Ash fell like snow.
It drifted through the red air, weightless and soundless, until it settled on the cracked marble of what used to be a church. The spire was gone. The bell lay melted beside the altar. All that remained was silence — and the smell of iron, thick enough to taste.
The world had ended three years ago.
Or, to be more precise, Heaven had left.
They called it the Rupture.
The moment the sky opened, the faithful vanished, and everything else — everything unloved, unchosen, unworthy — was left behind.
They called those who remained the Abandoned.
Now the planet was a carcass stitched to Hell. Rivers ran warm with rust. Forests breathed like diseased lungs. And demons ruled what was left.
Mathias Motwell stirred awake on a cold floor. The air was so heavy it hummed in his lungs. For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming. He remembered dying — his own hands wrapped around a knife, the wet shock of the blade under his ribs — then nothing but darkness.
But when he blinked, the darkness moved.
Stone walls. Crimson light leaking through tall windows. And a mirror on the far side of the room, where a stranger's reflection stared back at him — pale skin, silver hair, eyes faintly glowing like dying embers.
That's not me.
His heart stumbled.
Wait… I know this place.
It hit him like a hammer to the skull — the memory of a computer screen, a loading screen, a name.
Blood and Flesh.
The cursed game everyone said was impossible to finish. The one where every death hurt to watch. He'd beaten it once — barely. He knew every boss, every dialogue, every way to die.
And this body — these trembling hands — belonged to one of them.
"Mathias Motwell," he whispered. His voice cracked like an unused hinge. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
The door creaked open.
The air changed first — it grew thicker, charged, like the air before a thunderclap. Then came the footsteps — measured, heavy, almost regal — and a presence that pressed on his chest.
The demon entered.
Baron Fenris Motwell.
He filled the doorway like a storm in human shape — tall, too tall, his shoulders broad enough to blot the light behind him. His skin was the color of bruised stone, his horns curved back like blades, and his smile — if that thin slash could be called a smile — was full of quiet, ancient hunger.
"Ah," the Baron said, his voice slow, almost gentle. "You're awake, little one."
Mathias forced his throat to work. "Y-yes, my lord."
He knew this line.
He'd seen it in the game's cutscene.
Fenris was the tutorial villain — the one who turned his adopted human son into a weapon, the first boss, the reason the player's quest for vengeance began.
The man who broke Mathias.
He had to play his part.
If he didn't… if he slipped even once…
Fenris stepped closer. The air around him shimmered with faint heat, as though reality itself strained to keep him contained. He smelled faintly of sulfur and old smoke.
"You slept long," the Baron murmured. "Do you remember why?"
Mathias hesitated. In the game, the real Mathias had been punished for speaking out of turn — whipped until his voice failed. The answer was simple.
"I was ungrateful," he said softly.
Fenris's smile deepened. "Good. You remember."
He circled the boy slowly, studying him the way a butcher might inspect meat. "A child saved from the streets of the Abandoned. Do you recall that, too? How I plucked you from filth and gave you a name?"
"Yes, my lord."
"A name," the demon mused, almost tenderly. "Such a fragile thing. A word of power. Do you know, Mathias, what it means to name?"
Mathias swallowed. The Baron loved questions with only one right answer.
"It means to own," he whispered.
Fenris's laughter rolled through the chamber like gravel. "Correct."
Stay calm, Mathias told himself. He's testing you. In the lore, this is where he decides whether you're still 'useful.' Fail, and he flays you. Pass, and he keeps you as a pet.
He tried to keep his eyes low, to look small. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his knees wouldn't obey.
Fenris stopped in front of him, talons brushing against the boy's chin, lifting it.
"Look at me."
Mathias obeyed.
The demon's eyes were like pits of molten glass — depthless, patient. "You tremble," Fenris said. "Fear… good. Fear means your heart still works. I would hate to think you've gone numb like the others."
He tilted his head. "Tell me, child. Do you hate me?"
Mathias's breath hitched. Trap. The real Mathias had said no here, and still been punished for lying. If he said yes, he'd die anyway.
He chose silence.
Fenris chuckled, delighted. "Ah. You've learned something after all."
He turned away, pacing toward the window. Outside, the horizon pulsed — not sunlight, but firelight. Great furnaces burned across the land, belching smoke into a scarlet sky.
"Do you know what became of the world?" the Baron asked.
Mathias shook his head.
"The Rupture tore Heaven from the heavens," Fenris said softly. "We did not conquer Earth, little one. It came to us. The barrier broke. Hell spilled upward, and the two realms fused — a birth of monsters, a wedding of sins."
He looked over his shoulder. "And yet, amidst all that glory… men still think themselves divine. They fight, they pray, they weep. But the Abandoned are ours now."
He smiled again, faintly. "You are ours."
I know, Mathias thought bitterly. You make sure of that every day.
Fenris reached for the desk beside him, where a small crimson vial rested. Inside swirled a liquid so dark it seemed to drink the light around it.
"Do you know what this is?" the Baron asked.
Mathias did. Demon blood. The beginning of every transformation.
In the game, this was where Fenris began experimenting — trying to force Mathias's human body to evolve, to create a new kind of demon. He'd failed, of course. The process drove Mathias insane. But the player never saw the early tests.
Now he would.
Fenris uncorked the vial. The scent hit like a wave — burnt metal and something sharp, almost sweet. He dipped a claw into it, the black liquid clinging to the tip.
"Hold out your hand," the Baron said.
Mathias hesitated.
Do it. Just do it.
He extended his palm. Fenris drew a single line down the center of it. The blood burned like acid, searing through flesh and nerve. Mathias bit down hard on his tongue to keep from screaming.
Fenris watched, fascinated. "Good. You endure better than before."
He leaned close, whispering near the boy's ear. "Pain is the mother of power, Mathias. Remember that. Every scar is a seed. Every wound, a forge."
Mathias's vision swam. He's enjoying this. Of course he is.
The demon wiped his claw clean and straightened. "You will attend the Academy in two years," he said, as though the burning child in front of him were a servant being told tomorrow's chores. "The other barons demand it. Politics. I expect you to behave… like my heir."
"Yes, my lord."
Fenris studied him a moment longer, then turned toward the door. "Good. Clean yourself. The servants will fetch you for supper."
He paused on the threshold, his voice almost fond. "And, Mathias — do not die again without my permission."
The door shut.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of breathing. Ragged, uneven.
Mathias sank to the floor, clutching his hand. The cut still glowed faintly, veins around it darkening like ink spreading through paper.
He let out a shaky laugh that sounded more like a sob. "I really am in hell."
He pressed his head against the cold stone, eyes closed.
Okay. Think. You're in the game. You know the story. You know how this ends.
He saw it in his mind — the final fight, the shining knight Aint Strosfek Arnumn driving a sword through his chest while Fenris's castle burned. The fall of the flesh-born demon king. His own body splitting open, turning to smoke.
You die at twenty-five.
He was seventeen now.
That gives me eight years.
Eight years to survive. Eight years to rewrite a fate already written.
He looked at his palm again. The mark pulsed once, faintly alive.
"Pain is the mother of power, huh?" he muttered. "Fine. Let's see how much of it I can stand."
Outside, the red wind howled.
And the world kept burning.
leep took him the way drowning must feel—slow at first, then absolute.
He thought he heard someone calling his name through the darkness, but when he turned toward the voice, he found himself standing in a cramped room lit by the blue glow of a computer monitor. A half-empty cup of instant noodles sat beside the keyboard. Rain hissed against a window.
He knew this room.
The smell of damp carpet, the whine of the broken fan, the ache behind his eyes from too many sleepless nights.
I'm home…
Mathias—no, the man inside Mathias—looked down at his own hands. They were smaller, softer. Human. Not the pale, scar-streaked things he had now.
He remembered the weight of debt notices stacked on the counter. The call from the company that had let him go. The voice of his grandmother, gentle but distant, asking if he was eating well.
He'd lied, of course.
He remembered that too well: sitting on the edge of his bed, the screen of his phone glowing with unread messages, and the hollow certainty that tomorrow would be exactly the same as today. That nothing would ever change.
And then the knife.
The vision warped. His grandmother's voice echoed again, faint as static.
You shouldn't be alone, child.
A knock. Sharp and real.
"Master Mathias?"
His eyes flew open. The world rushed back in—stone walls, cold air, the heavy scent of sulfur. He was still in the manor. The cut on his palm throbbed faintly beneath a bandage.
"Master Mathias," the voice called again, muffled by the door. "The Baron requests you at breakfast."
He sat up slowly. The dream lingered, thin as smoke.
A dream… or a memory?
For a moment he let himself hope that maybe the other life—the computer, the rain, the cheap noodles—had been the dream. That he had always lived here, in this nightmare castle. That at least one version of him belonged somewhere.
Then he laughed quietly. It sounded too tired to be sane.
"I'm coming," he said.
The servant who greeted him was a woman with eyes too large for her face and skin the color of burned wax. She bowed low, never meeting his gaze.
"Follow me, young master."
Mathias obeyed, studying the corridors as they walked. Everything seemed older than time itself—the black marble floors, the walls lined with portraits of demons whose faces had been half-scraped away by age. Candles burned with green flame. The air carried a faint hum, as if the house itself breathed.
When they passed a window, he risked a glance outside.
The sky was gray.
Not cloudy gray—ash gray, a living shroud that pulsed faintly with red veins. What little sunlight broke through was thin and cold. Beyond the manor grounds, the earth stretched in twisted ridges of black soil. Shapes moved out there: tall, horned figures dragging chains; smaller ones scurrying between them like insects.
For a moment he couldn't look away.
One of the smaller shapes stumbled. A demon laughed, caught the human by the hair, and tossed them into a wagon filled with others. The sound was distant but unmistakable.
Mathias's stomach turned.
This… this is what hell on earth looks like.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" the servant murmured suddenly. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "The Baron says the new world must be admired, no matter how cruel."
He didn't answer. His throat had closed.
Breakfast was held in a hall large enough to fit a cathedral. Fenris was already there, seated at the head of a long table carved from blackened bone. Around him stood several demons—advisers, guards, whatever they were—all of them watching Mathias with lazy amusement.
"Sit," Fenris said.
Mathias obeyed.
On the table lay dishes he didn't recognize—red fruit that bled when cut, pale bread that steamed without heat, meat of no color at all. He stared at it, appetite gone.
Fenris gestured with a claw. "Eat. A body must learn to consume what this world provides."
He forced himself to take a bite of the bread. It tasted of nothing. The texture was wrong, too soft, almost like skin. He swallowed anyway.
The Baron spoke idly as he ate, discussing territory disputes and the Academy, occasionally referring to Mathias as my child or my experiment. Each word felt like another chain being fastened around his neck.
When it ended, Fenris dismissed him with a wave. "You may walk the grounds. Learn what is mine. Someday, all of it will be yours."
Mathias bowed, hiding the tremor in his hands. "Yes, my lord."
The air outside was thicker than inside, heavy with a faint chemical taste. The manor's garden stretched in chaotic directions: dying trees twisted around spires of dark glass, streams of something that wasn't water creeping between roots.
He walked until the manor was almost out of sight. Each step felt stolen.
Here, away from Fenris's eyes, he could breathe. Almost.
He thought about the dream again—the life he'd lost, the one he'd wanted to escape. And now here he was, trapped in the body of someone doomed to die before twenty-five. He could feel that fate coiled around him, heavy as a curse.
But fear wasn't all he felt.
There was something else rising inside him, small and bitter.
I'm not going to die like some NPC.
He clenched his hand, feeling the sting of the cut beneath the bandage. A faint warmth pulsed there, the residue of Fenris's blood. The "gift" that marked him as something between human and monster.
He hated it.
He needed it.
He began his act that very day.
Obedient. Quiet. The perfect servant-heir. He mirrored the real Mathias's mannerisms from what he remembered in the game—eyes lowered, voice even, every word laced with submission.
It worked.
The servants relaxed around him. Fenris grew complacent. And in the quiet hours when no one watched, he explored.
The manor's lower levels were mostly storage rooms, filled with crates and cages. Some held animals. Others… didn't. He avoided those. What mattered were the living things he could practice on.
At first he couldn't bring himself to try. The thought alone made his stomach twist. But curiosity—and survival—were stronger than revulsion.
One evening, when the moon was little more than a smear behind the clouds, he found a coop of small birds in the corner of the courtyard. He reached through the bars, picked one up. It flapped weakly in his hands, feathers brushing his wrist.
"Sorry," he whispered.
He focused on the mark in his palm.
The world tilted.
For a heartbeat he felt everything—the bird's tiny heart, the pulse of blood, the structure of bone. His vision blurred. Something deep in him reached out, rearranging what it touched.
Then the bird was gone.
In his hands remained something long and thin, shaped like a crude knife. Its surface was smooth but warm, faintly alive. A single feather fluttered to the ground.
Mathias dropped it immediately. His knees hit the dirt. Bile rose in his throat, and he vomited until he could barely breathe.
When the spasms ended, the knife still lay there, glistening faintly in the weak light. Its edge shimmered, sharp enough to split air.
He wrapped it in cloth and buried it under a loose stone.
Then he sat there for a long time, shaking.
Days passed. He repeated the experiment twice more—once with a rat, once with a chicken. Each time it became easier, though the nausea never faded. He learned how to guide the transformation, how to stop it before it consumed too much.
Fenris never knew. Or pretended not to. Perhaps he enjoyed watching his creation squirm.
Mathias used the hours afterward to clean the courtyard, tend to the manor's decaying garden, and listen. Demons talked more freely around him now. He learned fragments—rumors of noble houses fighting, of Judgers appearing near the northern gates, of humans vanishing in droves.
The world beyond the manor was unraveling faster than he'd imagined.
He stood one evening by the cracked wall of the outer terrace, watching the sky dim into a darker shade of gray. A faint drizzle fell, thick and metallic. He caught a drop on his hand and saw it leave a red smear like diluted blood.
"This world's rotten to the root," he muttered.
In the reflection of a broken window, his face looked different—sharper, eyes darker, hair glinting faintly silver. For a moment, he saw another expression there: calm, cruel, utterly alien.
The real Mathias.
The whisper came so soft he almost missed it.
You think you can change what's written?
He turned sharply. No one was there.
We share the same flesh, the voice murmured from inside his skull. And flesh remembers.
He pressed his palms against his temples until the echo faded.
"Not yet," he said aloud. "You had your story. This one's mine."
The wind carried his words away.
That night he returned to his room, locked the door, and sat on the edge of the bed. The air smelled faintly of iron again—the mark on his palm pulsing with slow, steady rhythm.
He unwrapped the cloth bundle from beneath his coat. Inside, the feather-knife still waited. The surface had hardened, dull and cold, no longer alive but somehow aware. Tiny lines ran through it like veins.
He placed it on the table beside him.
"Guess it's just you and me," he whispered. "A man who doesn't belong here and a weapon that shouldn't exist."
For the first time since waking in this world, he smiled. It was small, tired, but real.
He lay back, staring at the cracked ceiling.
Tomorrow he'd continue the act. Learn more. Train more. Pretend more. Until the day he could stop pretending.
Outside, the manor groaned in the wind. Somewhere far off, a demon's laughter echoed across the gray plains.
Mathias closed his eyes and whispered to the darkness:
"I'll survive, Fenris.
And when I'm ready—
you'll be the first weapon I forge."