Taren hesitated, his heart pounding in his chest. The silence in the room felt heavier now, pressing against him with every step he took toward the beast. Its massive form loomed over him, still as a statue, its fur tangled and coated with years of dust.
He approached a little closer, the tread of his footsteps making softly against the cold cracked floor. Then, as though sensing his presence, it stirred. Its eyes began to open slowly, barely glowing in the faint illumination. Taren halted. His breath caught in his throat. The creature locked its gaze on him with no malice but haunting emptiness. Its eyes seemed hollow, sunken and empty with the weight of ages carried without food, motion or life.
The beast did not growl, didn't move to attack. It just watched him, the gaze both piercing and fragile. Taren felt hunger emanating from that pair of eyes, a hunger that was not at all for food but for something deeper, harder to say. It was the hunger of endless waiting and starvation that time alone could not fill.
For a moment, the room seemed to breathe with him, heavy with the weight of the beast and the unspoken tension between them. Taren didn't know what to do, but something told him to stay, not to turn away.
Taren's chest tightened as he stared at the beast. Something about it called to him, a pull he couldn't resist. His hand moved on its own, reaching out, slow and cautious. The closer he got, the heavier the air seemed, pressing down on him like a weight.
His fingers brushed the beast's fur thick, cold, and rough beneath his touch. For a heartbeat, everything was still. Then, without warning, a burst of force erupted. It wasn't something he could see, only feel. The power hit him like a storm, so fast it stole the breath from his lungs.
He flew backwards; his body was weightless, as if the ground had vanished beneath him. His mind blinked out, swallowed by a sudden, deafening darkness. For a moment, there was nothing—no sight, no sound, no thought. Just black.
As the world went dark, a bunch of pictures slammed into Taren's mind. His body tensed, his head throbbing because the visions were gushing in like a raging river.
He caught glimpses of the beast: towering and wild, with eyes that grew brighter. The tunnel he had walked down was before him, but this time filled with flickering shadows and echoing whispers. In his mind's eye rose a ruined city, crumbling under a red sky. Faces he didn't recognize flickered before him; some pleading, others screaming.
His chest burned, and his hands clawed at the ground as the flood of memories overwhelmed him. He heard the cracking of stone and then the roar of a beast so loud it felt like his skull would split.
"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" The scream tore out of him, raw and desperate, as the visions grew faster, brighter, and more violent. Each flash left him gasping, his body shivering with the weight of emotions he couldn't name. Then, as suddenly as they began, the visions stopped. Silence filled his mind, leaving him trembling in the dark.
Taren groaned, pushing off from the ground, his arms straining under his weight. The air felt wrong-rounded, heavy, rippling with an energy he didn't know how to explain. When he opened his eyes, the world blurred, spinning around him. He tried to blink away the movement, but it wouldn't stop.
The beast loomed ahead, but now there seemed to be two of them, overlapping and flickering. Its massive form blurred and split, one image slightly behind the other, like a shadow struggling to keep up. The walls of the room twisted and wavered, their edges vibrating as though they were alive.
Taren stumbled to his feet, clutching his head as his vision swirled. The ground under him seemed to shudder and tremble as if the earth itself was going to crack open. He looked around, but nothing stayed still. The shapes of objects—old tools, broken crates, and the rusted beams of the garage—doubled and shifted, almost melting into one another.
Every step he took sent a wave of dizziness through him. His breaths came shallow, his heart pounding in his chest as if it, too, was caught in the chaos. The beast's glowing eyes stared back at him, splitting and rejoining with every blink, as though watching him through layers of broken glass. The whole world felt fractured, teetering on the edge of falling apart.
Taren lurched forward, his legs barely keeping him upright as the world around him began to twist and blur. The beast, or two overlaid versions of it, grew larger with each stumbling step. His heart was racing; his breathing was ragged, but something drew him closer as if some unseen force demanded it.
Again he reached out, and then his knees buckled under him. His body crumpled to the ground, and everything disappeared in an instant. Darkness swallowed him whole.
For an instant, he was nothing. His silence was so deep it was as if he did not exist at all. And then from the darkness came a light that grew softly, flickering in the blackness. Deep red, it glowed like translucent jewels against the vacant background, growing bigger to become a screen floating in space, shimmering with a texture like rippling water at its edges.
The screen pulsed softly, and words appeared, their letters sharp and glowing as if cut from crimson glass:
──────────◇◆◇──────────
「System Activated」
──────────◇◆◇──────────
◇ Second chance ◇
「Congratulations! You have obtained a second chance to live!」
──────────────────────────────
The words hung there, glowing in the void. Taren couldn't move, couldn't speak. He was frozen, staring at the strange message that seemed to echo in his mind as though it carried a power far beyond simple words.
Taren's eyes snapped open as if yanked there by a force beyond his will. His chest arched sharply with his first breath, and his gaze went wildly about. Light flooded in through tall, arched windows, and he blinked against its brightness, trying to make sense of where he was. His hands gripped the soft fabric beneath him—a bed, but not just any bed. The sheets were smooth and heavy, embroidered with gold patterns that glinted in the sunlight.
He sat up slowly, his fingers brushing against plush pillows and a silken canopy overhead. The air smelled sweet, like blooming flowers mixed with something warm and rich, almost like spiced wood. His eyes traced the room around him. The walls shimmered with intricate tapestries, and the furniture—every piece carved and polished to perfection—looked like it belonged in a storybook. Chandeliers of crystal hung above, catching the light in dazzling fragments.
But as he moved, a shiver of discomfort spread through his body. His muscles felt foreign as if they did not belong to him. His heart was racing, heavier, and his skin was tingling with an odd energy that he could not explain. His fingers quivered when he raised them as if they had been rewired somehow, and his breaths came unevenly as if his lungs were learning to work again.
Before he could absorb the strangeness, movement had caught his eye. A figure stood near the bed, her silvery-white hair falling like liquid moonlight over her shoulders. Her face was soft yet regal, her violet eyes shimmering with concern. She stepped closer, and the faint rustle of her gown brushed the silence.
"Are you alright?" she asked, her voice soothing and gentle but laced with a string of worry that seemed to settle into the air around them.