We all entered the throne room, which was dimly lit up by a hole in the rooftop, revealing a cloudy gray sky. The room also felt musty, with many dust particles in the air.
Many of the pillars had collapsed, scattering rubble and large chunks of stone everywhere. While those that had not yet caved in had cracks in them and large claw marks.
These claw marks were in various parts of the room, the walls, the doors and the red carpet that, like I had seen in many series before, led to the seat of the king.
Resting in that very seat, there was a skeleton.
The skeleton was still dressed in a fine purple royal garb, with what looked like a fur coat on his shoulders. The crown also remained sitting slightly tilted to its side on his head.
Perhaps more disturbing was the fact that the cranium had a hole on its forehead, and another one where the heart should've been.
"He's… dead" I could overhear Joon-seo say.
Tae-min in response, slapped his back, "Bro, we can see him too, no need for your npc sounding comments"
"So what now? The person who was supposed to give us our quest and any information about this world is dead." Dohyun asked.
Tae-min began to scratch his head, "Hmmm… this does look pretty bad."
"Pretty bad?!" the class president Ji-eun exclaimed, "Don't you see the blood splatters and claw marks all around the room?! Clearly there's some monster out there that did this, and we don't know if its still nearby!"
Dohyun approached the class president and tried calming her down, "Ji-eun stop" he said to her, "You're freaking out everyone else"
Ji-eun began to look around and just like Dohyun had described many of the other students looked restless and afraid.
She then looked down, "Sorry… I'm just not all too familiar with this type of thing like you guys are…"
Tae-min let out a large audible sigh, "Alright well seeing that everyone is pretty much scared, let's just stay in this room for now and figure out what our broken abilities are alright? Then we can head out without worrying about any monsters."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"Okay everyone, try chanting out your skills that aren't bugged and if that doesn't work try chanting out any spells that come to mind" he instructed to everyone.
As such everyone began trying to shout random spells like fireballs, and healing spells while doing exaggerated hand gestures.
While everyone did that, I decided to head back to the previous room, where the pedestal with the book was.
As I approached the simple stone pedestal, a feminine voice called me from behind, "Hyun-woo? Where are you going?"
I turned to see that it was another classmate, Han Soo-min, a soft-spoken and delicate girl who was popular amongst the boys due to her shy demeanor.
In response to her question I simply pointed towards the direction of the book, "Checking out that book over there" I said.
I walked to the pedestal, and Soo-min followed after.
The book looked tattered and worn out due to the passage of time, but it still held on to its leather structure regardless.
The book was somewhat thin, and it didn't have a title or anything, but a simple red gem on its cover, not one that particularly looked expensive or rare, but more of decoration.
"Hyun-woo aren't you scared?" Soo-min asked as I picked up the book with my hands.
I couldn't say what I felt was fear, it wasn't like we were in danger just yet, but I definitely felt uncomfortable.
It was more like the anxious thoughts I had before. The type where you begin to overthink, where your mother or father haven't arrived at the time they usually do, and you begin to think something happened to them for no reason.
An uncomfortable annoying feel in your stomach. But I couldn't exactly say that to Soo-min who looked pretty afraid in comparison.
"Yeah, I am, but I'm just pretty good at hiding it. I think it would be stranger to not be scared in this situation don't you think?"
Soo-min let out a small laugh, "Yeah I guess you're right, Dohyun and Tae-min didn't look scared so I thought I was being the odd one."
"Maybe they are pretty good at hiding it too." I said as I finally opened the book and began to browse through the pages.
Every page I turned to had only three or four words written per line. Each line had also been crossed with a dark pencil. But me and Soo-min could make out that all these lines had been names.
Alexander Nieman
Ivan Doe
Edward Petrov
Noriyuki Kazama
Haruka Kuroda
Li Wei
Xia Ling
Sophie Moreau
Pierre Dubois
Park Ji-soo
Yoon Seung-hee
Anastasia Sokolov
Sofia Lopez
Ignacio Vargas
Sergei Volkov
Vikram Rao
This trend of crossed out names continued for various pages. Some could not be made out because they had been completely crossed out and only a few had not been crossed out at all.
It was a creepy book, but more disturbing to me was the fact that it was just names. Nothing else had been written. No dates, no notes to give a clue who these people were, no annotations at all, just a list.
"Hyun-woo…" said Soo-min looking at the list of names with an anxious face.
Soon we arrived at the last page that had something written on it.
As expected, it wasn't a name, but a message. On the page to the left it read:
"I'm sorry. I promised you all, but I was no different. Now I leave this world with one last vain attempt before I succumb as well… I cannot help but write that I the hero of hope have failed."
Seeing that someone with such a grandiose title like the 'hero of hope' failed was… unnerving to say the least.
But potentially more disturbing, was another message written on the right page.
It was clear whoever wrote this message, probably this so-called hero of hope, had pressed so hard on the paper out of frustration that parts of the letters had small tears.
Written in large bold letters that had been traced over repeatedly was the last message in this book:
"WE SACRIFICED EVERYTHING. WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER?"
I closed the book abruptly and looked at Soo-min.
She began speaking first, "Where those names… people who had also been…?" but she didn't finish this sentence.
"Probably" I answered her, "For now let's go show this to everyone else. "
We headed back to the throne room where everyone looked disillusioned and depressed.
"Why isn't it working!" I could hear Tae-min yell in frustration.
"Hyun-woo did you find anything?" asked Dohyun who saw me first.
I handed out the book me and Soo-min had read to him, "Yeah, but it's not looking good."
He began to also browse through the pages and a sour look formed in his face.
Others saw us with the book, and they got closer.
"What does the book say?" Joon-Seo asked.
"It's a list" Dohyun answered him, "Probably of people who were summoned before us, and judging by how their names are crossed out, they are also most likely dead."
"Crap…" he only said in response.
I looked at Tae-min who was a bit farther away, yelling random things with his hand extended, "So what about you guys, did you figure out how to use magic yet?"
"Yeah well, apart from looking like morons, nothing so far" the class president responded.
Tae-min turned to look at us and began shaking his head side to side "Ha~ it's just as I feared"
"What stupid thing are you about to say now?" asked the class president.
"Well seeing how we can't cast shit right now, we have two possibilities, we either need a catalyst or a near death situation."
Ji-eun looking fed up with Tae-min began to pull up the sleeves of her uniform,
"WAIT! WAIT!" Tae-min exclaimed, "Hear me out first before you beat me up! We need a wand! You know something to channel our magic through, or a grimoire!"
"And this near-death situation?" Ji-eun asked with a frown.
"Well… here's the thing, some Isekai stories have the protagonist awaken their op ability juuust before they get killed by a giant monster or something"
"Well we have neither the catalyst nor the desire to risk our lives" added Dohyun to the conversation.
"C'mon y'all! Isn't the answer obvious?!" exclaimed Tae-min, "Hyun-woo help me out man!"
Everyone turned to look at me giving me shivers in the process,
"We're in a castle, so Tae-min is suggesting we go search around and take their stuff…" I said while averting my eyes.
Tae-min snapped his fingers and pointed at me, "Exactly! Aren't you a smart one? This castle definitely has some treasure room with weapons and magic books, we look for that room, get geared out and who knows in the process we might find out what happened here"
"Or we find the monster that trashed this room." Ji-eun Retorted.
We all looked at each other nervously.
"No, Tae-min's idea is probably the best thing we can do." I answered, "We die of starvation, or cold, or the monster finds us anyway, or we can at least try to get weapons. Doing anything else when we got no means to defend ourselves is too risky."
"HA! See Ji-eun!" mocked Tae-min, to which Ji-eun simply clicked her tongue.
Dohyun crossed his arms, "Alright, well should we split up then? This castle is likely huge and-"
"NO!" Soo-min said in a loud voice, scaring everyone in the process, "We are not splitting off! We are sticking together as a class!"
We all looked at each other, as if collectively remembering horror movies and agreeing that splitting up was a stupid idea.
"Alright" Dohyun continued, "Let's get going, we don't know how long till it get's dark."
We all got up and tried to open the different doors in the throne room, but unlike the one Ji-eun had knocked down by accident, none of them opened at all. As if being blocked by something.
As such the only door left was in the room, we originally found ourselves in. The one near the pedestal.
The door was huge, and one person by themselves couldn't open them. It made me wonder how anyone before this could open them without struggling.
We all leaned against the door and began to push against it with all our might.
"Keep… pushing!" Dohyun exclaimed to us.
The door began to creak and nudge around ever slightly more.
With the combined strength of the entire class, the door finally began to open, letting in a chilly wind from the outside. Eventually It was open enough so we could all pass comfortably.
The door had led us to an outside square terrace.
The place was deserted, surrounded by fog, with a dry wind blowing. This wind created a constant, yet unfamiliar echo. It felt as if it was whispering.
The terrace was high above with overgrown shrubs and grass. It also overlooked the large rectangular field that was the castle's garden. The castle's garden was also deserted with many overgrown plants, and due to the fog, we could barely see the walls protecting the castle on the other side.
We continued walking forward to the next building that was connected to the terrace. Two smaller wooden doors presented themselves to us and Dohyun who was leading the group until then, tried to open them but both also seemed stuck.
"Now what?" asked Ji-eun.
"I think we can knock them down" he answered her.
Dohyun then gathered himself and three other boys from our class, and with two on each door, they began to pound the door with their feet, while everyone else including myself stood by watching.
The others began to make a fuss, telling them where they should be kicking to knock the door down.
But I was barely paying attention. I looked down on the terrace once again, staring at the twisted, overgrown hedges and broken remains of statues that had crumbled under the weight of time.
Then I heard it. A sound so faint at first, I barely registered it. But I had no doubt that it was the clinking of chains.
At first, I thought I imagined it, maybe it was a sound from the commotion the others were making. But no, the sounds began to grow louder and deliberate. Chains being dragged across stone.
I leaned over the terrace's edge, scanning the garden below, and then I saw 'it'.
A figure. Slow and hulking, it's body wrapped in rusted armor that seemed too heavy for anyone to move in. But it was the chains which got my attention the most.
They pierced through its flesh like barbed thorns, weaving in and out of its arms, its legs and its chest. Bloodless, raw wounds.
The chains trailed behind it, rattling and binding the figure in pain. With every step, it looked like the chains dug deeper into it's body, as if punishing it for moving.
It's head slowly turned, and I felt as if the weight of the world was on me.
The figure was staring up at me. It didn't have eyes… or if it did, I couldn't seem them beneath the twisted, metal helmet that covered its face.
My heart slammed against my chest, my skin prickled with cold and a suffocating weight of dread loomed over me. It's presence felt like something that didn't belong in this world, a deliberate stain cast on reality itself.
Everything about it, the way it moved, the way the chains slithered around it, was like something out of a nightmare.
But the figure then looked straight ahead once again, and continued walking, ever-so slightly going faster.
Its chains continued to rattle, and I felt a sickening jolt of realization.
It was now heading towards us.