Hotel Room: The Betrayal
The hotel room was dark, curtains half-pulled, admitting only strips of orange dusk. The air clung—stale with perfume, perspiration, and something else, something darker: fear.
Victor's body slammed into the wall with a bone-rattling thud. His breath exploded out of him, ragged and shattered. Before he could even lift an arm, fists and boots descended again—merciless, unrelenting. Two massive men stood over him, their blows crashing down like steel hammers on his smaller, slighter body.
"Ugh—ahh!" His voice shattered with agony, ribs creaking under the battering. He huddled in on himself, but each effort at protection was torn apart with raw strength.
A scream of a woman cut through the mayhem.
"Stop—please, stop!"
Her voice shook, her words choked with tears. She stood on bare feet beside the bed, hands pressed tight against her mouth, shaking so hard she couldn't catch her breath. The silk gown hung on her skin, rumpled from passion and panic both.
"Kill him," the cold voice commanded. "Then toss his body into the ravine.
The order was given by a man of sixty, his pin-sharp suit crisp though besmirched by blood. His face set, eyes colder than steel. His voice sliced more incisively than any knife.
The heart of the woman skipped. "No—wait! Please—" She was cut off as his hand gripped her upper arm and pulled her back toward the door.
She spun around, eyes wide with tears. One final look at Victor—beaten, shattered, barely alive.
I apologize… I never believed my stupid anger would destroy you like this. Live through today, Victor. Please. just live.
Her mouth never spoke the words out loud. They were a prayer, a sorry, spoken only within her soul. A confession he would never know.
Hours before, the storm had started.
She had come home to discover her husband in the arms of another woman, entwined between sheets that were meant to be theirs and theirs alone. The image seared her from the inside out. Betrayal ripped her chest asunder, left her gasping on the floor of her own marriage. Fury—vision-blurring, toxic—became her response.
She discovered this hotel. One that promised discretion. One that provided revenge in the guise of handsome strangers.
Victor was the stranger she had selected.
He was young. Too young, perhaps. His shy smile, the guarded manner in which he spoke to her, the quietness in his tone when he said his name—he hadn't seemed a man forged for revenge. Rather, a boy getting through each day on instinct. Yet his kindness had only served to make her choice.
With wine and hushed secrets, she pulled him to her. Her shame required it, and Victor—reluctant though he could not deny her—fell into her tempest.
Their bodies met on the bed. His was warm against hers, his quivering hands familiarizing themselves with her contours. She drew him nearer, requiring his weight, his presence, anything to overwhelm the burn of betrayal.
But they had hardly completed their initial frantic merging when the door burst open. Her husband burst in with his men, fury and power filling the space.
The tempest she unleashed did not engulf her—it devoured Victor.
Under the Ravine
"Ugh…"
The thud of his body on stone rang out dimly, then was swallowed up by the darkness. Victor fell, flesh tearing, bones shrieking, until at last he collapsed in a heap against the wet ground.
Each breath was torture. His chest creaked. His eyesight went dim. The universe was dark except for the silver spillover of moonlight above.
So. this is it?" His lips were shaking, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. "My life. ending here?
He envisioned nothing magnificent. No relatives awaited him—no, he had none. No life lay ahead for him—merely the constant struggle to scrounge up bits of work to breathe. He had vowed, in secret, in desperation, that he would live. That no matter if the world held nothing for him, he would sample life in every color.
Now that vow shattered and disintegrated like dust between his fingers.
"I… I'm sorry," he husked, his voice shaking in the biting night. "Sorry to myself… I won't… get to live the life I vowed I would…"
His eyelids twitched shut. Shadow closed in, ravenous.
And then—
"La… la… la…"
The song floated like a spirit. A girl's singing, too pure for a cemetery, too carefree for this necropolis.
Victor's eyes creaked open.
Out of the darkness, a child emerged. She didn't move—she drifted, steps weightless, reality warping beneath her existence. All the blades of grass bent in passage. All insects, all crawling creatures stood still in awe or terror.
She paused in front of him, cocking her head, smile both naive and terrible. Her hair glimmered in the moonlight, her skin as pale as porcelain.
Her finger against his cheek. The contact cold, freezing him to the bone.
"Do you wish to live?" she inquired.
Victor's throat creaked, no sound passing through. His body convulsed with effort.
"Do you wish for power?"
Her eyes shone—too deep, too old, an ocean of secrets whirling within a child's body. She moved in, voice lowering, slicing through the darkness. "Reply quickly, or death will take you before I do.
Victor's lips moved. His mind strained at the brink of nothing. But deep in him, a fire ignited.
"I… want… everything…"
The girl's smile spread. Malice and delight were blended in her face.
"Good."
She raised her tiny hand. With a snap, her fingertip bloodied a single red drop. She smeared it on his lips.
"Drink. Taste my blood, and your wish will be granted."
Instinct conquered hesitation. His lips parted, needy. He drank.
"Ahn…" Her body trembled, her childlike voice momentarily twisting into something older, something queasily adult. For an instant of a heartbeat, her face bore the look of a woman savoring forbidden bliss.
Then her form disintegrated, unraveling into strands of white light. The radiance surged forward, pouring straight into Victor's chest.
Awakening
The instant when the light invaded him, Victor's body rose from the floor. His limbs hung weightless, suspended by invisible fingers.
The light spread over him, hot and soft simultaneously. Bones reformed with soggy cracks. Flesh sewed itself together. Blood was pulled back into his veins as wounds closed. His shattered form was rebuilt beneath the spinning of living light.
The ravine erupted in light, a cocoon of silence enveloping him.
Within his cranium, a voice boomed—cold, soulless, yet deafening.
[Ding]
Commencing the process of installing the System.
…
[System successfully implanted.]
[Ding]
[Initiating body reconstruction.]
…
[Body reconstruction complete.]
[Ding]
[Bloodline replacement process started.]
…
[Bloodline replacement complete.]
[Ding]
[Soul Transmission sequence activated.]
[Searching for new world…]
[Search complete.]
[Perfect body found.]
[Starting transmigration.]
Victor's unconscious body glowed like a new star. The cocoon shook, light breaking into streams of radiance. Then—silence.
In the time it took for an eye to blink, he was gone.
The ravine was vacant again. There was only the sound of wind whispering, and the distant echo of a girl's laughter, carefree and haunting, that disappeared into the evening.