The first thing Ren felt when he woke up was the weight.
Not the physical weight of the torn jacket draped over his body, nor the iron smell of blood on his hands.
It was heavier.
It pressed on his ribs and wrapped around his lungs, refusing to let go.
Everyone's gone.
The thought flickered again, like a sick joke he couldn't laugh at.
The world outside the broken window was loud—sirens, distant shouts, the low hum of a city pretending to function.
He pushed himself up from the floor, wincing at the stabbing pain in his side. The apartment he once called home was a hollow shell.
No photos on the walls.
No laughter bouncing through the rooms.
Only the cold echo of his own breathing.
Ren staggered to the kitchen, grabbing a dirty glass from the counter.
The faucet coughed out brown water before running clear. He drank without thinking, letting the filth burn down his throat.
In the reflection of the cracked windowpane, he saw himself—
Not the Ren who laughed too loud, who stayed up all night talking about dreams with friends, who hugged his mother until she told him he was crushing her ribs.
This Ren was a ghost.
Sunken cheeks.
Dead eyes.
A scream rose in his chest, but he bit it down, swallowing it like poison.
No one was coming to save him.
No one was left to save.
He walked to the living room, where the only thing untouched was the leather-bound journal he'd left behind years ago—the one his sister had given him before he was ripped into another world.
"For when you miss home," she had written inside the cover.
His hands shook as he opened it.
The pages were blank.
Every goddamn page.
Tears blurred his vision, but he didn't wipe them away.
What was the point?
There was no home.
No family.
No dreams.
Just him.
And the fire burning in his veins.
He slammed the journal shut and shoved it into his bag. He couldn't stay here. The city stank of rot and lies.
He needed answers.
And if the world didn't want to give them to him, he would rip the truth out with his bare hands.
---
The streets were worse than he remembered.
Trash piled up in alleys.
People moved like shadows, faces hidden under hoods, avoiding eye contact.
No one trusted anyone.
The fear was thick, clinging to the skin.
Ren moved through it like a phantom, senses sharpened by years of battle in a world that had tried—and failed—to break him.
He felt it before he saw it—a ripple of magic under the surface, faint but undeniable.
Magic.
In this broken shithole of a world.
He followed it down a side street, boots crunching glass underfoot.
It led him to a door with no sign, no light, nothing to say it was special.
But he could feel it.
Something inside was wrong.
He pushed the door open.
The smell hit him first—metallic and sweet.
Blood.
The room was small, lit by a single bare bulb swinging from the ceiling.
And in the center, a man knelt over a body, knife in hand, carving something into the corpse's chest.
Ren didn't hesitate.
The moment the man looked up, eyes wild with panic, Ren moved.
One second.
Two.
The knife clattered to the floor.
The man's throat opened in a wet gasp, blood spilling down his shirt.
Ren stood over him, breathing hard, fists clenched.
The corpse on the table—
A boy.
Couldn't have been older than sixteen.
Rage, hot and blinding, surged through him.
"Who sent you?" Ren growled, his voice raw from disuse.
The dying man gurgled something unintelligible.
Ren grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the floor.
"WHO?!"
Through bloody teeth, the man gasped, "The...Court..."
And then he died.
Ren stared down at the body, heart hammering against his ribs.
The Court.
He didn't know what that meant yet.
But he would find out.
He wiped his hands on the dead man's jacket and looked around the room.
Symbols were scrawled across the walls in dark, dripping strokes. Magic symbols.
Old magic.
Twisted, corrupted.
Whatever this "Court" was, it was tied to the magic leaking into the world.
Tied to the rot that had infected everything while he was gone.
He needed information.
Names.
Targets.
And he needed strength.
More than what he had now.
Ren left the room without looking back.
The city sprawled before him, broken and bleeding.
And he would tear it apart, piece by piece, until he found the bastards responsible.
No more second chances.
No more mercy.
The bright boy who had once dreamed of being a hero was dead.
All that remained was a monster with nothing left to lose.
---