The night was quiet.
Crickets chirped in the grass outside. The wind whispered through the pine trees behind the forge. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. Inside his small wooden room, Yamino lay stretched out on a futon, hands folded behind his head, eyes fixed on the low ceiling above.
Sleep didn't come easy to him. It never had.
Not since the city.
He sighed and turned onto his side, reaching for the old phone he kept tucked beside the bed. It was cracked at the corners and sluggish at times, but it still worked—and that was enough. No signal, of course. The village was too remote for that. But Wi-Fi? Somehow, it reached this far. His father had rigged it up a few years back, connecting to a nearby monastery's network through a signal extender on the roof.
Yamino booted up the device, dimmed the brightness, and settled in.
This was his routine now. After a long day at the forge, when the world was silent and the stars hung like scattered salt in the sky, Yamino escaped—not through sleep, but through pixels and whispers.
Games. Forums. Conspiracy sites. Urban myths.
He didn't even remember how it started, but it had become a habit. Almost a ritual.
Some nights he'd scroll through indie horror games or obscure roguelikes. Other nights, he wandered through online forums about strange sightings and digital hauntings. A lot of it was garbage—cheap scares, pixelated ghosts, and ARGs that never paid off.
But once in a while, he stumbled onto something… strange.
Tonight felt like one of those nights.
---
Yamino's thumb flicked across the screen lazily until he paused on a post titled:
"The Eidolon Pact Protocol: A Website That Offers You a Deal (And Doesn't Let Go)."
The header image was low-resolution. A grainy screenshot of a black webpage with blood-red lettering and a floating sigil that seemed to shift even as he stared at it.
He squinted.
It wasn't just any game or creepypasta. This looked familiar.
He tapped the post.
> "This site only appears at midnight. You don't find it—it finds you. And when it does, it gives you a choice. A pact. No ads, no login, no downloads. Just a phrase: 'Make a pact, and be reborn.'"
Yamino sat up a little.
He'd seen this name before. Eidolon Pact Protocol. Back in high school. Late nights at the dormitory in the city. Whispers between classmates. Some kids swore the site was real. Said it gave them weird dreams or made their computers glitch for days.
He'd laughed it off back then. Urban fantasy bullshit.
But tonight, something about the image gave him goosebumps.
He read on.
> "It asks for your name and desire. That's all. But if you go through with it, your world changes. You start seeing things—things normal people can't. Doors where there shouldn't be doors. Whispers in reflections. Symbols on skin."
Yamino frowned.
Ridiculous.
He clicked the link at the bottom of the post anyway.
The screen went black.
Then a loading bar flickered into existence.
> Connecting to the Eidolon Protocol...
His heart skipped a beat. A slow, uneasy tension crawled down his spine.
Then, just as quickly, the bar froze—and an error message appeared.
> Connection timed out.
Yamino blinked.
"Huh."
Maybe it was a dead site. Maybe it never existed in the first place.
But his screen had changed.
On the top corner of his phone was a glowing red symbol now. A tiny eye, flickering faintly, like a recording light.
His thumb hovered over it.
Then he locked the phone.
"Nope," he muttered, tossing the device aside and lying back down.
His pulse was a little faster than usual.
---
He stared at the ceiling again, thoughts racing.
Urban fantasy, huh?
Maybe that's all it was—stories. The village felt real. His life felt grounded. The heat of the forge, the weight of the hammer, his father's quiet presence.
But every now and then, he felt a whisper. A subtle dissonance. Like the world was hiding something just beneath the surface. A glitch in a perfect simulation.
Back in high school, there were rumors of strange websites. Games that read your thoughts. People vanishing after joining secret chatrooms. A boy in another school who went mad after playing something called "Sable Zero." None of it mattered back then—he was too busy studying, too focused on surviving the city.
But now?
Now he had time to wonder.
What if there's something more?
Outside, the wind picked up. The trees rustled like they were trying to speak.
Yamino closed his eyes, not quite asleep, but no longer fully awake either.
And deep in the phone's memory, behind firewalls and error screens, the little red eye continued to blink.
Watching.
Waiting.
The moment Yamino's phone hit the mattress, its screen flickered back to life.
He sat up as a high-pitched whine pierced the quiet of the room.
The screen, which had been locked just moments ago, turned pure white. Bright—painfully so. He squinted, shielding his eyes with one hand. No app was open. No interface, no keyboard. Just a blinding, blank canvas.
Then a figure materialized on it.
Not an image. A person—standing on the screen, but somehow real.
Yamino's breath caught in his throat.
It was a man in a sleek black suit, his face obscured by shadow, holding a silver revolver in one gloved hand.
"What… the hell?" Yamino muttered, heart thudding in his chest.
The man didn't speak. He raised the gun.
Yamino froze.
"This has to be a game," he whispered. "This isn't real. It's just—"
BANG.
The gun fired.
The muzzle flash exploded from the screen, and the bullet burst out—not on the screen but from it—ripping through space like the screen was a portal.
It was aimed straight at his heart.
Time slowed.
The air trembled.
Yamino's eyes widened as the bullet pierced his chest.
But there was no pain.
No blood.
The moment it made contact, the bullet dissolved into white light and sank into him like water soaking into cloth.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then a voice echoed in the room. Not from his phone. From inside his head.
> "Congratulations, Candidate Yamino K. Sura. Your Eidolon Protocol Access has been authorized."
Yamino stumbled back against the wall, gasping. His body felt like it was burning from the inside out—light and electricity racing through his veins.
The voice continued.
> "You have been Chosen. You are now linked to the Eidolon Pact System. Initiating Class Designation: SOLO KING."
> "Primary Protocol: Gift Multiplier (x100)."
> "Secondary Protocol: Gift Reflection (x2)."
"What does that even mean?" Yamino muttered, gripping his chest. He felt like he was going to throw up—or explode.
> "Explanation: You do not receive gifts directly. However, any pact-based ability shared with or granted to you is amplified 100x in effectiveness. Additionally, you return a reflected copy at double the strength to the original source—consciously or passively."
> "In simpler terms: Anything given becomes yours at x100. And what you give back… is x2."
Yamino's mind reeled.
No gift of my own? But… anything I receive becomes insanely powerful? And I give back a copy even stronger?
"That's... broken," he whispered. "That's ridiculous."
> "Correct."
The voice fell silent for a moment. Then it added, colder this time:
> "Warning: You are now being monitored. Accessing the Protocol means stepping into the game behind the world. You cannot go back. The eyes of the Eidolons are upon you."
The screen on his phone dimmed.
The man with the gun was gone.
Everything went still.
Yamino looked down at his chest. No wound. No sign he'd been shot at all. But his heartbeat thundered in his ears, and his skin felt warmer than usual—like something inside him had woken up.
He didn't understand what had just happened. But deep down, some part of him whispered:
You're not normal anymore.
Not in this world. Not in this skin.
Something ancient had chosen him.
And it had only just begun.
The room was quiet again, eerily so.
Yamino stood frozen in place, heart racing, still staring at the now-black phone screen. The buzz in his veins hadn't faded; it felt like something inside him had been rewired—his senses stretched, his instincts sharper.
Then he felt it.
A shift in the air. A presence.
His breath caught.
He turned his head slowly, eyes scanning the dimly lit room—and stopped.
There was a man standing by the corner near the window.
Tall. Thin. His face hidden beneath long black hair, his frame cloaked in rags of shadow that seemed to move even in the stillness.
But what struck Yamino most were the chains.
Dozens—maybe hundreds—of dark, rusted chains spiraled out of his back like spider legs, anchoring him to the walls, the ceiling, the floor. They writhed faintly, like living things.
Yamino's legs trembled.
His voice caught in his throat.
The figure turned to face him.
Their eyes met.
Yamino flinched—not from aggression, but the sheer wrongness of what he was seeing. This wasn't just a man. This was something that shouldn't be there.
After a long, silent moment, the man tilted his head slightly.
His voice was low, hollow, like it had traveled a great distance through stone and bone.
"Can you see me?"
The words hung in the air like smoke.
Yamino couldn't answer. His lips moved, but no sound came out. He shook his head slowly, unsure whether he was denying or refusing to believe.
The man repeated the question.
This time, slower.
"Can. You. See. Me?"
Yamino took an instinctive step back. The floor creaked underfoot. His back hit the edge of his desk.
He didn't know what to do. What to say.
He wasn't alone. Not anymore. The system… the gun… now this?
The man's face twisted—first into a half-smile, then something crueler.
A smirk that reached neither his eyes nor his voice.
Then, without warning, the skin peeled away from his face—folding back like old paper.
What remained was a skull.
A perfect, white skull with burning black pits where eyes should be.
His voice changed too.
Now it was ancient. Unyielding.
"I am no demon. No ghost. I am Death's agent. A Reaper of those whose time has come."
Yamino felt coldness surge up from his feet to his spine.
The skeletal figure took a slow step forward, and the chains clinked and scraped behind him, dragging across wood and shadow.
"I did not come for you," the Reaper said. "I came for him."
He raised a single, bony finger.
Pointed at the wall.
At the room next door.
Yamino's mind reeled.
"Your father's time ends in one hour."
The world seemed to tilt.
"No…" Yamino gasped. "You're lying."
The Reaper tilted his skull as though amused.
"Flesh lies. Bone remembers. I am only here to collect."
Yamino stumbled back onto his bed, shaking his head. "No. He's healthy. He's fine! He was working just today—he was with me at dinner!"
"And yet," said the Reaper, "he dies tonight."
The words were calm, absolute.
Yamino's thoughts spiraled.
He wanted to scream. To fight. To deny it all.
But the cold certainty in the Reaper's voice rooted him in place.
"What… what kind of sickness? An accident?" he asked, hoping for something—anything—he could change.
The Reaper only shrugged.
"I do not control fate. I only observe its end."
The chains behind him rattled, more aggressively now, as if stirred by his rising presence.
Yamino's fingers dug into the bedsheets.
"Can't you stop it? Delay it? Just one day?" he begged.
The Reaper's sockets burned like coals.
"What will you pay to delay death?"
Yamino's mouth went dry.
"…Anything," he whispered.
The Reaper paused.
Then, slowly, his face morphed again—back into the pale, shadowed man from before.
The chains slithered back into calm stillness.
"That is not a promise to make lightly, King of Solitude," he said. "Not when your soul already belongs to the Pact."
The words echoed like iron gates closing behind him.
Yamino didn't know what that meant. Not yet. But he knew the Eidolon Pact had chosen him—and now, so had Death.
The Reaper turned his back to him and faced the window.
"You have one hour," he said without looking. "Make peace. Or make a deal."
The moment the words left his lips, he faded—disappearing into the shadows as if he had never been there.
But the chill in the room remained.
Yamino stood alone.
Staring at the spot where the Reaper had vanished.
His breath came in short, ragged gasps. His chest ached—not from the phantom bullet, but from the growing dread that something terrible was truly coming.
One hour.
He bolted from his room, rushing down the hallway.
His father's bedroom door was closed. He knocked once, twice—then opened it without waiting for a reply.
His father lay on the bed, snoring lightly, a book across his chest.
Peaceful. Alive.
Yamino's heart twisted.
"Dad…" he whispered.
He didn't know what to do. What to say. Could he warn him? Would he think he'd gone mad?
Could he… stop it?
His eyes drifted to the wall clock.
Tick.
Tick.
One hour.
That was all he had.