Chapter 4: The Burnt Offering
There was no sky here.
No morning. No sunlight. No warmth sneaking in through the blinds.
There was no transition between death and awakening, no breath before life, no whisper of time passing.
Only the cold.
Not cold like winter. Not cold like weather. A deeper kind of cold—one that didn't touch the skin but reached straight for the soul. It sat inside his bones like a rot, unmoved by heat or thought or time. A quiet, patient cold that simply was, and always had been.
Kaito didn't dream this time.
There was no voice from the dark. No whisper of the Gate. No towering figure veiled in shifting shadow.
There was just absence.
A vast, echoing blank where even fear didn't bother to follow.
And then—he existed again.
He woke in silence—not the peaceful kind that followed sleep, but the hollow kind that followed death. Not calm. Not still. Just numb. It was the sort of stillness that didn't bring comfort but coiled around his lungs like smoke, tightening with every shallow breath. Kaito opened his eyes slowly, not because he was afraid, but because the weight of existing was heavier now. He felt like he was drowning without water, like the air around him was pressing inward, thick with memory. He wasn't scared anymore. He was just tired—tired in the way that didn't belong to the body, but the soul. And the world that greeted him was the same as it had been the last two times: the cracked ceiling overhead, the warped boards stained by sun and age, the faint shadow from the dead lightbulb overhead swaying just slightly with the draft. Everything looked exactly the same. But he didn't feel the same.
Something had cracked inside him during that last death. Something had splintered wide and spilled open everything he had fought so hard to keep buried—his fear, his shame, the gnawing emptiness of being powerless in a world that didn't care if he suffered. He hadn't cried. He hadn't screamed. Not this time. Now, he just lay on the floor of the house that used to be his, staring upward like a corpse who'd forgotten to stop breathing. There were no wounds on his body. No blood on his clothes. His skin was untouched, whole, clean—like it had never happened. Like he hadn't been torn apart, ripped to pieces, screaming as they devoured him alive.
But it had happened. And he could still feel it.
The claws. The teeth. The sheer, sickening helplessness. And worse—the echo of his own voice coming from the mouth of something already dead.
He sat up slowly, every movement aching—not with pain, but with resistance. Not a physical resistance, but something heavier. Something in his spirit. Something in his will. His limbs worked fine, but his soul was splintered. It would've been easier to lie back down and let the numbness take him. But he couldn't. Because lying down was surrender. And surrender meant letting this place win.
He stood. The house was unchanged. The couch sat where it always had, collecting dust. The coffee table remained crooked, still holding the long-dead phone whose black screen stared up at him like a closed eye. The backpack leaned against the wall, faintly glowing, still empty. It was a reminder of what he wasn't. He had no system. No stats. No skills. No perks or powers. Just a bag with ten slots and a world that was doing everything in its power to convince him he should give up and die again.
He didn't say anything. Not at first. He moved on instinct, stepping into the kitchen like someone trying to pretend they had a reason to exist. The drawer opened with a dull screech of rusted metal, and the knife was still there—short, stained, and so blunt it wouldn't cut bread. He stared at it for a moment, then took it by the blade and slammed the handle into the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The plaster cracked, thin lines crawling like veins across the surface, but the knife did nothing else. It fell from his hand and hit the floor with a metallic clatter that sounded too loud in the stillness.
"Is this it?" he said under his breath, barely recognizing the rasp in his voice. "Is this all you've got?"
No answer. Just the same quiet. The same lie of safety.
He walked to the bathroom, flipped the switch, and watched the light struggle for life before flickering into a sickly, blinking glow. He looked at himself in the mirror. Same face. Same hair. Same eyes. But something was missing. Something hollow had taken root behind his stare—like his reflection was a stranger mimicking the movements of someone who used to be alive.
"You want me to play your game?" he said. "Then show me the rules."
His voice rose, sharp now, cutting through the dead air.
"Show me something. A skill tree. A tutorial. A goddamn map. Give me a chance."
But the mirror gave him nothing.
"No skills," he said again, quieter now. "No inventory. No magic. No health bar."
He laughed. Not because anything was funny—but because there was nothing left to do.
"Not even a level one loser. I'm nothing."
He smiled at the mirror, and the mirror didn't smile back.
He turned. Picked up the bag. And walked toward the front door.
The forest outside was unchanged—still dense, still gray, still cold in the way that didn't belong to weather. The mist rolled slow and deliberate along the ground, like it had been waiting for him to return. The air tasted like ash and iron.
But Kaito had changed.
He didn't walk like prey anymore. He didn't hesitate. He didn't glance behind him. He moved forward, not with confidence, but with a grim, numb certainty that whatever was waiting, it couldn't take anything more from him than had already been lost.
He passed familiar things. A crooked tree, its bark split open like skin. The humming stone pillar, half-buried in moss, thrumming with some frequency he still couldn't explain. The clearing where he'd died. There was no trace of his body there now. Not even a stain. It was like the world had covered up the crime and pretended it never happened.
But he remembered.
And then he saw it.
The statue.
It stood tall beside a half-collapsed stone archway, its arms raised to the sky, its head tilted back in a scream that made no sound. Its body was blackened, charred to a brittle crust. It looked like it had been set on fire while still alive—and left that way forever.
Across its chest, three red lines glowed faintly.
They pulsed.
Like veins. Like breath.
Kaito walked toward it.
No fear. Just inevitability.
He reached out and pressed his hand to the statue's fingers.
Flame erupted in his palm.
He pulled back, startled—but it didn't burn. It was cold. Blue-white. Weightless. And it hovered above his skin, flickering like a candle untouched by air.
Then the world changed.
Not the trees. Not the ground.
The air itself carved itself into letters. Not floating text, not system prompts—etched into reality itself, glowing blood-red against the fog:
> [Offering Required: Entry Beyond Requires Sacrifice]
He stared at it for a long time.
Of course.
Of course nothing was free here.
He opened the bag. Reached in. Pulled out the only thing he had: a spoon. Something meaningless. He tossed it toward the flame.
Nothing happened.
Another line appeared beneath the first.
> [Choose: Memory. Flesh. Blood.]
He froze.
This wasn't a puzzle. It wasn't a riddle.
It was a demand.
He tried to think of something useless. Something he could give without hurting. But that wasn't what the system wanted. It didn't want things.
It wanted loss.
He closed his eyes.
And thought of Aiko.
Her laugh.
Not the memory of her face. Not her name. Just the sound she made when she laughed too hard. The way it filled a room. The way it made him believe—just for a second—that things could be okay.
He opened his mouth.
"I give… her laugh."
The flame grew brighter.
And the memory vanished.
He could still remember that she laughed. But not the sound. Not the warmth. Not the joy. It was gone—cut cleanly from him like a thread from a tapestry.
The flame blinked out.
And the arch opened.
The air behind it shimmered, like liquid stretched across a wound in the world.
He didn't speak.
He stepped through.
And everything changed.
The trees were tighter now. The light dimmer. The air heavier. And the silence—absolute. Even the mist here moved differently, faster, more curious. The roots curled inward like fingers waiting to close.
Then came the sound.
Not a howl.
Footsteps.
Quick. Deliberate.
He turned.
Shapes burst from the fog. Faster. Leaner. Less animal. More human.
They didn't scream this time.
They charged.
He dodged. Barely. Slammed his shoulder into one and felt bone give. Another clawed at his back. He spun, fists raised—no weapon, no help, just rage.
He fell.
But he didn't beg.
He grabbed a rock from the dirt and brought it down—over and over—until the twitching thing beneath him stopped moving.
Blood slicked his arms.
A chime rang.
> [Strength +2]
And he felt it.
Not imagined. Not faint.
Real.
Warmth spread through his chest and arms. A dull throb of something deeper. Something earned.
He staggered to his feet, breathing hard, eyes locked on the corpse.
It moved.
Just once.
Its mouth opened.
And his own voice whispered from its throat.
"Do you feel stronger now?"
He stepped back.
The body didn't rise again.
He turned.
The arch was gone.
The trees were different.
The forest had moved.
It wasn't the same.
It had rearranged itself around him.
And in that moment, he understood:
This place wasn't a world.
It was a maze.
It was a test.
It was alive.
The Gate wasn't a location.
It was a mechanism.
And it was watching him.
Learning.
He clenched his fists.
Breathed once.
Then stepped forward.
The mist curled around him like breath.
And somewhere deep behind him, in the dark—
The clicking began again.