The rain fell wrong here.
Not hard, not violent... just persistent, seeping into everything with the patience of rot. It dripped from sagging branches, pooled in the hollows of dead bark, turned the forest floor into a slurry of mud and decomposing leaves that smelled like graves left open too long.
Karasu walked through it like a man already dead.
He was twenty years old, though the scars layering his body told a longer, uglier story. Tall and lean, built for speed over strength, he moved with the grace of a shinobi even now, even with his black robes soaked through and clinging to wounds that wouldn't stop bleeding. His gray hair, cut short and messy, was plastered to his skull. Rain streamed down the angular features of his face, tracing the deep jagged scar that split across the bridge of his nose like someone had tried to cleave his skull in half and given up halfway, despite his rather handsome face.
His eyes were the worst part. Black. Completely black, pupils indistinguishable from iris, and utterly devoid of anything resembling warmth. They didn't track the forest around him. They just stared ahead, hollow, like the person behind them had vacated the premises years ago and never bothered coming back.
Blood dripped from his fingertips with every step. He'd lost count of how many wounds decorated his torso beneath the robes... kunai punctures, sword slashes, one particularly nasty gash along his ribs that made breathing feel like swallowing glass. His tekko arm guards were dented, one strap torn. His tobi trousers clung wetly to his legs, and his sandals squelched with every footfall, leaving faint red trails in the mud.
He stopped when he saw the fallen log.
The clearing was small, unremarkable. Just enough space for the rain to fall unobstructed. Karasu limped to the log, turned, and let himself slide down against it. His legs gave out halfway and he hit the ground harder than intended. Pain lanced through his side.
He coughed. Blood spattered across his palm, darker than it should be.
"I'm going to die, aren't I?" His voice was flat. Empty. He said it the way someone might comment on the weather. "Like a dog."
The rain kept falling.
Karasu leaned his head back against the log, staring up through the canopy at the gray sky beyond. His breathing was shallow. Uneven. Each inhale scraped.
"They'll catch up eventually," he continued, speaking to no one. "Finish the job. Can't have loose ends." A wet laugh bubbled up from his chest, turned into another cough. More blood. "The only problem was I got too good at it. A tool that's too sharp will eventually turn on its master. Isn't that how the saying goes?"
His mind drifted back... not far, the memory was still fresh, still bleeding.
He'd completed the mission. Executed the traitors just like the clan chief ordered. Three of them, all begging by the end, all dead by his hand. He'd done it cleanly. Efficiently. Returned to the village expecting dismissal, maybe a new assignment.
Instead, they'd been waiting.
Ambush. Twenty of them, maybe more. He'd recognized some faces... men he'd trained with, fought beside. They didn't hesitate. Didn't explain. Just attacked.
He'd killed four before the blades found him. Opened someone's throat with a kunai, put another's eye out with a shuriken, broke a third's neck with his bare hands. The fourth he didn't even remember... just blood and screaming and the wet sound of steel entering flesh.
Then he'd run.
Escaped into the forest with half his blood already painting the village stones, wounds burning, vision swimming. And now here he was. Dying against a rotting log while the rain washed him clean.
"What a worthless life," Karasu murmured.
His eyes slid shut.
The forest sounds... rain pattering, branches creaking, distant bird calls... all of it stopped. Just cut off, like someone had severed the thread connecting him to the world.
His vision went black.
Not the black of closed eyes. Deeper. Emptier. The kind of black that swallowed everything and gave nothing back.
So this is death.
He waited for oblivion.
It didn't come.
Consciousness returned like water filling a dry well... slow, reluctant, wrong.
Karasu opened his eyes.
He was sitting.
That was the first wrong thing. He'd been dying against a log, body broken, blood pooling beneath him. Now he was upright in a chair... wooden, old, creaking under his weight... and his wounds were gone. He could feel their absence, the phantom ache where pain should be screaming.
The second wrong thing was the room.
Except it wasn't a room.
It was an expanse. Endless. Empty. Gray nothingness stretching in every direction, formless and vast, and yet somehow contained within the small circle of dim light cast by a single naked bulb hanging overhead. The bulb flickered occasionally, throwing stuttering shadows across the only furniture: a massive oak desk, scarred and ancient, piled high with papers and files that looked like they predated civilization.
Behind the desk sat a man.
Karasu's eyes narrowed.
The man looked like a clerk. Literally. Crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, a green tie hanging loose, black hair slicked back into a neat comb-over that somehow made him look more tired instead of professional. He was writing something, pen scratching across parchment, and he didn't look up when Karasu shifted in the chair.
But his eyes... when they finally flicked upward... were red.
Not bloodshot. Red. Crimson irises with vertical slits cutting through them like a demon's, like something wearing human skin as a poorly fitted suit.
The clerk sighed. It was the sigh of a man who'd been doing the same tedious job for a thousand years and would continue doing it for a thousand more.
"Let's see..." He pulled a file from the towering stack, flipped it open without ceremony. "Ah. Here we are. Another soul I have to process." He glanced at Karasu with visible annoyance. "Can't you Irregulars just process properly? Do you have any idea how much extra work you cause? No, of course not. Why would you."
Karasu stared at him. Said nothing.
The clerk took that as permission to continue. He scanned the file, red eyes flicking back and forth. "Name: Karasu. Age at death: twenty years. Cause of death..." He paused. Snorted. "Bleeding out. But really it was betrayal, wasn't it? Stabbed in the back by your own people after years of loyal service. How... unfortunate."
He turned a page.
"Oh, this is interesting." The clerk's lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Occupation: shinobi. Kill count: two hundred and seven confirmed. Specialty: assassination, interrogation, wetwork." He looked up. "You were a busy little murderer, weren't you?"
Karasu's expression didn't change. "Is this the afterlife?"
The clerk blinked. Then he laughed... sharp and humorless... and reached into his breast pocket to pull out a pipe. He packed it with something that looked like tobacco but smelled faintly of sulfur, lit it with a snap of his fingers, and took a long drag.
"Afterlife," he repeated, exhaling smoke that curled upward and dissolved into the gray void. "Sure. Let's call it that. Technically, you're in Purgatory. The filing department of Purgatory, to be specific. Where souls like you... errors... get sorted out by people like me." He gestured vaguely with the pipe. "Errors in the soul stream. Glitches. Anomalies. Whatever you want to call them."
"Errors," Karasu echoed. His voice was flat.
"Yes. Errors." The clerk flipped another page. "See, when someone dies, their soul is supposed to disperse back into the stream. Clean. Efficient. Natural. But you..." He tapped the file with the stem of his pipe. "...you didn't disperse. Your soul held together. Stubborn bastard thing. And now I have to deal with it."
Karasu leaned back in the chair. It creaked. "I don't really understand, but if this is death, then get it over with...I don't care for pointless blabber."
The clerk stared at him for a long moment. Then he laughed again, harder this time, and coughed through the smoke. "Straight to the point. My kind of guy. Most souls that end up here... they haggle. They ask questions. 'Where am I?' 'Why am I an error?' 'Can I go back?' It's exhausting." He set the pipe down on the desk. "But you? You just want me to hurry up and damn you."
"Yes, did I not say that?."
"Well." The clerk pulled out a stamp... large, wooden, official-looking... and pressed it against an ink pad so dark it looked like a pool of liquid night. "Since you're an error, there's only one place for you."
He slammed the stamp down on Karasu's file.
REJECTED.
The word was printed in blood-red ink, bold and final.
Karasu looked at it. "Rejected by death. How poetic."
"Isn't it?" The clerk leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head. "Consider it punishment, if you like. For being a tool your whole life. For all that killing. Or don't. I don't care. Either way, you're going to Stage Zero."
"Stage Zero." Karasu's tone didn't shift, but something flickered behind his black eyes. Confusion, maybe. Or suspicion. "I'm not going to Hell?"
The clerk snorted. "Hell? Gods, no. Hell doesn't exist. What a ridiculous concept." He picked up his pipe again, took another drag. "No, your soul was just an error in the stream. It didn't disperse properly. So instead of oblivion, you get... well. You'll see."
He stood, gathering the file and tucking it under one arm.
"Any last words, shinobi?"
Karasu shrugged. "No. Get it over with."
"Efficient to the end." The clerk raised one hand, fingers poised to snap. "I wish you the best in your climb through Ygdras. If you make it to Lalucia, maybe I'll stop by and see how you're doing."
His fingers snapped.
The sound was deafening.
The world folded.
Not collapsed... folded. Like reality was a piece of parchment being creased along invisible lines, edges meeting edges, and Karasu was caught in the middle. His stomach lurched. The gray void peeled away, replaced by...
Stone.
Cold. Hard. and real.
Karasu hit the ground and caught himself on one knee, hand slapping against smooth stone floor. He sucked in a breath... air, actual air, not the stale nothingness of the clerk's office... and forced his eyes open.
He was in a dome.
Circular. Maybe thirty feet across. The walls were seamless stone, rising up to meet in a perfect arch overhead. No doors. No windows. Just stone and a single source of light: a brazier burning in the center of the room with pale blue flames that gave off no heat.
And standing next to the brazier was a woman.
Karasu's hand went to his belt on instinct. No kunai. No tanto. Nothing. He'd died with his weapons, and whatever this place was, it hadn't given them back.
The woman watched him with one green eye.
Her left eye was covered by a black cloth eyepatch, thick and utilitarian, tied across her forehead and across a face that might have been beautiful if not for the exhaustion etched into it. Her hair was blood-red, cut short and practical, and she wore the same uniform as the clerk... white dress shirt, green tie, sleeves rolled up, and had black dress pants and dark brown leather boots that were tucked into the pants
She looked tired. Not just physically. The kind of tired that settled into bones and refused to leave.
"Welcome to Stage Zero," she said. Her voice was softer than the clerk's, but no less weary. "I help climbers through their trials. Though seeing as you're an Irregular, I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about."
Karasu stood slowly. His body felt... wrong. Not injured, but not whole either. Like someone had stitched his soul back together with thread that didn't quite match.
Should I kill her?
The thought surfaced automatically, honed by twenty years of training. Eliminate unknowns. Interrogate if necessary. Remove threats.
But something stopped him.
Rule one: Don't take unnecessary risks.
He didn't know where he was. Didn't know what she was capable of. Didn't know if killing even worked here. His instincts screamed caution, so he buried the impulse and met her gaze with his empty black eyes.
"Where am I?" he asked. "I'm not dead. I can think. I can feel."
The woman's lips twitched. Almost a smile. "No, you're not dead. Not anymore. You're in the Mire... the entry point for Irregulars like you. Think of it as..." She paused, searching for words. "A second chance. Or a punishment. Depends on how you look at it."
"And what exactly is an Irregular?"
"Someone who wasn't supposed to be here." She gestured vaguely at the dome. "The tower... Ygdras... it selects souls. Climbers. People with potential. But sometimes the system glitches. Souls fall through the cracks. Errors, like you." Her green eye studied him. "You died, but your soul didn't disperse. So the Nexus dumped you here."
Karasu said nothing.
The woman sighed. "I know this is a lot. But if you want to survive, you'll need to understand how things work. Starting with this."
She gestured for him to approach.
Karasu didn't move.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said, exasperated. "If I wanted you dead, you'd already be dead. Now come here and sit down."
He considered her words. Decided they were probably true. Walked over and sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, facing her.
The woman knelt across from him, folding her hands in her lap. "First, I need to activate your Soul Sigil. Or in your case, create it. Every climber has one. It's... like a contract between your soul and the tower. It tracks your growth. Your power. Your Truth."
"My Truth."
"Your Soul Truth. The core of who you are, manifested as power." She tilted her head. "You'll understand once it's activated. But I need to warn you... this is going to hurt."
Karasu's expression didn't change. "I've been hurt before."
"Not like this." She stood. "Take off your robes. Not completely. Just enough to expose your back."
He hesitated for half a breath, then obeyed. The black shinobi robes slid off easily, pooling at his waist. The scars covering his torso were still there... hundreds of them, layered like a topographic map of violence. The jagged one across his nose had a twin running down his spine.
The woman circled behind him, and Karasu felt her presence like a weight against his shoulders.
"Brace yourself," she said quietly.
Then she pressed her palm against the center of his back.
Pain exploded.
Not physical. Worse. It felt like someone had reached into his soul and started carving runes directly into the essence of what made him him. Fire lanced through every nerve, every synapse, burning pathways into his spine that shouldn't exist. His back arched, muscles seizing, and he bit down hard enough to taste blood.
He didn't scream.
Screaming was weakness. Weakness got you killed.
So he swallowed it. Buried it. Let the pain wash over him and focused on the cold stone beneath his knees, the sound of his own ragged breathing, anything except the feeling of his soul being branded.
Something crystallized around his heart.
It was solid. Real. A weight that hadn't been there before, dense and cold and alive. It pulsed once... hard enough to make his ribs ache... and then the sensation spread.
Like water poured into cracks.
It crawled through his chest, down his arms, up his neck, branching through his entire nervous system in thin threads that burned and froze simultaneously. He felt it reach his fingertips. His toes. The base of his skull.
And then it settled.
The pain didn't stop. It just became background noise.
Karasu opened his eyes... when had he closed them?... and immediately saw something that shouldn't exist.
Floating in front of him, translucent and glowing faintly, was a sheet of parchment.
No. Not parchment. Information. Text. Words written in a language he'd never seen but somehow understood perfectly, layered across his vision like someone had etched them directly onto his retinas.
[SOUL SIGIL INITIALIZED]
NAME: Karasu LEVEL: 1 SOUL TRUTH: Nameless Black STAGE: Awakening AETHER CAPACITY RANK 1: 100/100 BLIGHT ACCUMULATION: 0%
SKILLS:
None
PASSIVES:
None
SOUL ESSENCES OBTAINED:
None
Karasu stared at it. His breathing was still uneven, heart still pounding, but the shock of seeing this... whatever this was... cut through the pain like a blade.
"What..." His voice came out hoarse. "What is this?"
The woman's hand lifted from his back, and the burning sensation faded to a dull ache. "That's your Soul Sigil. The interface between you and the tower. It tracks everything... your level, your power, your corruption. That name there..." She pointed at the glowing text. "Nameless Black. That's your Soul Truth. Your innate ability, unique to your soul."
"Nameless Black," Karasu repeated. The words tasted strange in his mouth. Foreign. But also... right. Like they'd always been there, waiting.
"It defines how you'll fight. How you'll grow. Every skill, every technique you develop will stem from that Truth." The woman walked around to face him, her green eye meeting his hollow black ones. "It's permanent. Can't be changed. Can't be rewritten. So whatever Nameless Black means, you'd better figure it out fast."
Karasu looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Just slightly.
Around his heart, that solid weight pulsed again. And in the back of his mind... quiet, toneless, not quite his own thoughts... a voice whispered:
"Soul Truth revealed. Nameless Black: Conceptual manipulation through naming and erasure. Core established. Awaiting first manifestation."
He closed his eyes.
Conceptual manipulation.
Naming.
Erasure.
The words settled into him like stones sinking into dark water.
When he opened his eyes again, the woman was watching him carefully.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
"For what?"
"Your trial." She gestured toward the far wall. As she did, the seamless stone cracked down the middle and began to split, grinding open with the sound of a tomb unsealing. Beyond it was darkness. Complete. Absolute.
And from that darkness came a low, wet growl.
Karasu pulled his robes back on, fingers working automatically despite the tremor. He stood. Rolled his shoulders. The sigil on his back itched.
"I don't have much of a choice, do I?"
The woman's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "No. You don't."
"Then let's get it over with."
She stepped aside, and Karasu walked toward the widening crack in the wall. The darkness beyond seemed to pull at him, thick and hungry.
This isn't death, he thought. It's not Earth either.
The growl came again, closer now.
This is where souls like me... errors in the system... are sent to rot.
He stepped through the opening.
The stone door ground shut behind him.
And in the absolute black, something moved.