One rule… there is only one rule….
Survive.
'Fear…'
Huff… huff…
'Why is my heart trembling?'
Huff…
'Why am I running?'
The world rushed past him in smears of green and black, but Aryan couldn't remember why he was running — only that he had to. His legs burned. His lungs screamed. Breath came in ragged, broken gasps, tearing through him like knives. Yet he pushed forward, driven by a terror he couldn't name or remembered.
Something was wrong.
'Something is very wrong.'
The mist thinned as Aryan staggered forward, one foot dragging after the other. Strangely, his feet felt cold and warm at the same time. However, his uneven breathing kept him from thinking about it.
The raw panic had dulled into something heavier — a cold, tight knot in his gut.
The thick forest stretched endlessly before him. Twisted trees towered above, their bark flaking like old scars. Moss coated everything in a sickly green hue. Insects buzzed unseen, and somewhere far off, something gave a low, rumbling growl.
After what felt like eternity, Aryan's legs finally gave out and he stumbled to a halt, chest heaving. He bent over, hands on his knees.
He was breathing slower now. Not calm but less frantic. Sweat was dripping down his face like raindrops. The silence pressed in again, and with it, a sudden stillness inside him.
His eyes drifted down to his right hand. It had been clenched for so long, his knuckles were white. cold and rough.
Slowly, as if noticing it for the first time, he lifted his hand into the thin light filtering through the canopy.
'How... Did I get this?'
A blade glinted faintly.
An old looking and slightly rusted sword felt heavy in his hand. He didn't know where it had come from.
He stared at it in silence, his brow furrowing. The hilt was wrapped in faded cloth, fraying at the edges. Dried stains marked the steel — brown and black, like ancient blood baked into its surface.
Aryan turned the sword slightly, watching the light crawl over the rusted edge. A strange chill ran down his spine.
Many questions crowded Aryan's mind, rising one after the other like ripples in dark water. How had he come to possess this sword? Had someone handed it to him… or had he taken it by force? Was it his… or was it stolen? The more he thought, the less he understood. Every answer dissolved before it could form.
His confusion deepened with every breath.
He didn't even remember arriving here—this forest that felt ancient and alien. There was no memory of how he had entered it, no path to retrace. Just fog in his mind and a gnawing emptiness where clarity should have been.
And above all, one question screamed louder than the rest:
Why was he running?
Was he being hunted?
Was he chasing something?
Or was he simply trying to escape?
He didn't know.
Not yet.
"What a pain..?" Aryan murmured to himself, the words dry in his throat.
He turned, glancing over his shoulder. The path he had taken—if it could even be called that—had already vanished behind a curtain of mist and trees. The forest seemed endless, stretching in every direction like a living maze. Twisted trunks and overlapping branches towered high, their shadows stretching long and cold.
Suddenly, without warning, pain ripped through Aryan's skull like a jagged blade. It was sudden—brutal—like something had burrowed into his mind and twisted.
Aryan's sword fell. It hit the ground with a dull metallic thud.
Aryan collapsed to his knees, a scream tearing from his throat—raw, ragged, inhuman. His screams echoed throughout the forest like a wounded animal being slaughtered.
Yet nothing answered. Only the silent stare of the trees... and something else. An unknown hidden in the shadows of the trees in the distance.
'What… kind of pain is this?'
Sweat streamed down his face in rivulets, soaking into his collar. His vision flashed.
Flashes of light and people's screams of pain, fear and despair.
Black smoke boiled in the sky, it seemed as if it had been burned from the inside. Two green spheres floated in the black smoke, pulsating unnaturally in the darkness, as if an eye was watching from beyond logic.
Then silence washover for a moment.
In the very next instant, the ground split open with a thunderous crack, and below its gaping wounds poured a darkness so deep, so vile, it seemed to bleed the light from the world. Like a monstrous spider's web, it spread in every direction, swallowing everything on its path.
People ran away from it —toward eight colossal, glowing mouths yawning wide in the distance. They shimmered with an eerie light, each one waiting, hungry, promising something worse than death.
And yet… the people ran to them willingly.
There was no struggle, no resistance—only silent surrender. As if leaping into those glowing maws was a salvation compared to being dragged into the abyss behind them.
It was madness. A horrifying madness.
And Aryan… Aryan felt it too.
He wasn't just witnessing the madness unfolding before him. He was part of it.
"Remember..."
Amid the chaos, a voice slithered into Aryan's mind. It didn't echo like a thought—it felt branded onto his consciousness, as if someone had carved it directly into his brain.
"Only those who dare cross the line of madness will survive..."
It wasn't a memory. It was an order.
Aryan gasped for breath.
Each inhale burned like fire, scorching his lungs. His legs trembled beneath him, barely holding his weight. His heartbeat thundered in his chest, wild and uneven. He was terrified. He was furious. He was unraveling.
Then the voice returned—darker, colder, a whisper dragging its nails across his mind.
"Everyone is the enemy... Kill them all..."
It was fading now, but the words left a scar behind:
"That's the only rule... If you want to survive in Battleworld... then..."
Eventually, the voice faded.
But its echo still throbbed inside Aryan's skull—like the relentless beat of a war drum, impossible to silence.
His breathing was ragged, sharp. He forced himself to calm it down, each inhale like dragging air through fire. His chest heaved, his skin drenched in sweat despite the cool breeze around him.
The world flickered between shadow and light, chaos and stillness—as if reality itself couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
Was any of that real?
His gaze dropped—and froze.
There, in the dirt, lay a sword.
His unknown sword. At least, it seemed to be. Its blade shimmered faintly under the dappled sunlight filtering through the trees. He still had no memory of holding it. No memory of how it came to be in his hand...
That was the worst part.
A quiet dread curled in his stomach.
He took a slow, cautious step toward it. The voice's warning echoed faintly in his mind. If even a fraction of it was true, he might need the sword again.
He crouched, fingers brushing the hilt.
What the hell was going on here?
He straightened and scanned his surroundings.
The glowing mouths were gone. The cracks in the earth sealed. The writhing shadows had stilled.
All that remained was silence—dense, watchful. The kind that made it feel like the forest itself was holding its breath, waiting for something.
He could feel the stillness pressing in.
He pressed a hand against his chest—his heartbeat still thundered beneath his ribs. The burning in his lungs was gone. The tremble in his legs had faded. But the fog in his mind, the chaos behind his eyes... that remained.
He glanced down at himself.
His favorite light gray shirt—creased, and stained. It was a birthday gift from his younger sister for his 25th anniversary. That's why he only wore it on special occasions.
'She's going to kill me if she sees this,'
Black jeans, dusty and scuffed. One sneaker on his foot—the other missing. Classic.
"It's a loss," he muttered. "I should've listened to mother."
Then he tried to reconstruct the day.
He remembered waking up. A normal morning like others.
Took a bath. Got dressed in his usual formal clothes. Grabbed his keys from the counter. Started the bike. The familiar rumble beneath him. The cool wind slapping against his face as he rode through the city. Same turn on the highway. Same playlist in his helmet. His thoughts drifting.
And then—
Nothing.
The next thing he remembered, he was running through a dense forest. His legs moving before his brain could catch up. Something chasing him. Or someone? he don't recall.
His thoughts stopped there. He looked down at the sword again. A shiver crept up his spine.
'How did I get here?'
More importantly— Why?
Had someone abducted him? Drugged him? Had he come here of his own free will?
Nothing made sense. Nothing fit.
Fear crept in—not of the forest, not even of the madness he had just witnessed—but of the emptiness inside him.
His memories were incomplete.
His thoughts... frayed at the edges.
And that voice—the one that had crawled into his mind—it hadn't just spoken to him.
It had spoken like it knew him.
Was it real?
Was any of this real?
He gripped the sword tightly, its weight grounding him. Cold. Solid. Dangerous.
And then the thought surfaced—sharper this time, ringing with clarity, impossible to ignore:
"What the hell is Battleworld?"