Blood.
That was the last thing she remembered. Warm blood spilling on the snowy pavement of a sidewalk. Her blood.
She tried to call for help, but only a pained whimper escaped her mouth. She gritted her teeth, suppressing the agony spreading through her body.
"Help..." It was the only word she could manage, a weak, rasping whisper. Her vision grew blurrier with each passing second.
For a moment, she thought a figure stood nearby, waiting. But her sight was too blurred to make out any details, save for the black outfits that covered them completely.
She tried to call out to them, to wonder why they wouldn't help. But the pain was too overwhelming. Soon, even the pain vanished, and the numbness of fading life began to set in.
And then, she was dead.
———
[Welcome, Lost Soul Yuki!]
Yuki gasped.
She opened her eyes. Her hands flung out, expecting to grip snowy pavement, but they met only coarse sand. Her body jerked upright, panic hammering into her unbeating heart.
"What?" The word was a dry rasp. Her mouth trembled as disbelief flooded her. Through her eyes, all she could see was an expanse of muted gray sand.
"Where am I?" She looked around frantically, hoping an answer would fall from the sky for the million questions in her mind.
Trying to stand, a head-splitting headache hit her instead, sending her back down to crouch on the gray sand. Her fingers trembled and shaking as it grips the coarse sand until the pain subsided.
"W- Who..." The words fell from her mouth. "Who am I?" She clenched her teeth as the headache finally faded and the ringing in her ears grew quieter.
"I wasn't supposed to be here," she thought. Yet, she didn't know where she was supposed to be, only that this wasn't the real world.
"I'm dreaming. Surely I am." But everything felt so real. The absence of air, the monotone gray of the sand, and the sky that looked nothing like a sky should.
The sky was white, like one massive fluorescent lamp hanging above her. Yet, looking at it didn't hurt her eyes.
"I need to get out of here."
And so she walked, for miles and miles. But the desert didn't end. It didn't even seem to have an end. For every mile she walked, the horizon only revealed more sand.
That damn gray sand.
Step by step, her feet sank slightly into the sand. She continued walking, disregarding the fact that she felt no exhaustion.
She had taken some mental notes about this place. First, the day didn't cycle. There was no sun or moon, but from the shadow beneath her feet, she deduced that the light source didn't move. Second, the strange sky cast no shadows except directly underneath her, making the whole desert feel even more eerie.
"It can't be endless," she thought. But doubt filled her, as the horizon only promised more sand. Driven by desperation, she walked on.
She had developed a habit lately. With nothing else here, all she could do was look at the sand. Sometimes, among the dunes, she spotted irregular patterns. Shapes that looked somewhat alien compared to their surroundings. Sometimes, she thought she saw another person on the horizon, only to be disappointed by another heap of sand.
Hours, days, weeks passed, but the endless desert hadn't changed. As if the only things occupying this desert were her and the sand.
That damn, gray sand.
"Oh, and you."
[Welcome, Lost Soul Yuki!]
A transparent, two-dimensional box hovered in front of her, bearing only that welcoming message. It was the only color in this monotone space—well, not really. It was black, but the screen's partial transparency still let the gray sand show through.
"Is this... a system?" she wondered. A murky memory resurfaced just in time for her to recall the name of this ethereal interface.
And she just so happened to know that she could interact with it—or that she should be able to.
Yuki lifted a finger and pressed the box, only for her digit to pass through it. She sighed; she had tried to interact with it a couple of times before, all with the same result. This time was no different.
She kicked the sand in frustration. It deserved it. She was tired of looking at this gray sand that seemed to stretch endlessly.
She had tried many things: speaking, touching it, even striking specific poses. Nothing worked.
"More walking it is," she said, as her feet carried her through the barren desert.
She had developed a hobby recently. She tried to count the grains of sand, and sometimes she tried to count how much time had passed, but it never worked. She didn't know why, but every time she tried to count, it felt like she was just gibbering.
As if numbers didn't exist in this realm. But of course they did! Look, she had arms, and of course every human had—
"How many arms am I supposed to have again?" She looked at the stump of her right shoulder... "Oh, I'm missing one." She looked back along her trail of footsteps and saw a severed arm lying on the sand several hundred meters away.
"What...?" She wasn't questioning the severed arm itself, but the realization that came with it—a revelation she desperately wanted to ignore.
She looked from the arm to the severed stump on her body. There was no mistaking it.
"Sand... Am I... Am I turning into sand?"
There was no one to answer her. After all, in this desert, there was only her, the box,
and that damn, gray sand.
Yuki tried to pick up her severed arm, but the moment she touched it, it crumbled into sand, rolling down the dune to become one with the desert.
She watched the sand roll down, a sight unlike any she could recall. It intrigued her that the sand was now her hand. And so she kept walking.
"Did I miss something? Why do I feel like I missed something?" Her mind churned, but nothing explained her unease. She left her arm behind and continued her journey.
It had been several hours—or days? Maybe only minutes—but she was now stuck in a predicament. She couldn't walk. She didn't know why at first, but she figured it out when she realized her feet had fallen off. Thankfully, she had felt them crumble after a misstep. They, too, turned to sand when she touched them.
"No matter, I can just crawl." And so she crawled. Hours turned into days, but she never counted; she couldn't even if she wanted to.
She only had one arm now. She dragged her body slowly across the sand. When she reached the top of a dune, she would simply roll down and repeat the process.
"Something's missing. I just don't know what." Yuki talked to herself, a habit born from prolonged solitude. Her brain turned, its cogs spinning slowly, but nothing came out. So she just lay there on the sand, limbless.
The system box hovered above her, blocking the white sky. She sighed and read the words a thousand times.
Well, she didn't know the words; it didn't look like any writing she could remember—not that she remembered anything. But she could still read it. Perfectly, in fact. As if she was meant to.
She kept focusing on the system box. It was the only thing accompanying her in this desolate landscape.
Well, aside from those damn, gray sands that her body was disintegrating into.
"Who's Yuki, though?" she asked. Was that her name? Or someone else's? Logically, the name had to be hers. It was displayed for her alone.
She sighed. Bored.
"Well, I've always been bored. But at least I could walk back then. Sigh..."
"Wait... Why can't I walk again?"
"Oh yeah... I'm missing my..."
Yuki looked at the stumps on her body. Something in her brain snapped, as if she had just woken from a long dream.
The blood-curdling scream came just after.