The sky bled light.
That was the first thing I noticed after the wind settled — a red shimmer leaking through clouds that didn't move. The air wasn't cold or hot, just wrong, as if it was pressing against my skin instead of passing through it.
Aki stood beside me, arms wrapped around herself, shaking. The wind made her soaked hair stick to her face. Behind us, the wreck of the train still hissed, bleeding smoke into the crimson haze.
No tracks. No city. Just wasteland.
It looked like someone had taken the skeleton of Tokyo and boiled it down to bone and ash.
The ground pulsed faintly under my boots, as though it was breathing.
I wanted to believe it was a hallucination — a head injury, a dream, anything. But the pain in my body, the metallic air on my tongue, the faint echo of the train's whistle somewhere in the distance… it all felt too sharp, too real.
"This isn't Earth," I said quietly.
Aki didn't answer. She just stared at the red moon above us, wide-eyed, her lips trembling.
"Where are the others?" she whispered.
I turned. The older man who'd been with us — the one in the suit — was gone. His footprints stopped a few meters away, where the dirt sank slightly, as though he'd been pulled under.
Just like before.
I swallowed hard. "He's not here anymore."
Aki looked at me, her eyes pleading. "You don't mean—"
"Yeah," I said. "I do."
We decided to move.
Not because we had anywhere to go — but standing still in that place felt like inviting something to notice us.
The landscape stretched endlessly, shaped from what looked like black coral and twisted veins. The "ground" was cracked like dried blood, and in some of the gaps, faint red light pulsed from below.
After a while, we saw movement ahead — small, flickering lights like lanterns.
"People?" Aki asked, her voice hopeful and afraid all at once.
"Maybe," I said, though I didn't believe it.
As we got closer, I realized the lights weren't fire or electricity. They were eyes.
Tiny, floating creatures hovered above the dirt — spherical, jellyfish-like, with threads trailing beneath them. Each had a single luminous eye at its center, blinking slowly as we approached.
When Aki reached out her hand, one drifted near her wrist, almost curious. Then it made a soft, wet clicking sound and darted away.
"They're watching us," I muttered.
"Do you think they're dangerous?"
"I don't think they're the worst thing out here."
Eventually, we found a structure.
It rose from the ground like a half-buried cathedral, its walls made of stone and bone, its windows glowing faintly from within. A faint hum echoed from inside, like a heartbeat.
Aki hesitated. "Do we… go in?"
I looked back. The fog behind us was moving. Slowly. Like something swimming through it.
"We don't have a choice."
The massive doors were half open, creaking as we pushed through. Inside, the air was heavy — warmer, thick with the smell of iron and incense.
Rows of candles burned along the walls, their flames crimson instead of gold. The light revealed strange carvings — runes shaped like veins, curling and twisting as if alive.
At the center of the chamber stood a tall figure, draped in tattered robes. Its face was hidden by a mask made of bone and silver.
When it spoke, its voice echoed from everywhere at once.
"Two stray hearts enter the Vein. One beats with hope. The other, with guilt."
Aki gasped and stepped back. I froze.
"I… don't understand," I said. "Where are we? What happened to us?"
The figure tilted its head. "You crossed the boundary of the living. The train was your vessel. The god's pulse drew you here."
"The god?"
It raised its hand, and the candles flickered violently.
"This world was once His body. His blood is the soil. His bones are our walls. His death is our eternity."
I felt my stomach twist. "You're saying… we're inside something's corpse?"
The figure chuckled softly — a dry, rasping sound.
"Call it that if you wish. But to us, it is home. You are Veinbound now."
Aki stepped forward, shaking. "How do we get back?"
The figure turned toward her slowly. The air shifted. I felt pressure in my chest, like the room itself was breathing with us.
"Return?" it whispered. "There is no return. Only ascension or decay."
The candles began to dim, one by one.
"The Vein feeds on what it claims. You will learn to serve it… or be swallowed by it."
The last candle went out.
Then, a flash of movement — too fast to see clearly. Something long and pale shot from the darkness, coiling around the figure's neck.
It wasn't a rope. It was a tongue.
The figure screamed, a sound that didn't belong to any living throat. Its body convulsed as it was yanked backward into the shadows.
Aki screamed. I grabbed her hand and ran.
We tore down a side corridor, our footsteps echoing through the pulsing walls. The floor trembled beneath us, like something crawling underneath the surface.
Behind us, wet, dragging sounds followed.
We found an exit — a smaller door leading outside. I slammed it shut and pressed my back against it, breathing hard.
The red light outside was brighter now, staining everything. The landscape around us had changed — or maybe it always had been this way, and we just hadn't seen it clearly.
Structures grew from the ground like tumors — towers made of interlocked bones, bridges of muscle and sinew. In the distance, a city shimmered faintly, its skyline writhing as if alive.
The door behind me shuddered once. Then it went still.
Aki crouched beside a cracked wall, hugging her knees, sobbing quietly.
"I can't do this," she whispered. "I just want to go home."
I wanted to tell her we would. I wanted to lie. But the words wouldn't come.
Instead, I looked up at the city.
The air above it rippled — and for just a moment, I saw something vast and winged unfurling in the clouds, its form blotting out the moon.
It didn't move like a bird. Or a dragon.
It moved like it was breathing.
A whisper brushed my ear.
"You're being watched."
I spun around, but no one was there.
Only the door. Only the wind.
But the dirt beneath my feet began to pulse again, faintly — once, twice, like a heartbeat.
And then, from somewhere far away, the sound of the train whistle echoed again — distorted, low, as if the world itself remembered the noise and was trying to imitate it.
Aki stood, trembling, her voice barely audible. "That… that sound… it's the train."
I looked toward the horizon.
In the distance, a dark shape moved through the crimson fog, its lights flickering — the same shape that had carried us here.
It was moving toward the city.
And somehow, I knew it wasn't empty.
The world was alive. The god was dead.
And somewhere within that corpse, something still called our names.