In a hospital room in New York.
"I wonder what standing in the rain feels like..." Lex said softly as he looked at the world through the window.
Outside, the rain fell in thin lines, sliding down the glass. Puddles formed on the street below, and cars drove by, sending small ripples across the water.
Lex watched silently as he lifted his hand a little, stopping just before it touched the cold window. Even that small move made his arm shake.
'I've never felt rain on my face…'
The thought passed through his mind. Outside, the rain kept falling, calm and steady, while Lex stayed inside, watching from behind the glass.
He had long forgotten what it felt like to be healthy.
At the age of twenty-one, his world had shrunk to sterile hospital rooms, the hum of machines, and the quiet murmur of nurses when they whispered about his blood — RH-null.
It was so rare that even his doctors treated him like a relic in a glass case.
Lex slowly moved his hand again while listening to the IV drip ticking time away. A single drop of blood fell down his fingertip as he closed his palm. That's how weak he was.
'I can't even close my palm without getting hurt! Life is truly so fickle,' he thought.
He hated this blood. His RH-null blood, which only a handful ever had throughout the world. The same blood that chained him to needles and transfusions, the same blood that kept him alive just enough to suffer.
When Lex was four years old, he had seemed healthy. But one day, he suddenly collapsed. His parents rushed him to the hospital, where the doctors discovered his blood type.
They told him it was so rare that only seven people in history had ever been recorded to have it.
Along with the rare blood came an even rarer disease: Diamond–Blackfan Anaemia. Because of this illness, Lex's body couldn't make enough red blood cells. And without a donor, he was forced to spend his life inside hospital walls.
His parents kept him around not out of love, but to show him off like a strange trophy — something rare that made them special. Such was his life.
'I wish I could taste real food…'
Lex thought once again as he glanced at the IV line beside him, which quietly dripped nutrients into his body.
Then, something changed all of a sudden.
A soft hum ran through the air, so faint it almost felt like a breeze against his skin. Outside, the rain paused in mid-air. Raindrops hung frozen in the air, like tiny mirrors catching the gray light.
Lex frowned weakly as he looked at the view, unsure if his tired mind was playing tricks on him.
The ceiling light flickered. Then the heart monitor by his bed let out a sharp beep, louder than before.
Words, glowing faint and blue, began to appear in the air above his bed, as if they were being written on invisible glass:
[Akashic Records have been activated.]
[Mana has returned to Earth.]
Lex's eyes widened as he read the message. His weak heart skipped a beat, and the monitor let out another warning beep.
Lex felt warmth spreading through his chest. But it wasn't a comforting warmth. It burned sharply as if something was crawling through his veins like fire.
The IV beside him rattled. His body shook as the mana wave flooded into the world, pushing through walls, glass, and flesh alike. He could feel it sinking into his blood. And his blood, which was already rare and strange, reacted to it in a way nothing else could.
Before this moment, Lex had always looked fragile: a thin boy with messy black hair that fell over hollow black eyes, skin so pale it almost seemed transparent. His arms were little more than bones wrapped in skin. Every breath had felt like work; every step, a fight.
But at this moment, pain exploded inside him, stronger than anything he had ever felt. His vision blurred, then darkened.
"Am… am I dying? Is this the end of me?"
Lex gasped for air while feeling his body change from the inside out. His weak limbs stopped shaking. His tired heart pounded faster and stronger than it ever had.
A dark hunger rose in his chest — cold, deep, and endless.
Lex's black hair lost its color, turning stark white like fresh snow. His dull black eyes changed too, glowing a deep, unnatural red that seemed to burn in the dim room.
The pale skin on his arms grew even paler, almost like polished bone, but the veins beneath turned darker, almost black.
Outside, the world fell into chaos.
At first, the gentle rain stopped in mid-air, each drop frozen like clear glass beads hanging above the city streets. Then, without warning, the frozen rain turned red as if blood had spilled across the sky.
The air itself grew heavy and hot, pressing down on everything. Steam rose from puddles as the heat spread, turning the street into a wavering mirage.
Cars came to a halt with their windshields fogging over. Lex could hear the faint sound of horns blaring and people shouting in panic.
But the heat didn't last. The sky shifted once again with dark clouds swirling overhead. Snowflakes began to fall, covering the wet streets and steaming rooftops.
And then the snow melted as soon as it touched the ground, mixing with the hot pavement to create patches of dirty slush.
And then the snowfall stopped as quickly as it had come. The dark clouds cracked apart, and the rain began to fall once more — cold, steady, and silent, as if nothing had happened.
Water rushed through gutters, and puddles reflected the strange red light that still hung in the sky.
Beyond the hospital walls, animals let out twisted, broken howls that didn't sound natural. Shapes moved between buildings — some large, some crawling, all wrong in ways Lex couldn't name.
The ground itself trembled, as if the earth was trying to breathe under the weight of something new.
Mana — the strange power that had returned to the world seeped into stone, metal, and flesh, twisting them into new forms.
Buildings along the street cracked from the pressure. Inside Lex's room, the machines beside his bed flickered and sparked, the screens flashing symbols he couldn't understand before going dark.
After ten minutes, Lex finally opened his eyes.
In the reflection on the window, he no longer saw the weak boy he had always been.
What stared back was something both familiar and terrifying: white hair framing a pale face, red eyes that glowed faintly in the dark, and dark veins that traced cruel lines beneath the skin.
Above his head floated a blue screen.
[Lex Wintoff -
[Level: 1]
[Race: Ghoul]