The basic outline for these situations: people find themselves in the middle of a king's castle or grand cathedral. They're greeted by a middle-aged king, a wise old bishop, maybe a beautiful princess or saint. Standard stuff.
Me? I woke up in a bottomless abyss.
No castle. No cathedral. No welcoming committee. Just... void. And floating islands. And a pervasive sense of wrongness that made my skin crawl.
I was standing on one of those islands—a chunk of ancient stone suspended in nothingness. The architecture was all crumbling ruins covered in moss and vines that definitely shouldn't have been able to grow without sunlight. There was no sun there, by the way. Just a sickly green ambient light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Floating above the islands were various green sigils not too dissimilar from the ones in my source book. Except these were much bigger and far more ominous looking. The symbols pulsed with an otherworldly rhythm, like a heartbeat that was just slightly off. I recognized a few of the patterns—Elder Signs, Seals of Binding, maybe some Yog-Sothothery mixed in there. My D&D knowledge was screaming at me that this was bad. Really bad.
I didn't know if it was my aversion to extreme heights or the atmosphere, but I felt extremely queasy. Even on a cruise ship, I'd never felt the urge to hurl as much as I did then.
Against my better judgment, I peeked over the edge of the island. Below me—or what I assumed was below since there was no real sense of direction there—was a dark sea. Except it wasn't water. The surface writhed and undulated like it was alive, covered in what looked like massive tentacles lazily drifting through the depths. And I swear, for just a moment, I saw eyes. Hundreds of them. All staring up at me.
I forcibly pulled myself back from the edge before my sanity deteriorated further. Unintentionally, I stumbled into the light of one of the sigils. Basking under its eerie glow, I felt the nausea recede.
Whew, nearly lost myself for a second right there. I shuddered to imagine what would've happened if I'd kept staring into the sea for too long. I didn't know if those eyes were real or not, but I was not staying in that godforsaken place any longer.
I trudged forward, my footsteps echoing unnaturally in the silence. The island I was on was small, so it didn't take long for me to reach the center. The ground beneath my feet felt solid enough, but there was this persistent sensation that I was walking on something that shouldn't exist in three-dimensional space.
In the middle of the island stood a massive statue—some kind of humanoid figure with way too many limbs and a head that hurt to look at directly. Could've been Cthulhu himself, or one of the other Great Old Ones. The architecture around the statue was all wrong too—non-Euclidean angles that made my eyes hurt when I tried to focus on them. Whoever built this place clearly didn't care about building codes or human comprehension.
The buildings weren't of any note—I'm not an archaeologist, I doubted I could figure out what happened to this extinct civilization. The only thing worth noting was a single dark shiny slab surrounded by candles burning in an eerie green that matched the sigils floating near the islands. Obviously, this was an altar. But I was more interested in what lay on it.
A book. Of course it was a book. Because when has touching a mysterious ancient tome in a creepy eldritch dimension ever gone wrong?
The book itself was bound in what I really, really hoped was leather and not... something else. It was covered in more of those sigils, etched so deeply into the cover that they seemed to absorb the candlelight rather than reflect it. There was no title, no author name, nothing to indicate what was inside. Just those damned symbols pulsing with that same off-rhythm heartbeat. Topping it off was a very cringy skull that threw off the entire vibe, making it look like some edgy goth girl's diary.
My gut and my knowledge of typical isekai tropes told me this was a really bad idea, but I had no idea how else to get myself out of there. I went up to the altar and placed my hands on the book.
And... I immediately regretted my decision, like a toddler placing his hand on a hot stove. Actually happened to me once—guess I never learned from that mistake.
The moment my fingers made contact, it was like someone jammed a live wire directly into my brain. Images were seared into my mind. The rise and fall of civilizations—not just human ones, but things that existed before Earth even had a proper atmosphere. Forbidden world-upending secrets that made nuclear physics look like kindergarten math. Visions of horrendous beings drifting through space, so massive that galaxies were mere specks of dust in their wake.
So much information at once—it was like trying to download the entire internet directly into my brain, except the internet was full of cosmic horrors and existential dread instead of cat videos. Every neuron felt like it was on fire. My vision went white, then black, then colors that shouldn't exist.
I could feel my sense of self starting to fragment. Memories that weren't mine flooded in—ancient rituals, dead languages, the true names of things that should never be named. My mouth tasted like copper and ozone. I think I was screaming, but I couldn't hear anything over the roaring in my ears.
Crap, my brain was going to be fried. If not, my personality was going to be out of tune at best or batshit crazy at worst.
Then, cutting through the chaos like a knife through butter, a single voice resonated through my skull.
'GO.'
Everything went black.
That single word carried more weight than anything I'd ever experienced. It was subtle in volume, but the shock to my brain was far greater than listening to a boombox directly blasting Ado into my ear at maximum volume. It wasn't just sound—it was a command that bypassed my ears entirely and went straight into the core of my being.
When consciousness started to return, it was gradual. First, I became aware that I wasn't in pain anymore. Second, I realized I was lying on something hard and cold—stone, maybe? Third, I noticed voices. Lots of them.
The visions I'd seen were gone—wiped clean like someone had taken an eraser to my memory. The mental stress, the psychotic breakdown, all of it vanished. I was honestly surprised I hadn't gone insane. Or maybe I did for a moment there, and the pain was so great my senses couldn't even perceive time properly.
But something remained. A wrongness I couldn't quite shake. Like a word on the tip of your tongue, or a song you can't remember the lyrics to, except this felt carved into the back of my skull. And there was something else—a fragment, just one, that refused to be erased. An image of a symbol. Not one of the sigils I'd seen floating above the islands, but something deeper. Something that pulsed in my mind's eye with the same rhythm as my heartbeat.
I tried to focus on it, but it slipped away like water through my fingers. Still, I knew it was there. Waiting.
Either way, I swore if I ever found out who toyed with me using those visions, I was going to return the favor tenfold. It hurt a thousand times worse than that time I went through a fever while recovering from wisdom teeth removal surgery.
Surprise, surprise... The moment I fully regained consciousness and opened my eyes, I found myself in a grand hall full of religious iconography. Stained glass windows depicting what I assumed were saints and holy figures. Banners with symbols I didn't recognize hanging from vaulted ceilings. The whole nine yards of fantasy church aesthetic.
But getting surrounded by angry church members who looked like they were about to scream "Deus Vult" and start purging cultists with their weapons was new. Their armor was polished to a mirror shine, and every single one of them had their hand on their weapon. The temperature in the room felt like it dropped ten degrees.
I was surrounded by my bewildered classmates—I could see Haruto looking around with wide eyes, Aika clutching Yumi's arm, Ren maintaining his usual composure despite the situation, and the rest of the class looking on in confusion. They all looked fine. Shaken, sure, but fine. Like they'd just experienced a normal isekai summoning—bright light, fancy castle, the works. Meanwhile, I'd just taken a detour through cosmic horror hell and back.
And then there were the armed inquisitors who looked geared up to bring judgement down on heretics.
Also, why did their gazes seem to be directed at me? Like, specifically me. Not the class as a whole. Me.
I glanced down at myself, wondering if maybe I was covered in eldritch symbols or something. My uniform looked normal enough, but when I raised my hands to check—
Oh.
Oh no.
There, on my palms, were faint traces of those sigils from the book. They weren't glowing or anything dramatic, but they were there, etched into my skin like temporary tattoos that refused to fade. And now that I was paying attention, I realized my lips were moving. I was muttering something under my breath. Words in a language I didn't know, couldn't possibly know, but somehow understood on an instinctual level.
I clamped my mouth shut immediately.
One of the inquisitors stepped forward, his ornate silver armor gleaming in the torchlight. He'd got this fancy plumed helmet and a cape that billowed dramatically despite there being no wind. His face was stern, weathered, the kind of face that had seen too many heretics and not enough vacation days.
He pointed directly at me with a gauntleted finger. "By the sacred texts, the heretical apostle of the Beyond has manifested among the summoned!"
The hall erupted into chaos. My classmates backed away instinctively, creating a circle of empty space around me. I saw confusion on their faces—they didn't understand what was happening. Why was I being singled out? We'd all been summoned together, hadn't we?
"Wait, hold on—" Haruto started to step forward, his usual joking demeanor replaced with genuine concern. "Shin's not—"
"Stand back, summoned one!" Another inquisitor moved to block Haruto's path. "The taint of the Beyond is upon him. He must be purged before the corruption spreads!"
"Taint? What are you talking about?" Aika's voice was sharp, confused. She looked at me, then at the inquisitors, then back at me. "Shin, what's going on?"
I wish I knew. I opened my mouth to respond, but before I can say anything in defense, the inquisitors move.
The lead inquisitor raised his hand, and the others began drawing their weapons—swords sliding from scabbards with that classic metallic ring, halberds being leveled in my direction. The sound echoed through the hall like a death knell.
"The ritual of purification must be enacted immediately," the lead inquisitor declared. "Before the entity fully takes root."
Ren, ever the composed one, stepped forward despite the weapons. "There must be some mistake. We were all summoned together. Whatever happened to him—"
"Was the work of the Beyond," the inquisitor cut him off. "We have seen this before. The summoning ritual, when corrupted, can serve as a gateway for Their influence. This one has been touched by forces that should not be named."
Okay, so apparently touching mysterious eldritch books has consequences. Who knew?
Wait, hold up, why are they advancing on me with those very sharp, very pointy weapons!?
Spoiler alert: Yeah, I figured out later it didn't.
I raised my marked hands in what I hoped was a peaceful gesture, but the inquisitors only gripped their weapons tighter. Behind them, I could see more armored figures filing into the hall. This was escalating fast.
Haruto tried again, his voice taking on a desperate edge. "Come on, this is insane! He's just a high school student who reads too many horror books! He's not some—some demon cultist or whatever you think he is!"
The irony of my name being 'Cultist' was not lost on me in that moment.
The circle of inquisitors tightened around me. My classmates were being pushed back by more armored guards. I could see the fear in their eyes now—not of me, but for me.
This was bad. This was really, really bad.
Hopefully everything ends well, right?
Spoiler alert: Yeah, I figured out later it didn't.