"Urgh!" With a groan, Silas' eyes fluttered open. His chest heaved as though dragging air into his lungs for the first time in years. He squinted; vision fogged with grey static.
A sharp pang stabbed at his back as he soon realised jagged stones were pressing into his spine. On the other hand, his stomach gnawed at itself, while his throat burned with thirst.
Slowly, the world around him began to sharpen, yet this clarity brought no comfort. Above him stretched a sky unfamiliar: what should have been a bright cerulean canvas was now drenched in a deep amethyst glow.
'The sky?' Silas' eyes snapped wide, his body jerking upright despite the protest in his back. 'I should have been in a train station…'
He turned, taking in the scenery. Where once the station had stood, there was now only ruin—stone reduced to splinters, iron twisted into misshapen sculptures, glass ground into powder that glittered faintly in the violet light.
He sat in the middle of it all, a lone figure among ruins, like some forgotten survivor of a demolition site.
With trembling legs, Silas pushed himself upright. His balance wavered, the unstable rubble shifting beneath his boots, but he managed to steady himself. His hand raked through his tangled hair as he muttered under his breath, "What on earth happened while I was gone…?"
His fingers fumbled inside his pocket, drawing out his phone. The cracked screen flared weakly to life.
11:07, June 7th.
Only a day.
His lips parted. A day.
That hellish eternity he had endured on the train had only lasted a day.
[Host is now awake]
[Charon is initialising]
The sudden glow of a translucent bubble cut across his vision. It hovered before him, untethered to the ruin around him.
Silas blinked, then raised a tentative hand to brush it away. His fingers passed through as if through smoke, the text rippling like a mirage.
'So this is what happened to the train…' he thought, tilting his head. 'It fused with me? I wonder what became of that bastard…'
There was no panic. No disbelief. Only a curious hum from his soul, which was once filled with emotions.
"Ah…" Silas exhaled, the sound almost empty.
He could still feel emotion, yes, but only as if through a veil, muted, blurred, diluted beyond recognition. Happiness was no longer filled with warmth but a faded ember. Fear was no longer a knife pressed against his skull but a dull pinprick. Even grief, when it pressed faintly at the edges of his chest, felt like remembering someone else's pain rather than living his own.
Despite his escape from that train, he knew this numbness would never truly leave him. Whatever the train had taken, whatever bargain he had made, his heart would never beat with the same rhythm again.
Shaking his head, Silas forced his gaze back toward the floating text before him, his face settling into an unreadable calm.
[Loading…]
[Panel Successfully Generated]
Name: Silas
Attributes:
[Constitution: 0.7 / 1.1] (Weakened: Hunger, Thirst, Stress)
[Spirit: 1.2]
(Note: 1.0 = baseline for an adult male.)
Talents:
[Eye of Omniscience — Using the knowledge of memories once stored in Charon, the host gains insight into all observed entities]
[Soul Absorption — Through Charon, the host is capable of assimilating fragments of souls from defeated entities, allowing them to gain their respective memories, knowledge and skills.]
Skills:
[Basic Accounting (Lv.2) — Capable of tracking resources, evaluating costs, and detecting inconsistencies.]
[Investment Theory (Lv.1) — Understands fundamentals of risk, reward, and market flow.]
[Negotiation (Lv.1) — Minor bonus to persuasion when dealing with peers or authority figures.]
[Data Analysis (Lv.1) — Can quickly interpret patterns in numbers, text, or fragmented information.]
[Martial Basics (Lv.1) — General self-defence knowledge learned in childhood.]
[System Notes
Constitution measures strength, agility and dexterity; Spirit represents soul, intelligence, and mental resilience.Skills have a maximum of three levels. Upon reaching maximum, there is a chance for skills to mutate using the knowledge reserves of Charon.Host's Constitution temporarily reduced by malnutrition and exhaustion. Recovery is possible with food, water, and rest.]
"Tsk! I went on a journey to hell and came out as a protagonist from a video game." Silas shook his head, muttering under his breath, though his eyes lingered on the strange talents glowing faintly within his mind's panel.
Sarcasm was all he had left. Still, he forced the thought away, tightening his jaw. He was weak, hungry, parched, and stranded in an alien world that looked like his own yet felt nothing like it. The first thing he needed was simple: food, water, and some sense of direction.
With careful steps, Silas picked his way through the rubble that had once been Westershire Train Station. Shattered glass crunched under his worn shoes with each step as he soon emerged onto what had once been the main street.
However, as he stood in the middle of the street, he found himself freezing. Silence. Not the peaceful kind, but the suffocating hush of a place abandoned by life itself.
The buildings, once proud brick facades and steel-framed towers, had collapsed inward, some leaning drunkenly against one another, others reduced to jagged heaps. Asphalt roads were split open, deep fissures carving scars in the earth.
And scattered among the debris were human remains. A pale hand jutting from beneath a fallen wall. Splashes of crimson smeared across stone and glass. Strips of flesh clinging to rubble. Each one a mute testimony of both panic and slaughter.
Silas' tilted his head as he noticed, almost with detached curiosity, that horror no longer came as naturally as it once would have. His head tilted slightly, studying the carnage.
"One day seems to have passed for me, but what about over here…" He mumbled.
It was impossible. Even in the worst riots, in the harshest disasters, this much devastation couldn't have unfolded in less than twenty-four hours. No matter how absurd things had grown, even he could not bring himself to believe this was the work of mere hours.
That could only mean one thing.
"There was a difference in the flow of time…" Silas chewed his lip, the thought gnawing at him.
A sigh escaped him.
His only concern remained to be his parents, yet with this change, it might be difficult to find them.
For all he knows, hundreds of years could have passed and grass could already be growing on their tombs.
[Beep!]
[New Mission Generated]
[Mission: Recovery]
Status: Host body is critically weakened. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue are impairing Constitution.
Objective: Secure food and drink to replenish physical strength before further deterioration occurs.
Reward: [Knowledge Unlocked—The Fracture]
Silas narrowed his eyes at the glowing mission text hovering before him.
"The Fracture?" He muttered. His gaze drifted skyward, to the gaping wound that split the heavens—an immense rift bleeding violet mist across the world. The haze writhed as though alive, spilling downward in tendrils that swallowed the ruined skyline.
Crunch. Chew. Gulp.
Seated amid the skeletal remains of what was once a supermarket, Silas devoured the stale rations in his hand. Rusted shelves lay toppled across the floor, their metal frames twisted like broken bones. Shards of glass and faded packaging littered the ground, while vines and mildew crawled along fractured walls.
In his hand was a dented tin of beans he'd pried open with a shard of metal. A half-crushed pack of crackers sat by his side, the last vestiges of preserved food scavenged from a fallen aisle. They were dry, tasteless even, but they filled the emptiness clawing at his stomach.
Between bites, Silas glanced at the glowing screen of his phone in his other hand.
"No signal…" he whispered, his thumb brushing across the screen. He tightened his grip, staring at the empty bars in the corner of the display. "I can't even contact them…"
Parents…
He remembered their existence, yes.
But their faces? Their names? Their warmth?
They slipped away like sand through his fingers, leaving only hollow impressions.
'It seems unlikely I can find them…' He shook his head, forcing the thought down. Survival came first.
"Haah…" Silas exhaled, leaning back against a collapsed column. He slid the phone into his pocket just as a panel flickered into existence before his eyes.
[Beep!]
[Mission: Recovery — Completed]
[Rewards Dispensed]
The glowing text dissolved, and in its place a flood of foreign knowledge surged into his skull. Silas staggered, clutching at his temple as if his head were splitting apart. Words burned into his mind, twisting together like tongues of fire. Images unfurled in flashes: civilizations rising beneath alien suns, starships splitting the heavens, worlds consumed in violet storms.
A phrase returned again and again, echoing like some sort of commandment: The Rapture.
His breathing slowed as the torrent of information bled into coherence.
"So that's what it is…" Spoke Silas as his eyes regained their brightness.
The Rapture… a cataclysm encoded in to the very fabric of the universe. It was inevitable. Unstoppable. Unending.
The instant a civilization reached beyond its natal planet, the sky itself would break. A wound, no, rather a rift, would bleed forth Primordial Energy, saturating the world below.
It was an higher-dimensional energy, unknowable in its nature, whose sole role was to remake life. To uplift it. To… evolve it.
On the other hand, there was some relevant information regarding Charon.
It was known by a myriad of names: the Herald of Doom, the Ferryman of the End, the Will of the Abyss. Whenever the Rapture tore across a world, its searing energies called to it. Drawn by the resonance, it would arrive to claim the souls of the damned, guiding them across the veil to their afterlife.
Silas sat in silence, before breaking into a soft chuckle.
"…Absurd," he muttered, shaking his head. "It's like something straight out of fiction…"
And yet, the amethyst sky above him bled mist into the ruins of his world. Reality had already chosen to disagree.
Nevertheless, there was one bit of information that gnawed at him.
A civilization that spanned beyond its own natal planet?
Silas had lost many memories, yes, but he was certain humanity had not yet reached such heights. At best, mankind had only managed to set foot on the moon. It had barely sent rovers to its nearest neighbouring planet. In its current state, humanity was centuries away from terraforming and inhabiting another planet.
Yet, that begged a question.
Why had the Rapture occurred here?
Coincidence? Or something else…?
Rarrgh!
A sudden noise cut through his thoughts like a knife.
'Was that an animal…?' Silas narrowed his eyes as he tried to look towards the noise.