When I was a child, I often wondered what it felt like to have a family.
I was an orphan—no parents, no background, no one to rely on. Still, I refused to surrender to fate. I worked relentlessly, clawing my way forward with a single dream burning in my heart:
To have a family of my own.
And I succeeded.
At twenty-eight, I married the woman I loved. At twenty-nine, we were blessed with a beautiful daughter. I finally had everything I had ever wished for—a loving wife, a smiling child, a warm home to return to, and a well-paid job. For the first time in my life, I felt… complete.
Or so I thought.
On my thirty-fifth birthday, I was walking back home, excitement filling my chest. I wondered what surprise my wife and daughter had prepared for me. I reached for the gate—
—and then everything went dark.
Something hot trickled down my neck.
Thick.Red.Warm.
Blood.
My blood.
As my strength faded, I forced myself to look up, desperate to see who had done this to me. Standing before me was a being that looked human—yet felt profoundly inhuman. Something about him was wrong, as if he should not exist at all.
He wore a faceless white mask.
Through it, I could see only his eyes—abyssal black, colder than night itself, utterly devoid of emotion.
They weren't looking at me.
They were looking through me… straight into my soul.
And then—
Everything went dark.
Only then did I realize how cruel it was.
Everything I had worked for my entire life—everything I had finally obtained—was taken from me in a single moment.
Fear gripped my heart as I realized I was going to die.
At that moment, only one thought surfaced in my mind:
I want to see them one last time.
But as if fate itself were mocking my helplessness, a voice echoed around me.
"Go find yourself. Unravel the truth."
The voice was filled with pity… and something else I knew all too well.
Sadness.
Find myself? Unravel the truth?
The audacity.
Rage coiled inside me like a blade twisting deeper with every breath. I wanted to hunt that bastard down, carve my fury into his flesh, and look him in the eye as I said it—
Fuck you.
Before I could say anything—
Darkness swallowed my vision.
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As I drifted into an endless void, my thoughts returned to my loving wife and my adorable daughter.
Is this it? Am I never going to see my wife and daughter again?
I wonder how they'll feel when they find out I died before reaching our small heaven, I thought.Will my wife mourn me? Will my daughter cry for her father?
I didn't want that.
I wanted them to be happy.
I knew it made me a hypocrite, but I never wanted to see them cry—only to smile, even if I wasn't there.
These thoughts echoed endlessly as I drifted through a boundless void.
I was thankful… and sorry at the same time.
Thankful for the time we spent together.
Sorry for leaving them alone so soon.
I wanted to grow old. To see my daughter get married. To play with my grandchildren. To take my final breath one day in my wife's arms, surrounded by the family I had built with my own hands.
The more i thought about them the more i felt rage toward that being who killed me.
I swear… if I somehow survive this, I thought, rage burning through the darkness,I will hunt down the bastard who killed me. I will make him pay. I will destroy him.
Time lost all meaning in the void.
How long has it been? Is this what everyone feels after they di—
Before I could finish the thought, a voice echoed through the darkness.
"Synchronization complete."
"What in the—?"
"Soul transfer is in progress."
"What is happening to me?!"
"Progress—50%… 55%… 86%… 99%."
"Wha—?!"
"Progress 100%. Complete."
Then, in that endless void, I saw a light.
A faint glow at first—fragile, distant—yet impossibly alluring. I reached toward it, driven by instinct rather than thought. The moment I touched it, the light expanded, swallowing everything.
White.
Blinding. Absolute.
Confusion and fear surged as my thoughts scattered. I couldn't understand what was happening—or what I had become.
And then—
I slipped into unconsciousness.
I opened my eyes after drifting in the void for what felt like an eternity.
I was sprawled atop a stone slab—an altar carved for sacrifices to a god long forgotten—hidden deep within a cave.
I tried to move, but my body refused to obey.
It felt as though every fiber of my being had been torn apart and stitched back together at the same time. The pain was excruciating—beyond anything I could put into words. My senses faded one by one, yet my consciousness stubbornly remained, held together by sheer willpower alone.
I lay there for hours in that cold, suffocating darkness.
It was painful.
And it was lonely.
As I stared at the rough ceiling of the cave, a single question echoed clearly in my mind, unshaken and undeniable:
"Where am I?"