In a dimly lit room, numerous bookshelves are visible. One book on a shelf began to shake slightly and continued until it fell to the ground, where the shaking finally stopped. The book slammed on the ground and opened to its middle page.
Everything is eerily quiet.
Then out of nowhere, text began to form on the left page of the book out of thin air. It looked like an invisible ghost was writing it. The text read
[ Initialising.
Host signal detected.
Locating administrative core.
Administrative core confirmed.
Binding sequence engaged.
Host integrity: compromised. Stabilisation required.
Seal engaged.
Initiating phase 2
Standing by.
]
In a faraway land across time,
One small wooden house stood weakly inside what looked like an ancient meteorite crater. The crater was so old that over the thousands of years of rain and climate change, it had turned green with grass, water streams, and trees. Water had gathered in the middle, but the land in the center was elevated enough that the water only gathered around it like a ring. The sky was as blue as the ocean with white clouds roaming it like whales. The whole center looked like a dream. That is because it was a dream.
Just outside the house, a child is sitting on his mother's lap. They were both seated on the grass, with the mother holding an open book in her hand in front of the child. The mother wore a scarf around her head and a long cloth with long sleeves. Nothing was visible except her hands and face. The boy wore ordinary handmade clothes. Neither the mother's nor the child's faces could be seen. They were blurry like fog. As if whoever was dreaming could not see them.
The child was laughing while the mother spoke to him. However, the dreamer could hear nothing but the wind.
The mother began to read the book to her child. Once again, the dreamer couldn't hear anything. Except for a few words.
"In The Name Of God, The Most Merciful"
Her voice echoed through the land like the voice of a bird. The scene turned warm with light and slowly vanished.
In another dimly lit room of a certain house in a certain city.
A boy dressed in tattered clothes lies flat on the floor, resembling a lifeless body. His eyes are wide open and unblinking, as if he witnessed something horrifying just before his demise. His mouth is slightly ajar, suggesting he might have died in a scream. Beneath him on the floor are strange letters resembling equations, scratched into the surface. The boy is bleeding from his wrist and abdomen, and the blood has soaked the entire floor like a crime scene.
The boy looked to be in his 20s, with fairly good-looking facial features and black hair. Out of nowhere, his body jerked up, and he gasped for air. His heart pounded loudly.
"What! What! What!."
"How am I alive? I thought I died in that cell!"
The boy felt a tingling pain in his wrist. He glanced at it and saw his open wrist, and blood was pouring out of his veins.
"Agh!" he screamed as he felt the pain increasing at a rapid speed.
He quickly grabbed a piece of clothing nearby and tightly pressed it on his wrist to stop the bleeding. The bleeding slowed down, and the boy let out a sigh. He glanced at the blood flowing near his feet and saw his reflection.
"Wait!"
He blinked a few times as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"Who am I?"
"This is not my body. I am in a different body. Did I transmigrate?"
The boy noticed something odd; his surroundings felt unnatural. He saw a wooden window; the crimson glow of the moon peeked out of it. With careful hands, he opened it, and a gust of wind blew in, causing his hair to flow in a gentle motion. With widened eyes, he looked outside.
A completely different world
He saw a wide city. Its homes were made out of bricks and wood. Certain parts of the city had buildings made out of concrete. It was nighttime. The red glow of the moon cast its soft red light on the city.
There weren't many pedestrians. Only a few carried a gasoline-fueled hurricane. The city looked completely unfamiliar to the boy as he watched with wide eyes. He turned his attention back to his body. He was bleeding from several places. His abdomen, wrist, and head. His whole body was bruised as if he survived a warzone.
Strangely, there wasn't even the slightest hint of panic on his face. He looked calm. Almost too calm. Then he began to recall something. He recalled how he starved to death in a certain cell. He recalled his mother's terrible, humiliated form. Just the sheer remembrance of it sent blood rushing to his brain in anger. He snapped back to reality.
"...Jasper," he whispered as if suppressing a mountain of hatred.
"That was your name. I won't forget it. I will return and find you, and I will definitely kill you. Not just you; I will slaughter every last one of those vampires. Until my feet are soaked in their blood, I won't stop," he said with great conviction. As if making a vow to himself.
This boy was without a doubt…Shin Nomiya.
But suddenly he felt a tinge of extreme pain in his head. He shook and grabbed the chair for support. His other hand pressed on his head like he was trying to suppress the pain. He first thought it was because of the wound on his head, but out of nowhere he began to have visions. Blurred and distorted visions. Visions of screams, death, and terror. Visions of places he had never seen before. He felt as if he was being teleported to random places on Earth instantaneously. He also began to hear words and whispers of people. One whisper, two whispers, three, four. The whispers became louder and louder and inaudible. Eventually, it just started to sound like a pain striking mush of loud noises. The kind you would hear when you slide a plate on a tile slowly. He felt like he was going crazy as he began to tremble and start wobbling around the room. He grabbed his head with both of his hands.
"Shut up," he whispered angrily.
"Shut up," he whispered again, but the voices kept on rising.
"I said…SHUT UUUUUUUP!" He screamed at the top of his lungs as he smashed his head on the wall. Blood squirted out, but the vision and whispers stopped. He came back to his senses.
Shin quickly started to look through drawers and cabinets to find something. Something he could use to stop his bleeding. He found a few clothes in the cabinet and began to tend to himself. He struggled as his body was losing strength every minute.
He successfully stopped the bleeding on most of his wounds. But he was already very tired. He sat on the ground to rest as he took slow and steady breaths.
"Alright. First of all, I need to figure out where I am and who I am," he whispered to himself. The night was slowly coming to an end. Shin could see the sky turning bright in the Far East. He decided it would be best to wait for sunrise. In the meantime, he searched the room for any clues.
He noticed that the clothes in the cabinet and the shoes in the corner were both not his size. Furthermore, he found a few documents and diaries, both of which didn't seem to belong to him. The diary belonged to a man named Christopher Martinez.
Shin could not recognise that name at all. His eyes fell on the strange altar. It was carved in the ground using something sharp. A small bloodstained knife was beside the altar.
That's probably the weapon this boy used to carve the altar. If he is the one who carved it, that knife might also be the reason for these wounds…Shin thought as he pressed against the wound in his wrist.
Especially this wound on my wrist. I am not sure if the boy cut himself or if someone else is behind this. If it is the later than that would mean someone is after my life. This isn't looking good.
He concluded.
"In any case, if someone were to walk in right now and saw this bloody scene, they would probably think I am performing some kind of demonic ritual. I need to clean up this mess"
Shin muttered to himself as he quickly tidied the room. He cleaned the blood off the floor with one of the jackets in the cabinet. Then he found the bathroom and washed off the jacket in the basin. All the blood went down, leaving no traces. The last thing left to do now is to take care of the carved altar.
He was very confused as to what he should do. There was no way to completely erase the carvings, so the best he could do was make it look less obvious. He picked up the knife, pressed it inside the gaps of the carved planks, and put force on the knife sideways. The knife was surprisingly sturdy. The planks were pulled out on my one. Exactly 5 planks were pulled out. Then he took off the nails, flipped the planks the other way around, and placed them back in their place and nailed them in place using the knife's bottom as a hammer. Now the carvings are perfectly hidden. Although the ground looked slightly weird because the backside of the planks was less dark than the surrounding ones, this was manageable.
By now, the sun had risen. The bustling gossip and footsteps of people could now be heard from the streets below.
Shin peeked carefully through the window and saw the bustling town below. Their clothing was not so different from his previous world, but the people were speaking a language he did not understand. This made him a little bit nervous to go down.
But something on his mind was telling him that staying any longer could be problematic. Besides, he needed to quickly see a doctor, as his wounds were only temporarily closed. But there was also another concern.
If I see a doctor in this state, I will surely be asked how I received these injuries. What will I say then? These injuries make it pretty clear that I was attacked. The doctors will know instantly. What if they call the cops on me? I am not very comfortable seeing cops in an unknown city. It sounds like trouble to me…He thought.
Knock!
"Shalven-kroft!"
The sound of a man. He said loudly, as if announcing something.
Shin immediately got alert.
He grabbed a cloth and covered his face in such a way that only his eyes were visible. Then he slowly approached the door and pressed himself beside it like a ninja.
Knock!
"Shalven-kroft!"
The man shouted again.
Shin carefully unlocked the door but didn't open it. He waited for the man to walk in.
"Vel draftn?. Tavel skaf-tunok-ve?"
The man slowly walked inside as he said that. He wore a brown shirt and rusty pants. He looked a few years older than Shin. He had a newsboy hat and a newsboy bag to his left side. He was looking around the room to see if anyone was inside.
"Vel draftn?"
He said again. Shin could not understand the language. This made him even more cautious.
Shin jumped at the boy from behind and quickly held him in place almost like a military soldier. The boy tried to scream for help, "Forsh— tavel tekar?! Vanen sheftak!" but Shin quickly pressed his knife to the boy's throat.
"Shh…be quiet. I just want to ask you some questions. Then I will let you go. Don't force me to silence you for good"
The boy became frightened and shut his mouth. He got scared and began to whimper.
"Va skarnva…Vanen khosheftak"
His plea was like a plea of a deer in the palm of a tiger. From the looks of it, the boy didn't understand Shin's language either.
Urgh…how do I do this? I can't understand a thing this guy is saying. I need to find a way to communicate with him.
Shin was in a dilemma. Then suddenly, he heard a long, high-pitched buzzing sound in his ear. The same one he heard a few moments ago. Then the whispers came back, and his head started to hurt again.
urgh! Not Now!
Shin anticipated the worst, but fortunately, the whispers and the buzzing sound quickly died down again, and the boy's pleading voice could be heard again.
"Vanen khosheftak!"
But this time, Shin strangely found the words to be very familiar
"I-nen kho-Kill-ak!"
The boy pleaded again, and the words began to sound more and more familiar, to the point where Shin started to understand the meaning of a few words.
The boy became teary-eyed as he pleaded
"I-me-dont-Kill-please!"
And finally…
"Please Don't Kill me!" Shin fully understood his language. Almost miraculously.
Then Shin said a little bit hesitantly,
"Forsh tekva drafken?"
(What is your name?)
Shin spoke their language, but to Shin, it didn't feel like his first time.
The boy said hesitantly, "J-Justin, my name is Justin"
Shin's grip on him tightened, and he smirked.
"Now then, Justin, why are you here?"
"I came here to deliver the newspaper. I am just a newsboy," the boy fumbled his words.
"Ho, newsboy, you say? Do you know the name of the person who lives in this apartment?" Shin already had a hunch that this boy wasn't a threat by looking at the boy's clothes and weak body. But he couldn't take any chances.
"I don't, sir. Today is my first day at work, so I have never seen the face of the person you are asking me about. We newsboys deliver newspapers, reading the building and apartment number given by the customer at the newspaper office during the registration process"
By now, Justin had become super submissive. All he cared for was getting out of here alive.
Shin asked another question: "What is the name of this city and what year are we in right now?"
Justin was taken aback by the barrage of different types of questions, but he answered anyway: "This city is called "Riven" and count 605, 17th Jolie"
Shin memorised the information. By this time, his wounds started to get worse.
"Next question: Do you know any illegal doctors around here? If so, then give me the address"
Justin thought for a bit, as if recalling; he then said hesitantly
"57th Street East alley, building no. 4, flat 102. An old man has a clinic there, but why are you looking for illegal doctors?
"You don't need to know that"
Now that I have all the things I needed to know, should I let this kid go? It would be problematic if he went to the cops. Plus, he has already seen my face. But I also don't want to kill him…Shin thought.
He pressed the sharp point of the knife inches away from Justin's eyeball and said in a cold and threatening tone.
"Listen, Justin, I am going to let you go now. If you tell anyone about anything that happened in this room after you leave…well, let's just say I will make you the headline of the news tomorrow"
With that, Shin let Justin go and stood up. Justin was shaking with fear. He trembled as he stood up as well. His eyes lowered, and his shoulders slumped like a fearful puppy.
"I-I promise I won't do anything." he took a step back. Then another, and then another towards the door. With all his might, he dashed out of the room and disappeared into the distance.
I don't know what the best option there was, but I am too tired to think. I need to hurry before I die a second time, Shin thought.