His senses awoke to a flood of foul stench.
It was a scent that didn't just assault the nose; it strangled the soul. He slowly shifted his hazy gaze, and what he saw struck his being like a lightning bolt, tearing through the remnants of his resolve.
He realized the source of that decay now. He wasn't in a house, but in the ruins of a "shack" groaning under the weight of neglect.
On the coarse mud floor, vast stains of black blood stretched out, dried like scars on the body of the earth—silently telling the story of a long-forgotten massacre.
"Where in the hell am I..?"
Before his question could finish, a predatory hunger gnawed at him.
His stomach felt as if it had begun to devour its own walls, feasting on itself from the sheer void within. His throat had become a parched wasteland, one that hadn't tasted a drop of water in eons.
A suicidal thought flickered in his mind. He didn't know why now, but he decided to subjugate this body against its will.
He lifted his hand... or tried to.
A violent wave of agony greeted him, as if every muscle fiber in his body had turned into a red-hot nail driven into his marrow. His nervous system screamed frantic SOS signals, but Shin decided to crush those cries under the boot of his will.
He raised his hand until it settled in his line of sight, and there, he was crushed for the second time in a row!
It wasn't his hand.
It was the hand of a small child, tender-skinned, no older than five or six. It was coated in dried black blood and decorated with green and blue bruises like a canvas of torment.
A hand that was meant to cradle toys, but in its current state, it looked more jagged and ruined than the hands of veteran warriors.
He finally slackened his muscles, gritting his teeth until they nearly shattered.
He escaped the pain of the flesh only to fall into the abyss of a cranial agony.
The headache was enough to make him forget his torn muscles; he felt his skull like glass cracking under immense pressure.
Images and glimpses began to seep into his mind like a torrential flood of information... or rather... invasive memories.
He saw strange faces: A man with hair as golden as a lie. A woman with features like the night. A young girl who resembled the man like his own shadow.
Random words filtered into his consciousness, slowly forming like bloody puzzle pieces, until an unfamiliar name echoed in the halls of his soul:
"Jin..."
"Jin Boulevard!"
He didn't have the luxury to ponder the identity of this name.
The headache was erasing his thoughts with a thick fog. The pain was so sharp it robbed him of the ability to scream; his vocal cords were paralyzed, and his throat was as dry as burnt wood.
He was like one whose voice had been stolen in the moment of his greatest need.
He tried to move toward the decaying wooden door, but his shattered legs declared utter mutiny.
Bit by bit, the roar of pain in his head began to fade, settling into a threshold of temporary bliss.
The fog lifted from his thoughts, and his awareness returned, only to find his legs burning with an invisible fire. In that moment, he wished for a "miracle" to intervene and save him—he, who was once a mountain of resilience, was now in a state of humiliation he had never before experienced.
But a wisdom, polished by his former years as "Shin," flashed in his mind:
"A miracle will never knock on your door. You must track its scent, smash its door down, and seize it by force."
In a desperate attempt, he turned his head left and right.
To his luck, he spotted in the corner of the desolate shack a rotting wooden door, held by nothing but rusted hinges that looked as if they were waiting for a breeze to fall.
A spark of hope appeared like a meteor in a pitch-black night, but it faded quickly. No movement, no screaming, and no sound of footsteps outside.
He began to think of suicidal solutions: "Should I crawl?" No. His entrails would tear on this jagged floor before he ever reached the door.
"What to do..? Think, Shin.. You conquered death, do not let a child's body break you!"
Then, the "Star of Desperate Hope" shone in his mind—the one that only appears in the final moments. His eyes widened with a terrifying glint.
"Is it possible that.. I only pray this body possesses a shred of talent!"
He closed his eyes and conjured every detail of the place: the mud walls soaked in moisture, the rotting wood, the rusted door.
He melted all of this into the crucible of his focus, binding his soul to the inanimate objects of the room, weaving imaginary threads from his mind to every corner.
Suddenly... the existence responded!
It worked.
I have awakened the latent power.
Now, the escape from this forgotten hell begins!