Chapter 1: Chapter 1- Grey In a remote corner of the southeastern continent, beneath the weary breath of early March, an unknown consciousness stirred.
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A dull ache throbbed within Grey’s skull, slow at first, then growing heavier, as though a distant drumbeat were echoing from within his bones. He could not recall the reason for this pain, nor even why he felt it at all, and the inability to remember settled over him like a suffocating blanket.
For a long, silent moment, he floated in a darkness without beginning or end.
A darkness so complete it felt ancient.
"...Why can’t I move?"
The thought rose weakly, drifting through the haze. He tried to lift a hand, or perhaps a leg... he could no longer distinguish them, but his body responded like stone. His limbs were there, faintly familiar yet entirely foreign, as though he had borrowed a body that was not meant for him.
"What happened to me?"
He tried again, gathering what little strength he could find, but the effort only made the pain in his head sharpen, spreading down his spine in a cold shiver. After a while, he surrendered, letting his breath settle into the void.
"Is this a dream...? If so, why does it hurt so much?"
Time trickled by. Maybe seconds. Maybe an eternity.
Then softly, the darkness began to peel away.
At first, it was only faint color leaking through, like water seeping under a door. Then the black retreated entirely, and the world revealed itself with slow, deliberate cruelty.
A blood–red sky greeted him.
Not crimson from sunset, nor dyed by smoke or flame, but truly red, an oppressive, suffocating red that seemed to stain even the air. Clouds hung low, swollen with an unnatural glow, drifting like silent omens of disaster.
Grey exhaled shakily and forced his head to the side. The motion alone left him panting, but what he saw stole the breath from his lungs.
Ruins stretched before him.
Broken buildings twisted into grotesque shapes.
Steel supports jutted from shattered concrete like exposed ribs.
And threading through the desolation was a forest, wild, hungry, unrestrained, its vines strangling what little remained of human civilization.
Beyond the ruins lay a lake, wide and unmoving.
Its surface was a smooth mirror of crimson, reflecting the red sky above it until water and heaven became indistinguishable.
"...This isn’t my room," he murmured, his voice scraping out like rusted iron dragged across stone.
The lake rippled once, as though disturbed by some unseen presence. But aside from that, the world remained eerily still. No wind. No birds. Only silence.
Grey stared at the reflected red sky, dazed.
The pain felt too real.
The air too cold.
The scent of dust and wet earth too sharp.
He tried to rise, but the moment he strained, memories tore into his mind like knives.
Grey Reynolds.
Fourteen years old.
A student of Moon Walk Academy in Griffin County, Kamui, southeastern continent.
Parents were Jack and Lilly Reynolds. A doctor and a nurse.
Both erased two years ago... but not by disease, not by human hands, but by the divine power of God descending upon the world.
His breath trembled.
His siblings, one older brother, one younger sister, floated at the edges of his memory like smudged ink, as though someone had smeared their names and faces before he could grasp them.
More memories followed, belonging not to him, but to the body he now inhabited: the final thoughts of a boy who had survived alone within a corroded zone touched by god-power... until he finally succumbed.
Grey swallowed hard.
"...I died?"
Grey said in a horror-stricken voice. He was not sure whether he was really the one that died or not. But the close feeling of familiarity he felt was extremely real.
In fact, he did not feel like he died, he felt as if his body had been switched. Eventually, another conclusion came to his mind.
"So I really... transmigrated. Or did I?"
His laugh was bitter, empty. "Even my name stayed the same. How considerate." Grey was not sure, but he could feel that his previous name was Grey as well.
He forced himself upright, pain radiating through every joint. His leg felt wrong, fractured, barely holding, but he ground his teeth and endured.
"I need to see myself..."
Dragging his damaged body, he crawled toward the lake. Every movement was a battle, arms trembling, leg burning, sweat dripping into his eyes, but he refused to stop. Inch by inch, he approached the blood–red water.
When at last he leaned over the surface, the boy from this world stared back.
He had pale skin that was smeared with dust and dried blood.
A face marred by cuts and bruises.
Clothes torn to shreds.