Ash scattered like snow over a lifeless plain. There were no beasts. No plants. No air. Even light itself struggled to remain. This was the Death Continent, a forgotten fragment of the world where reality thinned, and the boundary between existence and oblivion was all but erased.
A sudden tremor disturbed the silence.
Far above the cracked horizon, a dark streak split the sky like a blade. It came crashing down, trailing smoke and red embers—an object thrown with monstrous force, too fast and violent to be natural. It struck the obsidian ground with a thunderclap, gouging a crater into the black soil, spraying shards of molten rock and dust high into the void-lit sky.
Within the crater—a body.
Burned, broken, and still.
Its chest was motionless. Its eyes scorched shut. But more disturbing than the ruin of flesh was the absence within—no soul. It was not death by any ordinary hand. This was something worse. The spirit had not fled—it had been consumed.
And yet, as stillness returned, something deeper awoke.
The shadows twisted. The world dimmed.
Something arrived.
No footsteps marked its coming. No breath disturbed the dust. But every speck of air grew heavy. The horizon itself bent inward. An unknowable presence had entered the continent.
Death.
Not a being with form, but an ancient force, older than gods and unspoken by men. It stood—or perhaps simply observed—the ruined corpse.
And it did not blink.
There were no words. No lament. No anger. Only presence.
> "He is back again
Far away, on a different corner of the world, Rei stood shirtless in the fading morning light, the torn robe of the cultist already discarded. His body, now clad in scavenged gear—leather boots, dark pants, and a weathered jacket—felt more like his own. From the corpses of his attackers, he had taken more than just their lives: he now had a small pouch heavy with coins, a blade in decent condition, and most importantly… clarity.
Rei sat on a boulder, eyes flicking between the coin pouch in his hand and the faint trail of smoke still rising from the ruins behind him. For a moment, he smiled.
"Money…" he muttered to himself, weighing the pouch in his palm. "At least they were useful for something."
His stomach growled—his body still mortal, after all. But his thoughts weren't on food. They were on power. On opportunity. On the raw force he had just tasted.
Earlier, he'd tested his strength by grabbing one of the bodies and idly tossing it aside—only to watch in disbelief as it vanished into the sky like a broken star. The crunch of bone, the boom that followed, and the distant glimmer where the body pierced the clouds had left him stunned. It wasn't just strength. It was monstrous.
"I'm strong," Rei said aloud, voice low. "Undoubtedly strong. But… how strong for this world?"
He didn't know the limits yet. Didn't even know the rules of this place.
But now, he had a plan.
First: get rich. Money meant food, shelter, movement.
Second: get famous. Fame meant safety—or danger—but also information.
Third: climb. Power. Control. Maybe even answers to why he was here.
And last?
He didn't know yet. But something in his bones whispered that the path ahead wouldn't just change him.
It might change the world.
With a final glance at the smoke in the distance, Rei tightened his belt, tucked the pouch into his coat, and started walking—toward the nearest city, toward his first job, and toward the beginning of something far larger than he could yet understand.