The first thing Kellan noticed was pain.
Not sharp, not clean—total. Every nerve in his body felt lit from the inside, raw and misaligned. His lungs refused to work. When they finally drew in air, it was thick and vile, like breathing mold through smoke.
His eyes opened to a sky that didn't belong to Earth.
Dark crimson clouds churned above him, stitched with black lightning that pulsed without sound. A ghostly sphere hung behind them, dull and distant, casting no warmth. The wind howled like something half-alive.
Kellan lay in a crater of bones.
He realized this only when he tried to move and his hand slipped on a sun-bleached jawbone. Skulls, ribs, fragments of beasts and things that may once have been human littered the pit around him. Some were fossilized. Some still had scraps of flesh clinging to them.
His ankle throbbed—wrong angle. Possibly sprained. His arms were scraped raw from the fall. The left sleeve of his uniform shirt was gone, and one shoe had vanished completely. His backpack was missing.
A low sound escaped his throat, but he bit it down.
Don't panic.
He crawled up the slope of the crater, dragging his bad leg behind him. The ground was sharp—fragments cracked beneath his weight. The wind picked up, colder now, hissing between shattered ribs.
He reached the edge.
And froze.
Beyond the ridge, the world expanded in every direction like a nightmare too detailed to be dreamed. Cliffs of twisted black rock clawed at the horizon. Rivers of glowing ash ran like veins through the land. Above them, enormous, broken islands floated in the sky—suspended by crimson chains of energy, pulsing with ominous rhythm.
Kellan crouched, breath shallow.
Then he saw it—movement.
Something massive, long, and silent crawled through the canyon below. Its body shimmered like oil, limbs hidden beneath a rippling carapace. Dozens of dull eyes blinked along its back. It made no sound. The silence moved with it.
Kellan ducked back below the ridge.
His heart was hammering.
This was not a game. Not a hallucination.
He had fallen into something real.
And then—
A clicking noise.
It came from behind. Down in the pit.
He turned.
Eyes gleamed in the shadows between bones. Black. Reflective. Watching.
The thing that stepped into the light had six legs and a jagged mouth. It looked part beetle, part scorpion, part nightmare. Its mandibles clattered as it crept forward on spiked limbs, drawn to him.
Kellan backed up. His foot slid on a broken femur. He grabbed it on instinct—held it like a bat.
The creature hissed.
He swung.
Crack.
The bone hit hard, cracking one of its eyestalks. It reared back with a shrill cry. One hooked leg lashed out and caught him across the thigh, ripping through cloth and skin.
Kellan dropped with a cry, clutching his leg. Blood spilled across the pale bones.
No time to think. No time to scream.
His hand found another shard—jagged, curved. He drove it forward as the creature lunged again.
Crunch.
The shard pierced between mandibles. The creature jerked, thrashed, then collapsed beside him in a twitching heap.
Kellan fell back, panting. His leg burned. The cut was deep.
Then—
[UNRECOGNIZED ENTITY DETECTED… SCANNING… ERROR.]
[A.R.K. SYSTEM SYNC FAILURE.]
[Reconstructing System Framework… STAND BY.]
A flickering red window appeared in the air before him. It glitched—overlapping text, code flashing faster than he could read.
He blinked. "What...?"
[INITIATION COMPLETE.]
[Welcome, Host. You are in breach of authorized dimensional pathways.]
[Survival Override Mode: Engaged.]
Another screen slid into place.
[Status: Kellan Jin]
– Level: 0
– Species: Human (Unranked)
– Strength: 1
– Agility: 1
– Endurance: 1
– Vitality: 0.7
– Traits: None
– Conditions: Laceration (Minor), Fracture (Moderate), Panic (High)
[First Directive: Survive.]
[Optional Objective: Kill to Grow.]
The screen blinked once, then shrunk to a small dot in his vision.
Kellan stared at the creature's body. At the bone in his hand. At the blood on his fingers.
The wind rose above the crater again. Far off, a howl echoed through the sky.
Kellan whispered, "If this is real…"
His fingers closed tighter around the bone.
"Then I'll survive."