The night was heavy here, not just an absence of light… but as if the darkness itself were a living being.
A being that breathed between the cracks, seeped beneath the skin, and left its chill embedded in the bones.
Amidst this darkness, a dark-blue fox moved, its footsteps barely audible, its eyes glowing with a pale gleam.
Its movement seemed to know the way well… or to have long since lost its fear.
Then—a sharp whistle pierced the silence.
A knife appeared out of nowhere, darting straight toward its target, lodged in the fox's chest.
There was only a muffled scream… and then it fell.
From the shadows emerged a man.
His footsteps were quiet, as if the earth were breathing beneath him. His long black hair cascaded over his pale face, interspersed with gray strands like the ash of an ancient time. He wore tattered black cloth.
His eyes were completely black, lifeless.
He was… Mayuth… his age… I mean He is about , 17 now.
He knelt beside the corpse and extracted a small white seed.
He placed it on the fur, silently watching the skin decompose little by little, until the strands turned into a light gray scarf.
He wrapped it around his neck.
The air was cold, and the air carried a harshness only someone who has walked a long time without shelter could feel.
He took an old piece of paper from his jacket.
The law had once granted it to him, but it was nothing more than cryptic symbols and incomplete sentences, speaking of something… almost a dormant force within him. One day, he must prove his worth so that the law could grant him… the gift he deserved.
The power associated with the crescent-shaped tattoo on his arm, extending to his neck.
A power… if he understood it… could mean the difference between life and death.
He put back the paper and pulled out a worn map.
The Dark Recess… a space filled with unknown regions, home to low-level Chaos Beasts, but he knew full well that just surviving here was a miracle.
But in the center of the map… there was a black dot.
No name. No signs. Just a dead spot on the paper.
Mayoth narrowed his eyes. "What are these strange places?" I don't know that at all.
… Days passed as he wandered among the broken roads, searching for clean water.
Many rivers, but they were dirty, filled with blood and a strange, unsettling color.
Until he finally found a small waterfall flowing through the rocks.
He drank until his chest nearly burst with relief.
He took some water skins with him.
Little did he know that his joy would not last long.
The tattoo on his neck began to glow.
Its lines intersected… forming a symbol resembling a broken crescent moon.
The light twisted, then a portal opened from his shadow into nothingness.
Then suddenly, he lost consciousness.
He woke up after an unknown amount of time.
Strange whispering sounds… from around the place where he found himself chained.
Gray walls, narrow, cold. The air was ancient, as if time had stopped centuries ago.
Then came the voice.
It was quiet, but heavy… as if it was speaking not just to him, but to the depths of his bones.
"You have entered the time and space. You are now in the prison of the dead."
The voice fell silent, then continued:
"Here… the first and final reckoning begins. Either you prove yourself worthy of survival… or you become mere remnants added to nothingness."
Mayoth closed his eyes for a moment.
"I don't know why I came back to life."
He opened his eyes.
They were deep. Empty. Filled with something resembling hatred... or stubbornness.
"But if I'm here to die... I'll dig my way out with my fingernails."
It was an old, dusty room with windows and a foul, unpleasant smell. He felt tremors shaking over the walls, something like shattering and shaking.
The silence was heavy...
Not ordinary silence, but as if the world itself had forgotten how to make sounds.
Then...
The sound of footsteps.
Slow...
Heavy...
As if they came from a being not made to walk, but to fall.
Something emerged from the shadows of the cracked walls.
The figure of a man...
Distortedly tall, as if his bones had been forcibly elongated until they broke the balance.
But... he wasn't a man.
A soldier of stone and bone.
His height was like an elongated nightmare.
No eyes. No features.
In place of eyes, two dark, deep, bottomless voids.
His face... A skull dug into eroded gray rock.
And from between the cracks... ash fell slowly, scattering in the air like dirty snow.
His armor was...
like that of an ancient knight, borne from a lost battle centuries ago.
Cracked at the shoulder...
Broken at the waist...
And around his arms hung burnt black leather straps.
Mayoth shivered.
He tried to step back...
But... a sharp chill gripped his ankles.
He glanced quickly...
Thin silver threads.
Glistening, but reflecting not like gold or silver... more like the light of a slaughtered moon.
The threads were moving.
Slowly wrapping around his legs... their phantom fingers tightening their grip with every breath.
He tried to back away.
In vain.
Suddenly!
The threads tugged hard.
He was dragged roughly forward, his legs slipping on the hard floor. He felt the gray dirt crunching beneath his nails as he struggled, but the resistance was nothing but an insult to his weak body.
He was dragged until he reached… the courtyard.
A strange courtyard…
Its rocks weren't ordinary stones—they were chunks of giant bone mixed with the rock.
Every step on it creaked, as if it were screaming…
or as if something living beneath it was trying to rise to the surface.
He raised his head…
The creature was still there.
It wasn't walking.
It was sliding… as if its weight was too heavy for the earth to support.
The next moment…
The soldier slowly raised his arm.
He wasn't holding a weapon…
but a long, sharp, black knife. Dangling from his arm, embedded in it…
Then, he felt the sounds of screaming all around him, as if the voices of the victims were all around him.
Mayoth felt his skin tingle…
He didn't know where the sound came from.
He didn't know what it meant.
But he knew one thing:
This place... holds within it a warning of death and what a ghost like him must discover in the prison's dead zone...