The city was breathtaking.
Akai Ren stood at the outer edge of it, staring in stunned silence. Towering spires twisted into the sky like ivory horns, trimmed with glowing symbols that pulsed softly with ethereal light. Floating lanterns drifted between the buildings like luminous jellyfish, casting dancing shadows on cobblestone streets. Strange crystalline birds circled high above, their songs echoing in harmonies not meant for human ears.
He blinked several times, as if trying to reset his vision. "This... this isn't just fantasy," he muttered under his breath. "This is ultra-fantasy."
The streets bustled with activity that seemed pulled straight from his wildest JRPG dreams. Stalls lined the thoroughfares, merchants hawking fruits that pulsed with inner light, fabrics that shifted color at a touch, and weapons forged in impossible shapes that screamed of legendary artifacts. People moved past him in elaborate robes that seemed to flow like liquid starlight, gleaming armor that caught the sun like mirrors, and–
*Demi-humans.*
His breath caught. Horns spiraling from foreheads. Tails swishing behind graceful forms. Scales that caught the light like precious gems. Wings that folded elegantly against backs.
And then he saw her.
By a small fruit stand, examining produce with the careful attention of someone who knew quality when she saw it, stood a girl who made his heart skip. Silver hair shimmered like moonbeams, catching the afternoon light in ways that seemed almost magical. Cat-like ears twitched atop her head as she concentrated, and a delicate tail swayed lazily behind her. She moved with an elegance that seemed too refined for this bustling market, too perfect for this world.
Akai's jaw went slack.
*A catgirl. An actual, real, living catgirl.*
Something primal overrode every rational thought in his head. His feet moved before his brain could catch up, sprinting toward her like a man possessed.
"Hey! Hi!" he shouted, waving both hands above his head like some sort of deranged windmill. "You—you're absolutely beautiful! I'm Akai! Akai Ren! From another world!"
She turned, confusion flickering across delicate features.
Without thinking, Akai reached for her hand, grasping it gently as he bent forward in what he thought was a gallant gesture. "Allow me the honor of kissing you're"
*CRACK.*
Her palm connected with his cheek with the force of a sledgehammer.
He stumbled backward, clutching his face as stars exploded across his vision. The sound echoed through the marketplace like a gunshot.
Her scream cut through the ambient chatter of merchants and customers. Within seconds, she was sprinting away, her silver hair streaming behind her as she disappeared into the crowd. Her tail vanished last, swishing once before being swallowed by the mass of confused onlookers.
Akai stood there, swaying slightly, trying to force a laugh through his rapidly swelling cheek. "Tough crowd," he mumbled, rubbing the side of his face.
He didn't notice the way conversations had stopped around him. The way merchants whispered to one another behind their stalls. The way city guards began to turn in his direction. The way mothers pulled their children a little closer.
Shrugging off the incident with the casual air of someone who'd clearly learned nothing from it, Akai continued deeper into the city.
Hours crawled by like wounded animals.
He wandered through districts that seemed to shift and change around him—residential areas with houses that defied architectural logic, merchant quarters where the very air seemed to shimmer with enchantment, and what looked like administrative buildings carved from single massive stones.
Slowly, painstakingly, he began to piece together fragments of this world's culture. The way people bowed to one another—shallow nods for equals, deeper bows for those of higher station. The strange coins with square holes in their centers that jingled in pouches. The unspoken rituals between buyers and sellers, a dance of respect and commerce that spoke to centuries of tradition.
But something gnawed at him like a persistent itch he couldn't scratch.
Nobody understood a single word he said.
He tried everything he could think of, cycling through every language he knew or had ever heard.
"Hello?"
Blank stare.
"Kon'nichiwa?"
Confused head shake.
"Namaste? Bonjour? Guten tag? Hola?"
Nothing. Not even a flicker of recognition.
His attempts at communication grew increasingly desperate. Hand gestures that probably looked more like he was having a seizure. Drawing crude pictures in the dirt with his finger. Even attempting to mime concepts that had no business being mimed.
Still nothing.
In a moment of complete exhaustion and defeat, he slumped against a marble column in what looked like the city's central plaza. Frustration boiled over, and he threw his head back, shouting at the crystalline birds circling overhead.
"WHY DON'T I GET A MAGIC TRANSLATOR LIKE IN EVERY F***ING ISEKAI?!"
His voice echoed off the surrounding buildings, drawing more stares, more whispers.
The echo died away into uncomfortable silence.
Then came the sound of metal boots on stone.
*Clink. Clink. Clink.*
Akai turned his head, and his stomach dropped straight through the cobblestones.
A full unit of city guards marched toward him with the inexorable precision of a military formation. Spear tips glinted in the afternoon sun. Sword hilts rested under calloused hands. Their expressions weren't curious or even annoyed.
They looked ready for a fight.
The lead guard—a mountain of a man with scars crossing his face like a roadmap of violence—barked something in that incomprehensible language.
Akai threw his hands up in what he hoped was a universal gesture of surrender. "Okay, okay, I'm chill! No more catgirl incidents, I promise! Look, I'm sorry, alright? I don't know what I did!"
They didn't slow down.
Something in their eyes made his blood turn to ice water. There was no mercy there. No interest in explanations or apologies.
Only duty.
Akai ran.
He made it maybe fifty yards before pain exploded in his stomach like a lightning bolt. A spear butt, driven with expert precision, folded him in half. He hit the cobblestones hard, vomited what felt like everything he'd ever eaten, and watched the world fade to black.
Cold pressed against his cheek when consciousness crawled back.
Stone. Rough, unforgiving stone that smelled of centuries of despair.
His head pounded with each heartbeat. His stomach felt like someone had used it for sword practice. His mouth tasted like he'd been gargling with sand and regret.
Chains rattled as he struggled to sit up, the metal tight around his wrists and ankles. The sound echoed in what was clearly a cell—four walls, iron bars, and the kind of darkness that seemed to eat hope.
In the corner across from him, barely visible in the dim light filtering through a tiny window, sat a small figure.
A girl. No older than ten. Her skin looked like it had been kissed by fire and left scarred by the encounter. Burns covered her arms, her neck, anywhere visible. She sat perfectly still, staring at nothing, as if she'd long since retreated somewhere deep inside herself where the world couldn't reach.
Akai's throat felt raw, but he managed to croak out, "Hey... are you okay?"
She might as well have been carved from the same stone as the walls.
He slumped back, cursing under his breath in languages she couldn't understand anyway.
Time became a meaningless concept in the cell.
There was no day or night, just the gradual shift from dim to dimmer. Food came at irregular intervals—bread that tasted like sawdust and water that tasted like nothing at all. The girl never spoke, never moved except to eat mechanically when the guards shoved bowls through the bars.
Eventually, footsteps echoed in the corridor outside.
Two guards hauled him to his feet with all the gentleness of men moving livestock. They dragged him through stone passages that seemed designed to crush hope, past cells filled with shadows and whispers.
They brought him to a plain room—two chairs, one table, walls that had probably witnessed more confessions than a monastery.
They shoved him into one chair and chained his hands to the tabletop with practiced efficiency.
Then they left him alone.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time had a way of stretching when you were chained to furniture in a windowless room.
Finally, the door opened.
The man who stepped in made Akai's breath catch in his throat.
Tall enough to have to duck through the doorway. Muscled like he'd spent his life turning other people into paste. Armored in steel that had been darkened by what looked suspiciously like blood and smoke. His hair fell to his shoulders in waves the color of fresh fire.
Where his left eye should have been was nothing but a jagged scar crossing an empty socket.
He sat down across from Akai with the casual confidence of a man who had never doubted his ability to break whatever needed breaking.
And stared.
The silence stretched between them like a taut wire.
Then he spoke. Sharp words in that same incomprehensible language. His remaining eye fixed on Akai with an intensity that made him want to crawl under the table.
Akai blinked. "I don't know what the hell you're saying, man."
The knight—because what else could he be—pointed at Akai's tracksuit. Said something else, more insistent this time. His voice carried the kind of authority that made mountains listen.
Akai shrugged helplessly. "Look, I'm just a guy. A really, really stupid guy who apparently can't keep his hands to himself. I don't even know how I got here."
The knight's voice rose, frustration bleeding through the language barrier like water through a cracked dam.
He waved to the guards.
They dragged him to another room.
This one was darker. Colder. And filled with tools that had clearly been designed by someone who understood that the human body had far too many ways it could be convinced to share information.
They strapped him to a wooden chair that had suspicious dark stains worn into its grain.
Something sharp bit into his arm—a needle sliding home with practiced precision. Liquid fire raced through his veins, some kind of drug that made everything feel both distant and intensely immediate.
Then came the hot iron rods.
The first one pressed against his chest, and Akai's world exploded into an ocean of screaming agony. The smell of his own burning flesh filled his nostrils as he thrashed against the restraints.
His arms.
His legs.
His back.
Every inch of skin they could reach.
He screamed until his voice cracked and bled. Cursed in every language he knew until the words became meaningless noise. Cried until he had no tears left to shed.
The men doing it moved with the casual precision of craftsmen. They might as well have been carving wood for all the emotion they showed. This was just another day at the office for them.
Questions in that incomprehensible language. Hot iron when he couldn't answer. More questions. More pain.
The cycle repeated until consciousness fled like a coward.
He woke up back in the cell.
The scarred girl still sat in her corner, hands pressed over her ears as if she could block out sounds that existed only in memory.
This time, Akai said nothing. What was there to say?
The pattern established itself with the reliability of sunrise.
They would drag him to the interrogation room.
The red-haired knight would ask questions in words that might as well have been alien gibberish.
They would hurt him when he couldn't answer.
He would scream.
They wouldn't care.
By the third session, the fight had been burned out of him as surely as if they'd used those iron rods on his spirit.
The knight showed him a drawing—a man in a hat with a magnifying glass, smiling with the kind of cheerful confidence that suggested he solved mysteries for a living. It clearly meant something desperately important to them.
Akai stared at it with eyes that had forgotten how to hope.
He had no idea who it was. No idea what they wanted. No idea why any of this was happening.
The iron rods answered his ignorance with mathematical precision.
One morning—or what passed for morning in a place without windows—he woke up with rough rope cutting into his wrists and ankles.
He was tied to a wooden stake.
In the center of the city square.
The same square where he'd shouted at the sky about translation magic. The irony wasn't lost on him, but irony was cold comfort when you were about to be barbecued.
Crowds had gathered, their faces hungry for the kind of entertainment that left nothing but ashes and memories. Street vendors sold snacks. Children pointed and whispered. It was a festival, and he was the main event.
Oil soaked through his clothes, the stench filling his nose with promises of what was to come.
He turned his head and saw her—the silver-haired catgirl from the market. She stood in the front row, close enough that he could see her face clearly.
She was watching him.
Smiling.
That same elegant, refined expression she'd worn while examining fruit. As if his imminent death was just another item to be appraised and found acceptable.
Someone stepped forward with a torch.
The flame danced in the afternoon breeze, casting shadows that seemed to reach for him with eager fingers.
Fire was a living thing.
It crawled up his legs like a hungry animal, eating through cloth and skin with equal enthusiasm. His tracksuit melted and fused with his flesh. The smell of cooking meat—his own cooking meat—filled the air as the crowd cheered.
His skin bubbled and peeled like old paint. His muscles cooked like meat on a grill. His screams tore his throat raw until no sound could escape the ruin of his vocal cords.
The pain was beyond description. Beyond human comprehension. It was every nightmare he'd ever had about fire distilled into pure, liquid agony.
Akai Ren burned.
Akai Ren cooked.
Akai Ren died.
****
His eyes snapped open.
He was standing in the same alley where the guards had first found him. The same buildings towered around him. The same people walked past like nothing had happened.
Like nothing had ever happened.
His stomach lurched. His eyes went wide as dinner plates.
He dropped to his knees and vomited until his stomach turned inside out, until there was nothing left but bile and the taste of his own terror.
His whole body shook like he'd been thrown into an ice bath. His chest heaved like he'd just run a marathon through hell.
A scream ripped out of him—wild, broken, absolutely terrified.
"NO—NO—NO—WHAT THE F*** IS HAPPENING?!"
He clawed at his hair with trembling hands as the truth crashed into him like a freight train loaded with cosmic horror.
It had all been real.
Every moment of torture.
Every scream.
Every second of burning agony.
The catgirl's smile as he died.
He wasn't free.
He wasn't dead.
He wasn't even safe.
He was back.
Back to do it all over again.
Back to make the same mistakes.
Back to suffer the same fate.
Back to burn.
The alley walls seemed to press in around him as he realized the scope of his prison. This wasn't just another world.
This was hell.
And he was its only prisoner.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but sometimes hell is just where the road leads—regardless of what you intended."
"In every fantasy, someone is the monster. The question is: who gets to decide which one you are?"
"The cruelest prison isn't made of bars—it's made of hope that this time will be different."