Arriving at the barn, I slung my bag over my left shoulder, letting it thunk against the damp, red-stained wood of the inner wall. The scent of aged hay and earth greeted me as I settled into my usual spot, sinking into the straw beneath me. Moments like these—where I could forget my worries, past mistakes, and the looming weight of the future—were the glue that held my sanity together. This place, away from the suffocating presence of home, was my refuge.
With nothing but the steady hum of silence to accompany me, my eyelids grew heavy, and I drifted into slumber, untethered from the world.
Then, deep into the night, a sound shattered the stillness—a pitiful wail, no, a whimper—trembling through the cold, desolate barn. It echoed against the damp wooden beams, swallowed by the vast emptiness of the surrounding darkness. To an outsider, it might have resembled the harrowing cries of a lamb in the jaws of a wolf—a cruel reminder of nature's unyielding law: the survival of the fittest.
And perhaps that's exactly what it was.The strong dictating the fate of the weak.
When was the last time I cried this much?I could hardly recognize the sound of my own thoughts. They felt distant, detached—floating somewhere outside of my own body. This… this shouldn't be happening. And yet, as I awoke I was, staring down at myself, witnessing the brutal scene from a perspective I couldn't explain.
In the real world, my body lay half-naked, trembling, broken on the cold, damp floor. My blood painted the wooden planks beneath me in violent streaks, pooling around the straw like some grotesque offering. The sharp sting of rusted dagger tearing through my flesh felt more distant by the second.Through my eyes started to roll in the back of my head, my mind wouldn't shut down.I saw everything. I felt everything.
The tormentors—no, my executioners—loomed over me, their eyes wild with thrill, their faces twisted in a sick mix of satisfaction and cruelty. They had taken their time. They wanted me to suffer. And I had given them exactly what they wanted.
I was dying .
A silent, airless scream escaped my lips as one of them twisted a knife deep into my abdomen, the sensation barely registering anymore. My throat was raw, shredded from the screams that had long since gone unheard.
"There goes my collarbone," I thought absently. Then my ribs. Then my—
It didn't matter. None of it did.Dying in an abandoned barn, far from the elegant halls of my noble family, felt… almost poetic. Like a fitting conclusion to my pitiful story. A failure, discarded and forgotten.
A bitter laugh scraped past my lips. I always bent the knee, turned the other cheek, avoided conflict. Even when my family dismissed me, when my peers walked all over me, when the world made it clear I was weak—I never fought back. I never once raised my voice.
And where did that get me?
Lying in filth, drowning in my own blood.
I should've tried harder. I should've been more ambitious.
A face flashed through my mind—my mother. Her warm smile, the gentle way she held my hand when I was a child. She always believed in me. Always told me I was worth more than the role the world forced on me.
But I had let her down too, hadn't I?
If I had been stronger, if I had fought back, if I had risen in the ranks of my family—maybe I could've bought her freedom. Maybe she wouldn't have…
I clenched my jaw. No. No more regrets.
If I had another chance, maybe I'd actually try.
Not just for her. Not just for revenge.
But for myself.
"Huh?"
A strange sensation ripped me from my thoughts.
Suddenly, my mind was yanked back into my body, and I felt everything again. The stabbing, the tearing, the unbearable heat and cold all at once. The boys' sharp, rusted daggers buried into my skin, again and again and again.
And then—
Everything vanished.
The pain. The sounds. The blood-drenched air.
Gone.
The world collapsed into nothingness.
Darkness swallowed me whole, and for a moment, I thought that was it. That my soul would just fade into the abyss, lost to whatever lay beyond death.
But then—
Something shifted.
It was subtle at first. A faint hum, a strange pulling sensation that I couldn't quite explain.
Then, suddenly—
A million words. A thousand voices. A storm of light and knowledge, crashing into me all at once.
My mind felt like it was being split apart, reassembled, then torn apart again.
Images flashed. Memories, visions, foreign symbols I couldn't comprehend.
It was like I had been granted a sixth sense, something far beyond human understanding.
And then—
Light.
Blinding, suffocating light.
I gasped, lungs burning, as if I had been drowning and only now breached the surface.
My body felt... strange. Different.
A collage of bright colors swirled around me, shapes I couldn't quite process. My limbs felt weak, barely responsive, but—I was alive.
But where?
I forced my heavy, reluctant eyes to open.
And the first thing I saw—
Was a world I didn't recognize.