The bullet didn't hurt.
It went through nineteen-year-old Tamotsu Masuda's chest. Sudden. Final. Like an ice pick shattering glass.
One moment: the sour tang of instant ramen. The fluorescent buzz of the convenience store. The frail weight of the grandmother he'd shoved behind the counter.
The next: Nothing. Not darkness. Not peace. Just .absence.
He woke on stone. Sharp. Biting like broken teeth. Grey ash fell like dirty snow. It smothered a landscape of shattered black rock. Above, a bruised sky offered no light.
Cold seeped into him. Deeper than bone. A cold living where his heartbeat used to be. His fingers clawed at his chest. No wound. No blood. Just an empty, icy mark. His life was gone.
This… can't be it, he rasped. The heavy silence swallowed his words. Dying for doing the right thing. leads here?
A guttural roar shattered the stillness. Crack ! Rock split nearby. Instinct screamed. Tamotsu scrambled behind a jagged pillar. He pressed his back against the cold stone. Peered out.
Hell unfolded.
Three figures moved with chilling grace. Clad in dark, segmented armor that seemed to eat the light. Soulwardens. One raised a gauntleted hand. A searing white beam lanced out. It vaporized the spot where a fourth figure had stood. The air stank of ozone and burnt rock.
Their target was a nightmare. Towering. Flesh cracked with glowing red lines, pulsing like lava. One arm was a massive, serrated bone scythe, dripping shadow. A Demon-Forged. It roared again – a sound of pure agony – and charged. The bone scythe shrieked against a Soulwarden's shimmering shield. Another white beam burned its shoulder. It stumbled, howling.
But its eyes.Tamotsu locked onto them. Amidst the fury and pain, they held a desperate, human spark.
Salvation through dissolution. A cold, metallic voice echoed in his mind. A Soulwarden doctrine. It tasted like ash.
A loose shard of black rock clattered near Tamotsu's boot.
The sound was thunder in the silence. The Soulwarden who fired snapped its head towards the noise. The wounded Demon-Forged stopped roaring. Its burning gaze fixed on Tamotsu's hiding place.
Four sets of eyes found him. Soulwarden lenses, cold and calculating. Demon-Forged orbs, burning with hunger and pain. The message was clear. Resource. Fuel. Prey.
Thought died. Survival shrieked. Tamotsu's hand closed around the obsidian shard. Its razor edge cut his palm. A sharp, grounding pain. The grandmother's terrified face flashed before him. Tried to find good. Tried to help. Ended here. Bitter failure washed over him.
Zzzap! White light seared the rock beside his head. Heat blistered his cheek. They advanced Soulwardens precise, the Forged furious. Death closed in.
Then it hit him. Not light, but memory. A psychic explosion.
Five nights before the bullet… Weightless. Aware. Drifting above a city made of starlight and impossible shapes. Beings of pure cosmic light regarded him. One spoke, its voice vibrating through his very being: "You walk the borderlands, dreamer. You touch the clay of worlds. Remember…"
The vision shattered. A Soulwarden stood before him. Its weapon aimed point-blank. Oblivion glowed white.
The icy void in Tamotsu's chest SURGED. A tsunami of glacial defiance against the killing heat. Run! screamed his nerves.
But the dream-voice roared through the void: "Remember !"
He didn't run. Tamotsu Masuda, the dead boy who'd barely lived, met the Soulwarden's cold gaze. The freezing power inside him twisted . It forged his voice into a weapon of raw fury:
"Is this your salvation?"
"Just more butchery?"
The Soulwarden froze. A microsecond of hesitation. A flaw in its perfect, merciless machine.
It was enough. The wounded Demon-Forged saw its chance. It bellowed and lunged past Tamotsu. Its bone scythe slammed into the distracted Warden's shield. Sparks flew.
Chaos erupted. Blinding beams crisscrossed the ash. The Forged roared with feral rage. Tamotsu didn't hesitate. He spun and ran. He scrambled over the knife-edged rocks. Another beam sizzled past, singing his hair. He didn't look back.
The icy void in his chest pulsed violently.
Blue white light bled through his shirt. It felt terrifying. Alive. A cold counterpoint to the fading memory of the starlit city and the phantom bullet wound.
He wasn't searching for good anymore. He was fighting for existence in a realm where both heaven and hell were lies told by killers. One burning thought seared his mind: Was the dream real truth. Or just the last spark of a dying brain.
His life ended at nineteen. His afterlife began with a shout against the void. A glacial fire ignited in the hollow space where his soul should be.
Pawns were meant to be sacrificed.
But this pawn, lost on a sea of ash and broken stone, clutched his obsidian shard. He felt the impossible cold burn. He remembered the dream. He remembered the bullet. He remembered he was Tamotsu.
And pawns who remembered… could sometimes become something else.