"Self-guidance," the text began, each word drawing him further in. "I was tasked with several other slaves to explore an abandoned house on the 135th road of Graze, Grave City"
"This paper is to guide me back to where I was, and to me, who will be reading this, don't be scared… We survived, which means you are still alive…"
"we are still alive"
"Hurry and go back to the house on the 135th road… "
"There, you will find guidance"
The message ended abruptly, leaving a heavy silence in its wake.
The man's heart quickened, the words resonating with a strange familiarity as if they had been meant for him alone. Reading this, the man couldn't help but smile, a harmless expression that belied the thoughts swirling in his mind.
And suddenly.
"What a bunch of rubbish," he muttered to himself, a hint of amusement in his voice.
"The easiest fool is not for me to be labeled as" With a casual shrug, he glanced over the paper again, his eyes scanning the text.
Then, almost as if it had been hiding in plain sight, he found it—the piece of information he had been unknowingly seeking.
His gaze settled on a name scribbled in the corner of the parchment, faint but unmistakable.
"Nadim Villa," he read aloud, the words rolling off his tongue as though they carried weight. "So that's the body's name…"
He pondered the name for a moment, letting it settle into his consciousness.
It felt foreign, yet oddly fitting as if it belonged to someone
"Having a name… That's a good start for knowing who I am," he mused aloud, his voice trailing off as he paused to let the weight of those words settle.
His eyes roamed the room, taking in the dim surroundings as if searching for answers in the shadows.
Then, in a moment of quiet resolve, he added a final thought, but this time, it remained locked within the confines of his mind.
'In this world.'
With that unspoken admission, a large piece of the truth slipped free, revealing itself beneath the confident mask he had worn so well.
His thoughts turned inward, piecing together the bizarre circumstances he found himself in.
"A strange scene… This body is not mine, this memory is not mine, nothing is mine… Or so I believed…" The man's expression tightened for a brief second, a mere flicker of emotion before he shrugged it off.
The paper that bore the name "Nadim Vilal" was crumpled in his fist and shoved into his pocket, the significance of that name lingering in the back of his mind as he turned away.
There was no need to check the final drawer, he somehow knew it would be empty. Whatever he was searching for, it wasn't there. Not yet.
"Let's assess what is happening first" he resolved, his thoughts sharpening.
His eyes, glinting with a hidden clarity beneath the rim of his glasses, turned toward the table cluttered with tools and papers.
With a subtle shift of his body, he moved away from the shelves, each step measured, and he approached the table.
The distance to the table was short, and each movement deliberately slowed.
Yet, as he moved across the room, his eyes wandered, catching details in the dim light.
To his right, something unusual caught his attention—a window set into the wall, framed by old wood slightly warped with age. The frame, despite its wear, formed a near-perfect square, its edges curved just enough to give it an almost handcrafted appearance.
The window itself was covered by a thin, transparent film of some unknown material, casting a faint, distorted view of the outside world.
The man halted in his steps, curiosity piquing his interest. "Even with the thin film, there are no lights that manage to pass through…" he muttered to himself, his brow furrowing as he stepped closer.
Reaching out, he felt for the latch—a simple shifter lock.
He hesitated only briefly before edging the window open, the mechanism groaning softly in protest. As the window cracked open, light seeped in like a curtain of water falling in slow motion, piece by piece illuminating the room.
But something wasn't right.
"Something's wrong…" he muttered. His eyes widened as the view outside slowly unfolded before him.
The more that was revealed, the deeper the frown etched into his face.
His gaze, fixed on the sky, caught sight of something that defied all sense of normalcy.
"There's two moons?" he whispered.
The scene before him was both awe-inspiring and deeply unsettling—the sky, bathed in an eerie twilight, was dominated by not one, but two luminous moons hanging low on the horizon.
One was larger, glowing a pale silver, while the other, slightly smaller, shimmered with a faint, bluish hue. The sight was impossible, otherworldly, and yet here it was, stretching out before him as undeniable reality. He stood still, the open window framing the surreal landscape, the truth of his situation sinking in with a cold, inexorable clarity.
It took a few seconds for the rapid rise and fall of his chest to slow, for the excited breaths to calm.
But even as his heart steadied, a different kind of energy surged through him.
His blood boiled, not with fear, but with an electrifying thrill that coursed through his veins.
And then, suddenly, he burst into laughter—wild, unrestrained, and echoing madly against the walls of the small room.
"Hahaha!" The laughter spilled out of him, maniacal and uncontrollable, as he leaned into the open window.
His arms spread wide as if embracing the impossible reality before him, his laughter growing louder and more unhinged with each passing second.
It was a sound both chilling and strangely melodic, like a broken chord played over and over, yet undercut with a deep, resonant tone that hinted at something darker.
His body trembled with the force of his emotions, his laughter shifting from an open display to something more introspective as he hugged himself tightly, seeking a twisted comfort in the embrace.
"This is it!" he screamed, his voice hoarse and filled with a bizarre mix of triumph and madness. "Hahaha"
His words rang out, fierce and victorious, as his laughter reached a fever pitch.
His face, flushed and wild, was a perfect picture of mania, his eyes glinting with a dark contrast to the overwhelming excitement that consumed him.
His hair, disheveled and unkempt, fluttered slightly as if caught in a phantom breeze, adding to the chaotic image he presented.
There was no fear now, no confusion—only the exhilarating realization that he had escaped, that he had crossed over into something beyond his wildest imaginings.
Whatever this world was, with its twin moons and unfamiliar skies, it was his now.
And in that moment, his madness seemed like the most natural response in the world.
"Then!" he exclaimed, his eyes snapping back to the bed where the two cubes lay.
The urgency in his voice was matched by his purposeful stride as he crossed the room.
He reached the bed in no time, his hands closing around the cold, metallic surfaces of the cubes.
Lifting them, he held the strange objects close, a twisted smile stretching across his face, one that bordered on malevolence.
"There is no justice but the darkness that clings to pale light," he murmured, his voice low and intense, as if speaking to the cubes themselves. "But for me… this is the place… A new starting point to relieve my boredom"
His eyes gleamed with a dangerous mixture of excitement and determination, the madness from moments ago now tempered with a disturbing clarity.
"It is me, Nadim Villa," he declared, the name sounding foreign on his tongue, a name that didn't quite fit. "A new me… N-no…"
He paused, the twisted smile faltering as a frown of contemplation creased his brow.
But as he stared down at the cubes, his expression slowly shifted again, the frown giving way to a smile that was no less intense, but now layered with a deeper meaning.
"My name is Mize Adhart" he whispered, the words carrying a heavy weight of truth.
"I am but… a slave of the people. To serve the upper greed, and the lower's suffering"
"The suffering of the mortals is what kept me alive..."
Mize Adhart.
The name echoed in his mind, bringing with it a rush of memories, not of this world, but of the life he had lived before.
This was who he was, who he had always been, regardless of the body he now inhabited or the strange world he found himself in.
"Ahhhhh, splendid," Mize murmured, his voice dripping with satisfaction as he approached the table.
His smile widened as he pushed aside the pile of papers with a swift, careless motion, sending them scattering across the surface.
Beneath the disarray, something caught his eye—a third cube, resting in wait. He picked it up, his fingers tracing the etched words that adorned its sides: "DUNIA" above and "MATI" below.
Mize's smile deepened, a glint of realization sparking in his eyes as he brought the cube closer to his face.
"Then, to sum all the words again," he muttered, the gears in his mind turning rapidly as he pieced together the fragments.
First, there were "AKU" and "DIAM," the words from the first cube. Then "HIDUP" and "MATI" from the second. And now, "DUNIA" and "MATI."
The words swirled in his mind, their meanings intertwining as he considered the implications.
"I remember now..." His eyes turned crescent with his smiles the echoes of the darkness secret.
"Aku… Diam… Hidup… Mati… Dunia… Mati…"
A grin spread across his face, this one far more sinister than before.
The phrases held an ominous weight as if they were more than just words—pieces of a prophecy, perhaps, or a command.
"I am silent... Life... Death... The world... Death..."
His smile faded slightly as he considered the repetition of "Mati"—death. Twice it appeared, on both the second and third cubes, as if emphasizing its importance.
Was it a warning?
A declaration? Or something else entirely? What does it have to do with me?
Whatever it was, Mize knew it was significant.
The cubes, the words, the strange room—all of it was connected, part of the same twisted reality he now found himself in.
"The fact that we had never been alone," Mize muttered, his voice barely above a whisper as he began to tiptoe around the room
"No matter, let's dance"
It was as if he were walking through a delicate garden rather than an old, dark chamber, his movements fluid and almost whimsical.
His gaze shifted up and down, his body swaying as if following some invisible melody only he could hear.
"I was insane, they said. I was out of reach, they said" he continued, his tone tinged with a mockery that bordered on bitterness.
"No, I was simply outcasted, and also out of their understanding." His body moved in a slow, continuous circle around the room, his eyes secretly scanning his surroundings with a careful, almost negligible awareness.
It was as if he was seeking something—or someone—hidden in the shadows.
His thoughts danced as lightly as his feet, but there was a darkness underneath, a current of something twisted and deeply unsettling.
"Then, how about a story…" he mused, his voice taking on a sing-song quality.
He suddenly stopped in his tracks, standing directly in the center of the room, just in front of the bed.
His head tilted back, eyes fixing on the ceiling as a wide, creeping smile began to stretch across his face.
"And how about a big surprise," he whispered, his voice filled with gleeful malice, "of the crazy kid who once killed himself to achieve immortality."
The words hung in the air, heavy with the weight of something unspeakable.
Mize's fingers tightened around the cubes in his palms as if drawing strength from them. His gaze remained locked on the ceiling, as if seeing beyond the wooden beams, beyond the room itself, into a world only he could perceive.His smile grew wider, almost grotesque, as the memory of that long-buried story surfaced in his mind. It was a tale that few knew, and those who did were either dead or mad themselves.
The story of a boy who was so desperate to escape the confines of mortality that he took the ultimate leap into the unknown—a leap that shattered his life and sanity, but perhaps, just perhaps, had granted him exactly what he sought.
Immortality. Not in the sense that others understood, but something far darker, something that transcended life and death, reality and illusion.
"And now," he whispered to the silent room, "that story begins again."