Chapter 1 – The One Hundredth Audition
The rain poured over the city like a punishment from the heavens.
From his cracked windowpane, Ravan watched the droplets slide down, merging, splitting, and racing toward the rusted frame. Each one shimmered under the flashes of lightning, like a mocking applause for the sky's performance. It was past midnight, but sleep was the last thing on his mind.
He sat alone in his dim penthouse — though "penthouse" was too fancy a word for what was essentially a small one-room apartment on the building's top floor. The wallpaper was peeling, the ceiling fan rattled, and the faint smell of instant noodles filled the air.
On the creaky table lay his script — its edges wrinkled, its ink smudged, its pages weary from endless rehearsals. Ravan picked it up again, running his thumb over the cover as though it were a sacred relic.
Title: "Winds of Tomorrow."
Role: Supporting Character — Young Detective, Scene 4.
A small role. Barely five minutes of screen time. But he had practiced every line, every pause, every breath.
And yet… they'd rejected him again.
His one hundredth audition.
He let out a short laugh — not out of humor, but disbelief. "Maybe that's it," he muttered, his voice hoarse. "Maybe this is my limit."
He leaned back, staring at the ceiling, replaying his life in flashes.
Orphaned at eight.
Graduated from a government college at twenty.
Working as a delivery boy, waiter, and part-time model between auditions.
He wasn't extraordinary, but he wasn't bad either. He could cry on cue. He could smile through pain. He had emotion — real emotion — the kind that couldn't be faked.
But the industry didn't care about that. They cared about faces that looked like posters, followers that filled feeds, and names that sold tickets.
He rubbed his temples. "I should've quit after the fiftieth one," he whispered. "Why did I think I could change anything?"
Yet even as he said it, he didn't believe it.
Because for him, movies weren't just stories — they were his only friends. They had raised him when no one else did. Through the screen, he had cried with heroes, laughed with fools, and dreamed with lovers he'd never meet.
He didn't want to be famous.
He just wanted to exist — to be seen.
Thunder rumbled outside, shaking the small window. Ravan flinched and glanced toward his outdated television. It was a bulky CRT set, a relic of the past, one of the few things he had bought from a secondhand shop years ago.
He reached for the remote and pressed the power button, but nothing happened. The red standby light stayed off.
"Not again," he groaned, tossing the remote aside. He crouched beside the TV and pressed the switch near the cable port, trying to turn it on manually. One hand on the switch, the other still clutching his script.
Another flash of lightning.
For a split second, everything turned white.
A thunderclap roared — so close it felt like the sky itself had fallen. The bulb above flickered violently, and then—
Snap.
A spark jumped from the switch. A sharp sting ran through Ravan's arm. His body froze mid-motion, the jolt crawling up to his chest like ice. The script in his hand fluttered, the pages catching the storm's light.
He tried to pull away, but his body didn't listen. Pain exploded through him, yet his mind was oddly calm — distant. His vision blurred, colors bleeding into one another. He thought he heard the sound of static, like whispers through a broken radio.
And then silence.
He collapsed to the floor, motionless, the script still tightly clutched in his hand.
Outside, the storm raged on, uncaring.
---
When he opened his eyes, the world felt… wrong.
The air was colder, cleaner. The faint hum of the city was gone. No flickering light from the billboard outside. No distant horns. Only quiet — a quiet so complete it made his heartbeat sound deafening.
He tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy, as though submerged in water. The smell in the air was different — faintly metallic, faintly sweet.
He blinked, trying to adjust his sight.
The first thing he saw wasn't the stained ceiling of his apartment. It was a sky — vast, endless, painted in hues of violet and gold. Strange floating lights drifted through it like fireflies. And beneath him wasn't the hard floor, but soft grass that shimmered faintly under his fingers.
"What… the hell…" he whispered.
His hand twitched. The script was still there — clean, new, not a single crease or smudge. But the title had changed.
Title: "Soul Chronicle: Genesis of Dreams."
He stared, mouth slightly open. His pulse raced as if trying to catch up with what his mind refused to process.
"Is this… a dream?" he murmured.
The pages fluttered on their own, glowing faintly as the wind brushed past. The letters on the cover twisted, reshaping, until they formed new words — ones that made his heart stop.
'Welcome, Ravan. Your audition has been accepted.'
He froze.
The wind howled again, carrying whispers — faint, distant, yet familiar, like the voices of a thousand movie characters calling from the screens of his memories.