The air was thick, laden with a sweetish, putrid stench that crept into the lungs like a slow poison.
A boy suddenly woke up, his heartbeat pounding in his temples, his body immersed in something slimy and lukewarm.
He tried to move, but felt oppressed, crushed.
He was surrounded by cold flesh, stiffened limbs pressing against him like rotten roots of a cursed tree.
An agonizing scream ripped through the air, a wail that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth itself.
Pain poured into the mind of the boy buried among the corpses like an electric shock, shaking him to the core.
A relentless pounding in his head, a rushing river of information flooded his mind, unchecked, unabated.
Each fragment was a vision, a memory that did not belong to him, but implanted itself in his brain as if engraved in his soul.
He saw a young man walking through a modern city, neon lights reflecting off the glass of skyscrapers.
Then, another scene: a different young man with unfamiliar features held a glittering sword, his breathing heavy as he prepared to face an opponent.
Their robes were distinctive, uniform perhaps, and there was something familiar in their bearing, as if they were part of the same school, of an ancient order.
The images shifted again, and this time the change was drastic. A surreal vision unfolded before him: an army of skeletons, their empty eye sockets turned to the sky, their bones worn by time but still firm in their corroded armor. They did not move, they did not speak, they waited.
Before them stood an indistinct figure, a shadow that defied all logic. Its existence seemed a paradox, blurred, as if reality itself struggled to define it. Yet, there it was.
The boy's eyes-or at least those of his self in that vision-were fixed on the undead horde. No tremor, no hesitation.
His posture was rigid, commanding, like a blade ready to pierce the sky itself. Then, with a simple wave of his hand, everything moved.
A deafening clangor echoed through the air as weapons rose in unison. Bone crunches, guttural roars, sounds impossible to describe mingled in a hellish cacophony.
Was this a dream? A memory? Or perhaps...a forgotten truth?
The only thing certain was the pain he felt from everything he was experiencing.
A few seconds later, the pain suddenly subsided and a glimmer of intelligence struck the boy's blank face.
"Why am I here? Is this hell?"
---
John was a simple boy, one of those who found happiness in small things.
He loved life, but most of all he loved the silence of the night. Walking under the starry sky was his therapy, his way of escaping from a world that seemed to have no place for him.
He had no home to return to, no family waiting for him. For him, every road was his home, every deserted path a refuge.
That evening, the air was cool and the wind whispered through the trees. John walked along a remote road, far from the city lights, letting the surreal tranquility of the place lull him. The silence was enveloping, almost hypnotic. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.
"How peaceful ... this place is strangely relaxing," he murmured, a smile hinted on his lips.
He did not notice how tired he was. His eyelids grew heavy, his body surrendered to the warmth of the night. Without realizing it, sleep enveloped him, sweet and treacherous.
Then, a sound ripped through the air.
A horn, sudden, deafening.
John's eyes widened, his heart jumped into his throat. The beam of headlights hit him like a blade of light in the dark. An instant of sheer terror, the instinctive reflex to jump up but-
It was too late.
The roar of the engine, the dull thud. Then, only darkness.
This was John's last memory before waking up in this rotten, stinking, godforsaken place.
Then memories filled his mind.
He was not John. His name was Jeremy.
At one time, he was just another student, a young man attending the Academy with dreams and ambitions. That day was supposed to be special, the day of his awakening-the moment when he would discover his potential, the power that would define his future.
But everything had fallen apart for one fatal reason: he had fallen in love with the wrong girl.
And for that he had been punished.
The beatings had been merciless, and when the pain had become unbearable and his body no longer responded, they had dragged him away like a sack of useless flesh. And now there he was, abandoned in that forgotten place, buried among the corpses of those who, like him, had been considered insignificant.
But as blood dripped from his wounds and darkness enveloped him, a thought crossed his mind.
Revenge.
And just as he thought this, something broke inside him.
Not a bone, not a muscle, but something else. It felt almost like the breaking of a chain.
The pain vanished in an instant, dissolving like fog in the first ray of sunlight. Jeremy's breathing became slow, measured. The blood oozing from his wounds slowed almost to a stop, and an unnatural chill enveloped his battered body.
Then, he heard the voice.
Not a real voice, not a whisper in the air, but something visceral, a hissing in the depths of his own soul.
"You have been discarded. Betrayed. Thrown away like garbage. But tell me -- did you really think death was the end?"
Jeremy's fingers moved, almost unconsciously. His nails scraped the decay-soaked ground, and beneath him the rotting bodies quivered. Something stirred, something responded.
His eyes opened wide, but they were no longer those of a defeated boy. They were no longer the eyes of John, who loved life. They were no longer those of Jeremy, who had struggled for something unattainable.
They were new eyes. Empty.
"Ah... Finally."
A low, throaty laugh escaped his lips. It was the first time he had spoken in that voice. Deeper. More confident. More...inhuman.
He threw off the bodies that trapped him with disarming ease and stood up as if the pain had never touched his body. With a slow movement of his hand, he felt the bond. The pull. The power coursing through his veins like a dark river, as old as death itself.
Then, a strange negative energy took shape like a hurricane, with Jeremy, or whatever he was now, at the center.
The bodies around him trembled. Something inside them was being sucked in, ripped out from the depths of their broken souls. Dissatisfaction, stifled grievances, despair etched into their last moments of life... All that negative energy, repressed for years, perhaps centuries, began to converge in one place. A dark, dense, suffocating torrent poured into the space around him like a river of ink poured over the world.
This place was a forgotten grave, an anonymous cemetery of broken lives, each with its own story of pain. But there was one thing they all had in common: the frustration of being discarded. Killed and thrown away like trash by their own protectors, by those in whom they had placed their trust.
And here, in this stagnant sea of regret and stifled hatred, enough energy had built up to crack the veil between worlds. But, until a few moments before, something was always missing, a spark capable of bringing to fruition a reality that the strongest longed for.
A coal-black gateway opened wide for a single instant, connecting this reality to an ancient and forgotten darkness. A portal born from the resentment of the dead, from the abyss of forgotten souls.
But it lasted barely a breath.
It vanished the same instant it appeared, swallowed by the nothingness from which it was born.
Yet, that fleeting moment did not go unnoticed.
Shortly after its disappearance, the sky ripped open. Figures shrouded in cloaks floated through the air, observing the ground below with looks filled with tension.
"What's going on?" asked a hooded figure, his voice charged with suspicion.
"We finally made it?!" exclaimed a rough-looking man, his eyes blazing with expectation.
"I just hope it's worth it. I hate this. If it weren't for the urgency, I would never stoop to participate in such madness." The words were spat out in disgust by Rose Redspine, the Academy's current principal.
"Yet there is nothing here ... could it have been an illusion? Something is eluding us," said another man with a scarred face.
In recent decades, the world had changed. Monsters had become stronger, more aggressive, more ruthless. Humanity, to survive, had to adapt. Grow. And the only way to do that was to gain more power.
The resources to evolve and become stronger were found not only in the bodies of the beasts that haunted the continent, but also in secrets buried in time. Ancient worlds, forgotten ruins, mystical and forbidden lands. Each of these lands concealed dangers of all kinds and monsters of all kinds.
And the only way to reach them was through those inter-dimensional portals.
Unbeknownst to the figures out there, a single living being was transported inside that strange portal.