*Chapter One: Threshold*
On earth.
Arin, twenty-seven, sat in his room clutching a delicate, antique necklace that seemed straight from the 70s. The intricately designed artifact featured red rubies worked together with a fine rope, centered around a large, flat ruby that seemed to belong on a ball gown.
His mind drifted to the day his mother gave it to him before she passed away. The painful memory threatened to bring tears to his eyes, but he remembered her last words: be strong and never give up. Taking a deep breath, Arin composed himself. His gaze moved across the cluttered room — old books and dusty trinkets lined the walls, reminders of his mother's love for antiques and history.
He looked at the necklace again and felt an inexplicable connection to it, as if it held a secret. He recalled her voice: "This necklace has been passed down through generations, Arin. It's said to hold a special power, one that will reveal itself when the time is right." The sensation he felt while holding it made him wonder if there was truth in her words. He smiled, thinking it was just one of her ways to make him keep it. Whether true or not, it was precious to him. She had pressed it into his hands on her deathbed, where she succumbed to a mysterious illness no doctor could explain.
Night had fallen. Arin looked out the window and saw streetlights casting a warm glow. His stomach growled. After pocketing the necklace, he left his room and took the elevator to the ground floor.
Outside, he saw a group of men fighting. To avoid getting pulled in, he crossed to the other side of the road. His apartment building sat by the roadside, so he checked for traffic before stepping out.
Halfway across, a speeding car appeared from nowhere, heading straight for him. He caught it from the corner of his eye. An unusual calm washed over him. Time slowed as his mind urged his body to move, but he knew he couldn't escape it.
In his final moments, Arin felt embarrassment at the thought of dying in a mundane accident instead of a heroic sacrifice. And yet, there was joy too — the thought of reuniting with his mother in the afterlife.
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But what happened next, Arin was not aware of. Time seemed to freeze. The ruby necklace in his pocket flashed with soft light, pulsing once per second for what felt like an eternity.
In a burst of radiant light, the ruby sprang to life. It pulled Arin's soul from his lifeless body and propelled it through space and time. It carried his bound soul toward a gigantic blue and purple planet. Then the ruby's power released its hold, and Arin's soul descended gently onto foreign soil.
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Pain came first. Excruciating pain was all Arin felt after regaining consciousness. His brain felt laid bare under a scorching sun, pricked by thick needles. He wanted to lose consciousness, to escape the agony, but that was a luxury he couldn't afford. The pain felt eternal. Then, little by little, it began to recede.
As the pain subsided, clarity returned. Arin opened his eyes, wondering if he was in heaven or hell. He doubted it was heaven — he was still in pain.
He looked around. Nothing was familiar. He lay in a room, a very run-down room. Curiosity rose in him. How had he ended up here? Thoughts swirled as he studied every detail.
He was on a bed, or what was left of one. The room looked ravaged by a wild animal. The table was broken. Clothes lay scattered on the floor,
Arin couldn't understand what was going on. The last thing his mind clung to was the screech of tires against asphalt, that horrible, drawn-out sound that came right before impact. Then pain. Blinding, total pain. The car ramming into him. Metal folding. The world going black.
He was supposed to be dead.
The thought hit him like ice water poured straight down his spine. His chest rose and fell, but each breath felt borrowed. Wrong. Like he'd stolen it from someone else.
Emotion clawed up his throat without permission. Images of his mother flashed behind his eyes—her frail hands, her smile even when the hospital room smelled like medicine and goodbye. Her death. The empty house after. The silence that stretched for years. Lonely. Alone.
A sad, crooked smile twisted his lips. The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd spent years wishing the pain would end. And now, when it finally had… he was still here. Moments away from joining her in the afterlife, yet somehow breathing in a room that wasn't his.
Instinct moved before thought. His hand lifted, fingers searching his neck by memory alone. They found it. The ruby necklace.
Warm. Familiar. Heavy.
The last inheritance his dying mother had pressed into his palm with trembling fingers. "For luck," she'd whispered, even as her eyes were already dimming. He pulled the chain free and held the pendant between thumb and forefinger, lifting it into the dim, flickering light of the room.
The ruby was broken.
Worn down, Only a thin, fragile shard remained, fractured down the center but still clinging together. Held together by little more than memory and will. It looked like it could shatter with the slightest pressure, turning to dust between his fingers.
Its glow was dim. Barely a whisper of red light pulsed from within the stone. Barely there. As if it was dying too, right along with the boy who wore it.
A hollow laugh escaped his lips before he could stop it. Dry. Empty.
He sat on the edge of the ragged bed, listening to the springs groan under his weight like they were protesting. The mattress dipped, old and uneven. His eyes traced the cracks spiderwebbing across the ceiling above—thin lines of decay spreading like veins. He tried to piece together what had happened. Tried to make sense of any of it. But nothing made sense. The room was too small. The air was too still. The body was too… unfamiliar.
Then the memories came.
They didn't arrive gently. They hit like a flood breaking through a dam.
Foreign, yet achingly familiar, they flooded his mind all at once. Faces he'd never seen. Streets he'd never walked. A childhood of hunger and cold and scraping by. Sharp, blinding pain lanced through his skull like knives being driven in behind his eyes.
"Pain again," he hissed through clenched teeth, the words ragged and torn from his throat. He doubled over, both hands clutching his head as if he could hold the memories in. He bit down hard to keep from making noise. Didn't want anyone hearing. Orphans who drew attention didn't last long.
The agony dragged on, endless and suffocating. Time stretched. What felt like an hour of knives and fire was only five minutes when he finally surfaced, gasping. Sweat clung to his skin, cold and sticky. His breathing came in short, uneven pulls. His whole body trembled.
He forced himself upright again, fingers gripping the edge of the bed until his knuckles went white. Then he started sifting through the memories that didn't belong to him—but felt like they did. Like someone had dumped another life into his skull and told him to carry both.
Shock came first. A cold, numb disbelief.
Then dizziness, as the two sets of memories ground against each other.
Then panic, cold and fast and clawing up his throat.
He had transmigrated.
The word didn't feel real. It felt like something from the novels he used to read on his phone during night shifts. But here he was. In the body of an orphan. A boy who, by some impossible, cruel coincidence, bore the exact same name: Arin.
The previous owner had starved to death mere minutes before his consciousness was dragged into this shell. The body was thin. Malnourished. Every rib stood out under the skin. Death had been close. Now death had been cheated.
But that wasn't what truly dazed him.
It was the world.
This world was called Pangu.
The name settled in his mind like a stone dropped in still water. And it felt wrong. Ancient. Medieval. No steel towers. No cars. No phones. The air smelled different—dust, woodsmoke, something metallic he couldn't place. Like one of those novels he'd read back on Earth, except he wasn't reading it anymore. He was living it.
But with the geography knowledge he still carried from his old life, with every map and satellite image burned into his memory, he realized the truth that made his stomach drop out: Pangu was vast. Impossibly vast. At least ten times the size of Earth. Maybe more. Continents stretched beyond comprehension. Oceans that could swallow countries whole.
And that realization was nothing compared to the next.
Pangu wasn't just big. It was dangerous.
This world was infested with exotic beasts. Demonic beasts. Creatures, evolved and twisted and hungry. Creatures with enough strength to shatter mountains with a single stomp. To split the earth with a roar.
The previous Arin had never seen one himself. Orphans didn't travel far. But the evening classes in the village square made sure every child knew exactly what waited beyond the walls.
Academy cost money. Tuition. Books. Orphans couldn't afford it. So they learned at night, crammed together in the square while a tired teacher with a scar across his cheek spoke in a voice worn thin by repetition.
And the teacher told them about beasts. About things with claws longer than a man was tall. About demonic beasts that could flatten their entire village with one step. That could erase a family line in a single breath. About how the walls existed for a reason, and why no one went past them after dark.
Going through those memories left Arin shaken. Traumatized. His hands started shaking and he had to press them flat against the bed to make them stop.
The evening class taught more than just fear. It taught history. The kind they didn't write in books anymore. The kind that explained why the world was broken.
They called the time before it all the Pre-Awakening Era.
An era of normalcy. Of decency. Of illusions. Massive towers of glass and steel scraped the sky until they disappeared into clouds. Carts rolled on four wheels, powered by machines instead of beasts. Nations were called countries, and people believed the world was safe. That humanity was in control.
Then the day it all started.
The weather had been perfect. That was the cruelest part. The sun shone bright and clear. Children played in streets. Merchants shouted their prices. Everyone went about their day, unaware, laughing, planning for tomorrow.
Until the ground shook.
A massive earthquake rolled across the entire planet of Pangu. Not just one continent. All of them. Simultaneously. Buildings swayed. The earth split open. And then came the roots.
Thick, purple, vein-like tendrils oozing mist the same violent color, pushing up through the soil like titanic pythons moving just beneath the surface. Some burst through and streaked across the ground, carving lines across continents, cracking mountains, swallowing cities. They moved with purpose. With intent.
Panic exploded. People ran screaming, convinced it was the end of the world. And they weren't wrong. Leaders scrambled, calling emergency world meetings as the purple roots completed their axis, wrapping around the entire planet like a net. Like a cage.
Then the mist spread.
It rose into the air, choking the sky until the sun became a pale, sickly disk. And the wild animals—on land, in water, in the sky, everywhere—began to change. Mutate. Evolve at a rate that defied nature. Most twisted into grotesque aberrations, bodies warped beyond recognition, bones cracking and reforming, flesh splitting and regrowing. Their eyes burned red, filled with killing intent and malice that felt straight from hell itself.
They attacked in masses. Waves of teeth and claws and corrupted fury. They tore into humans. Feasted on flesh like they'd been starving for centuries. Blood ran in rivers through streets that had been peaceful hours before.
Law enforcers rushed in, guns raised, sirens wailing, but their weapons were useless. Bullets could wound, maybe slow a beast down for a few seconds, but they couldn't kill them. At best, they just drew the monsters' attention. Made them turn.
The population thinned. Billions gone in months. Cities became graveyards. Humanity stood on the edge of extinction, teetering.