Damien Ward had a secret.
A secret so immense it made him question his own sanity:He might not belong to this world.
Eight years ago, Damien had inexplicably crossed over from the familiar world—the twenty-first-century Earth—into this other place.
He remembered his old life with crystalline clarity: the cartoons he loved as a child, the tedious formulas and theorems from middle-school textbooks that he had been forced to memorize, even every last detail of that accident—
The shriek of brakes.The dizzying weightlessness as the world spun.The tearing pain in his chest…
That car crash should have killed him. Yet somehow, Damien had not only survived—he had awoken in a world both strange and familiar.
And yet…
Eight years had passed, and this so-called "other world" was disturbingly normal.
No magic.No game-like system prompts.No shadowy organizations appearing to hand him mysterious missions.
The sun still rose and set without fail, the laws of physics governed everything with unerring precision, and people lived lives no different from those he once knew.
If not for the foreign stretch of memory lodged in his mind, Damien could almost believe the whole notion of "crossing over" was just his own delusion.
So he searched—desperately—for any thread, any crack in the fabric of this world.
Abandoned hospital basements, the old library wing of his school at midnight, even a cornfield on the outskirts where rumors claimed aliens had once landed—any place whispered to harbor the strange, he would investigate, camera and thermal scanner in hand.
Every time, the result was the same.
A childish prank.A vagrant's hideout.Or simply his imagination running wild.
Eight years of chasing legends across every supposedly "haunted" corner of Raccoon City, only to walk away empty-handed each time. Every failure left him feeling like a complete fool.
Yet reason alone couldn't extinguish the ember in his heart. If he had truly crossed over, then something—anything—in this world must be amiss.
Maybe he simply hadn't found it yet. Maybe it was hidden too deeply. But it had to be there.
The more ordinary the surface, the more likely it was to conceal something unknown. Wasn't that the truth?What began as a youthful fantasy had hardened into obsession—an obsession to seize hold of something, anything.
Tonight was no exception.
The sun had set, draping the city in shadow. In the deepest, most deserted corner of the campus library, Damien wandered slowly between the shelves.
Dust floated in the amber lamplight, each breath tinged with the scent of aging paper. The silence was so complete he could hear nothing but the faint rhythm of his own breathing and the muted thud of his footsteps, as if the world had shrunk to just him and the books.
Here, the library kept its non-circulating collection—rare manuscripts, some so old they seemed to breathe history.
Damien liked this place for one reason: the more forgotten the text, the more likely it was to contain a truth hidden from the masses.
The mainstream, popular sources he had already scoured. If the answers couldn't be found in open daylight, then they had to be buried in these shadows.
He pulled out a particularly ancient-looking volume.
Its cover bore no title, only a strange dark-red sigil—half symbol, half abstract rose.
Damien frowned. He didn't remember ever seeing this one before. Was it newly catalogued?
The cover was dry and rough beneath his fingertips, the air around it faintly scented with age. The spine was worn thin; as he opened it, a sprinkle of dust drifted down.
A new find. His lips curled faintly upward.
The title, scrawled in crooked ink on the flyleaf, read: A Study of the Diwa Tribe's Rituals.
The handwriting was uneven, as if the book were a personal notebook rather than a published work.
Rituals? Could this be an account of some kind of sacrificial ceremony? Damien's breath caught as he began to read.
The pages were yellowed, their edges frayed. The text was archaic, peppered with obscure characters. He deciphered slowly, mentally translating as he went.
Without realizing it, his heartbeat had quickened.
The manuscript described an ancient rite called The Seal of Dust and Blood. Damien's fingers tightened around the page.
Dust and Blood…
Could this be the anomaly he had been searching for all these years?
He read on. The ritual was simple in principle:"…Only with the fresh blood of a sentient being may the unseen door be stirred… Blood as the key, to open the door of the soul… and when the door yawns wide, crimson shall stain the earth…"
Each line made his breathing heavier.
The account was vivid, almost eyewitness in its detail: the altar traced in ancient glyphs, the sacrificial cut across the victim's throat, and at last, the summoning of a scarlet doorway. Rough sketches accompanied the text, each one steeped in a sense of the grotesque and the arcane.
According to the Diwa Rituals, there existed a summoning rite in this world—one that could open a gate to another realm, if one were willing to pay in blood.
Reason screamed: Get a grip! It's just an old myth!Emotion roared back: This is it. This is what you've been looking for!
Calm down.
Damien forced himself to lift his eyes from the grisly diagrams, throat dry.
The corridor beyond was still empty, the only sound the low hum of the air conditioner. No one was watching the man in the corner leaf through a heretical text. The service desk in the distance sat dimly lit—clearly, the librarian was off napping again.
His fists clenched. Just moments ago, in this forgotten corner of the library, he had found a shard of truth hidden beneath the world's facade.
It wasn't enough to prove the universe was wrong—but it was something.
Then, as the initial rush faded, reality struck:
To complete the ritual, Damien would have to sacrifice a sentient being—
In plain terms, he would have to kill someone.
Damien's brow furrowed. In all these years of searching, he had never once broken the law, never crossed his own moral line.
To butcher an innocent like some serial killer? He doubted he could bring himself to do it.
But the book didn't specify the sacrifice had to be innocent. It only said "sentient being." Which meant… a monster in human skin would suffice just as well.
In fact, perhaps the ritual would work better with a soul steeped in malice—many dark arts favored such offerings.
And in Raccoon City, it wasn't hard to find someone who deserved to die.
Gangsters in the slums, muggers in the night, even certain well-dressed men in high places—whose hands were ever clean?
Damien's lips curved into a thin smile. Now they had a new use.
He closed the heavy book, tucking it carefully under his coat. It had slumbered here, untouched for years—he would "borrow" it without guilt. Compared to what he was now contemplating, stealing a dusty old volume was nothing.
With a tangled knot of anticipation and unease in his chest, Damien strode out of the library.
Night had deepened, the streetlamps stretching his shadow along the quiet campus path. Normally, at this hour, his mind would be filled with mundane thoughts—tomorrow's classes, daily chores.
Tonight, every thought surged toward a single vision: a lone figure before a blood-red altar, chanting in some unearthly tongue, as dark red streams coiled across the floor…
A restless heat churned in his chest.
Eight years of searching had finally revealed a crack—just wide enough to glimpse the truth beyond. Eight years of patience, frustration, and doubt burned away, leaving only the hunger thrumming in his veins.
The story had finally begun.