The world around him was still.
Only the echo of his heartbeat filled the void slow, uneven, fading. Then, through the silence, a voice cut in.
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
It spoke with the calm authority of something beyond human.
"Are you willing to throw away everything you worked for?"
The words hit like iron — deliberate, measured.
"Because you were betrayed… or is it that your team died for nothing?"
A pause. The air trembled, heavy with unspoken truth.
"I can give you a chance to become stronger," the voice continued, low and resolute. "But I must warn you— the life that comes after this is only the beginning."
The darkness around him seemed to breathe. A faint shimmer of light formed somewhere in the void, beckoning.
"Do you accept my proposal," the voice asked, "or decline it? The choice is yours."
As the light swallowed everything
His eyelids fluttered.
A sliver of light pierced the darkness — just enough to form the outline of a blurred figure standing over him. The world swam in and out of focus, shapes melting into shadow. A faint rustle. A slow inhale. Blink.
The light sharpened.
A wooden ceiling came into view, the faint scent of dust and sunlight hanging in the air. Beyond it, a window framed the morning — pale beams spilling across the floorboards, drawing soft lines across the room. The warmth of it contrasted sharply against the dull ache crawling through his body.
"Haa…" he exhaled, the sound a dry, rasping thing that scraped his throat.
Someone stood by the window.
Dark hair. Cold eyes. A muted green scarf draped around his neck. His arms were crossed, posture steady, voice low but cutting through the silence
"Ohhh, you're awake."
The voice was young, male, and laced with a casual air that felt entirely out of place. Shiro turned his head, a fresh wave of soreness washing over his neck and shoulders. A boy, perhaps a year or two his senior, was slouched in a simple wooden chair by the hearth, his form silhouetted by the firelight. He seemed utterly at ease.
Pushing himself up onto his elbows sent a jolt of protest through his core muscles. He winced. "Ahh…"
"You know you're lucky that you survived the wilderness with those wounds you have," the boy stated. His tone was a peculiar blend of genuine amusement and blunt, unvarnished honesty.
Shiro's mind, still clouded and slow, clawed for the most fundamental anchor. "Where am I?"
The boy let out a short, incredulous laugh. "Really? That's the first question you have? You should be thanking me for saving you."
A flicker of familiar annoyance cut through the haze of his pain. "Ain't you gonna introduce yourself?"
The answer was not verbal. It was a blur of motion. One moment the boy was lounging; the next, his fist had shot out, connecting with perfect, painful precision with the bruised flesh of Shiro's stomach.
POW.
"Ahhh—!" Shiro wheezed, the air driven from his lungs. He curled inward on the bed, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and betrayal. It wasn't a strike meant to maim, but it was impeccably aimed to remind him of his current, profound fragility.
Later, after a fitful rest, Shiro leaned heavily against the cabin's doorframe, his body protesting every movement. He stepped outside, the air cool and clean in his lungs. He looked up, and his breath hitched in his throat.
The sky was a vast, deep blue, clear and endless. But hanging within it, defying all logic, were two moons. They were pale and luminous, their surfaces clearly visible even in the daylight. One was large, its face a familiar, cratered landscape, while the other was smaller, smoother, and alien. They hung there, silent and immutable, twin sovereigns of this impossible sky.
"How is this possible...? The sky... it has two moons..." he whispered, the sheer, staggering reality of his displacement finally crashing down upon him.
"It was always like that," Rael said, his voice devoid of any wonder. He was crouched by a small, cleverly built fire, turning a spit on which roasted a large, unidentifiable bird. He didn't even bother to glance upward.
Shiro's mind reeled, scrambling for purchase. Nah, this can't be one of those novels where a person gets sent to another world to escape from reality or something…
"Name's Rael, by the way," the boy said, his attention still fixed on his cooking.
"Shiro," he replied, the response automatic. "Wait… where are we, exactly?"
"We're in Aetheln. A place within the Wilderness Territory." Rael finally stood, brushing the dirt from his hands. His playful demeanor faded, replaced by a gravity that seemed more fitting for the wild landscape around them.
"Why in the world would you live in a place like this?" Shiro asked, gesturing vaguely at the untamed forest and jagged peaks. "Just another question—how did you get me here if that place was far?"
"Ohhh," Rael said, a look of exaggerated innocence crossing his features. As if on cue, a small, shimmering image—a chibi-style phantasm—popped into the air beside him. It depicted a comically struggling Rael, dragging an unconscious Shiro through a dense thicket, getting snagged by branches, and unceremoniously dropping him every few paces.
"Well, that's not important," Rael continued, waving a hand to dismiss the vision. "The important thing is that you need to heal your wounds if you want to survive."
The night was long and haunted.
[NIGHTMARE SEQUENCE]
Shiro's sleep was not restful. It was a descent into a hellscape of memory, rendered in stark monochrome, punctuated only by violent flares of purple light.
He saw it again—the Humanoid of Calamity, a being of pure, devouring energy, its form twisting reality around it. He heard the silent, psychic roar that preceded the annihilation. He felt the searing heat as Lloyd, his hair bleaching white with the strain of his final, ultimate technique, sacrificed everything. He watched, helpless, as Misuzu was erased from existence, her determined charge ending in a blink of purple light. And finally, he saw them—the Betrayers, their faces obscured by shadow, their weapons raised not against the monster, but against him. A spear of light, cold and precise, lancing toward his heart—
He jolted awake, a cold sweat drenching his body, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The pale, dual light of the twin moons streamed through the cabin's single window, painting the room in an eerie, silver glow.
With the first hint of dawn lightening the sky, Shiro's resolve hardened into a single, desperate point. He could not stay. He scribbled a brief note of thanks for Rael, who still slept soundly, and slipped out into the dewy quiet of the morning.
For hours he trekked, driven by a restless need to move, to find some sign, some way back. His path eventually crossed with a group of rugged adventurers, their armor scarred and practical. They were huddled around a strange sight: a shimmering, vertical crack in the air itself, from which faint emerald light pulsed.
"Hey, kid! You look lost," their leader, a man with a jagged scar across his brow, called out. "We could use an extra hand. This rift's unstable, spitting out Emeralds of Aetheln! Help us collect them, we'll give you a cut and point you toward the nearest town."
Desperate for any direction, Shiro, against his better judgment, agreed. But the moment the first glowing green crystal floated through the tear in reality, the adventurers' demeanor shifted. One of them snatched the emerald, while another shoved Shiro hard in the back, sending him stumbling toward the dimensional crack sending him to a place like a forest.
"Thanks for the bait, sucker!" the leader laughed, a cruel, sharp sound. "The energy from these emeralds drives the Stone-Claw Bears into a frenzy! You keep them busy while we make our exit!"
They melted into the tree line with practiced speed, their laughter echoing behind them. As they get out of the dimensional crack before being trapped inside leaving Shiro and other guild member yu .low, ground-trembling growl answered almost immediately. From the surrounding forest, a pack of the monstrous bears emerged, their eyes burning with a feral red light, drawn inexorably to the rift's energy—and to Shiro, who now stood directly in its path.
His body screamed at him to run. Adrenaline, that old, familiar fuel, flooded his veins. He sprinted, the bears teleporting in flashes of motion, their claws tearing at the air inches from his heels. It was just like before—the helplessness, the flight.
But as he ran, the faces from his nightmare flashed before his eyes—Lloyd's sacrifice, Misuzu's end, the cold betrayal. The memory of running from the Calamity, only to be struck down. The shame of being a pawn, a piece to be used and discarded.
No more.
He skidded to a halt on the loose scree, his boots scattering stones. He turned, his chest heaving, to face the closing pack. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and with a surge of will, a faint, sputtering flame—a pale echo of his former power—ignited around them.
"I can't let my past failures bend my destiny... not again!" he growled, the words a vow to himself.
This time, he did not wait for their attack. He launched himself forward, meeting their charge with his own. He moved not with overwhelming power, but with a desperate, focused precision. He ducked under a sweeping claw, driving a fiery punch into a beast's jaw. He sidestepped a teleporting lunge, using the creature's momentum to send it crashing into a tree. One by one, he cut them down, his movements becoming sharper, more fluid with each passing second, a dance of survival and burgeoning defiance.
He did not stop. He fought his way up the rocky slope, a trail of defeated and dazed beasts behind him, his breath pluming in the rapidly cooling air. He pushed on, driven by a need to conquer the mountain, to stand at its peak, until he finally crested the ridge.
There, waiting for him, silhouetted against a sky that had begun to release a fine, cold drizzle, was the Alpha. It was a titan among its kind, its fur like plates of dark iron, its eyes burning with a deep, intelligent crimson aura. It opened its maw and roared, a sound of pure, primal challenge that vibrated through the stone beneath Shiro's feet and the very marrow of his bones.
The rain began to fall in earnest, plastering Shiro's hair to his forehead and mixing with the sweat and grime on his face. He stood his ground, his fists still clenched, the flickering aura around them growing just a little brighter,as multiple laser bears approach him with blood lust.
This time, he would not run.