Chapter 1 – The Room Between Worlds
(Part 1)
The ceiling fan groaned like an old man clearing his throat, spinning just enough to stir the summer heat without really making it bearable. Lucas sat at his desk, shirt clinging to his back, a half-empty can of cheap soda sweating beside his keyboard. The monitor lit up his tired face, his hazel eyes flickering as he scrolled through the chat box of his latest livestream.
Two thousand subscribers. That was all. Not enough to pay rent, not enough to be famous, but just enough to keep him addicted to the dream. The dream of making it big.
"GG, Lucas. Better luck next time."
"Bro, how do you always choke in the last round?"
"Streamer luck is a myth confirmed."
He chuckled at the last comment, leaning into his microphone. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, chat. One day you'll all witness history. Lucas is gonna pull through with the god-tier win. Just wait."
The chat exploded in laughing emojis and sarcastic cheers. He grinned, but it didn't reach his eyes. Behind the smile was a quiet weariness. Lucas lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment that smelled faintly of instant noodles and dust. He had no family nearby, no close friends—only the faceless avatars of his subscribers to keep him company at night.
When the stream ended, silence fell like a heavy curtain. He took off his headset and stared at his reflection in the darkened screen. Twenty years old, messy brown hair, bags under his eyes. An ordinary young man with extraordinary emptiness gnawing at his chest.
He pushed back from his desk, stood, and stretched. That was when it happened.
The soda can on the desk trembled, as though caught by a breeze. But the window was shut, the air still. Lucas blinked. He reached for the can—only for it to vanish.
"What the hell—?"
The can was simply gone. Not rolled off the desk, not crushed. Gone. His heart lurched. He stumbled back, searching the floor. Nothing.
And then—he felt it. A weightless pressure in his mind, as though his brain had opened a new drawer. When he focused on it, the soda can reappeared in his hand. Ice-cold. Perfectly full, as if time itself had reset it.
Lucas dropped it in shock. The can clattered across the floor, spraying fizz.
He clutched his head, breath coming fast. "What… what was that? Am I losing my mind?"
But curiosity burned brighter than fear. He tried again, this time with his phone. He thought of it disappearing—and it was gone. He thought of it returning—and it was there, perfectly intact.
Infinite storage. That was the only phrase that made sense. A space inside his mind, limitless, waiting to swallow and return anything at will.
His hands trembled, but a laugh escaped his throat. Wild, disbelieving. "Holy shit. I have… superpowers?"
Excitement roared through him like fire. He spent the next hour experimenting, storing objects, recalling them, even juggling them in and out of existence like a magician. Nothing seemed to degrade. Nothing seemed to break.
But then came the second power.
It started with a sound. A low hum, like distant machinery, echoing in the corners of his skull. The apartment walls wavered. The air tasted of iron. Lucas staggered, the world tilting—
—and suddenly, he wasn't in his apartment anymore.
He stood on cracked asphalt under a blood-red sky. Towers of ruined concrete loomed like broken teeth. The wind carried ash, dust, and a faint stench of rot. Cars lay overturned, rusted husks clawed open like prey.
Lucas's knees almost gave out. "No… no way."
He turned in circles, his pulse hammering. This wasn't Earth. Not the Earth he knew. It was a wasteland. A dead world.
A screech split the silence.
From the ruins emerged a creature—something like a wolf, but larger, its skin stretched tight over bone, eyes glowing faint yellow. It growled, drool hissing as it struck the ash-covered ground.
Lucas's body froze. His mind screamed: Run.
He stumbled backward, fumbling for anything, and in pure desperation he reached into that infinite drawer inside him. His fingers closed around something. When he pulled it free, it was a baseball bat—something he'd stored earlier without thinking.
The beast lunged.
Lucas swung. The bat cracked against its skull, a wet thud reverberating through his arms. The monster howled, staggering but not dead. Lucas's breath tore from his lungs. He stored the bat, summoned it back, swung again. Again. Again.
Finally, the wolf collapsed in a heap, dust clouding the air. Lucas stood panting, his arms shaking violently. Blood—thick and dark—oozed across the ground.
"I… I killed it…"
His stomach churned. He wanted to vomit. But another part of him whispered: You survived.
He looked around the ruin, fear still burning in his chest. But along with it came awe. Somehow, his power had not only given him infinite storage—it had dragged him into another world. An apocalyptic one.
The hum returned. The air shimmered. And in the next blink, he was back in his apartment, soda can fizzing on the carpet, monitor still dark.
Lucas collapsed onto the floor, clutching his chest. His heart felt like it might burst.
But a smile crept across his face.
His life had just changed forever.
---Lucas sat on the floor of his apartment for a long time, his back pressed against the side of his bed. The faint buzz of the ceiling fan seemed like the only thing tethering him to reality. His hand still smelled faintly of ash and blood.
It wasn't a dream. The scar on his palm from gripping the bat too tightly was proof enough. He had killed something… something that didn't exist on Earth.
"Storage. Teleportation," he muttered, words tumbling from his lips like pebbles down a cliff. "I… I actually have powers."
He pressed his palms over his face and laughed. A wild, breathless laugh that bordered on hysteria. He was nobody. A streamer with barely two thousand subs. A kid who lived off instant noodles and dreamed of being something more.
Now he was something more.
When the laughter finally died, silence returned—heavy, suffocating. His apartment felt smaller now, like a cage. The real world, with its unpaid bills and bland walls, suddenly seemed… fragile.
Lucas stood. He grabbed a notebook from his desk, flipped it open, and began writing.
Experiment Log – Day 1
Power 1: Infinite Storage. No weight limit. Time inside seems frozen.
Power 2: Teleportation to apocalyptic world. Trigger unknown. Duration short. Returned automatically.
He stared at the page, tapping the pen. Questions piled up faster than answers. Could he choose when to teleport? Could he choose where to go? Were there multiple worlds, or just one?
And most importantly—was he safe?
The memory of the monster's glowing eyes clawed at him. He shivered.
But curiosity gnawed deeper than fear.
"I need to test it again."
---
The hum began when he least expected it. Hours later, while washing a bowl in the sink, that same metallic vibration resonated in his skull. Lucas barely had time to drop the bowl before the air tore open.
Light bent, color bled—and the world shifted.
When his vision cleared, he stood in a city drowned in water. Half-submerged skyscrapers jutted from an endless black ocean, their broken windows reflecting the silver moon. Waves slapped against tilted rooftops. The smell of salt burned his nose.
Lucas staggered, his shoes splashing into ankle-deep water. "What the hell…"
This wasn't the same place as before. Different apocalypse. Different nightmare.
A guttural roar echoed across the water. Lucas spun. Far off, a shadow moved between the skyscrapers—massive, serpentine, rippling beneath the surface. The ocean swelled as if the creature's very presence bent gravity.
Cold terror shot through him. His breath came ragged, every instinct screaming at him to hide. But there was nowhere to run. Just endless black water and drowned ruins.
The shadow moved closer. The waves grew taller.
"Not good. Not good!" Lucas yelled, scrambling onto the side of a bus half-swallowed by the flood. His hands shook as he reached into storage, pulling out the first thing he could think of—a flashlight. The beam cut through the night, shaky and thin.
The creature responded.
From the water rose a head—if it could even be called that. Jagged spines glistened like wet knives, eyes burning gold, jaws splitting wide enough to swallow cars whole. A leviathan.
Lucas froze, flashlight trembling in his grip. The thing was staring at him.
"Please," he whispered, his voice breaking. "Please let me wake up. Please—"
The hum came again. The world rippled—
And he was back in his apartment.
The flashlight clattered to the floor, water dripping from his soaked clothes. Lucas collapsed to his knees, gasping like he'd been holding his breath underwater for hours.
His notebook lay open on the desk. With trembling hands, he wrote.
Experiment Log – Day 1 (continued)
Teleportation is random. Each time: different world.
Duration seems linked to danger? Returned when in immediate life-threatening situation.
Infinite Storage works across worlds. Items brought back are real.
He stared at the wet footprints staining his carpet. His skin still prickled from the cold ocean air. This was no illusion.
His powers were real.
And the worlds were endless.
Lucas leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. His heart still pounded like a drum, but beneath the terror was something else. Something fierce.
Opportunity.
If he could survive those worlds… he could gather anything. Supplies, resources, maybe even treasures beyond imagination. He could build a life greater than anything his streaming career would ever give him.
And no one had to know.
A slow smile spread across his face. "Lucas, my guy… your boring life just got a lot more interesting."
---
That night, sleep refused to come. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the wolf's glowing eyes, the leviathan's golden stare. And yet, despite the fear, his chest burned with restless excitement.
The worlds were waiting.
And he would return.