The bell rang like a shot through the halls of Kasuga High—a sharp clang that meant freedom, if only for a few hours.
Rain blurred the windows, the kind that smudged the world into watercolor and turned everything dull and sleepy. Students poured out of the building in waves, umbrellas blooming like petals. Laughter, shouts, the wet smack of sneakers against tile.
But he didn't leave.
He sat there, slouched in the back of the second-floor Literature Appreciation Club, staring at the same damp spot on the ceiling for what felt like the hundredth time.
"Alright, listen up," the club president said, clapping her hands. "Today we'll—"
He didn't hear the rest. His attention splintered five seconds in. Something about poetry, probably. Or a group reading. Maybe a contest coming up. Not that it mattered.
He wasn't here by choice.
"Yo, you dead?" said Kazu, the friend responsible for dragging him into this club.
The words hit like muffled echoes. He caught every fifth one.
"—gonna skip—later—crazy—dude—?"
He looked over slowly. Three friends were talking around him, laughing, jabbing each other's arms, complaining about homework and teachers and the rain. Normal stuff. Safe stuff.
But all he could do was watch the window.
Beyond it, the sky was choked with clouds. Lightning flickered like dying thoughts. The storm had been building all afternoon, but no one cared. Everyone was just fine with the day ending like this. Again. And again.
"I want something else."
He didn't say it out loud.
But it looped in his head like a prayer.
He was tired.
Not the kind of tired you could sleep away. He was tired of lockers and announcements. Of being told what mattered. Of playing along with games that bored him senseless.
He wanted to feel something. Danger. Discovery. Something that meant something.
He stood up before the club meeting ended.
"Yo, where you goin'?" Kazu asked, startled.
"I've got somewhere to be," he lied.
He grabbed his helmet from the hook by the door and walked out without looking back.
The bike sat waiting in the parking lot. A black Kawasaki Ninja, older model but lovingly kept alive. Its engine, when kicked on, gave him the only thrill he ever got in this world.
The rain had eased to a whisper, a quiet mist clinging to the streets like ghosts.
He mounted the bike.
Revved it once.
Twice.
And smiled to himself.
"Let's make this interesting."
The wheels screeched as he bolted forward, cutting through the parking lot like a bullet. He didn't care about traffic laws or weather warnings. His heart slammed in his chest like a war drum.
Speed was freedom.
He weaved through the empty streets, neon signs a blur. Everything behind him became sound and light and water. His thoughts were white-hot, burning through the grayness of everyday life.
He took a sharp turn. The tires screamed.
ZOOM.
Faster.
ZOOOOOM.
Still faster.
There was a blind hill up ahead.
He didn't slow down.
He wanted to fly.
As the bike crested the hill, something happened.
The sky tore.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
A line of white split the storm clouds, jagged like cracked glass. Light poured through it, not sunlight—something older, deeper, wrong.
The air buzzed like a dying signal.
His helmet screamed with static. The bike's engine sputtered. Gravity warped.
He looked up.
And the world blinked.
He fell.
But not onto asphalt.
Stone cracked beneath him. Cold. Ancient.
He gasped, the air knocked out of his lungs. The helmet shattered like porcelain, fragments scattering across what looked like… a marble floor?
He sat up.
The sky above was purple.
Not a cloud in sight. Just two massive moons glaring down at him through a shattered stone dome. The ruins around him whispered of some forgotten age—pillars choked with moss, carvings etched in languages he didn't know.
"What… the hell…" he breathed.
Something inside him buzzed.
A low hum, deep in his chest. A sense of wrongness—and rightness—twisting together. Like he was being recognized by the very air.
The rain was gone.
The club was gone.
The city.
His world.
All gone.
And in its place… this.
A realm of silence and ruin and stars.
And it felt like something he'd been missing all along.
Then a noise echoed in the temple.
Drip… drip…
Click.
Hiss.
He turned, slowly.
In the shadows, something watched him.
Its eyes glowed like embers in fog. Its breath rattled like chain-mail being dragged across stone. A creature, crawling on elongated limbs, stitched from shadows and bone, emerged from the far side of the ruin.
It screeched.
He ran.