shock. It was a searing, piercing force that stabbed into my chest like a molten blade, then erupted outwards, consuming my entire body. I tried to scream—not aloud, but within the confines of my own mind, as every nerve, every cell, every atom of my being screamed back in a silent chorus of agony. My vision blurred, fracturing into a kaleidoscope of blinding white and suffocating black. My lungs collapsed inward, a vacuum where air used to be. My heart slammed against my ribs like a drum of war.
'Great. Just my luck. I finally get a portal and it's a death sentence.'
Darkness swallowed me whole. A cold, suffocating blanket, like being buried under ten feet of silence.
But when I opened my eyes again, I wasn't dead.
I was… somewhere else.
The world around me shimmered with an endless, radiant golden light, stretching in all directions into an infinite horizon. There were no trees, no sky, no sun. Just a luminous, featureless void—a land of pure light floating in a sea of serene nothingness. A place both eternal and empty.
And I… I wasn't solid.
I looked down at my hands and saw only a translucent, shimmering outline. My body had become faint, ghostlike, a faint echo of the form I once inhabited, barely clinging to the shape of who I once was. My fingers passed through the air like fog, leaving no trace, no warmth.
"What the f***…?" I whispered, my voice shaky and ethereal.
Nearby stood an ornate chair, grand and thronelike, with velvet cushioning and an obsidian frame, as if it belonged to royalty. But when I tried to sit, my hand passed straight through it, the contact sending a strange, tingling numbness through my spectral form.
I was a spirit. A specter. A soul untethered from its mortal coil.
Before I could process the sheer impossibility of my situation, a shadow flickered into existence behind me. I turned, my ghostly form moving with a weightless ease.
A man stood there—tall, graceful, and so impossibly beautiful he seemed less a person and more a sculpture carved by the gods themselves. He looked human… mostly. But his crimson eyes held an ancient, broken sorrow that seemed to suffocate the light around him. His face was a mask of calm, unreadable serenity, but the grief beneath it was a palpable force. His presence filled the void like thunder without sound, a silent, overwhelming power that made my very soul tremble.
Then, he spoke. His voice was smooth, ancient, and resonated with a power that seemed to shake the foundations of this strange reality.
"Finally," he said, a faint, weary smile touching his lips. "I have found a man worthy of changing my fate."
My thoughts ground to a halt. "What?"
The man stepped forward, his crimson eyes glowing faintly as they scanned my ghostly form. "My name is Ashen. Ashen Crimson. And I know you have many questions. Why you're here. What you are now. What your purpose is."
He paused, his smile widening, not with joy, but with the resigned grace of someone who had waited centuries for this single moment.
"But first," he said, "you need to understand who I am."
I blinked, my phantom heart pounding in my ghostly chest.
Whatever this place was, it wasn't Earth. Whatever this man was, he wasn't human.
And whatever was coming next… was going to change everything.