A fan turned slowly, its worn blades slicing through the stale air of the dim room. The walls were faded blue, cracked in places, bearing the weight of years long forgotten. A bed stood in the center, where a lone figure lay motionless. A desk sat nearby, topped with a flickering lamp, its weak glow the only light fighting back the shadows. An empty chair beside it was thick with dust and spiderwebs, unused for who knows how long. Heavy curtains blocked the window, sealing off the outside world.
Yu Siwang lay on the bed. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, gray and lifeless, like a faded photograph. His cheeks were sunken, his skin pale and drawn tight, as though his body was slowly giving up. His lips, cracked and dry, didn't move. His once-black hair had faded to dull white — a silent record of time and suffering.
He didn't move. Didn't react. Didn't think.Not really.
Inside, there was nothing. No pain, no anger, no hope, no fear. Just a hollow absence — like a machine running without purpose or feeling. Yu Siwang existed in a void, untouched by anything beyond the room's dim light and stale air.
The fan kept turning. The silence held steady.
And he remained, motionless.
As time passed, something stirred.
Yu Siwang slowly sat up. His movements were mechanical, like old gears grinding back to life after years of stillness. He wore a loose black shirt, wrinkled and faded, and white baggy joggers that clung to his thin frame. His bare feet touched the cold floor with a quiet tap.
He stood.
The fan behind him turned still, as if sensing the shift.
Step by step, he made his way to the door. His hand, thin and veined, reached for the handle. For a second, it hesitated there—then twisted. The old door creaked open, and a sliver of white, sterile light bled into the darkness behind him, slicing the gloom like a blade.
He stepped out.
A massive hallway stretched before him — wide, polished, soulless. The walls were silver and smooth, humming faintly with power beneath the surface. Tubes ran along the ceiling, pulsing with a dim blue light, like veins of a sleeping beast. The floor was immaculate, too clean, like it had never been touched by life.
Yu turned left.
He walked in silence, his footsteps echoing faintly, like whispers in a tomb. The corridor seemed to breathe with him, in sync. The air was thick with antiseptic and something else — something metallic and cold.
He stopped before a tall steel door.
He stared.
His face was unreadable, but something twitched beneath the surface. Not sadness. Not fear. Something older. His expression remained still, yet his face betrayed him in quiet ways: the slight furrow between his brows, the way his jaw locked tight. The hollowness of his stare.
He reached out again.
His fingers hovered over the handle, trembling faintly. This time, he took longer. Then—click—he twisted it open.
The door hissed. Light spilled out.
And inside...
A vast chamber stretched endlessly forward, swallowed by shadows. Rows upon rows of towering tanks filled the space — glass-like containers of thick, luminous blue fluid. Suspended inside were children.
Dozens. Hundreds. More.
Each child floated, their eyes closed, bubbles rising around them in slow, sorrowful rhythms. Cables ran from the backs of their skulls, plugged directly into the walls behind the tanks. Suits — dark, skin-tight, marked with glowing symbols — clung to their bodies, monitoring every breath, every heartbeat, every flicker of brain activity.
Each one different.Each one utterly still.Each one... like him.
Ascendents.
The word echoed in his mind, hollow and sharp like a knife scraping glass. It wasn't pride. It wasn't sorrow. Just recognition — like reading the label of a species in a lab report.
He stepped inside. The door shut behind him.
The soft hum of machinery filled the chamber. Lights blinked in rhythm, giving the room an artificial heartbeat.
Behind him, footsteps echoed like hammers against the sterile floor. Sharp. Measured. Heavy.
Two men in black uniforms appeared from the shadows — tall, broad-shouldered, faces hidden behind expressionless visors. One of them didn't hesitate. With a savage motion, his boot slammed into Yu Siwang's back.
Crack.
Yu collapsed, his face smacking the cold floor. The impact echoed through the chamber, sharp and final, like a verdict.
He didn't scream.But his body shook.
He lay there for a moment, cheek pressed to the steel, his white hair falling across lifeless eyes. His chest rose slowly, the air catching in his throat. Pain twisted through his ribs, sharp and deep, but the pain was an old friend. Familiar. Meaningless.
Still, something inside his face changed — barely. The faintest flicker of fear. Not for the kick. Not for the pain.
But for what came next.
"You're late, you fucking piece of shit!"
The shout cracked through the still air like a whip. One of the guards stepped forward, voice soaked in venom and rage.
"We told you all to be here by 9 A.M. You want your fucking head blown off, huh?!"
He pressed a pistol to Yu's temple, the metal cold, the gesture casual — like swatting a fly.
Still, Yu didn't speak.
His limbs twitched. Not defiance. Just instinct — the body trying to rise even when the mind had already surrendered.
The guard sneered. "Fucking useless trash..."
Yu slowly pushed himself off the floor. Blood smeared faintly from his lip. His knees trembled beneath him, but he stood.
He faced the room again — the tanks, the lights, the endless rows of sleeping children — and he said nothing.
Not because he couldn't.But because there was nothing left to say.
Then, a voice — smooth, genderless, synthetic — echoed from unseen speakers hidden in the walls, a sound that blanketed the chamber in sterile command:
"Yu Siwang. Rank: 113432. Power Classification: F. You are assigned to enter the Dream World for the purpose of resource extraction.Survival is not guaranteed. Contestation will be met with immediate termination.You have thirty seconds to comply."
The blue light in the room dimmed, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
Yu didn't move right away.
He looked forward, past the tanks, past the guards, past everything — as if seeing something no one else could.
The Dream World.
That's what they called it. That's what they sold to the public.
They said the children went there to protect humanity. To gather vital resources. To fight back The End — the creeping collapse of time and space, of memory and meaning.
But that was just the story. The lie.
The truth?
This was a harvest.
The Dream World wasn't a mission. It was an engine — and children were its fuel.
The guards didn't need to speak. They grabbed him roughly by the arms, dragging his thin frame toward the nearest tank — one slightly apart from the others, rimmed in red lights. Designated for low-tier entries.
Yu didn't resist.
His eyes barely moved as they threw him into a medical chair, bolted to the ground in front of the tank. Cold metal restraints clamped over his wrists and ankles with hydraulic clicks. A machine descended from above — insect-like, covered in needles and wires.
He didn't flinch.
One of the guards leaned in, muttering more to himself than to Yu, "You F-ranks never last long. Don't make a mess inside."
He didn't scream as the machine arms descended from the ceiling with a hiss. They gripped him — too many arms, too cold — and tore his clothes off in one fluid motion, like stripping a doll. His shirt fell to the ground in tatters. His pants were gone the next second.
He stood naked and shivering in the sterile light.
Then the vest came.
A thick, thigh-tight exosuit dropped from the machine like a dead weight. Black and slick, it looked like a parasite ready to latch on. The arms lifted him by the limbs, hanging like meat. The vest was slammed onto his chest, buckled violently around his torso. Clamps dug into his thighs, locking around the muscle.
He didn't resist. He didn't even blink.
Cables — thick, snake-like — slid toward him.
One by one, they drilled into his skin. One behind the neck. One through the spine. Others curled around his arms and chest like feeding tubes. Blood dripped from the points of entry, and still he made no sound.
The tank opened.
The tank behind him hissed, its blue liquid glowing faintly as the hatch slid open with a wet groan. The restraints released all at once, and with a sudden, almost lazy shove, they pushed him in.
Yu floated weightless for a moment before the thick liquid enveloped him.
It was warm.Too warm.Almost like a womb — or a grave.
The cables pulled at him, locking him in place mid-suspension. Tiny oxygen tubes wrapped around his mouth and nose, pumping something sweet and synthetic into his lungs.
His limbs went numb.
The world around him blurred. The lights above fractured into shifting shapes, then darkness. His heart slowed, slowed… slowed…
And then,he fell.
Not physically — but deeper. Somewhere below thought. Below memory. Below self.
Through layers of noise and color and shadow, his mind sank into the digital abyss known only as:
The Dream World.
Behind him, in the waking realm, the tank sealed shut with a dull clunk.
A red light began to blink on its surface.
Subject 113432: Active.
The guards walked away. Just another shift. Just another entry.
And in the sea of glowing tanks,another child began to drown.