The evening rain fell in uneven rhythms, spattering against the glass of the last train bound out of the city. Kai Shirogane sat slouched in the corner seat, his reflection fractured by droplets on the window.
It was supposed to be an ordinary Friday night. A week of exhausting shifts at his part-time job, a mountain of university assignments he pretended didn't exist, and the gnawing emptiness that came from a life where every day blurred into the next.
He had missed the earlier train, as always. The streets had been crowded, the neon lights suffocating, and the laughter of people who had places to be had scraped against his ears. By the time he reached the platform, the last departure was already waiting—its doors yawning open, its cars almost completely empty.
That was the first thing unusual.
The Chiyoda Line at this hour was never this barren.
Kai brushed off the unease. He was used to loneliness.
The train lurched forward, the sudden motion pulling him back into the seat. He glanced around. Only three other passengers occupied the carriage:
A man in a dark suit, hunched forward as if asleep, his face obscured by shadows.
A teenage girl, maybe younger than him, clutching a sketchbook to her chest, her knuckles pale.
An elderly woman, her eyes closed, lips murmuring soundless words—prayers, perhaps.
The fluorescent lights overhead flickered once. Twice. Then stabilized.
Kai pulled out his phone. No signal. No notifications. Just the hollow glow of the lock screen.
Something was wrong. He felt it in his bones.
---
The train didn't stop at the next station.
The LED sign above the door should have scrolled through the station name. Instead, it displayed a string of corrupted symbols—shattered letters, as though language itself had been chewed up.
Kai's breath caught.
The teenage girl noticed too. She stared at the sign, her lips moving silently as if trying to pronounce the nonsense. Her eyes widened when she realized she couldn't.
The elderly woman's prayer grew louder. The suit-wearing man lifted his head slightly, but his face remained hidden in shadow—unnaturally so. Even under the harsh fluorescent glow, no detail emerged.
Then the train entered a tunnel.
---
It lasted too long.
Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. The windows reflected nothing but darkness, not even the faint blur of tunnel walls. It was as if the train swam through a void.
Kai stood, his throat dry. He walked toward the nearest door and pressed his palm against the glass. Cold. Not the ordinary chill of tempered glass—this was the biting cold of winter frost, even though outside it was still late summer.
His reflection wavered.
The glass rippled like water.
And then, for the briefest instant, he saw something behind his reflection—an endless plain of ashen soil, beneath a sky that writhed with veins of red light, like scars tearing across heaven's skin. Shapes moved in that wasteland. Twisted silhouettes. They watched.
Kai staggered back. His heart slammed against his ribs.
The girl gasped. "You saw it too, didn't you?"
Her voice cracked, trembling.
Before Kai could answer, the train jolted violently. The elderly woman screamed a prayer that was cut off mid-word. The lights died.
Darkness swallowed everything.
---
When the lights flickered back on, the world outside the window was no longer a tunnel.
The train had emerged onto tracks that cut through an endless wasteland of ashen dunes and skeletal ruins. The sky was a bruised shade of crimson, pulsing as though alive.
And far in the distance, an ivory tower pierced the sky, impossibly tall, its base obscured by storms of ash.
The teenage girl clutched Kai's sleeve. "This… isn't Japan."
The suit-wearing man finally raised his head. His face—or rather, the absence of it—was revealed. Where his features should have been was a smooth void, like clay left unshaped. Yet somehow, Kai knew the man was smiling.
"Welcome," the faceless man said, his voice a dozen whispers layered over one another. "You've crossed the Veil."
---
The train screeched to a halt in the middle of nowhere. The doors slid open with a metallic groan.
A hot wind howled in, carrying the scent of rust and decay.
Beyond the doors was no station—just shifting dunes of gray dust, and shadows that moved against the wind's direction.
The faceless man stood. His suit writhed, as though woven from black smoke. He stepped toward the open door.
Neither the girl nor the old woman moved. They were frozen with terror.
Kai's instincts screamed at him to stay seated, to deny this reality. But something deeper, a force he couldn't explain, pulled at him—toward the ash-strewn horizon.
The faceless man paused in the doorway and tilted his head, though he had no eyes to look at them with.
"You are chosen," the whispers hissed. "The Ivory Tower awaits. But you will not climb it unchanged."
He stepped out, vanishing into the storm.
---
Then the shadows came.
They slithered closer, their shapes not fixed—sometimes humanoid, sometimes animal, sometimes nothing recognizable at all. Their bodies leaked black smoke, and where their faces should have been were pits of teeth, gnashing soundlessly.
The old woman broke. She ran screaming out of the train, into the dunes. The shadows followed instantly, their movements unnervingly fast. Her scream was cut short, smother
End of chapter 1