W000h… Woooh…
W-A-K-E U-P
The sound was loud, jarring—like a mournful wail ripping through the fog clouding his mind.
What is that noise?
Lucius flinched as a sharp wave of pain tore through his skull. He forced his eyes open, but only darkness greeted him—thick and suffocating, pressing down on him like a heavy shroud.
Is someone crying?
His vision blurred, yet one thing was clear: someone, somewhere, was crying.
No, not just one—many people are crying.
Their voices swirled around him in a haunting chorus of despair.
"Why did you have to die so young?" a woman's voice asked, choked with grief.
Are they talking about me?
"Why did you take such a drastic step? Don't you know how precious life is? Death is nothing but suffering!" a man's voice demanded, trembling with anger and sorrow.
What step? What suffering?
"Big Brother, go back. Live your life. There is no peace here. Your time will come, but don't condemn yourself so soon," a little girl's voice whispered.
"Go back… Go back… Go back!" the voices chanted, overlapping until they formed a deafening cacophony.
Lucius tried to speak, but his throat felt crushed, his mouth sealed by some unseen force. Panic clawed at his chest; a cold, numbing chill spread through his limbs.
Gradually, the voices faded, as if he were sinking into an abyss where they could no longer reach him.
He felt trapped, suspended in some invisible confinement. A crushing weight bore down on his chest, and his legs hung limp, as though dangling into a bottomless void.
Why can't I speak? What is this pressure?
Memories flickered like static: the glow of his desk lamp, the tapping of his keyboard, the faint aroma of coffee as he typed at breakneck speed, and then… the loop of that rope?
Rope?
His thoughts wavered. No, not rope… the report.
He recalled working tirelessly on a client's report. The deadline had loomed; everyone else was off for the holidays, while he, the manager, stayed behind to shoulder the responsibility.
He sighed inwardly.
I remember… I promised Mom I'd come home early.
She'd begged him to take a break after he mentioned weeks of recurring nightmares. Now she'd be worried sick—maybe furious too.
Could this be one of my nightmares?
Maybe I fell asleep at the office.
He tried to focus, hoping to snap out of a bad dream, but the oppressive weight only intensified, dragging him further into the void and shattering his concentration.
Anguished wails and piercing screams echoed around him, accompanied by the haunting sensation of countless hands pushing him deeper into nothingness. The vividness was too intense to be just another nightmare.
This doesn't feel like a nightmare.
Could it be some kind of sleep paralysis?
Determined, he tried again to concentrate, but the suffocation gripped him harder. His arms and legs refused to move, pinned down by these phantom hands.
A new, searing agony erupted across his skin—tiny, piercing bites all over his body.
Pain. Too much pain.
For a moment, he felt as though he'd been dragged into hell itself. Red flooded his vision; shadows twisted, and jagged shapes danced in a swirling, chaotic mosaic. His heartbeat slowed, and he teetered on the brink of losing consciousness.
Am I dying? Why now? There's still so much left undone…
FOC—US
He fought to focus.
W-A-K-E UP
Yes, I need to wake up!
The pain in his head exploded a hundredfold, like millions of red ants biting into his scalp at once.
AHH! Pain!
DO-N'-T GIV-E UP
He refused to submit. Straining against the agony, he felt a subtle push—like crossing an entire ocean in a single inch.
Gradually, the cries faded, and the pain began to recede. Sensation returned: his fingers twitched, his legs tingled, and his lungs burned, desperate for air.
LIVE
With a final surge of will, he broke the suffocating grip. His body convulsed as he gasped, fighting for breath. His feet brushed something solid beneath him.
The ground?
It felt rough, nothing like the smooth tile of his office.
He glanced down.
His feet dangled just above a toppled chair.
Wait. This isn't my office.
Panic roiled in his stomach. He snapped his gaze upward.
A ceiling fan. A rope. A noose cinched tight around his neck.
"Oh, God—"
Clink. Scrape.
The rope snapped, and he tumbled onto the floor. Air flooded his lungs in frantic gasps as his body convulsed with shock. Overhead, the fan creaked, its slow sway a silent witness to his brush with death.
"What the hell!" he choked out, his voice raw.
A torrent of memories surged through him: a small boy's laughter, the shadow of a missing uncle, the weight of a failing business, crushing debt—and then a void of nothingness.
"These aren't my memories!" he realized, horrified. "But they're not fake either!"
Transmigration? C-could I have… transmigrated?
As a kid, he'd devoured countless novels about such things, but facing the reality was crushing, not exciting.
He pinched himself. It really is transmigration. A wave of panic flooded his chest.
"Why? How could this happen to me?"
"I had a stable job and a loving family! I wasn't some NEET fantasizing about isekai worlds, nor was I chanting weird rituals to some goddess. I don't care about martial arts or jade beauties, and those so-called 'systems' are ridiculous!"
His voice trembled. "How could someone like me get transmigrated?!"
And what will happen to Mom and my sister back home? His sister had just started college, and he had no savings left for them.
A painful dread struck him like a punch to the gut.
He scanned the room, heart pounding. Strange walls. Strange furniture. A bed, a fan, and the rope beside it… everything felt unfamiliar, oppressive in its silence.
He turned toward a large window. Moonlight spilled in, bathing the floor in cold silver. As he lifted his gaze, his heart lurched.
The moon.
It hung in the night sky, impossibly large and radiant—yet horribly, impossibly broken. Cracks ran across its surface, glowing like veins of light, while jagged fragments drifted around it in the void.
A fantasy world.
He stumbled backward in disbelief, colliding with something solid. Pain flared in his shoulder, snapping his attention back to the room.
A dressing mirror wobbled from the impact, and in it, he saw his reflection.
Wide, terrified eyes stared back—familiar yet foreign. He looked like his sixteen-year-old self but with hair bleached stark white, unnaturally bright against his features. A chill crawled down his spine.
And then, a name floated through his thoughts with eerie certainty:
Lucius Orwell.
So close to his own name—yet not quite. Dread hollowed his chest.
Who am I now?
Fragments of unfamiliar memories pulsed behind his eyes:
Lucius, a citizen of the Daksha Kingdom on the Western Continent, raised in the city of Kari, Vira County.
Adopted by his Uncle Jimmy, who ran a once-famous traveling circus.
Three years ago, Uncle Jimmy vanished, leaving behind massive debts.
Lucius sold off the circus bit by bit, then performed on the streets as a clown and puppeteer to repay what remained.
Two years of relentless harassment and hunger had broken him, until…
Lucius's gaze fell on the rope. His chest tightened.
This Lucius… he took his own life.
An unsettling thought flashed through his mind:
Is this a coincidence? His father vanished, just like mine did.
He remembered his own father, a circus clown, who vanished without a trace one day after leaving to buy milk, earning the infamous title of a deadbeat dad.
The police investigation led nowhere. His mother uprooted them, taking menial jobs so he and his sister could have a future.
His eyes stung with tears, a surge of longing for the family he'd lost. "Mom… what will she do without me?" His voice wavered. "And what am I supposed to do here?"
Start over? Live this other Lucius's life like the protagonist of a novel?
"No." Though he felt a pang for the boy whose body he now inhabited, the thought of abandoning his mother and sister was unbearable. "I won't leave them behind."
He steadied himself. "If I could come here, then there must be a way back. I'll find it."
"I will go back! This world, this Lucius… they mean nothing to me!"
Suddenly, a gust of wind rattled the window. The single candle on a nearby desk guttered and died, the only light now a dim wash of moonlight. A prickling sense of being watched crept over him.
Thud.
Something dropped to the floor—a doll from the top shelf.
It looked disturbingly lifelike, with a goatlike head, golden fur, and large, curling horns.
Why do I recognize this doll…?
He knelt to inspect it, heart pounding. "The Horror Doll? Is this… the one my father gave me before he disappeared? But Mom threw it away…"
He remembered the last Christmas gift from his father—the words etched in his mind:
"Son, this is a gift from the great Lord of Horrors. Whoever owns it will be subjected to sadness, pain, misery, and horror for all eternity."
"Why would you give me that?" he'd asked, horrified.
His father had only laughed. "I'm a jester. How can there be laughter without sadness, pain, misery, and horror? My act would flop without them!"
He recalled sulking for days, refusing to sleep in his room, utterly terrified of the eerie doll.
It can't be the same one…
Yet here it was, identical in every unsettling detail. "Lucius's uncle gave him this, too?" he murmured, feeling a hollow chill. A coincidence?
He prided himself on being a skeptic, dismissing superstitions, but the doll exuded a menacing aura. Oppressive. Malevolent. Alive.
"Just a coincidence…" he whispered, trying to steady his breathing. "No way the 'Lord of Horrors' has anything to do with my transmigration—"
Before he could finish, the doll's goatlike eyes flared bright red. A crushing sense of presence bore down on him, like a monstrous shadow swooping in.
"AAAAAHHH!" Lucius stumbled back, the doll slipping from his grasp.
In the air above it, glowing crimson text shimmered into view, accompanied by a chilling verse:
Part of yourself forever belongs to the Morningstar.
You shall not meet your end by suffocation.
A sacrifice is required for the next stage—yours, or that of a thousand others.
Choose wisely, oh one chosen by the Devil.