A cold wind hit Omen's face.
His eyes snapped open. The world around him spun for a moment, his head hurting as if someone had dropped him from the sky.
But the boy stumbled, trying to catch himself on his shaky feet.
Everything was dark.
Not pitch-black, but the kind of darkness that swallowed everything around you.
Above him, a heavy, blood-red moon hung low in the sky, bleeding light across the broken stones and twisted shadows around him.
The faint white glimmer of stars did little to help.
Omen looked around slowly. He was standing in the middle of what looked like ancient ruins, there were collapsed pillars, walls split in half, and the remains of what might have been a grand temple long ago.
Thick vines crawled up the shattered rocks like veins, and puddles of still, black water reflected the deep, red sky.
For a long moment, he didn't move. His body was trembling. The air was cold and smelled like damp soil and rusted iron.
Every sound, every crunch of dirt, the rustle of wind made his skin crawl.
"…System?" The boy said quietly. His own voice echoing back at him. "System…open?"
The faint blue light flickered in front of him.
[Status]
Name: Omen
Race: Demi-Human / Ghoul
Rank: ???
Endowments: Mutation
Stigma: Overflow
That was it.
No map.
No quest and certainly no directions.
Omen stared at the screen, then swiped his hand through it. Nothing else came up.
No help, messages…just the cold.
Omen rubbed his arms and took a deep breath. "Okay…okay, calm down," he muttered under his breath. "It's just the start of the game. It's supposed to look scary."
But even as he said it, the words didn't sound convincing at all.
His feet moved slowly across the uneven ground. Each step crunched against the stone and dry leaves as a faint fog rolled over the ground, curling around his ankles.
Omen could hear water dripping somewhere, echoing in the silence.
The ruins stretched ahead of him. In the faint light, he could only see the outline of a large structure in the distance, a broken hall with half its roof missing.
No one would believe him, but Omen genuinely believed he wet his pants a little as he found himself in this darkened place.
He had always been scared of the supernatural, even though he had been in dark all his life.
Controlling the tremble of his hands, Omen hesitated if he should go on or just try to log out even.
Something in his gut told him not to go there but standing still felt worse.
So he moved.
And as he walked closer, the moonlight revealed more details.
Huge statues lay toppled on the ground, their faces cracked and unrecognizable. The air grew colder while the boy's breath started coming out in visible white puffs.
When he finally reached the hall's entrance, he stopped again. The broken door he had seen from far away seemed to have vanished?
'Umm, help me god—' Omen never really believed in all this divine shit, but thanks to the fact that Rebekah was a former priestess candidate, she'd often hymn devoured of god.
Remembering any one of those, Omen started walking again through the broken archways as he stepped inside.
The floor creaked under his bare feet. The hall smelled of dust, old metal, and something else he couldn't name, like burnt flesh mixed with mold.
He raised his hand slightly, as if that would somehow make him feel safer. "System… increase…brightness?" he tried half-heartedly but nothing happened.
A faint fluttering sound came from above, Omen freezing in place.
Slowly, he tilted his head up.
Hundreds of bats were hanging from the ceiling, silent and still. Their small eyes glowed faint red under the moonlight leaking through the cracks in the roof.
"…oh, hell no," Omen whispered.
Then one of them moved, it's wings twitching. Another followed. Then another.
Before he could even take a step back…
FWOOSH!
A wall of black wings exploded from above. The sound of screeching filled the air as the bats swarmed, rushing past him like a living storm. The pale skinned boy screamed in horror, sweat covering his head as the creatures brushed against his face and neck. The air turned wild, cold, and thick with dust and feathers.
He stumbled backward, falling hard onto the ground, and waited until the noise faded.
When the last screech disappeared into the distance, silence returned.
Omen sat still for a few seconds, gasping for air. His whole body was shaking. "Okay," he muttered under his breath, voice trembling, "that was…that was just something hanging in the air. Just…normal creatures, right?" Because of the fact that he was blind since the day he could remember, he had no idea about most of the things, and these bats were one of them.
The 17 year old boy forced himself to stand again, brushing the dirt off his clothes. That's when he noticed something.
The bats had knocked loose a thick layer of dust from the far end of the hall.
And behind it…was a throne?
Omen blinked, trying to see clearly.
The faint red light from outside crept in, sliding over the surface of a wide staircase that led up to an elevated platform.
At the top, the throne stood tall and cracked but still regal, carved from black stone, its back shaped like two curved wings.
But it wasn't empty.
A unknown figure sat atop it.
Omen froze.
The shape was faint at first, almost blending into the shadows, then the moonlight touched her face.
She was thin, too thin. Her skin was pale, almost colorless, stretching over her sharp bones.
Her long hair fell down in messy strands, black and tangled. Her hands, resting on the throne's armrests, looked almost skeletal.
She wasn't moving.
Not even breathing.
For a moment, Omen thought she might be dead. But something deep inside him said otherwise.
The air around her felt heavy around him, wrong. Like she was the source of the cold that filled the entire ruin.
A sudden pressure appeared on his body as his instincts screamed at him to run, but his legs refused to move.
The silence was too thick.
Even the wind outside had stopped.
He could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
Then, the unknown lady's fingers twitched.
Her head tilted slightly to the side, hair falling away from her face. And even though she hadn't opened her eyes yet, Omen felt it, like something ancient and hollow was staring right through him.
He took one step back, then another, barely breathing.
The faint blue of his system screen flickered weakly beside him, reflecting in his terrified eyes the figure that would soon become his salvation…or death.
***