The rain never stopped all day. It hammered down in relentless sheets across the miserable streets of the city, trying to wash everything clean—but it could never erase the filth, the despair, or the rot that clung to every corner of this cursed place. Once, in ancient legends, the city had been called Aurania. Now it was nothing more than a rotting pile of crumbling tenements, crooked alleys, and leaking roofs where the lowest dregs of society huddled together, waiting for the world to finally end.
The rain struck the ground with violence, forming filthy puddles that reflected the weak, flickering candlelight leaking from broken windows. The air hung heavy with the smell of wet earth, mold, and decay seeping from cracked walls. In this city where people lived like ghosts, Lonir was one of them—a young man in his early twenties, drifting through the darkness, searching for the place where everything could finally stop.
Lonir sat on the cold, soaking ground inside the graveyard, directly in front of his mother's grave. The cracked stone was drenched, the dead weeds swaying in the wind as though sighing at the cruelty of the world. The graveyard itself was completely abandoned, surrounded by rusted iron fences and filled with ancient headstones overgrown with moss and filth. No visitors came at this hour. Only the wind rattling the few dead trees and the rain tapping on the stones like an endless funeral dirge.
His mother's grave was simple: just a broken slab of stone with the name "Laura" etched in faded letters—a faint reminder of days when life had been less unbearable.
He pressed his face into his hands, then glanced briefly at the small mirror he always kept in his tattered bag. His reflection stared back through the rain-streaked glass. An ordinary face: wet black hair plastered to his forehead, dull gray eyes, cracked lips from the cold. Not ugly. Not handsome. Just… nothing. The face of someone who had long ago lost any hope of mattering.
"Ugly…" he whispered to himself.
But the moment he looked deeper, he knew it wasn't true. His face was simply too ordinary—painfully, insultingly average. And yet his mind screamed that it was grotesque. How could a mind drowning in despair see something so bland as absolute horror?
That mirror had been a gift from his mother long ago. He remembered her laughing as she handed it to him: "Always look at yourself, my boy. You're the most beautiful thing in this universe." Now those words felt like the cruelest mockery.
The graveyard was silent except for the rain. No birds. No whispers. No footsteps. Just him, the freezing ground, and the grave in front of him.
The grave of the mother who had chosen to leave years ago, leaving behind a void in his chest that nothing could ever fill.
He remembered those long nights in the filthy public hospital where the doctors barely glanced at the poor. His mother groaning in pain after drinking poison—poison she had chosen herself because the suffering had become too much. Her thin body wasting away day by day while the physicians treated her like less than human. He had worked as a servant, scrubbing floors and swallowing insults from arrogant nobles, collecting scraps just to pay for medicines that never helped. It was all pointless. She died in his arms, whispering one final plea: "Don't do what I did, Lonir."
But despair became his only companion after that.
He lost his job because he could no longer endure the daily humiliations from the nobles. He lost his room because the greedy landlord decided to throw him out. He ended up living on the streets—eating garbage, sleeping on sidewalks, kicked awake by city guards who saw him as vermin.
Every day the world squeezed tighter around him, as though the sky itself wanted to crush him.
Lonir felt despair pressing on his heart—thick, heavy, eager to grind it to dust.
He had tried everything: looking for any work that preserved a shred of dignity, begging, even stealing small things when hunger became unbearable. But this city showed no mercy to the weak. Old friends drifted away, terrified his bad luck would infect them. He wandered the streets watching the rich ride by in gilded carriages, laughing as though he were invisible.
"Why me?" he asked himself over and over. "Why do I have to suffer like this?"
The only answer was silence—and the rain that kept falling, as though the sky itself were weeping for his fate.
He lifted his old knife and pressed it against his throat, pausing just long enough to look at his reflection once more. The blade was rusted, the wooden handle worn smooth from years of use—a gift from the father who vanished before he was born.
He wasn't afraid. He wasn't hesitating. He was searching—for anything that could tear through this cruel world.
He imagined the end: blood pouring, body cooling, soul finally at rest.
Yet a tiny part of him still wished for something else. Something unknown. Perhaps the power to change this fate.
Then, suddenly, a strange sensation crawled over him.
Someone—or something—was watching.
No shadow. No sound. No face. Just a heavy, suffocating feeling pressing against his soul, whispering that every movement was being observed.
He raised his head and scanned the darkness. The graveyard remained empty. The wind grew fiercer, shaking the dead trees. The rain turned violent, as though trying to stop him.
But Lonir didn't move. He didn't speak. He lifted the knife again, closed his eyes, surrendered to the savage moment—and slit his own throat.
He sat there gurgling, blood pouring down his chest and soaking the rags he called clothes. He closed his eyes and accepted his fate as tears mixed with rain on his face.
The deep wound was not the end.
Pain exploded through him. Blood ran hot across his skin. The world spun wildly. He collapsed onto the ground, gasping like a stabbed dog, waiting for eternal darkness.
Instead, a strange energy surged inside his body—like cold fire burning through his soul. Reality flickered.
Then he woke—standing upright.
But he no longer felt the cold, wet ground beneath him.
His clothes had changed.
A heavy, luxurious black robe—strange and far too fine for a street rat—now covered him. Silver threads like cracks in ice ran across the fabric. A wide golden belt encircled his waist. And hanging from that belt… a black card, rough to the touch, an incomprehensible name written in a twisted script that radiated dread and secrecy.
The card was small, palm-sized. Its edges looked scorched and frayed, yet strangely metallic under the faint moonlight.
He reached out and touched it.
The moment his fingers made contact, a crushing weight clamped onto his soul—as though part of him had been frozen forever.
A name appeared in his mind, blazing:
"The Bleak."
The word echoed like a distant scream, carrying images: abandoned graveyards, hopeless faces, endless days of solitude.
Suddenly, other cards flickered through his consciousness.
Strange images. Names. Shapes. Colors. They appeared and vanished like ghosts.
• Some glowed faintly, like "The Forgotten"—a gray card showing a figure dissolving into shadow.
• Others were dark, oppressive, heavy—like "The Burned," where black fire devoured everything.
He couldn't touch them yet. He didn't understand what they meant. But he felt they were real—part of his power now, part of a pact with something no one had ever spoken of.
Then the voice came—from the card at his waist itself. Deep. Calm. Laden with terrible power.
"I am… the God of Despair. You chose despair. This is your first card: 'The Bleak.' You will see your non-core cards in your mind, but they will only manifest in reality when you use them as I desire… or you can die now, and your suffering ends."
The voice rolled through his skull like distant thunder, flooding his mind with visions: ruined cities, broken souls, strength born purely from emptiness.
Lonir felt horror mixed with a sick thrill—as though something inside him had finally awakened.
As soon as the voice finished speaking, it vanished.
He stood there, clutching the black card. The other cards shimmered in his mind like fleeting illusions, impossible to grasp.
Everything else… silence.
He looked around. The graveyard looked the same. Yet now it felt like an extension of himself—as though despair itself had become his ally.
Lonir didn't know what to do next.
He didn't fully understand what "The Bleak" meant.
But he felt a hellish strength flowing through his veins, making the cold bite even harder.
He didn't know the true power of that voice.
He couldn't even think about what might come next.
But something inside him had changed.
Something he wasn't yet allowed to name.
Now the contract was written. The words on the card faded, leaving only the image: a horned, thorn-wreathed figure staring upward, wrapped in chains of shadow.
Lonir gripped the black card tightly. His eyes widened. His heart beat unnaturally fast.
One thing he knew for certain:
The world he had known was over.
He took his first step out of the graveyard. The filthy streets waited.
But now he carried new power—mysterious, dangerous power.
(End of Chapter 1)