The rain had stopped an hour ago, but the clouds refused to move. They hung low like a second ceiling, heavy and gray, casting the streets in a dim, colorless dusk that felt closer to mourning than daylight.
Yosu stood in front of the apartment building, his hoodie clinging to him in the damp air. One hand clenched his phone; the other trembled in his pocket. The screen was blank.
Still no messages.
Three weeks. Three weeks of silence. His best friend—gone. No warning. No note. Just a single post that shouldn't have been there.
A chapter.
It wasn't scheduled. It didn't match his usual tone. The title read:
The Story Begins When I Disappear.
Yosu had stared at it for hours that night. His friend had always been clear: "Don't read the novel until I finish it. Promise me that." And he had kept that promise.
Until now.
What if this isn't just a post? What if it's a message?
He tapped the title.
The story began normally. Then it bent. Shifted. Letters twisted like smoke. The screen shimmered. The words moved in ways they shouldn't have. His vision split.
A scream tore from his lips—but not from his mouth.
Something vast ruptured behind his eyes. Not black. Not shadow. Void. A place where the concept of light had been murdered.
A presence unfolded—not around him, but through him. Not a voice, not a face, but a thought so massive it collapsed everything he called sanity. His body ceased to matter. His soul—untethered—plunged into an abyss where even time had been devoured.
He fell past cathedrals of bone, their windows weeping blood, drifting in oceans with no surface—only depth. He saw a sky stitched with lidless eyes. They watched not with curiosity, but with a hunger that existed before the birth of stars.
He fell further.
Cities of ash. People wearing masks sewn from their own skin. A sun screaming as it was devoured by a god shaped like a question. Machines begging for death in languages never written. Stars swallowing themselves into nonexistence.
And then—
Voices.
Not one. Thousands. Each wrong. Each desperate. They screamed, they laughed, they became him. He couldn't scream back. He couldn't think.
Only know.
And the knowing was madness.
Then it came.
Not a god. Not a being. A will.
Vast. Ancient. Aware.
It did not move. The world recoiled from it.
And it spoke—not into his ears, but into his bones.
Its name wasn't sound. It was structure. Fire. Memory. Ruin.
A word older than time. A name made of knife-shaped syllables.
He tried to hold it.
But it held him.
Silence. Collapse. Nothing.
When Yosu opened his eyes, the world was wrong.
The first thing he noticed was the cold cobblestone beneath his cheek. It was damp. Rough. Real. The rain must've stopped a while ago, but the ground still clung to it like it hadn't realized. His clothes were soaked, plastered to his skin like a second layer of confusion.
Where…?
His breath came shallow. The air smelled like soot, old garbage, mold, and something worse—something sour and dying.
No. No, this isn't right.
He pushed himself up slowly. His limbs felt heavier, stiffer, as if he hadn't used them in years. His palms scraped across the stone.
Then he saw them.
His hands.
They weren't his.
They were larger. Calloused. The fingers longer. The knuckles swollen. These weren't the hands of someone who typed for hours or sketched on napkins. These were hands that had lived another life.
He stared at them, heart stuttering.
What the hell...? These aren't mine.
He staggered to a storefront window, the glass cracked and stained yellow from years of grime. It barely reflected, but enough. Just enough.
The man staring back was a stranger.
Mid-twenties, maybe. Gaunt cheeks, sharp jaw. Messy black hair hung over his brow. His eyes—sunken, shadowed—looked hollow, as if the soul inside hadn't quite found its footing. His skin was pale, borderline sickly. The clothes he wore were worn thin: a frayed white shirt, a faded brown vest, loose pants that hung awkwardly on his frame.
A battered cap lay next to him on the stones like it had fallen off someone else.
No. No no no. This isn't real. This isn't real.
He turned in a slow, disbelieving circle, trying to take in the alley around him. Shadows crept along the stone walls. Trash was piled in the corners. Rats the size of cats scurried between crates. A dog's bloated corpse lay slumped near a collapsed crate, flies already claiming it. Deeper down the alley, a man curled beneath a thin blanket didn't move—Yosu didn't know if he was sleeping or dead.
The buildings loomed like drunken giants, bricks blackened with age and smoke, leaning in like they wanted to whisper a secret they'd never stop repeating.
This is insane. Am I dreaming? No dream smells like this. No dream is this heavy. This cold. This dirty. This real.
He reached up, touched his face—foreign angles, sharper than they should be. His throat tightened.
This isn't my body.
He stumbled forward, half-walking, half-drifting. His footsteps echoed too loud against the stone.
This has to be a hallucination. A coma. A trick from that story. That post—God, what did I read?
His heart pounded harder.
Did it do something to me?
There was a hole in his mind where clarity should've been. No memory of arriving here. No explanation. Just the faintest echo of a name he couldn't remember and the taste of something burnt at the back of his tongue.
He walked.
Because standing still meant admitting this was real.
The streets beyond the alley weren't empty. Lanterns glowed faintly behind smeared windows. A man in a tall coat passed by without looking at him. Two children bickered over a crust of bread before darting into the fog.
Everything felt… wrong. Not just foreign—off.
Like he'd landed in a painting made from someone else's grief.
Was this the past? Another world? A dream layered over a nightmare?
No answers. Just questions wrapped in panic.
He whispered to himself, testing his voice. It came out lower. Rougher.
Not my voice either.
Then:
"Hey, Leonard! What are you doing out so late? Come on, let's get home."
Yosu froze.
Leonard?
A man approached—mid-to-late twenties, tall, sharp-featured, hollow-eyed. His patched coat flapped in the wind. He smiled, casual, but something in it felt... practiced. Off.
Yosu blinked at him. "Leonard?" he echoed without meaning to.
The man slapped a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't tell me you're lost in thought again," he chuckled. "Come on. Let's not freeze out here."
Yosu hesitated, then nodded slowly. He followed.
What else could I do?
They walked in silence. The streets decayed around them. Doors sagged from hinges. Windows were boarded or broken. The smell thickened—urine, smoke, old blood.
Yosu's thoughts spun like a wheel stuck in mud.
Leonard… that's me now? Is that this body's name? Did I… replace him? Or did I become him?
Or worse... was I never Yosu at all?
They reached a narrow building—barely more than stacked stone and rot. The man pushed the door open.
Inside, darkness.
Yosu stepped in hesitantly. "Why don't you turn on the light?"
The man gave a half-laugh.
"No oil left. We barely ate yesterday."
The hallway swallowed them. The walls felt too close, like they were listening. Breathing.
The room was a box—two beds, a crate, a chair with only two legs. No windows. The kind of place meant to forget people existed.
Yosu lay on the bed. The damp clothes clung. His thoughts refused to settle.
Leonard... he called me Leonard. Is that who I am now? Was that person real? Did I just fall into his life? Or... was there never anyone else here?
And if I'm not me anymore… then who's thinking these thoughts?
Half an hour passed in silence.
Then—
The door creaked open again.
Footsteps.
Soft. Deliberate.
Yosu didn't move. His breath caught.
He peeked, just barely.
His brother stood near the crate.
In one hand: a knife.
In the other: a thick, leather-bound book, covered in symbols that writhed beneath the faint light like they were alive.
The man began to chant.
Low. Guttural. The words made no sense. They didn't belong to any language Yosu knew. They didn't belong to this world.
Yosu's blood turned to ice.
What is he doing? What is that book? That knife?
He didn't move. Couldn't move.
Something shifted in the air, like the walls had started to listen. Like the room itself was holding its breath.
The ritual had begun