Chapter 1
The cold night in the NQSC middle-class neighborhood was broken only by the soft click of a lock. A boy of about sixteen of age slipped into his house, the hour late.
The air inside was warm and carried the thick, cloying reek of cheap alcohol, a scent that clung to the modest furnishings despite their best efforts to appear clean.
The boy sighed wearily as He bypassed the living room and made his way to the stairs, each step a familiar effort. But as he reached the top, the silence was shattered by sounds from his father's room—a sharp cry, followed by a low, throaty moan.
"Ahhh!"
"Oh,yes!"
The boy froze, his face twisting in disgust. 'Another one...' he thought bitterly 'Great. Just fucking great.'
It seemed his drunken mess of a father had brought yet another prostitute home...
He didn't hesitate further. Striding into his own room, he dropped his bag with a thud and immediately snatched a pair of headphones from his desk, clamping them over his ears. The tinny blast of music was a welcome shield, muffling the grotesque symphony from down the hall.
Collapsing onto his bed, he stared at the cracked ceiling, the white paint stained and yellowing. In the artificial silence, the memories came unbidden, washing over him like a tide.
---
—Memory—
"Hugo!"
A woman's voice called out, warm and full of affection, devoid of any anger. A young boy, no older than six, was a whirlwind of energy, his small legs carrying him across the synthetic grass of the NQSC park. A brilliant, untainted smile was carved onto his face, a peaceful, beautiful expression untouched by the horrors that lurked at the edges of their world.
Hugo rushed toward the sound, crashing into his mother's legs and wrapping his arms around her. "Ma! Can you play with me?" he pleaded, his voice dripping with innocent hope.
She patted his head gently before bending down to his level, her own smile elegant and heart-wrenchingly kind. "Of course, honey. After all, if I didn't play with you, who else would?"
Right then, as they turned toward the center of the park, the world itself shifted.
The very air grew still, holding its breath as if awaiting a executioner's blow. Then, reality didn't just ripple—it cracked, violently and without warning.
In mere moments, the entire world went mad.
Dozens of harrowing figures spilled from a tear in the world like dark plague, their forms monstrous and wrong. The pristine green of the synthetic grass was instantly stained a brutal, shocking red.
---
The scene fragmented, reforming on a nearby road. Hugo's mother now carried him, his small body clutched tightly against her chest as she ran. Panic was etched onto her face, a raw, primal fear.
Of course she was afraid; she wasn't an Awakened And a Category 2 Gate had opened without a single warning from the Obel Scale, making evacuation impossible.
---
Hugo watched, his child's mind struggling to process the impossible speed of it all.
His mother stumbled. Then she fell to the ground violently.
A horrific, glistening claw protruded from her chest, slick with her own blood. In her final, instinctual act, she had twisted as she fell, shielding Hugo, preventing the talon from piercing him too.
She collapsed, her arms still locked around him in a deathly tight embrace.
"I... I'm sorry..." she whispered, the words a wet, gurgling breath.
The light in her eyes flickered and died in an instant...
And Just as the beast loomed over them, its harrowing fangs poised to descend, another figure appeared.
She moved like a cold angel of death—a soul reaper given form. With impossible speed and grace, her scythe flashed, and the abomination was severed.
The woman quickly shifted her stance, her brow furrowing as she noticed the dead woman near her her.
She sighed, a hollow sound. "Your nightmare is over..." Then, she saw the body slightly twitch, in an instant Her instincts as an awakened veteran kicked in; she stepped forward, ready to dismember the corpse, fearing that some parasitic abomination had already taken over the women body.
But what she found was far more horrifying than any monster.
A little boy, no older than eight, was clinging to his mother's body. He was trying to shake her awake as if she was merely taking a nap, his small frame drenched in her blood. Translucent tears carved clean paths through the crimson mask on his face, turning red as they fell onto her lifeless form.
Soul Reaper Jet stared, her professional composure shattered into complete shock.
For a long, suspended moment, the world stopped. The government Awakened battling Nightmare Creatures in the background, the countless other dead mundune humans —it all faded into a meaningless blur. There was only her, and the boy smeared in his mother's blood.
For the first time in a long, long while, Jet was brutally reminded of how harrowing and cruel this world was.
Of How cruel the Nightmare Spell truly was.
A hundred thoughts raced through her mind
Should I apologize for being too late?
Should I comfort him? But how? How do you comfort a child drowning in his mother's viscera?
In the end, Soul Reaper Jet said nothing.
That single, silent action would become a ghost that tormented her for the rest of her life as an Awakened, and most importantly a second, powerful driver for her relentless rampage against the creatures of the nightmare.
---
Back in the present, the torrent of memories receded, leaving Hugo hollowed out. He saw it all again: the endless therapy sessions he still attended, his father's slow decline into madness by alcohol and strangers, the morbid emptiness of his own life.
He felt the familiar, coiling hatred—for himself, for the Nightmare Creatures, for the Spell itself.
And most of all, he remembered the cold, blue eyes of the woman who had saved him. Even through a haze of blood and tears, the image of Soul Reaper Jet—the famous government Awakened who was now an Ascended Master—was burned into his very soul. The cold, unrelenting promise of bloodshed in her gaze still haunted him.
He wanted it. He wanted that same look in his own eyes. He wanted to become like her. He wanted the power to kill and kill again, to erase all the abominations from the world one by one.
But for now, Hugo was just a boy curled into a tight ball on his bed, his legs clutched tightly to his chest. Truculent tears traced fresh paths down his cheeks, silent sobs wracking his frame.
"You promised..." he whispered into the music-filled silence, his voice breaking. "You promised you'd play with me... You promised you'd stay..."
Eventually, his tears ran dry, his muffled cries lost to the beat in his ears. That night, Hugo fell into a fitful sleep, barely finding rest.
For the next day, he would wake to find himself in a strange, hazy state.