The red light wasn't blinding. It felt more like a warm, viscous fluid, enveloping Lucian's body and consciousness in its strange heat. He didn't struggle. Within the light, he felt a tranquility he'd never known, like a return to the womb. All his frustrations, his failures, his anger—it was all smoothed away. It was a perfect, seductive comfort, and he surrendered to it, sinking willingly into the calm.
He had no idea how long he drifted in that abyss.
What woke him was the cold.
It was a damp, bone-deep chill that made his teeth chatter. Then came the smell. A thick, revolting cocktail of rot, scorched plastic, rusted metal, and some other unidentifiable, foul stench. It seized his senses like a pair of invisible pliers, brutally yanking his consciousness from the void.
Lucian's eyes snapped open.
He wasn't in his familiar luxury apartment. He wasn't under his soft down comforter, and he wasn't looking at the warm glow of his bedside lamp. He was staring up at a vast, sickly, purgatorial sky of the deepest crimson.
There was no sun, no moon. Only massive, churning clouds that looked like congealed blood. Behind them, a colossal, barely-visible light source pulsed faintly, casting its eerie red glow evenly across the land.
The land…
With a stiff, creaking movement, Lucian propped himself up. He was lying on a pile of rubble and twisted rebar. He was still wearing his silk pajamas, now caked in filth and some unknown slime, clinging to his skin with a damp, miserable chill. He looked around, and an invisible hand clenched around his heart, squeezing until it nearly stopped.
It was the ruin of a city.
In the distance, a skyscraper he knew intimately—once the gleaming landmark of his city—was now a broken bone. Its top half was snapped clean off, canted sideways into the husk of an adjacent building, its concrete and steel guts exposed to the world. The tower that had housed his corporate headquarters was a hollowed-out shell, its glass curtain wall completely gone, leaving only black, empty voids like the eye sockets of a giant skull staring lifelessly at the sky. The streets were gone, replaced by mountains of debris, overturned vehicles, and massive, jagged chasms that split the earth.
This wasn't a special effect. It wasn't a dream. The biting cold in the air, the nauseating stench in his nostrils, the sharp, painful press of the rubble beneath him—every sensation screamed that this was real.
"...Is this some kind of joke?"
His voice was a dry, raspy thing, and he could hear the tremor in it. He tried to stand, but his legs felt like jelly, refusing to obey. A tsunami of fear and confusion washed over him, shattering the foundations of the world he had known for over thirty years.
What the hell was happening? A kidnapping? A prank? Some kind of top-secret military experiment he'd stumbled into?
As his mind raced, trying to apply his cold business logic to this utterly insane situation, a sharp, inhuman shriek echoed from behind a nearby ruin.
Lucian froze.
Holding his breath, he carefully shifted his body behind the relative cover of a waist-high slab of concrete and peered over the edge.
He saw three grotesque, humanoid creatures dragging something from the wreck of an overturned armored vehicle. They had the bipedal forms of men but the long, fang-filled snouts of hyenas. Their skin was a dirty, grayish-brown, covered in patches of coarse hair. Their hands and feet ended in razor-sharp claws, which were currently dug deep into the thing they were pulling.
It was a body. The body of a soldier in some kind of powered combat suit. The hyena-creatures growled with greedy excitement, tearing at the alloy armor with their teeth and claws, creating a grating, nails-on-a-chalkboard screech of metal on metal.
One of them, apparently the leader, let out a triumphant howl as it finally ripped open the chest plate. It plunged its entire head inside, tearing and gulping at the contents. A spray of warm blood and visceral chunks splattered across the ground. The thick, coppery smell was unmistakable, even from fifty yards away.
Lucian's stomach churned violently. He clamped a hand over his mouth, barely suppressing the urge to vomit. He wasn't a stranger to savagery—the boardroom was its own kind of battlefield, and he'd driven competitors to bankruptcy and ruin. But that was an indirect, digital kind of cruelty. Compared to the raw, primal butchery happening before his eyes, it was child's play.
Just then, the feeding leader froze. It snapped its head up, its blood-soaked snout sniffing the air intently. Its yellow-brown eyes, utterly devoid of reason, locked directly onto Lucian's hiding spot.
Spotted.
The word exploded in Lucian's mind like a hammer blow. He didn't have time to think. Primal survival instinct overrode everything else. He scrambled to his feet and ran.
He had no idea where he was going. He just ran like a cornered animal, stumbling and scrambling through the debris field. The sharp edges of rebar tore at his silk pajama pants, leaving bloody scratches on his calves, but he felt nothing. Behind him, the three hyena-creatures let out shrill, excited hunting cries, their four limbs propelling them across the ruins at an inhuman speed.
The sounds were getting closer, a death knell at his heels.
Lucian's heart hammered against his ribs, threatening to burst. His lungs burned, and the taste of blood filled his throat. He could feel the shadow of death closing in from behind.
"You will die on a battlefield…"
The monk's raspy voice roared in his mind like a curse.
So this is the battlefield? This is how it ends? As dinner for a pack of monsters I can't even name?
No!
A final surge of adrenaline gave him a burst of strength. He hauled himself over a broken wall, not seeing the steep slope on the other side. His foot slipped, and he tumbled down, landing hard in a small, open clearing.
The impact made his vision flash with stars. He lay there, momentarily stunned, as the three hyena-creatures fanned out, surrounding him. The hunt was over. They slowed to a predatory, circling pace, toying with him. Saliva dripped from their jaws, their yellow eyes gleaming with the cruel greed of a predator savoring a fresh, tender meal.
This was it. For the first time in his life, Lucian felt true despair. His sharp mind, his cunning, his wealth and status—at this moment, they were all a meaningless joke. In the face of absolute violence, he was just a lamb in pajamas, waiting for the slaughter.
The creature on the far left lunged, its foul, bloody maw snapping shut just inches from his face.
SHHHIIIIINNNK.
A piercing whistle cut through the air.
A rusted piece of rebar, about a yard long, shot from the side like a javelin thrown by an invisible hand. It moved with impossible force, punching clean through the hyena-creature's skull. The kinetic impact launched the body backward, pinning it to a concrete wall with a sickening thump.
The sudden, violent death stunned the remaining two creatures.
A second later, another whistle. A thicker piece of rebar dropped from the sky like a giant nail, impaling the second creature and pinning it to the ground. It didn't even have time to scream; it just twitched once and went still.
The last hyena-creature finally understood fear. It let out a piteous howl and turned to flee.
It only took two steps. All around it, a dozen pieces of scrap metal—shards from a car door, jagged pieces of sheet metal—lifted into the air as if granted life. They converged in mid-air, assembling themselves into a whirling net of razor-sharp blades. The net descended with lightning speed, slicing down over the creature's head.
SHRRIIIP!
With a sound like a dozen shears closing at once, the creature was instantly diced into a score of bloody pieces that rained down on the ground.
The entire engagement, from the first piece of rebar to the last monster's death, took less than five seconds. It was clean, efficient, and possessed a chilling, violent beauty.
Lucian stared, dumbfounded. His brain had completely shut down.
"Hey. Pajama guy."
A cool, female voice, laced with impatience, came from above him.
Lucian slowly craned his head up. A woman was standing on the wall he'd just tumbled down. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, dressed in practical combat gear made of stitched leather and plates of what looked like black and gold metal. She had a short, no-nonsense haircut, and her eyes were as sharp as knives. Behind her stood another figure, this one impossibly large and imposing.
It was… a bear-man?
The figure stood at least eight feet tall, covered in thick, silver-white fur. It had the massive head and powerful limbs of a polar bear but stood upright like a man, clad in simple leather armor. It carried no weapon; its huge, dinner-plate-sized paws, tipped with terrifying claws, were clearly weapons enough.
The woman hopped down from the wall with practiced ease. She walked over to Lucian, looking down at him with open suspicion.
"Who are you? Where did you come from?" she asked. "And don't tell me you're some idiot who wandered out of a shelter. I've never seen a shelter that issues silk pajamas as a uniform."
Lucian opened his mouth, but no words came out. His entire view of reality was undergoing a seismic, catastrophic reconstruction.
"Kaelan," the bear-man rumbled, his voice as deep as thunder. "He doesn't have the smell of the Wastes on him. He's clean. Like someone from… Before."
"Someone from Before?" The woman, Kaelan, raised an eyebrow as if a thought had occurred to her. She crouched down and grabbed Lucian's chin, forcing his head up. Her fingers were cold and strong. "I'll ask you one more time. Where. Are. You. From?"
"I… I don't know…" Lucian finally found his voice, though it sounded like a sob. "I was… asleep in my home… and then… then I was here…"
"Asleep?" Kaelan's eyes grew colder. "You're saying you're a Descender?"
"A Descender?"
"A poor bastard who drops in here from the 'Old World' for no good reason," Kaelan said, letting him go and standing up. Her tone was laced with undisguised contempt. "Every so often, when the Veil gets unstable, one of you falls through. They don't usually last a day."
"Old World… the Veil…" Lucian's mind raced, trying to process the terms. He looked at the woman who controlled metal, at the giant bear-man, at the apocalyptic landscape around them. An unbelievable but terrifyingly logical explanation began to form.
With a trembling hand, he reached into his pajama pocket and pulled out the cause of all this—the blood-red stone.
The moment the stone appeared, the faces of both Kaelan and the bear-man, Roric, changed dramatically.
"A Rift Stone!" Roric gasped, his deep voice cracking with a shock it hadn't shown before.
Kaelan was faster. She snatched the stone from his hand, her eyes burning as she stared at it, her breathing suddenly shallow. "It really is… a Key… No wonder you made it through the Veil." She looked up, her gaze boring into Lucian. "Where did you get this?"
"A… a monk gave it to me…" Lucian answered honestly.
"A monk?" Kaelan frowned, clearly not understanding. But she quickly dismissed it, clutching the stone tightly in her fist. She turned to Roric. "Get him on his feet. He's the Key-holder. I don't care who he is; he's useful now."
Roric nodded and hauled Lucian to his feet as if he weighed nothing.
"Wait… where are you taking me?" Lucian asked in a panic.
"To a place where you might live to see the morning," Kaelan said without turning back. "As for tomorrow… that will depend on your value."
She paused and glanced over her shoulder, her eyes assessing him like a piece of merchandise.
"Welcome to the Wastes, Descender. The 'era of peace' you knew ended two hundred years ago, the day the Veil ripped open. Every inch of ground you stand on is a battlefield. Now shut your mouth and keep up, unless you want to be a midnight snack for the real monsters out here."
With that, she turned and strode into the ruins. Roric gave Lucian a shove, motioning for him to follow.
Lucian stumbled forward, glancing back at the mangled corpses of the creatures, then down at his own ridiculous pajamas. Finally, his eyes settled on Kaelan's fist, clenched tightly around the red stone.
The monk's words echoed in his ears one last time.
"You will die on a battlefield."
"It can help you."
"Only you can save yourself."
It hadn't been a curse or a scam. It was a prophecy, a warning, and… a brutally efficient survival guide.
His fate was, indeed, still in his own hands. But starting today, the definition of "fate," and the means of "controlling" it, would be entirely different from anything he had ever known. His old world was dead. And on this new, bloody, and mysterious battlefield, he would have to learn how to survive.