CHAPTER 1 OPENING EYES
In a hotel in one of the cities in the Imperial district, there lay a young, diminutive girl who appeared to be no older than fourteen. The moonlight streaming through the window illuminated the crumpled blankets, her fair skin, and the dark hair of her curled-up figure in a light-green pajama. Clenched fists and occasional grimaces on her porcelain face with Asian features indicated that her dream was anything but pleasant.
Soon, the girl's breathing quickened, and with a sudden jolt, she sat up, her large gray eyes wide open.
"Am I alive?" she uttered, her voice trembling, and looked in astonishment at her own hands. Scanning the dimly lit room and briefly focusing on a katana leaning against the bedside table, she vigorously rubbed her temples.
"What the heck?" Kurome, as our heroine was called, muttered.
"Unexpected side effects of the new 'medicine,' I suppose. Will it drive me insane and render me useless?" she panicked in her thoughts.
It's worth mentioning that she had reasons to be concerned. The leadership of the Imperial Assassin Strike Team, of which she was a rank-and-file member, held the belief that a "killer unable to fight should die." Of course, as long as she didn't go rogue and continued to follow orders, no one cared about what was happening in her head. But that was the present situation. Who knew what would happen to her tomorrow? In any case, she could still fight, which meant everything was fine!
But it was best not to inform the leadership about what had happened to her.
The gray-eyed assassin didn't believe she'd be treated. Memories of how, after their first mission, she had lost one of her partners and had barely managed to drag her heavily wounded second partner back to the base were still fresh in her mind. And how the Commander had personally finished off their injured comrade. Because of her severe injury, she had become useless, and as the saying goes, useless trash is disposed of. That's what Commander Bill had said, and the new Commander shared the same sentiment.
Kurome got out of bed and approached a small table, pouring herself a glass of water from a pitcher. After taking a few sips and calming down a bit, she sat down on a nearby chair, placing the glass on the edge of the table.
What kind of insane dream had she just had? Not only had she witnessed nearly thirty years of someone's life (though it felt strange to call someone you knew almost everything about "someone"), but it was in an unusual world without monsters but filled with a vast array of flying, rolling, and even thinking machines. And on top of that, she had to witness and feel the horrific death of that person. Thinking of the Abyss, the girl shivered and hugged herself tightly.
Her memory didn't retain anything specific about her time in that nightmarish place, thankfully for her sanity. But even the faintest echoes of those memories made the Imperial assassin, who had seen a lot in her short life, tremble with fear. And now, after the dream, she felt like she was that very man!
Frowning, she pushed the glass away from her.
What next? Would she dream next that she was a ladybug, and to the delight of the Revolutionary Army's bandits, she'd start munching on grass? In that case, it would indeed be better to face the enemy's sword than to be disposed of.
"It's a shame I won't get to see my sister before I die," she sighed sadly. "Maybe she betrayed the Empire, but I still love her. If I'm destined to die, I'd like it to be at the hands of Akame."
"But maybe it's not all that bad?" she thought with a glimmer of hope. After all, the young assassin didn't want to die so soon. Despite her vivid dreams, strange desires, or other nonsense that psychos were supposed to experience, she felt perfectly sane. "If I can think clearly, then I'm not insane," the petite brunette reassured herself. Perhaps, it was just a dream.
A strange and very detailed dream that spanned two lifetimes.
"Damn, I even remember their language!" she exclaimed, struggling with the unfamiliar speech.
As soon as Kurome uttered those words, her consciousness blurred, and scenes from Victor's life began flashing before her eyes once again. But unlike the dream where she was merely an observer, this time, the girl was living the life of the Earthling together with him.
Her previous life.
Victor's life wasn't much different from the lives of many thousands of similar young men across the vast expanse of Russia. He grew up with his grandparents, as his parents had separated almost immediately after his birth. His mother, who finished university a year later, married an American and, after moving to his homeland, severed almost all ties with her family. From his father, only his patronymic name remained.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
He studied, then served in the military, went back to studying, and in his free time, he enjoyed reading books, occasionally flipping through manga or watching anime. He got a job, met the love of his life, the girl he wanted to marry. That's how he might have lived—a life that might not have been extraordinary but suited him perfectly.
But things didn't work out that way.
When he, along with his grandparents, was driving back from their dacha, a black SUV belonging to the mayor's son suddenly emerged from behind a turn, overtaking a truck. Neither the SUV nor Victor, who was driving an old Niva, could avoid the collision. While the passengers in the foreign-made car barely suffered any injuries, the crumpled and now burning Niva left only Victor alive.
When they pulled his burned and broken body from the mangled car, no one believed he would survive until the ambulance arrived. But he did survive and went through several subsequent surgeries. Luckily, the mayor, in an attempt to hush up the scandal before the elections, fully covered Victor's medical expenses and the funeral expenses of his family.
And so ended the life of a healthy, fairly cheerful, and optimistic young man always ready to lend a helping hand to friends and acquaintances. And it marked the beginning of the existence of a disabled man who could barely move even with crutches, resembling the horror movie character Freddy Krueger, as he grimly joked himself.
His former fiancée conveyed the message that they should part ways a couple of days after he was transferred out of the intensive care unit. Victor didn't blame her. It would be foolish for a young woman to tie her life to a man who resembled a horror movie character and who, after a spinal injury, couldn't even fulfill his marital duties. Friends quickly disappeared from his life as well. Well, they were friends with the healthy guy always ready to help, not with the moderately cooked invalid who couldn't even make the trip to the store and back without it being a major feat.
Who needed a companion from whom you couldn't derive any benefit from friendship? It turned out, no one.
The few things that set him apart from fellow recluses (apart from his outstanding health and stunning looks, of course) were his interest in the paranormal. Not that he believed in it wholeheartedly, just a lonely person's minor obsession. Runes, various methods of self-healing, meditation. In the case of the latter, he even achieved some results, learning to dull the constant pain in his back, relying on painkillers and sleeping pills as little as possible. Riding the wave of success, he redoubled his efforts...
And then, something happened, something erased from his memory, and he found himself in the Darkness.
More precisely, in the Abyss.
Stripped of his familiar sensory organs along with his body but retaining the ability to think, Victor's spirit, in an otherworldly and incomprehensible form even to himself, was able to sense the boundless ocean of malevolent and dark energy. The surrounding Force eagerly began to consume the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of the hapless esoteric, in exchange generously sharing its hunger, madness, and thirst for destruction, as if trying to reshape the intruder according to its own patterns. And although the young man, summoning all his willpower and strength, somehow managed to resist the changes, the Abyss continued to erode his will and mind with the relentlessness of ocean waves crashing against the rocks.
Victor didn't know how much time had passed. Did time even exist in this accursed place? Constantly battling himself and the pressure of the Forces eager to change him, he learned to sense not only the Abyss but also its denizens.
Each of the abhorrent spawn exuded immeasurable hunger, hatred, and something utterly alien to the human mind. The strong devoured the weak, the weak formed packs and attacked the strong, all in a frenzied frenzy over the corpse of a fallen foe. Occasionally, titanic, indescribably horrifying creatures would appear, obliterating and devouring everything in their vicinity with their mere presence.
To Victor's fortune, for some reason, the local monstrosities couldn't sense or influence his soul in any way. But even the mere ability to perceive this world, indescribable in any mortal language, nearly annihilated him.
It seemed as if he had been on the brink of breaking down and dissolving into the surrounding filth more than once, but each time, his innate stubbornness prevented him from succumbing to his weakness, and he continued to fight, refusing to devalue his past efforts. If he were destined to disappear in this place, he would rather go fighting than bow down in submission!
Fortunately, like water pushing out an air bubble, this strange and terrifying place expelled the foreign element that refused to become a part of it.
When an entity, shrouded in the aura of dark energies, appeared in the realms of the Interdimensional Void, most of the local inhabitants deemed it best to stay out of its way. Even the pack of astral predators, perpetually hungry and almost devoid of fear, chose not to engage with this entity, which, although not outwardly formidable, awakened a deep-seated terror within them. Their more developed, almost rational comrade also preferred to keep his distance, never daring to attack. He considered the strange, seemingly feeble but cloaked in potent dark energy entity a clumsily disguised demon... or perhaps even a Creature of the Abyss.
The spirit, radiating joy and hatred, insatiable hunger and hope, happiness and a thirst for destruction into the surrounding space, dashed in one direction, then another, momentarily halted, and then began to descend into one of the material worlds.
"I have won!!!" the entity emitted a powerful mental cry, filled with grim triumph. "Choke, Abyss!!!"
After the mental shout shook the surrounding space, causing the astral beasts to scatter, the fire of the strange spirit's presence began to rapidly dim. It was as if he had invested his last strength into that cry and was now dying. Realizing that the entity, which had frightened them so much, had been on the brink of death all this time, the denizens of the Interdimensional Void rushed after it in the hope of tearing it apart and claiming a portion of its power. But it was too late; the entity had already crossed the threshold that separated the material worlds from the astral.
And they couldn't reach there on their own.