---Center City’s outskirt, co.Nest, year 2249.

  “Is this the place?” The man muttered into his radio, his long dark coat fluttering in the dust-choked air as the wind dragged sheets of grit along the cracked road.

  In his gaze, an abandoned house stood like a wounded animal left to rot. The structure had long been forgotten, eaten away by time and urban decay, barely standing within the perimeter of what was loosely categorized as a surveillance zone.

  Its paint peeled off in flakes, windows were cloudy with grime, and the entire roof had sagged inward. The air around it stank of mildew, metal, and rust, sour, like the breath of a long-dead corpse.

  “Confirm, you are at the right place, [Raven],” the radio crackled, distortion weaving through the signal.

  The man with the codename Raven stroked the stubble at his chin, his jaw clenched with irritation, before fitting a half-burnt cigarette between his lips. The orange ember flared once as he inhaled.

  “What the hell is this suspicious report?” he hissed, flipping open the yellowed folder in his hand. “Did those lazy bureaucrats not read this? Why the hell did this even pass?”

  He flipped open the folder in his hand.

  A cheaply printed mission request. No fixer ID. The infuriatingly vague text, its mission summary describing nothing more than “unverified anomalous activity, possible cult involvement, request investigation for confirmation of threat level,” all submitted anonymously.

  “Complain all you want,” the radio replied dryly. “Even if it’s written like shit and sent by an anonymous nutcase, you know how those paranoid pigs in the Upper Bureau work. Anything smelling even slightly off must be clarified.”

  Raven rolled his eyes.

  These kinds of reports weren’t uncommon in Center City. The Bureau had seen its fair share of zealots, lunatics, or just abominable madmen, all hungry for power, transcendence, or chaos, sometimes all three.

  “Really? And what kind of cult would be dumb enough to try a forbidden ritual inside the Central Authority’s backyard?”

  “You are the one to talk. Don't tell me you forget what kind of shit you have pulled in Central City,” the radio answered tiredly.

  ‘...’ Touché.

  Raven grimaced.

  “And why deploy me? I’m just an unknown, mediocre investigator. Do they hate me that much?” Raven grumbled.

  “No, no,” the radio snickered, “on the contrary, you’re a world-renowned, charismatic investigator. Truly an irreplaceable legend! How could they not hire someone so famous?”

  “Shut up. The Syndicate better pay me double for this nonsense.” He flicked the cigarette aside, stepping on the ember as he prepared to enter the house.

  As his hand hovered near the door, a prickling sensation crawled up the back of his neck. He hesitated.

  “Hey,” he whispered, “what if this place is ‘Paranormal-infected’?”

  ‘Paranormal-infected’, or in common tongue, extraordinary events, were where things happened in unexplainable and bizarre ways.

  Extraordinary anomalies where the laws of physics twisted, where people vanished. Places where screams never made it out. They defied reason and just simply… happened.

  “Man, don’t jinx it,” the radio deadpanned. “No way. The Unbounds have personally confirmed it themselves. No paranormal activity detected. You’re clear to proceed.”

  Raven muttered a curse.

  Unbound Humans were those naturally gifted with supernormal abilities. They could zip across the sky, lift transport trucks with a single hand, transform into magical beings, or even command the elements to bend with their wills. They were practically superhuman in movies.

  Too bad he wasn’t one of them. He was just a completely ordinary, frail human with no superpower or divine inheritance. He could only accept death if he came into contact with one.

  “Then why confirm but not investigate it themselves?” Raven grumbled.

  The radio sounded suspiciously smug. “Oh, please. You think I don’t know you? It might relate to the cult you’re pursuing. As your best friend, I recommend you personally! Am I the best?”

  “…You fucking dogshit. Go to hell!”

  “Ha! Says the bastard who owes me thirty credits. Don’t waste time. Move!”

  Raven let out an exhausted sigh; he nudged the door open and stepped inside.

  At first, the interior seemed standard for abandoned buildings. The floorboards rotted, plaster peeled from walls, and the groaning whisper of wind slipped through broken vents. A small drip echoed in the background, steady as a leaky faucet in a forgotten basement.

  But the deeper he went, the more wrong the surroundings felt.

  “Hey,” he whispered into his radio, “are you sure this isn’t paranormal-infected?”

  No answer. Only violent static noise answered him.

  BZZZZT—KKRSHH—CRK—

  “Hello? Hey—”

  The device vibrated violently in his palm. His instincts screamed loudly.

  *BOOM!!*

  He flung it to the floor just before the device exploded in a burst of sparks and smoke.

  “Dammit, ‘personally confirmed it themselves’ my ass!” Raven snarled as realization crashed into him. “At least be more competent at it, pigs!”

  He dashed for the door, but the doorknob refused to turn.

  “I can’t open it!”

  Knowing it was futile to try further, he darted toward the nearest window, smashing it open with his elbow. Glass exploded outward as he leapt out.

  And the space warped inwardly.

  In the blink of an eye, he found himself standing again right at the entrance door.

  “No… no, calm down, damn it.” He slammed his fist against his chest, forcing his breath steady.

  ‘I need to find the rule. I need to find it fast, or I’m dead.’

  Paranormal-infected zones often had rules. Rules that govern survival and must be obeyed.

  Raven drew the handgun from his holster, keeping it steady with both hands. He moved cautiously, not making any noise.

  He searched room after room, searching for any pattern, clue, or anomaly that might dictate the nature of the rule.

  Minutes passed. Then he found a basement. Or rather, a narrow staircase nearly hidden behind a fallen cabinet led downward into a basement. He swore it wasn’t there a moment ago.

  With no other choice, he descended into the basement, the wooden steps groaning under his weight. As he pushed the creaking door open, its sight froze him.

  “Oh, I’m damned as fuck,” he muttered in horror.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  What met his gaze was a symbol that had been carved into the rotten, moist plaster. A bell. It was the shape of a bell, intricately wrought in sharp, looping strokes.

  It tilted slightly to the right, frozen in its mid-swing, its clapper drawn unnaturally close to the bell’s edge, as if caught in the instant before sound could be born.

  “Apostoli…” His eyes gleamed dangerously.

  Beneath it sprawled a web of geometric patterns, a diagram of interwoven symbols and lines that curled in upon themselves. They glowed faintly, seemingly breathing light into the room like a heartbeat.

  ‘Hold on, it’s literally glowing!’

  As he realized his imminent danger and turned his back to run away—

  *DING*. A bell chimes.

  A low resonance rippled through his body like a slow-motion detonation. It shook his bones like an earthquake, and the world in his eyes tilted sideways.

  His knees buckled. Pressure crushed his head, his thoughts unraveling into incoherent static, his consciousness tearing apart like paper caught in a storm.

  The last thing he registered was a flash of regret before darkness swallowed him whole.

  —

  Upon the return of his senses, he found himself adrift in an endless void, suspended in a space without form, without sound or light.

  There was no sky, no walls, no ground, and no sense of direction. Just nothing. A vast, endless emptiness that neither moved nor breathed.

  ‘It’s dark… I'm scared…’

  The soft and trembling thought slipped through his mind. For a moment, as he thought of it, something within his awareness recoiled, and he shuddered. Afterward, he reflexively snapped back.

  “Scared? Me? Who?’

  Has he ever been frightened in life? He sifted through his memories. Only once did he show his fear. For the rest? Even when the world burned and shattered, He couldn’t care less about it.

  He remembered when war erupted between the Co.NEST and other continent regions, all fighting over an unregistered, mist-cloaked continent that shouldn’t have existed. Then an enraged dragon, a literal fucking dragon, descended from the sky out of nowhere and shut off the war. True literal of the saying "fuck around and find out."

  Or the sudden appearance of magicium that upheaved the whole world, the appearance of witches, magical girls, and unbound humans, or the spontaneous surges of unnatural natural disasters occurring throughout the world like an ending apocalypse, and a sudden rise of anomalous phenomena?

  The promise of a better life? They lied. They lost the war. And only when he realized it, everything he cherished had gone.

  Life changed? Yes. What use was fear? There were always more disasters, more chaos. Lingering in the past was a luxury no one had the time and heart for.

  He tried to move his body, his limbs, or at least make a small head movement, to no avail. There was nothing, not even a breathing motion or a heartbeat.

  ‘What am I now?’

  There was just this still darkness.

  Time had long since slipped through the cracks of his perception. His consciousness dimmed. And he would awaken again. It happened again and again.

  Until all that remained was monotonous awareness. So much so, he grew bored of it.

  ‘Nothing to do again… 2,063,570,325 sheep went into the church. 2,063,570,326 sheep were blessed. 2,063,570,327 sheep then left the church.'

  ‘Why were the sheep blessed, though?’

  An uncomfortably bright voice chimed in, disrupting his thoughts out of nowhere.

  What was this childish voice he always heard in his head? He exhaled mentally and grumpily responded.

  ‘Who knows? God wants it. It is what it is.’

  ‘That…uh? Will they get superpowers?’ The voice continued its nonsense.

  At some point during this endless sequence of drifting in and out of consciousness, he had arrived at a simple explanation.

  This wasn’t some external entity whispering in his mind; this was his own voice, or at least his own thought.

  To put it in layman’s terms, his thought had simply regressed to that of an infant. That meant there were at least two versions of him in his mind, a more mature version and a childish one.

  When he focused, the mature thought would emerge. It was analytical, skeptical, and able to process what little information was available and form something resembling understanding. Yet often, his mind would slide back into the childish version of himself, when it asked foolish questions, made up pointless games, and grasped at some ridiculous meaning.

  Like a pendulum in an airless space, he had begun to oscillate between the two. The mature side and childish side took hold simultaneously, and his thoughts would turn back and forth between clear clarity and idle fancies.

  ‘Maybe? Anyway, how much did I just count?’

  ‘Humm, 2 billion…something? I don’t remember’

  That derailed into this situation, one question, one answer. And from there, the internal dialogue would spiral, bouncing back and forth across the stretch of time in his mind, diverting his attention over time.

  To be honest, at least there was a saving grace in his situation. That was, in this formless void, with no sensation of body, no sight beyond endless darkness, and no one to talk to, he might have gone insane without this conversation.

  Though, if he really thought about it, the very fact that he was holding entire conversations with himself might already be proof that he’d lost the battle for sanity a long time ago.

  ‘Then let’s count again.’

  ‘No! That’s too boring! Boring! BOOO~’

  ‘That’s so childish…’ The outburst echoed through the space of his mind; it made the mature part of his awareness recoil slightly, sighing in exasperation.

  He was fairly certain this wasn’t dissociative identity disorder, since there were neither separate consciousnesses vying for control of his mind nor blackouts or gaps in his memory. He was still himself, the same person, the same awareness. Well, just fairly, who knew?

  His thoughts were fractured along two patterns: one sharp and rational, able to piece together fragments of logic, and the other impulsive and na?ve, built from simplicity and wonder. He could perceive his own childish thought, albeit not before it was formed.

  Because the childish mind was spontaneous and unpredictable, for the more mature portion of his mind, being drawn into nonsense conversations while not knowing what would come next provided a strange sense of relief.

  It broke up the boring monotony at least.

  'Stop it, get some help.’

  ‘Uu~,’ the childish voice whimpered, offended but already distracted by something else.

  It continued, this surreal companionship within his own consciousness. A lonely mind, entertaining itself on the verge of madness. It unexpectedly became a routine in this bizarre situation.

  Until one day, he heard a sound intrude on his hearing. At first, it was distant, likely on the edge of his perception, almost too faint to register. But time passed, as it grew, sharpening with clarity.

  Before long, he could hear a piercing, youthful scream in agony; it shattered the silence and jolted his mind. The voice didn’t belong to either version of himself; it carved through the darkness like lightning through a night sky.

  Alarm shot through him, and he instinctively looked around, or at least imagined himself doing so, scanning the space he couldn’t define. Of course, it was futile, yet in some way, he felt something shift, different from before.

  ‘Strange.’

  ‘What’s strange?’

  His consciousness pricked, and he immediately focused and anchored himself to his position and his mature thought. In silence and calmness, his awareness pierced through his surroundings.

  There was still nothing, darkness; however, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he subtly felt a certain object.

  At last! His illusory heart raced. Finally, he could distinguish things from his surroundings, even if he was still drowning in the darkness.

  However, his excitement soon faded; instead, an inexplicable confusion welled up within him.

  ‘What is this? A painting?’

  ‘?’

  Afterward, a faint murmur came, curling through the silence.

  “Isi…Isidora…”

  The murmur came and went quickly, it vanished before he could even begin to understand it. He would have dismissed it as just a hallucination born from endless isolation if not for the constant occurrences of it.

  With every cycle of sound, the darkness shifted. Each time he heard the agonizing scream, like a child in terror, another murmur would follow. It would always gently call out the same name: Isidora.

  And with each repetition, gradually, the faint outlines sharpened in the darkness, like a brush seeping into the wet canvas, and the emptiness began to peel back. He could now distinguish a faint color in the black, something akin to a room forming around him. What once had been a realm of absolute nothingness was now thick with hidden contours.

  Eventually, the darkness no longer pressed against him like a suffocating shroud. His awareness expanded outward as the light seeped in, it was no longer locked in an internal loop of thought.

  He could feel the space now, the presence of reality. For the first time in what felt like centuries, he could perceive his surroundings; the world around him, walls, floor, air, and distance returned as an actual tangible form.

  And at the same time, he held back his sheer admiration, as his vision and his mind gradually sharpened and focused on the blurry figure standing before him.

  A gentle old man draped in a long gray coat that resembled the ceremonial cassocks worn by clerics or monks. The fabric hung solemnly, carrying the quiet dignity of ritual. His posture was upright, yet not imposing, radiating a sense of calmness and tranquility. His neatly trimmed gray hair framed a kind face worn by time, with quiet sorrow and endurance, and perhaps, hope.

  Then the man spoke, his voice measured but trembling slightly at the edges.

  “Isidora,” he said, reverently, as if uttering a sacred word. “Finally… the preparations have been completed. Everyone was eager for your birth, Isidora.”

  The unknown name was then spoken once again. The same name that had haunted him with each scream of young lambs struck like a jolt to his core.

  The man stood there in the soft light, gazing forward with fanatic eyes… at him? Why? There was no malice in his gaze. Only recognition and familiarity, or maybe a little madness?

  ‘What is this creepy old man saying?’

  ‘Creepy?’

  The man’s voice softened, cracking with emotion.

  “Wait for me, and I will free you from this canvas, from them, from this stage!”

  As he spoke, the middle-aged man lifted his arms, his eyes shining with uncontained excitement. His breath then quickened, and his lips trembled from anticipation.

  Looking at this scene, his mind pooled with dread.

  ‘Shit, this is definitely a red flag, isn’t it? What in the world have I involved myself in?’

  ‘?’