Ack!
Blood burst from his mouth, warm and metallic, staining his lips and chin before dripping onto the already soaked front of his white sweatshirt. Dust clung to the torn hem and frayed sleeves like the residue of despair. The crimson only made the ruin more complete.
'What's happening?'
His pupils quivered as he stared at the figure slumped against the door—his figure. Lifeless. Pale. A brass revolver dangled from limp fingers on the right hand, its weight dragging toward the blood-slick floor.
"H-How...?"
A pool of blood had already formed beneath the body, spreading like a shadow no light could chase away. Pain slammed into his skull, sudden and brutal, like being struck with a wooden beam. He staggered mentally, unprepared for the agony—or the truth.
He hadn't even reacted to the shot.
"Argh..." Merek groaned, his voice raw, threaded with anguish. His vision flickered like a dying light bulb—now sharp, now blurred—but still clear enough to register the chaos of the room.
It was unfamiliar.
Not his bedroom. Not his apartment. Not anywhere he'd ever been.
The room looked like it had been ravaged by grief itself. Chairs overturned, drawers flung open, books scattered like fallen feathers. A mirror lay shattered across the floor, each shard reflecting his face. This was no robbery—this was an emotional storm, an outpouring of rage.
Merek's eyes widened.
His head turned slowly, trembling with dread. On the far wall, embedded deep in plaster and paint, was the silver rear of a bullet.
The same bullet that had exited the head of the man—of him—now crumpled against the door.
A tremor ran through him. He lifted one trembling hand, still smeared with blood, and pressed the cold, gore-slick muzzle of the revolver against his temple. His other eye remained fixed on the bullet in the wall, as though it could answer the impossible.
His heart thudded once—hard—like a hammer striking the walls of his chest.
'Did I… kill myself?'
The thought hit with such absurdity, such ferocity, that for a moment he couldn't breathe. He was an artist, yes. A dreamer with bills, with rejections, with the constant ache of obscurity. But he wasn't suicidal. He had dark days, sure—but nothing close to this. The idea of ending it all had never even crossed his mind.
And yet...
Suddenly, the dam inside his mind broke, and memories that weren't his came flooding through—alien and vivid, like someone else's life projected into his soul.
This body... wasn't his.
It belonged to Merek Solen, a twenty-two-year-old man born and raised in a city called Blue Star—a place that didn't exist on Earth. A glittering metropolis of seventy million individuals, a crossbreed of every megacity that had ever been. Autonomous, massive, a dream.
In this city, Merek had lost everything.
His parents, gone in a plane crash when he was seventeen. Left to care for his younger brother with only the remnants of their bank accounts and their shared grief. But even that fragile life crumbled when disaster struck.
A meteor that shifted the Earth's orbit.
And with it, a strange gas that contaminated the earth's atmosphere and turned much of humanity into soulless, flesh-eating monsters.
Zombies!
It had been a week since the apocalypse began.
Since every breath, every step, became a struggle to survive.
Merek gasped, staggering under the weight of memory and dread.
This isn't Earth.
It resembled it, mimicked it, but it was something else. A parallel world—a darker one. A cracked reflection. And in this world, he was just a powerless older brother.
His brother, unlike him, had a gift. A unique job class: Luckbringer. A job so valuable, so envied, that it drew the attention of the most feared faction in the East Ring District—
The Howling Moon Gang.
They came for the brother. And Merek? He was too weak to stop them.
Powerless. Helpless. Broken.
And in the aftermath of that helplessness, he tore this room apart in a frenzy of grief, guilt, and rage. When it wasn't enough, he turned to the revolver.
Now, the memories of the former Merek surged like a tsunami—his sorrow, his anger, his utter sense of failure. And this new Merek, this outsider, felt every bit of it.
Tears pricked at the edges of his eyes. A sob threatened to claw its way out of his chest. He didn't even know if it belonged to him or the man whose body he now inhabited.
Who was more pitiful?
The man who lost his brother and took his own life...
Or the one ripped from his world and thrust into a nightmare?
He couldn't even cry properly.
But then—hope, like a fragile flame, flickered in his chest.
'Maybe... if I use the revolver again... I might return to—'
His eyes shifted down.
The hammer was cocked.
But the cylinder—
Click.
Was empty.
Just then, a midnight blue screen flickered to life before his very eyes—silent, yet pulsing with an unnatural glow that seemed to hum beneath his skin. In bold, silver-white letters, words etched themselves across the surface like divine decree:
[Merek Solen, you have beaten death. Congratulations!
You have gained a Revelation Tier Class: Weaver.]
A second prompt unfolded in a whisper of digital light, unfolding like the page of a grimoire:
Status Panel Opened
Name: Merek Solen
Title: Death's Victor
Level: 0
Job: Weaver
Job Skills: Soul Vision | Soul Bind | Weaving | Veilwalk | Verdict
Acquired Skills: None
Condition: Healthy
"What is this supposed to mean?" Merek muttered, voice dry and rough. "Soul Vision? Don't tell me that means I can actually see souls?"
But the moment he looked up, the world seemed to hold its breath.
His heart skipped.
Seated cross-legged on his bed—his bed—was a woman. No, not quite a woman.
Her skin was pale as frost, almost translucent, as if light avoided her. Long, silken hair fanned out behind her like a quiet storm, and from her body wafted faint, pale-white tendrils of energy—wraithlike and slow, coiling gently through the air like smoke underwater. Her presence was wrong. Not evil… but out of place. Impossible. Unsettling.
Her luminous eyes locked onto him with silent curiosity.
When she noticed the way his gaze had sharpened on her, she tilted her head ever so slightly.
"Can you see me?"
Merek's throat tightened. "N-No?"
It came out like a lie he desperately wished was true. His skin prickled. His breath faltered. Every nerve screamed at him to run. And so he obeyed. With sheer desperation, he lunged to his feet, staggering to the door and clutching the knob like a lifeline.
Then her voice came again, soft but echoing with unnatural calm.
"You want to go out there… unarmed?"
Merek's hand froze on the doorknob.
He turned—slowly.
The soul was still seated, patiently waiting. And for the first time since waking in this twisted new reality, he truly began to feel the weight of the world he'd been pulled into.