Raizal slowly opened his eyes.
He found himself lying on the cold, hard ground of a dark room. A faint, sickly light filtered down from a small ventilator high above on the ceiling. The air was damp and heavy.
He pushed himself up with a groan, his head throbbing with a dull ache. As he stood, a powerful stench hit him — the thick, rotting smell of dead corpses. It was so intense that Raizal instinctively covered his nose with his hand.
"What the hell is this?"
Raizal muttered, his voice barely coming from behind his hand.
He looked around the dark room, then moved cautiously toward the door. As he reached out to pull it open, a voice drifted into his ears.
"—let mercy turn to stone...."
His hand stopped on the handle of the door. Two more lines echoed:
"Lay down the heart—let mercy turn to stone."
"Unmake the will that calls the fragile known."
The voice was coming from the other side of the door. The stench of rotting corpses grew even stronger. Even with his nose covered, the foul smell forced its way in.
Raizal pushed the door open.
A narrow staircase stood in front of him, dimly lit from above. He climbed the stairs slowly. The voice grew louder with every step. It was no longer a single voice — it was a group of people chanting in perfect rhythm.
When he reached the top, the sight before him was horrifying.
A large hall stretched out, resembling an old cathedral but twisted and wrong. Rows of people sat on long wooden benches, all singing together in perfect unison:
"Lay down the self—let mercy turn to stone,"
"Unmake the will that calls the fragile known."
"To face the dark, become the dark in part— "
"For only dark can pierce a darkened heart."
Raizal was struck by the sight of the people sitting on the benches. They were divided into two groups. One group had their heads intact and continued singing in perfect rhythm. The other group had no heads at all — yet the singing still came clearly from their headless bodies.
A woman from the group with intact heads stood up and walked forward calmly. She moved to the front of the hall where a massive guillotine was present.
Beside it stood a bulky man over seven feet tall, wearing full knight armor. Several other armored knights stood silently nearby.
Whatever this was, it lay beyond Raizal's understanding.
The woman stepped forward without hesitation and placed her head on the guillotine block. Even as she did so, she continued singing in perfect rhythm with the others.
The huge knight grabbed the rope and pulled the blade down with a heavy thud.
The woman's head was cleanly severed. Fresh blood sprayed from the stump of her neck, splattering across the stone floor.
Raizal's eyes widened in shock, as if they would pop out of his skull. The sight was so horrifying that he almost forgot to breathe.
"You've got to be kidding me… what the actual hell just happened?"
Raizal murmured to himself.
He stayed crouched low on the stairs. For a moment his eyes turned away from that scene.
In that moment, the singing stopped completely.
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the hall.
Raizal felt his heart skip a beat. He realized that his quiet murmur had echoed through the entire place, bouncing off the stone walls.
The silence was really heavy. Every head — and every headless neck — seemed to turn slowly in the direction of the stairs.
"Fuck—"
Before another word could come out of his mouth, Raizal's head snapped toward the side where the guillotine was present. Something was coming at him with terrifying speed.
He immediately jumped to the side. The massive sword thrown by the bulky knight slammed into the staircase with brutal force, shattering stone and wood. Rocks and debris completely blocked the way back to the dark room.
Raizal turned and ran toward the exit of the cathedral-like building.
"I have to get out of this shitty place," he muttered under his breath.
The moment he stepped outside, he saw the area clearly. The houses around him were badly damaged, with broken walls and fallen roofs. Some houses were still burning, with smoke rising into the air.
On the ground, there were bodies lying still, scattered across the street. The place was quiet, and nothing seemed untouched by what had happened.
Raizal was momentarily speechless as he looked over the wreckage.
His thoughts were abruptly shattered by the sound of heavy footsteps and a rhythmic chant echoing behind him. Knights and townspeople streamed from the cathedral-like hall, their voices merging in perfect unison as others continued to emerge.
Raizal quickly ducked inside a broken house nearby and hid.
The group dispersed across the entire area, their singing continuing without pause. Raizal flattened himself against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe.
As he hid, he noticed the accessories of the house in which he was hiding and the design of the house. It was not modern at all — the house was built from timber wood, like something from a hurt village.
The entire area around it looked like it belonged to medieval times, as though time had withered and left this place behind in a distant past.
At that exact moment, a sharp realization hit Raizal.
He finally grasped the grim situation.
The AFTERVERSE had created a medieval world tailored precisely for him.
On Earth, as the threats of DEFECT mutations grew increasingly frequent and uncontrollable, the discovery of the AFTERVERSE emerged as humanity's last desperate hope.
Though the exact circumstances of its discovery remained shrouded from the public,
the AFTERVERSE, which is also known as the Realm of Eternal Change, was a living domain that tested the worth of every DEFECT who entered it.
It reshaped itself with each new arrival, crafting trials uniquely suited to challenge and measure their potential. Even now, both its true origin and its discovery stood as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the earth.
He was still contemplating all of this when a sharp pain suddenly exploded in his left shoulder.
"Ahhhhhh—!"
A painful scream tore out of his throat.
Raizal looked left and saw a sword had impaled his shoulder from above. He glanced up at the torn roof of the house. A knight was standing there, gripping the sword with both hands.
The knight yanked the sword out ruthlessly. Raizal's legs gave way and he fell to his knees, blood pouring from the wound.
Then the knight jumped down from the torn roof, landing heavily inside the house right in front of Raizal.