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 like the creature itself was made of the same greedy earth.
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—not with mercy, but with consequence.
Eventually, the water ran out.
I didn't panic. I searched. Not with urgency, but with patience born of necessity. 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. Precision was no longer a preference—it was survival.
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. Not the silence. Not the water. Not even stillness.
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.
A breath too soft for the wind to carry.
A heartbeat muffled beneath bone and skin.
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. Each thought sharpened against the next like blades drawn across stone.
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.
No wasted effort. No rapid movements. Just breath and discipline...
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 no insects floating along the edges, no sound of dripping water, no breeze. 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.
Same direction. Same motion. Same measured pace.
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. Still dry. Still empty. 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 would be the most accurate way to describe the current situation.
Why?
Because Ayanokōji Kiyotaka, without wasting a second, instinctively raised the Vowalker's skull to shield his chest—just in time to absorb the impact.
The creature's claw connected. Its brittle body, already weakened from dormancy, couldn't withstand the collision.
The Vowalker crumbled instantly, its limbs snapping apart as if made of ash. Bone fragments shattered across the dirt, scattered like dry leaves caught in wind.
The skull in Ayanokōji's hands cracked under the force. A sharp crack rang out, and then the water vessel split apart. At the same time, the recoil sent him sliding backward across the parched earth, dust trailing behind him like smoke.
His shoes tore open from the friction. Thin soles weren't made for this.
Torn fabric flapped loosely around his ankles. But he didn't stop. Not even to brace himself. His mind had already shifted into action.
What concerned him wasn't the Vowalker that had attacked.
It was the debris.
The shattered limbs and dust from the destroyed creature scattered across the field—and they didn't remain inert. The fragments spread across ground that hadn't yet been disturbed… ground where more Vowalkers slept just beneath the surface.
And that was the problem.
Before Ayanokōji could fully gather his thoughts—Boom.
More Vowalkers erupted from the ground in a sudden, violent wave.
Triggered not by sound, not by movement, but by contact with the remnants of their fallen kin.
It was a chain reaction.
The rise of one sent fragments scattering outward, which landed on more buried creatures—activating them as well.
As each Vowalker broke through the surface, the impact stirred the surrounding soil, spreading dust and splinters to even more dormant ones.
It didn't stop.
A domino effect of monsters.
Ayanokōji was already on the move, running full sprint across the cracked terrain. His calculations had completed before the second creature ever surfaced.
And for the first time since leaving the White Room—he ran with everything he had.
In his previous world, they had called him many things. The perfect human. The Demon of the Fourth Generation.
But the name that persisted in whispers, spoken with both awe and fear, was...
The Masterpiece.
And now, with a ton of monsters erupting in sequence behind him, that so-called perfect human had already formulated his plan of escape.
He wasn't following the safe route anymore. There was no time to measure puddles or throw droplets. That method had outlived its usefulness. Precision had been traded for controlled chaos.
He ran at full capacity, pushing his weakened, thirsty body to the edge. Despite the strain, his speed spiked to nearly 19 miles per hour—more than enough to provoke the creatures but not outrun them.
And that was deliberate.
Because he wasn't just escaping.
He was baiting them.
He sprinted directly over patches where more Vowalkers lay in wait. Each step activated another—each one emerging just in time to intercept or chase him.
And yet, they didn't last long.
BAM.
One creature burst from the ground only to be struck by another pursuing Ayanokōji at full speed. The resulting collision shattered both.
BAM. BAM. BAM. BAM.
It repeated again and again. The chaos multiplied. Creatures collided mid-pursuit.
One would emerge directly into the path of another, unable to stop itself in time. Their dense bodies struck with bone-breaking force, killing each other before they could even act.
After just two encounters, Ayanokōji had already deduced their speed and acceleration. His path was no longer random—it was orchestrated.
He moved like a ghost threading through the eye of a storm. Behind him, the landscape collapsed into carnage.
From the outside, he may have appeared calm—perhaps even emotionless. But inside, he was calculating down to the decimal. Mapping angles. Timing reactions. Reading the chain before it unfolded.
But even then, he knew.
This was only delaying the inevitable.
Every shattered body became more debris. Every collapse sprayed more fragments. And each new scatter ignited another monster beneath.
The battlefield was rapidly becoming a spiral of emergence and destruction—an endless echo of life and death crashing into itself.
And then, at the precise moment he'd been waiting for, Ayanokōji jumped.
He didn't leap just to avoid the Vowalker reaching for his leg.
He leapt because the next phase had arrived.
He dove straight into the enormous thirty-meter well—the one filled with stagnant, collected rainwater.
The only place in this nightmare where the earth had depth and softness. The only terrain left that hadn't betrayed him.
And as he plunged into the water, they followed.
Vowalkers erupted behind him and dove in as well—not out of logic, not out of calculation, but out of instinct.
Hunger. Obsession. Jealousy.
***
The descent was long.
The pool was far deeper than it looked—too wide and too uniform to be natural. Ayanokōji swam downward, holding his breath, dragging his limbs through the weight of the water without panic.
Behind him, the Vowalkers followed.
More than twenty of them plunged into the depths, still chasing him, pulled down by their own purpose. Their bodies swelled as they absorbed more water, becoming heavier, denser. Their movements grew sluggish. Their limbs strained to keep momentum.
But Ayanokōji did not stop.
He kept swimming, deeper and deeper, until he reached the bottom.
The mud here was cold and undisturbed. His feet touched it briefly, just as he turned his eyes upward.
Through the filtered blue of the well, he saw them coming—shapes descending like statues falling in slow motion.
Yet even then, he wasn't afraid.
His gaze didn't flicker. No panic entered his lungs.
What he felt was certainty.
Every step after that mayhem now had brought him here. Every calculation had been right. Every deduction had led to this outcome.
And in his silence, there was something terrifying.
Clarity.
He had seen through the very nature of this nightmare—understood it at its bones. This wasn't new to him. Not truly. He had lived through worse.
He simply waited.
As the creatures descended, they drank more water with every inch. Their muscles stiffened. Their skins thickened—so dense now they might as well have been encased in armor.
Eventually, they stopped moving altogether.
The Vowalkers that had followed him down could no longer advance. They had become too heavy to swim, too bloated with water to rise or maneuver. They simply sank around him, paralyzed in the silence of the deep.
Still, more arrived—drawn by sound, scent, movement. Vowalkers that specialized in hearing, sight, smell, instinct—they all jumped in one after another, unable to resist the pull.
And one by one, they joined the others in motionless suspension.
Ayanokōji remained seated at the bottom, conserving air, unmoving.
Now, it was no longer a battle of wits.
It was a test of endurance.
And his entire life had prepared him for exactly this.
***
It was over in minutes.
When Ayanokōji opened his eyes again and looked upward, he saw no movement. Just a field of still bodies hanging in the water above him like petrified statues.
Frozen death.
Thirty-two Vowalkers had entered the well.
Not a single one could move.
Their bodies had become like diamond—impossibly hard, impossibly slow. Snails would outpace them now. Their own strength had doomed them.
The only mistake they had made... was leaving the ground in the first place.
Ayanokōji began swimming upward. On his way, he passed each one.
He reached out, methodically, and pulled the small, core organ from the base of their silt—the same weakness he had observed earlier. He did this to every single one he could reach, showing no haste, no emotion. Just completion.
It wasn't out of cruelty. It wasn't revenge.
It was the least he could do.
He made sure not to miss a single one.
By the time he broke the surface, he was holding three of the organs—heavy, warm, and inert. The rest remained below, buried beneath water and silence.
He looked down one last time, expression unreadable.
He staggered but refused to fall.
Ayanokouji Kiyotaka didn't wait and went up the hill with three organs of Vowalker in his hand.