The First Nightmare…
In simple terms, it could be the beginning of a life tangled in the chains woven by fate.
Everything in this world is pre-written. Every outcome predetermined. No one escaped it, not even those who believed they might.
In a world like this, where fate prepares the stage, those assigned mundane roles hold no value. They're just pieces meant to vanish without a trace.
Unaware of any of that, a man crouched down and flicked droplets of water onto the dry ground. He watched closely, waiting to see how the soil responded.
The droplets lingered for a moment, trembling slightly on the cracked surface then sank without a sound, vanishing into the dirt as if swallowed whole.
That was all he needed.
He rose, lifting the bone-white object in his hand, and began walking once more, measured steps, precise and quiet.
What he carried was something no one else would have thought to use.
The skull of a Vowalker.
Because it lacked eyes and a mouth, the skull had few openings, only two small holes where ears once were, and a thin vertical slit where the throat had connected to whatever lay beneath. Even that had proven easy to seal.
He had packed each gap with thick mud, pressing it into place carefully, patiently, until the entire thing became watertight. Once satisfied, he filled it from a puddle and carried it like a primitive canteen.
Now, as he walked, the yellow grass reappeared ahead, dry, brittle, sparse. Without slowing, he dipped his fingers into the water-filled skull and flicked droplets to both sides, one meter away.
This time, the water disappeared instantly.
He sighed, the gesture quiet but not quite relaxed, and stepped forward onto the yellow grass.
So far, he hadn't seen a single tree.
Nearly two kilometers of walking, and not a sign of movement. No birds overhead. No insects crawling. No wind.
Just silence and soil that drank water as fast as it arrived.
That detail alone meant everything.
Because if there were no trees, then there were no branches to perch on, no cover for anything to hide in. Not above ground, at least.
Which left only one possibility.
They were beneath him.
𓁹𓁹
I realized it during the fight with the Vowalker.
The ground everywhere else had puddles from the recent rain. But not there. Not around me.
There, the water never lingered.
It was drawn into the earth the instant it landed.
Then I stepped forward… and it emerged.
The Vowalker.
A split second later, the puddles started forming again.
At first, it didn't make sense.
But as I fought it, I noticed something else, none of the rain that touched its body rolled off. It was absorbed, soaked in, the creature itself drinking it in the same way the ground had.
The more water it absorbed, the slower it moved… but its skin hardened. Its body turned dense.
That's when the pieces started to fit.
Wherever they're hidden, water doesn't soak into the soil.
Because it's being fed directly into them.
So I tested it.
I walked back the way I came. Threw water far ahead. No matter where I aimed, the droplets vanished instantly. That path was wrong.
I returned to the center point, where I'd first arrived, and tried forward again.
This time, I was more careful.
The Vowalker had torn open a hole almost four meters wide when it surfaced. Its actual body was only about two.
That left a margin for error.
So I began throwing water just a meter ahead. Close enough to feel safe, but far enough to warn me before a misstep.
Water that vanished meant danger.
And everywhere I went, the ground drank the droplets except for one direction.
That direction became my path.
And not long after, I saw the yellow grass again.
A signal. Or maybe a checkpoint.
Why yellow?
Because that kind of grass grows where something massive has rested underground for a long time, where the soil is compacted, undisturbed, dry at its core.
Stable.
I couldn't rely on it fully, but it told me I was still following something.
You might ask, why not follow the yellow patches alone?
Because they didn't lead in a straight line. They curved, vanished, reappeared at angles. They teased routes that couldn't be trusted. And there wasn't a pattern I could exploit.
This trial wasn't meant to be rushed.
There were no shortcuts to exploit, no safe guesses to lean on when instinct faltered. Each step had to be exact. Each motion measured. One mistake, and the very ground beneath me would rise.
Eventually, the water ran out.
I didn't panic. I searched. A new puddle revealed itself, shallow and still.
I crouched beside it, filling the skull once more. My hands moved slowly, carefully, making sure not to waste a single drop.
I wasn't thinking about why I was here. Or how I got here. Or even what this place truly was. Those questions loomed like distant storms, but they meant nothing if I didn't survive this moment. They could wait.
Right now, every motion counted more than memory.
And if a Vowalker truly existed, if it could hear me in the way I feared, then nothing I was doing would save me.
The idea of hearing was still just a theory. A possibility. A quiet suspicion that hadn't yet turned to certainty.
But the name gave it away.
Vowalker.
Split it apart.
"Vo" perhaps for voice. Or vow.
I have read countless mythology growing up and in every single one of them... Vow plays the same role.
A vow isn't a simple promise whispered into the dark. It's a command etched into flesh and spirit, a rule that overrides hesitation, rewires fear, and leaves only obedience. If someone vowed never to retreat, they wouldn't pause to think. They wouldn't falter, even as their legs broke beneath them. They would keep moving forward, blind, bloodied, dying until there was nothing left to move.
That's the danger of a vow. It grants strength at the cost of freedom.
The Vowalker I had faced, briefly, barely, must have made such a vow. It had given something away. Or it only chose one thing. Hearing, and sacrificed everything else.
In return, it had gained something unnatural. A different kind of perception. A sharpened sense of hearing that bordered on the impossible.
The gentle impact of a droplet landing meters away on soaked earth.
If one of those creatures were nearby, it would've already found me. My silence wouldn't have mattered. My steps would've spoken for me.
But there could be others.
Others that made different sacrifices. Some that see in places no light touches. Some that can smell the echo of fear rising off skin. Some that feel the trembling of your footsteps through the soil like the beat of a distant drum.
And the question that kept returning, quiet, but persistent, was why.
Why would anyone give that much of themselves away?
Why would they vow themselves into monsters?
Only one reason made sense.
Remorse Eater.
That name lingered like rot in the air.
They hadn't vowed for power. Not at first. They must have vowed to resist something darker. Something that consumed guilt and grief like sustenance. And when they failed, when their will broke, they didn't simply fall. They became something else. Now, they served it.
And if I was right about what I suspected… if I was anything close to the truth…
---
More theories came to me as I walked, not in a frenzy, not as noise in my head, but as steady progress.
Eventually, the field gave way to a subtle incline. A hill, low and sloping, but just high enough to offer a view beyond.
I climbed with quiet focus.
Compared to white room this was a breath of new air.
Atleast I could breath in fresh air and do whatever I wanted.
...
And when I reached the top, I saw what waited.
A river stretched across the horizon. Wide and unmoving. Its surface reflected a pale sky, so still it looked like glass. There was no breeze to stir it. No current to ripple it. No birds floated above. No flies buzzed near the banks. No scent of algae or decay hung in the air.
It was too still.
Too perfect.
But the river itself wasn't the threat.
Beyond it was something worse.
On the far side, the world changed. All color had been bled from the land. Grass had vanished. Shrubs had crumbled to dust. There was no movement. Not any kind of life. Just a scorched plain that stretched into the horizon like a wound.
And there were trees, or remnants of them.
They stood upright, but barely. Twisted and blackened, they looked like statues long abandoned. Their bark hung in ragged strips, peeling like skin from bone. Branches bent under unseen weight, sagging like broken limbs after a fall. Roots tore through the ground, not to anchor, but to crawl, desperate to escape the soil that birthed them.
The river flowed beside them, but they did not drink. They did not bloom. Not even mold claimed their flesh. Not even weeds had the courage to grow there.
It was as if the world itself had declared a verdict.
Nothing belongs here.
Nothing ever will.
And every yellow mark I had followed, those faint traces that guided me like breadcrumbs, had led me to this very point.
But before that.... I must check something out.
***
I began descending the hill, retracing the same path I had used to climb. My earlier footprints were still visible, pressed faintly into the brittle dirt.
Nothing in the terrain had shifted. The air remained quiet, heavy with that unnatural stillness. There was no reason to test another way down when this one had already been proven safe.
Roughly fifty meters back, I arrived at the depression I'd noticed earlier. A massive, circular hollow in the land, thirty meters wide, shallow around the edges but deep enough at the center to resemble a dried out well now filled with collected rainwater.
It didn't shimmer or move. The surface was smooth, dark, and undisturbed. There were just silence and stillness, as if the world had forgotten this place existed.
I crouched at the rim and lowered the skull directly into the water.
The hollow bone filled quickly, water rushing in until no air remained.
I lifted it with care, letting the final few drops settle before rising to my feet again.
Turning away from the future objective river entirely, I faced a dry stretch of land branching off from the main route, an area that had even less vegetation than the rest.
The grass was barely clinging to the surface, brittle and colorless. Even the yellow patches had almost completely disappeared.
This world offered multiple pathways, this was just one the pathway.
Now there's a question, if there are multiple safe pathways that means there are multiple people in this nightmare.
...
That's something for the future.
I moved forward a few meters, just enough to mark a new starting point, and then I swung the skull in a wide, practiced arc. A spray of water scattered forward across the ground.
I stood still and observed.
Some of the droplets were absorbed instantly. Others took a fraction of a second longer. It was a small difference, but one that mattered.
I walked only up to the furthest spot where the absorption had been delayed, even slightly. Then I returned to the massive well, refilled the skull again, and repeated the process.
I wasn't testing random patches. I wasn't wasting time casting water in all directions. I was advancing with surgical precision, throwing the water only forward, then walking to the furthest confirmed safe point.
After each step, I would double back, refill, and repeat.
I did it multiple times.
The land ahead remained unchanged. There were no new signs of life, no meaningful shifts in terrain. Each throw confirmed the same pattern, slightly delayed absorption in some spots, instant disappearance in others. And I kept moving forward, using only what I could confirm with certainty.
I did this again. And again. And again.
At some point, I realized I was getting thirsty, but I ignored it. That feeling could wait. My priority was clear.
I wanted this nightmare to end, and the only way to get through it was by proving everything I had theorized.
The terrain had long since abandoned any trace of normalcy. No more grass. No more color. Just an endless stretch of pale, cracked earth repeating itself like a broken pattern.
Still, I pushed forward.
Eventually, I saw it. A section of land that stood out, not visually, but in how it responded. I flung another arc of water ahead, and when the droplets landed on a particular spot, they vanished immediately.
Faster than I had seen anywhere else. The ground drank the water without hesitation, as if something beneath it had been starving for it.
I didn't need to hesitate.
I walked to the final delayed zone, then stepped lightly onto the suspicious patch. I placed my weight just enough for contact, then immediately retreated three meters backward.
As expected, the ground burst open.
A Vowalker erupted from beneath, the soil parting around it in a wide, violent crater.
The motion was nearly identical to the first time, a creature rising from beneath, reacting only to surface contact, then pausing in perfect silence.
And with this, all my theories were proven right.
Why?
Bec–
𓁹𓁹
All hell broke loose.
That was the only accurate way to describe the situation.
Ayanokōji Kiyotaka reacted without hesitation. In the instant the Vowalker struck, he lifted the creature's skull and angled it across his chest, using it as a shield just before the claw connected.
The impact came immediately.
The Vowalker's body had already weakened during its long dormancy, and the force of its own attack proved too much for it to endure. Its brittle frame shattered on contact, limbs breaking apart as bone fragments scattered across the dry ground.
The skull in Ayanokōji's hands cracked under the same force. A sharp fracture rang out, and the hollow vessel split open while the recoil drove him backward across the parched earth, dust trailing behind his sliding body.
The friction tore his shoes apart. Their thin soles had never been meant to withstand that kind of strain, and the fabric ripped open until loose strips hung around his ankles.
He didn't stop.
He didn't even attempt to brace himself.
His mind had already moved ahead.
What concerned him wasn't the Vowalker that had attacked. It was the debris left behind.
Fragments of bone and dust spread outward across the field, landing on ground that had remained undisturbed until now. Beneath that soil, more Vowalkers slept.
That was the problem.
Before Ayanokōji could fully reorganize his thoughts-
Boom.
The ground erupted.
More Vowalkers burst upward in a violent wave, triggered not by sound or movement, but by contact with the remains of their fallen kin.
A chain reaction began.
The destruction of one creature scattered fragments outward, those fragments struck the earth, and the buried monsters beneath awakened in turn. Each emergence disturbed the surrounding soil, sending more dust and splinters across the terrain, activating still more dormant bodies.
It did not stop.
The field transformed into a spreading cascade of awakening monsters.
Ayanokōji was already moving, sprinting across the cracked landscape. His calculations had finished before the second creature even surfaced.
For the first time since leaving the White Room, he ran with everything he had.
In his previous world he had been called many things... the perfect human, the Demon of the Fourth Generation. Yet the title that lingered longest, spoken quietly with a mixture of awe and unease, was one particular name.
The Masterpiece.
Now, with dozens of monsters erupting behind him in sequence, that so-called masterpiece had already completed the outline of his escape.
He abandoned the safe route entirely. There was no time left to measure puddles or scatter droplets. That careful method had reached its limit, and precision gave way to controlled chaos.
He pushed his weakened, dehydrated body to its edge, accelerating until his speed approached nineteen miles per hour. It was fast enough to provoke pursuit, yet not fast enough to leave the creatures behind.
That balance was intentional.
He wasn't merely running away.
He was baiting them.
Ayanokōji ran straight across patches of earth where dormant Vowalkers waited. Each step triggered another creature, forcing it to burst from the soil and join the pursuit.
They rarely lasted long.
BAM.
One Vowalker surged from the ground only to collide with another charging directly behind Ayanokōji. The impact shattered both bodies instantly.
BAM. BAM. BAM.
The pattern repeated again and again as chaos multiplied across the field. Creatures emerged directly into the path of others already sprinting forward, leaving no time to stop before their dense frames crashed together with bone-breaking force.
After only two encounters, Ayanokōji had already calculated their speed and acceleration. From that moment onward his route was no longer random.
It was deliberate.
He threaded through the terrain while the chain reaction expanded behind him. Each calculated turn, each shift in direction guided the creatures into the paths of one another, and the field collapsed into a storm of destruction.
To an outside observer he might have appeared calm, perhaps even emotionless.
Inside, his mind worked without pause, measuring angles, predicting collisions, and following the unfolding sequence several steps ahead.
Even so, he understood the truth.
This was only delaying the inevitable.
Every shattered body produced more debris. Every collapse scattered fragments across new ground, awakening more buried creatures. The battlefield spiraled into an endless cycle of emergence and destruction.
A vowalker came beyond everyone else as it leaped for Ayanokōji's leg.
Ayanokōji jumped.
The leap wasn't meant to evade the Vowalker reaching for his leg.
It marked the beginning of the next phase.
He plunged straight into the massive well nearby, a thirty-meter pit filled with stagnant rainwater—the only place in that nightmare where the earth possessed depth and softness, the only terrain that had not betrayed him.
As he disappeared beneath the surface, the Vowalkers followed.
They leapt after him without hesitation, driven not by calculation but by instinct.
Hunger. Obsession. Jealousy.
***
The descent lasted longer than expected.
The pool extended far deeper than its surface suggested, its circular walls too even and wide to be natural. Ayanokōji swam downward while holding his breath, his movements steady as he forced his body through the heavy water.
Behind him, the Vowalkers followed.
More than twenty of them plunged into the well, still pursuing him. As they descended, their bodies absorbed more and more water, swelling until they grew heavier and denser. Their movements slowed, limbs straining to maintain momentum.
Ayanokōji continued downward without pause.
He swam until his feet touched the bottom.
Cold, undisturbed mud pressed beneath his soles while he lifted his gaze toward the dim light above. Through the blue haze of the water he saw them descending after him, their silhouettes sinking through the depths.
He remained perfectly still.
No fear entered his thoughts. His breathing stayed controlled, his gaze steady.
What he felt was certainty.
Every step since the chaos began had led to this moment. Every calculation had aligned with the outcome unfolding around him.
In the quiet of the well, that certainty took on a chilling clarity.
He had already understood the nature of this nightmare.
The Vowalkers continued to descend, drawing in more water with every movement. Their bodies grew heavier and heavier until their muscles stiffened and their thickened skin hardened around them.
Eventually, they stopped moving.
Those that had followed him down could no longer swim or maneuver. Their water-filled bodies sank through the depths and settled around him, suspended in silence.
Still more arrived.
Drawn by sound, scent, movement—creatures with heightened senses hurled themselves into the well one after another, unable to resist the pull of their instincts.
Each new arrival met the same fate.
They absorbed water, grew too heavy to move, and sank into stillness beside the others.
Ayanokōji remained seated at the bottom of the well, conserving his air and waiting without motion.
The situation had changed.
This was no longer a battle of intelligence.
It had become a test of endurance.
And his entire life had prepared him for exactly that.
***
It was over in minutes.
When Ayanokōji opened his eyes again and looked upward, there was no movement. Above him floated a field of motionless bodies suspended in the water, the Vowalkers hanging there like petrified statues.
A silent grave.
Thirty-two Vowalkers had entered the well.
Not one could move.
Their bodies had hardened beyond use, their mass now working against them. The water they had absorbed made them impossibly dense and unbearably slow. Even the slowest creature would outpace them now.
Their own strength had become their downfall.
The only mistake they had made was leaving the ground.
Ayanokōji began swimming upward.
As he moved through the water, he passed the immobilized bodies one by one. Whenever one drifted within reach, he extended a hand and removed the small core organ embedded at the base of its silt, the same weakness he had observed earlier.
He repeated the process methodically.
There was no urgency in his movements and no emotion on his face. He simply continued upward, extracting each core he could reach and ensuring the creatures would never recover once the water drained away.
It was not cruelty.
It was not revenge.
It was simply the most practical course of action.
He made certain not to miss any that were within reach.
By the time he broke the surface, three of the organs rested in his hands, heavy, warm, and inert. The rest remained below, scattered across the bottom of the well beneath water and silence.
For a moment, he looked down into the depths, his expression unreadable.
His body staggered when his feet reached solid ground, but he refused to fall.
Without pausing, Ayanokōji Kiyotaka climbed the hill, three Vowalker organs held firmly in his hand.