"GET UP, YOU LITTLE BRAT! DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?! GET DRESSED AND GO TO SCHOOL! KEEP THIS UP AND NO ONE IN THIS DAMN WORLD WILL EVER WANT YOU!"
The hoarse shout, raspy with age and simulated irritation, vibrated through the floorboards of the old house.
But the boy had been awake for hours.
Truong Long sat paralyzed on his mattress, his spine pressed against the frigid wall. In his trembling hand, his phone looped the same recording. His grandfather's voice—a haunting, painful tether to a world that no longer existed. Every time the audio reset, Long felt a phantom hand squeeze his heart until it bruised.
Silent tears traced cold paths down his hollow cheeks.
"Grandpa… Grandpa… please…"
His voice was a jagged fragment, lost between the sobs he had stifled for a year. The wound of loss hadn't scabbed over; it remained raw, bleeding at the slightest memory.
At fifteen, Long was a ghost of a boy. Thin, frail, with a nest of unkempt hair and skin the color of parched parchment. In a world of billions, his grandfather, Mr. Nam, had been his sole anchor. His parents were shadows—a mother who viewed him as a mistake and a father he was forbidden to meet. Why? The question had always been a locked door in his mind, and Long had been too afraid to knock.
That sanctuary of a life had shattered on his fourteenth birthday.
Rain had lashed the farmhouse that night, thunder tearing the sky apart like a wounded beast. Long had been waiting, swinging his legs in giddy anticipation for his birthday cake. Beside him sat Liam—his shadow, his protector, his "brother."
Liam was an anomaly. Born with albinism, his snow-white hair and translucent skin gave him a chilling, ethereal beauty. His eyes were deep wells of ice, and he moved with a refined grace that suggested he belonged to a higher echelon of existence. He had been Long's inseparable companion since age seven—the iron to Long's glass.
Then, the door burst open.
A flash of lightning illuminated a nightmare. Mr. Nam stood in the doorway, his silhouette swaying. He wasn't carrying a cake. He was drenched—not just in rain, but in thick, crimson blood.
"Grandpa!" Long lunged forward, his hands hovering in a panicked dance, terrified that a single touch would break the man further. "I… I have to call an ambulance…"
"I already did," Liam's voice cut through the chaos, unnervingly steady. "Help Mr. Nam sit down. Get the kit."
Mr. Nam raised a leaden hand, a faint, tragic smile ghosting his lips.
"No need… children."
He leaned his weight onto Long's shoulder. His touch was unnaturally, deathly cold.
"I'm sorry. From now on… I cannot shield you anymore." He coughed, blood flecking his chin. "You are my pride, Long. And you too, Liam… I cared for you both."
His strength was hemorrhaging. "It's my fault… I was a soldier… I was…" He hesitated, a shadow of deep shame flickering in his dying eyes. "I didn't have enough resolve. Now, you both must suffer for my sins."
"Grandpa, stop! Don't say that!" Long's world was dissolving into salt and grief.
With his final ounce of will, Mr. Nam lifted a mangled box. A birthday cake, ruined and stained.
"Happy birthday, Long." He turned his fading gaze to Liam. "Take care of him… for me."
The light left his eyes. His body hit the floor with a finality that echoed louder than the thunder.
Long's scream was swallowed by the storm. Liam stood frozen, his jaw locked so tight the bone nearly cracked. Suddenly, Liam's fist slammed into the wooden door, the heavy oak splintering under a force no fourteen-year-old should possess.
"Damn it…"
The investigation was a farce. A pre-written will, no struggle, no suspects. Suicide, they called it.
Long became a hermit, carving himself out of the world. The school pleaded for his return. Liam did not. Liam became a stranger—cold, distant, and eventually, a tormentor. The "brother" who once stood in front of Long now led the pack that hunted him.
Indifference from teachers, whispers in the halls, the crushing weight of a promise to become a doctor—it all collapsed.
"If the world doesn't need me… why do I exist?"
Summer arrived, sweltering and hollow.
Long turned off the recording and stood up. His legs felt like lead. The house was a museum of ghosts—the tractor where they ate ice cream, the shed where his grandfather carved wooden swords. He wanted to weep, but he was a well run dry.
He lit a single incense stick.
"Please… let me follow you."
The rope was a rough noose. The chair tumbled.
As his lungs burned and his vision narrowed to a pinprick of black, his grandfather's voice roared in his mind: "YOU DAMN BRAT!"
The rope snapped.
Long crashed to the floor, gasping, clawing at his throat like a drowning man. He looked up at the portrait. It felt as if a hand had physically cut the cord.
His hand brushed the floorboards, slipping into a hidden seam. A faint, rhythmic pulse of violet light seeped through the cracks.
Long pried the wood open. Below lay a basement that shouldn't exist.
Fear fought with a desperate, burning curiosity. He descended. At the end of a damp tunnel stood a massive stone gate, etched with ancient, glowing runes.
His hand touched the cold stone.
The world tilted. The gate groaned open.
Beyond it lay a distorted dream a realm of violet mists and impossible architecture.
Long stepped back, his heart thundering. He could run. He could hide.
But the memory of his grandfather's blood returned.
"Who were you… really?"
He had lost everything. If this was hell, he wanted to know why he had been cast into it.
Long stepped forward. The light swallowed him whole.