Darkness clung to the room like a second skin, thin and suffocating, disturbed only by the pale glow of a phone screen resting in Zaraf's trembling hands.
He sat at the edge of his bed in silence, elbows pressed against his knees, shoulders slightly hunched forward as the flickering light painted his face in shifting shades of crimson and white. Outside, the city slept beneath the weight of midnight. Inside, only the sound of distant rain tapping against the window remained.
And the quiet breathing of a boy too absorbed to notice the world around him.
On the screen—
she was dying.
The heroine staggered backward beneath a ruined sky, blood blooming across her torn clothes in dark, spreading stains. Her sword slipped from numb fingers and clattered against broken stone. The enemy before her spoke words Zaraf could no longer hear over the pounding in his chest.
The soundtrack swelled.
Cruel.
Desperate.
Drawn out like the world itself wanted him to suffer through every final second.
The girl reached upward weakly, trembling fingers stretching toward nothing.
Toward no one.
As though somewhere above the burning heavens, salvation still existed.
"Don't…" Zaraf whispered.
The word barely escaped him.
His throat felt tight.
"Don't kill her…"
His fingers slowly curled around the phone until his knuckles whitened.
It was ridiculous.
Pathetic, honestly.
She wasn't real.
Just lines and colors on a screen.
A fictional character in a fictional tragedy written to make people emotional for a few minutes before moving on with their lives.
So why did it hurt so much?
Why did that helpless anger crawl beneath his skin like poison?
Why did it feel so familiar?
His gaze darkened slightly.
Because he knew this feeling.
Watching something fall apart while being unable to stop it.
Watching pain unfold from a distance.
Watching people disappear while his hands remained empty.
Too weak.
Too late.
Always too late.
"If I were there…" he muttered quietly.
His jaw tightened.
"I would save you."
The moment the words left his lips—
the screen flickered.
Zaraf frowned.
Not the normal flicker of damaged pixels or bad internet.
Something else.
Something wrong.
The light on the screen twisted unnaturally before the air directly in front of him split apart with a sharp sound that resembled tearing cloth.
His body froze.
A thin line of white light appeared in the darkness of his room.
Perfectly straight.
Perfectly still.
Like reality itself had been sliced open by an invisible blade.
"…What?"
The line widened.
Cold air spilled from the crack.
No—
not air.
Something deeper.
Something ancient.
The room trembled faintly.
A low hum echoed around him, vibrating through the walls, the floor, his bones. It sounded distant and impossibly close at the same time, like the breathing of something vast sleeping beneath existence itself.
Zaraf slowly stood from the bed.
His heartbeat quickened.
"This isn't real…"
The white fracture widened further.
Then the world changed.
Wind exploded outward violently, roaring through the bedroom hard enough to rattle the walls. Papers scattered. Curtains snapped wildly. The lightbulb above him burst with a sharp pop, plunging the room into darkness illuminated only by that endless white crack hanging in the air.
His phone slipped from his fingers.
It hit the floor.
But before the sound could even register—
the ground beneath him vanished.
Zaraf's eyes widened.
And he fell.
—
Impact struck like a hammer.
Pain exploded across his back as his body slammed into solid ground hard enough to force the air from his lungs. For several seconds he could do nothing except gasp soundlessly while dizziness spun through his mind.
Cold grass brushed against his fingertips.
Smoke burned his throat.
The scent of ash and blood filled the air.
Slowly—
very slowly—
he lifted his head.
Ruined stone buildings surrounded him beneath a crimson sky. Some still burned, flames devouring shattered rooftops while black smoke climbed endlessly upward. Others had already collapsed entirely, reduced to broken rubble scattered across bloodstained streets.
People screamed somewhere in the distance.
Not dramatic screams.
Real ones.
Raw.
Animalistic.
The kind born from genuine terror.
Zaraf's breathing became uneven.
"No way…"
Then he saw her.
His body stiffened instantly.
The girl from the screen lay collapsed several meters away, blood soaking beneath her exactly as before. Her silver hair clung to her face. Her breathing was weak. Fading.
And standing above her—
blade raised—
was the enemy.
The exact same scene.
Every detail.
Every shadow.
Every drop of blood.
Like the world had ripped the moment directly from fiction and dragged him inside it.
His thoughts stalled.
This wasn't possible.
None of this made sense.
Panic clawed violently at his chest, but beneath it—
beneath the disbelief and terror—
something else surfaced.
Something calm.
Something terrifyingly steady.
A quiet certainty.
Before he even realized what he was doing, Zaraf raised his hand.
"Stop."
The word left him softly.
Yet the instant it did—
the world obeyed.
The blade halted midair.
Completely still.
The wind disappeared.
The flames froze.
The smoke stopped moving.
Sound vanished from existence itself.
Silence descended so suddenly it felt unnatural.
Like reality had forgotten how to breathe.
Zaraf stared blankly at his own hand.
His heartbeat thundered inside the emptiness.
"…What did I just do?"
Something stirred within him.
Not imagination.
Not adrenaline.
Power.
Pure and incomprehensible.
It flowed through him effortlessly, naturally, as though it had always existed there waiting to awaken.
And somehow—
that frightened him more than anything else.
The enemy's body suddenly cracked apart into fragments of pale light before scattering soundlessly into the air like shattered glass carried away by unseen winds.
Gone.
Erased.
The girl's wounds began closing instantly.
Blood vanished from her skin.
Torn flesh restored itself as though time itself had reversed.
Then the silence broke.
The world resumed.
Flames roared once more.
Wind swept through the ruined streets.
The girl gasped sharply, collapsing forward as life returned to her eyes.
Alive.
Zaraf staggered backward.
His breathing became ragged.
"I… did that?"
The ground beneath his feet felt solid.
Real.
Too real to deny.
And deep inside him—
something had awakened.
Not simply power.
Possibility.
The realization settled heavily in his chest.
If this was real…
Then the boundaries of reality itself meant nothing anymore.
—
A month passed.
Zaraf wandered between worlds like a ghost no one could catch.
Disasters unfolded.
Kingdoms burned.
Monsters descended from forgotten places.
And whenever death reached for someone—
he appeared.
Sometimes he stopped wars before the first strike landed.
Sometimes he erased monsters with a single glance.
Sometimes he rewrote fate itself so completely that tragedies vanished without leaving behind even memories.
People began whispering stories.
A wandering spirit.
A hidden god.
A nameless savior dressed in black.
Entire villages prayed to him despite never seeing his face clearly.
Zaraf never corrected them.
But he never stayed either.
Because every time someone looked at him with reverence—
he felt uncomfortable.
Detached.
As though the world around him had become fragile paper beneath his fingertips.
Something editable.
Something temporary.
A story he could rewrite whenever he pleased.
That thought unsettled him more deeply than any monster ever could.
When people asked his name, he would only smile faintly.
"A traveler," he'd say quietly.
"Just passing by."
But at night—
when silence returned and there was nothing left to distract him—
one question always remained.
If I can come here…
Can I go back?
—
Beneath a sky filled with unfamiliar stars, Zaraf closed his eyes and focused.
His room.
The dim light.
The rain against the window.
The quiet loneliness of ordinary life.
The longing.
The ache to return somewhere simple.
The air trembled softly before him.
Then space split apart.
A portal formed.
His eyes widened slightly.
"…It worked."
Without hesitation, he stepped through.
The world distorted around him violently for an instant—
then stabilized.
His room greeted him in silence.
Unchanged.
The anime still played softly on the fallen phone near the bed. The heroine's voice echoed faintly through the speakers as though nothing had happened at all.
Zaraf looked toward the clock hanging on the wall.
Three minutes.
Only three minutes had passed.
A quiet laugh escaped him.
Disbelieving.
Relieved.
"So I can move between worlds…"
The realization should have comforted him.
Instead—
it only deepened the hunger growing inside him.
Because now he knew.
The impossible existed.
And once someone glimpsed infinity—
normal life became unbearably small.
—
Days later, the pull became impossible to resist.
It called to him constantly now.
Softly.
Patiently.
Like something waiting beyond the edge of existence itself.
This time, when Zaraf opened the portal, the energy felt different.
Deeper.
Older.
The moment he stepped through, he understood instinctively—
this was not another world.
This place existed beyond worlds.
White greeted him from every direction.
Endless white.
No sky.
No earth.
No horizon.
No sense of distance or time.
Only infinity stretching endlessly around him in perfect silence.
Zaraf stood still.
Surprisingly calm.
Not because he lacked fear—
but because something inside him felt strangely… awake.
As though every step he had taken until now had unconsciously led him here.
Toward this place.
Toward this moment.
Then he saw her.
A girl stood within the endless white.
Small .
Really small.
Fragile-looking.
Long black hair drifted weightlessly behind her like ink suspended beneath still water. Pale blue eyes glowed faintly in the empty void, calm and unwavering. Her ears were long and delicate, unmistakably inhuman.
Or something close enough.
Most unsettling of all—
she did not look surprised to see him.
She looked as though she had been waiting for a very long time.
"…Hello," she said softly.
Her voice carried effortlessly through the endless space despite the absence of echoes.
"You have arrived, Creator."
Zaraf stiffened slightly.
Creator?
The word struck deeper than expected.
Yet strangely—
it did not feel unfamiliar.
"…Creator?" he repeated slowly.
The girl stepped forward soundlessly.
No footsteps.
No presence.
Like a dream wearing the shape of a person.
"I am Bell, of the Fairy Realm," she said calmly.
Her glowing eyes locked onto his.
"And you have awakened."
A chill crawled down Zaraf's spine.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Like hearing a truth he had always known buried somewhere deep inside himself.
He glanced around the endless white space cautiously.
"This isn't another anime world… is it?"
Bell tilted her head slightly.
"No," she answered.
"This is the Imagery World."
Her voice remained calm.
"The space between realities. The birthplace of creation itself. The realm where chosen humans gain the authority to create worlds of their own."
Chosen.
The word settled heavily inside him.
Not random.
Not coincidence.
Chosen.
"There are more active creators," Bell continued quietly. "Whether you become one of them depends on me."
Silence followed.
For the first time since arriving, Zaraf felt genuine tension tightening in his chest.
"…Depends on what?"
Bell's expression changed.
Subtly.
But enough.
The warmth vanished from her eyes.
"On whether you pass."
The endless white space trembled violently.
Cracks spread beneath Zaraf's feet without warning, dark fractures tearing across infinity itself.
"And if you fail," Bell said softly,
"you will be exile from imagery world ."
This time—
fear arrived instantly.
Cold.
Sharp.
Real.
The cracks shattered open beneath him.
Darkness swallowed the world whole.
Bell's glowing blue eyes became the final thing visible within the abyss.
Then even they began to fade.
"Your test," she whispered,
"begins now."