Chapter 2: First Blood
Kaito didn't sleep that night. Or the next. Or the one after that.
For nearly three days, he didn't leave the house.
He wandered the same rooms over and over again, turning on lights that didn't work, checking the faucet for running water, opening the fridge as if food would magically appear. He flipped through the channels on his TV, even though it only showed static. He sat with his phone in hand for hours, refreshing the screen, hoping—praying—that something would load.
It never did.
The sky outside remained locked in a strange limbo. No sunrise. No sunset. Just gray. As if time itself had been paused in a place that didn't believe in clocks.
He refused to step outside.
Every time he passed the front door, he stopped, stared at the handle, and then turned away.
"This isn't real," he kept whispering. "This is a dream. A coma. I'm sick. I'm going to wake up. Any minute now."
He ate what little food was in the pantry. Dry cereal. Old crackers. Stale bread. It didn't taste like anything.
He tried to sleep on the second night, curling up on the floor, but every time he closed his eyes, he heard a low growl on the wind. Not from inside the house. From out there. Beyond the forest.
It took until the third morning for the numbness to break.
He woke up shaking. Covered in cold sweat. Heart racing.
And in that moment, something shifted.
He thought of his mom. Of Aiko. Of his dad.
What if they were here? What if they had been dropped into this world too? What if they were out there—alone, confused, scared?
What if they needed him?
That thought was enough.
He stood. Slowly. Legs unsteady, like he hadn't walked in weeks. He grabbed his hoodie off the back of a chair, slipped on his shoes, and opened the front door.
The air hit him like a wave. Cold, damp, heavy with scent. Not the familiar air of a city or suburb, but of untouched wilderness. The kind that made your lungs ache.
The forest loomed ahead, tall and ancient, the trees groaning in the wind. Mist clung to the ground like spilled milk. Somewhere in the distance, a bird let out a sharp, unnatural cry.
He took one step forward.
Then another.
And just like that, Kaito disappeared into the trees.
---
The forest was alive in ways he didn't understand.
The deeper he walked, the more it felt like the trees were watching. Their branches stretched above him like ribs, creating a canopy that blocked most of the sky. The bark on some of the trunks seemed to pulse, as if breathing. Insects buzzed, but none he recognized. Some flew on wings that shimmered like glass. Others crawled with legs that bent backward.
The ground was soft, covered in moss and gnarled roots. His shoes were already soaked.
He whispered their names as he walked. "Mom... Dad... Aiko... please be here. Please be okay."
No answer.
Just the wind, and the occasional rustle of leaves.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, something moved.
He turned slowly.
A creature stood in the shadows. Deer-like. Tall and slender. But its body was elongated, twisted. Its legs had too many joints, and its eyes—black, empty—were on the sides of its neck. It didn't blink. It didn't run.
It just stared.
Kaito backed away carefully, heart racing.
"Okay... okay, not normal. Nothing here is normal."
He kept walking, faster now. Pushing through low branches. His clothes snagged on thorns. His breath fogged in front of him. The forest was colder the deeper he went.
Then he heard voices.
No—not voices.
Growls.
Metal clinking.
He crouched low and crept toward a clearing.
What he saw made him freeze in place.
Four massive wolf-like creatures stood upright in a circle, armored and armed. Each one towered over seven feet tall, covered in dark gray fur, with long, jagged claws gripping rusted swords and dented shields. Their yellow eyes glowed like embers. They moved with purpose. Coordination.
Kaito's blood turned to ice.
His breathing stopped.
His legs locked in place as if frozen by fear.
These weren't just monsters. They weren't wild beasts acting on instinct. These things had structure. Strategy. The way they stood guard—the way they scanned the trees—it felt like they had been trained.
Not animals.
Not monsters.
Soldiers.
The sheer weight of that realization crushed him.
Kaito's mouth fell open. He whispered to himself, breath shallow and quick, "What... what the hell am I looking at? Why do they have weapons? Why are they organized like that? This... this isn't just a random monster encounter. This is something else."
Suddenly, a glowing blue notification appeared in front of him, pulsing in the air.
[New Quest Received]
Quest 1: Trial of Survival
Objective: Defeat the wolf guards
Time Limit: 7 Days
Penalty: None (First Quest Exception)
Kaito blinked. Then blinked again.
"You want me to what?! Are you kidding me?! With what?! My fists? Am I supposed to... punch a sword out of their hand and hope they die of embarrassment?!"
But the system said nothing else.
No guidance. No help.
Just that single command.
He turned to run.
A deep growl echoed across the clearing.
Then the wolves moved.
Their charge was instant. Fluid. Controlled. They knew he was there.
Kaito stumbled back, feet catching on roots. "No no no no no—"
He turned and sprinted, heart pounding like a war drum. Branches whipped across his face. Roots reached up to trip him. He didn't look back, but he could hear them—crashing through the underbrush, gaining fast.
One of them howled. The sound shook the trees.
Then came the blur of motion beside him.
A massive shape lunged from the side. Kaito tried to dodge, but it was too fast.
Its blade flashed through the air.
Pain.
A white-hot scream tore from his throat as the world tilted.
His body spun from the impact, crashing into a tree with bone-shaking force. His breath was knocked out of him. Everything blurred. He looked down.
His arm was gone.
Not cut—severed.
Blood sprayed in sickening bursts. The raw end of his shoulder throbbed like it was still connected, his mind refusing to accept the void where his limb had been.
He dropped to his knees, gasping. Screaming.
"MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE!" he cried, voice cracking as the pain flooded in.
Another wolf was already there. Its sword came down, splitting open his side. He screamed again, a horrible sound, gurgling with blood. The air burned in his lungs. His vision blurred.
Claws grabbed him by the collar. Lifted him off the ground.
He saw its eyes—so human. So cruel.
Then teeth.
A savage bite tore into his chest.
He couldn't even scream anymore.
They didn't stop.
They kept going.
Ripping.
Tearing.
Breaking him into parts, each more useless than the last. Every second stretched into a lifetime of agony. His body twitched. His mouth opened and closed without sound.
His last thought wasn't fear.
It was regret.
He hadn't even gotten a chance to try.
---
Gasp.
Kaito jolted upright, lungs begging for air, a scream halfway frozen in his throat. The floor beneath him was cold, and the ceiling above him was painfully familiar.
He was back.
His room.
The silence hit him like a brick wall.
He didn't speak. Didn't move. For a long, suffocating moment, he simply sat there, staring at his hands.
His arm—it was there. Whole. Undamaged. But he could barely lift it. It felt like someone else's limb, attached to him by mistake.
Then the notification appeared.
[System Update]
You have died. Returning to last checkpoint.
Note: In Oblivian's Gate, death will return you to your origin point. However, stats and progress earned beyond your last checkpoint will be lost. There is no penalty for the first mission. Future deaths will result in rollback.
Kaito stared at the glowing text, unmoving, unblinking. His lips parted but no sound came out.
He didn't cry.
Not at first.
Then a noise escaped—half laugh, half sob. A broken sound that cracked in his chest.
"No penalty," he whispered. "Yeah. Sure. Except for the part where I watched my own body get torn apart. Except for the part where I screamed until my throat went numb. Except for the part where I... I died."
He dropped to his side, curling into himself, fists clenched so tightly they hurt. The air felt too thick to breathe. His lungs ached.
He had felt everything.
He had seen himself die.
And now he was here again, like nothing happened.
But everything had changed.
He wasn't the same anymore. That version of him—the one who hoped, who trusted, who thought maybe this world would make sense if he just tried hard enough—died in that forest.
What was left was broken. Scared. Cold.
He shook uncontrollably. His voice, barely a whisper, cracked through the silence: "I don't want to go back out there. I can't... I can't do that again."
But the system didn't care.
The world outside didn't care.
No one was coming to save him.
And even as he cried into the floor, heart shattering in silence, he knew the truth:
He would have to go back.
Because if he didn't learn to survive...
He would die again.
And again.
And again.
Until there was nothing left of Kaito at all.