Golden remembered the classroom with unsettling clarity.
The sunlight slanting through tall windows.
The faint smell of chalk dust and old wood.
The low murmur of voices blending into a familiar, meaningless background. Someone tapping a pen against their desk. Someone else stifling a yawn.
Ordinary.
Golden sat in his chair, elbow resting on the desk, staring at the clock above the blackboard. The second hand crawled forward, each tick painfully slow.
Five minutes left.
He wondered, idly, whether life would always feel this uneventful.
The bell rang.
Or rather—it started to ring.
The sound twisted halfway through, warping into something hollow and wrong. Golden frowned, lifting his head.
The air thickened.
At first, it was barely noticeable. Like the pressure change before a storm. His ears popped. The chatter in the classroom stretched and blurred, voices smearing together as if heard through water.
Golden blinked.
The world shuddered.
Light bent strangely, colors bleeding at the edges of his vision. The faces of his classmates flickered—elongated for an instant, losing definition, as though reality itself had failed to render them properly.
Someone screamed.
Golden felt his stomach drop.
The floor vanished.
There was no sensation of falling. No wind rushing past him. Only crushing pressure, wrapping around his body from every direction at once, squeezing the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his mind.
Then—
Pain.
Golden hit the ground hard.
The impact drove the air from his chest in a strangled gasp. He lay there, stunned, staring blankly as his body struggled to remember how to breathe.
Cold seeped into his back.
Roughness.
Stone.
Golden groaned and rolled onto his side, coughing. His palms scraped against a jagged surface, sending sparks of pain through his hands.
This wasn't the classroom floor.
He pushed himself up slowly, every movement cautious, heart pounding.
The ground beneath him was black stone—fractured and uneven, stretching endlessly in all directions. Deep cracks ran across its surface, glowing faintly with a dull crimson light that pulsed rhythmically.
Golden stared at it, mind blank.
"…Hello?" he called hoarsely.
His voice echoed, thin and lonely.
No one answered.
Golden turned in a slow circle.
Ruins surrounded him.
Broken towers rose in the distance, their silhouettes jagged against the sky. Stone walls lay collapsed and half-buried, tangled with structures that made no sense—metallic platforms hovering in midair, etched with glowing symbols, fragments of technology fused seamlessly with ancient masonry.
It looked like a medieval city that had collided with something far more advanced.
And lost.
Golden's breathing grew shallow.
"Guys?" he said, louder now. "Anyone?"
Nothing.
The silence pressed in on him, heavy and absolute.
They had been there. Just moments ago. His classmates. His teacher. An entire room full of people.
Where were they?
Golden lifted his gaze—and froze.
The sky was violet.
Not blue. Not gray. Not anything familiar.
Vast bands of violet and silver clouds drifted slowly overhead, illuminated by a light that had no visible source. There was no sun. No moon. Just an oppressive glow that made the ruins below feel exposed and insignificant.
Golden swallowed hard.
This isn't Earth.
The realization settled into him with terrifying ease.
He looked down at himself.
His school uniform was gone.
In its place was a dark, unfamiliar tunic reinforced with leather at the shoulders. Sturdy boots covered his feet. A strap crossed his chest, connected to a satchel resting against his hip.
He hadn't changed clothes.
His hands trembled slightly.
Golden took a careful step forward.
Pain flared in his leg.
He hissed and looked down. Blood seeped through a tear in the fabric near his thigh, dark and sticky. He didn't remember being injured.
His heart began to pound.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
A low sound rolled across the ruins.
Golden stiffened.
It wasn't wind.
The air was completely still.
The sound came again—deep, resonant, vibrating through the stone beneath his feet.
A growl.
Golden turned slowly.
Atop a collapsed wall in the distance stood a massive shape.
Three heads rose from a single body, each crowned with curved black horns. Its fur was dark as obsidian, muscles coiled tightly beneath its skin. Veins glowed faintly red along its necks, pulsing in time with the cracks in the ground.
Six golden eyes fixed on him.
The creature exhaled, and the sound alone made Golden's skin crawl.
THE THREE HEADED DIVINE CREATURE CERBERUS
Golden didn't know how he recognized it.
He only knew that, standing beneath the violet sky, alone among ruins of a dead world, he had just come face-to-face with something that should not exist.
And it had seen him.