Where is this?
Everything is dark. I can't see, feel, or hear anything. This place is truly empty.
Who am I?
What am I?
Where is this?
In the middle of that emptiness, something appears, a light, a flame that suddenly emerges from nowhere within the darkness of the void.
Fire?
The light from the flame spreads, expanding without warning.
What is this feeling? I can feel it...
This… I'm feeling something. Something familiar, yet uncertain.
Ouch! It hurts so much!
The pain comes suddenly, extremely intense.
What is this? I feel something moving.
Is this...a hand?
A hand appears. He tries to move it. His fingers twitch, slowly and stiffly. After that, he feels something else, a sensation like stepping on something, a feeling that is very familiar yet strangely foreign.
Everything happens so fast, and unconsciously a mirror appears. An oval-shaped mirror, elongated downward, with a small crack along its edge.
That… is that me?
A physical form like that of a human, shrouded in light, is clearly reflected in the mirror.
What am I, really?
In the blink of an eye, that physical form changes. Now it has the appearance of someone in their early twenties, wearing a police uniform, with a wound on the right side of the abdomen covered by a hand.
This wound!
What is this?! Since when am I injured?
As he looks back at the mirror once again, a single question keeps spinning in his mind: who.
As he tries to process this, his mind is flooded with informations in the form of someone else's memories.
"This…" While enduring the pain, he clutches his head, drops to his knees, then collapses onto the floor.
"WHAT THE HELL IS ALL OF THIS!!!!"
The memories rush in rapidly, countless in number.
When it finally ends, he awakens again, gasping for air violently. He tries to steady his breathing, sweat pouring down.
Kaelan Morvain. A police officer who was newly sworn in, but killed during his very first investigative assignment. Am I now inside the body of someone who is already dead?!
He tries to stand, struggling to adapt to the body. When he turns around, the flame from before has changed into a small sphere, like a marble, with a tiny red point of light inside it.
Kaelan walks toward it, trying to touch it. Slowly his finger approaches, and warmth begins to spread at his fingertip. The moment his finger makes contact, the surroundings change. The space that was once pitch-black, nothing but endless emptiness, transforms into a modest-sized room. A simple room with wooden floors that creak when stepped on, a bookshelf that isn't completely filled, and a wooden study desk with books scattered across it.
I don't know where this is, but this place brings a sense of nostalgia, Kaelan says. He walks through the room, approaches the study desk, and notices a plain red-covered book lying closed on top of it.
When he opens it, the pages are blank, from beginning to end, just an empty book with nothing written in it.
"Kaelan…"
He is startled and immediately turns around. A woman with weary eyes and her hair tied in a ponytail stands right in front of him.
"Me?" Kaelan asks.
"My child, I've been looking for you. And here you are, hiding in this place," the woman says as she walks closer.
"W-wait!"
The woman hugs Kaelan. A warm embrace that makes tears stream down Kaelan's face.
Huh, why is this happening?
What is this? This… feels calming.
Is this…Kaelan's memory?
Not long after, the woman's figure disappears as if it never existed, and the room around them falls into disarray. The ceiling seems torn open, the ground cracks, as if distortion itself is taking place.
Kaelan's eyes are suddenly flooded with an intense, blinding light.