Cain woke up choking as a wave of heat hit him, stealing the air from his lungs and making it hard to breathe.
His body jerked upright on instinct, his hands digging into the ground beneath him, only for a sharp, searing pain to spike through his palms as he realized he was pressing into burning sand.
"Shit!"
He hissed and yanked his hands back, heart pounding as he scrambled onto his knees, trying to make sense of what was happening.
The air around him wavered from the heat, making everything look blurry and unsteady.
His throat was dry, and his tongue felt rough and uncomfortable.
"Where... where the hell am I?"
Cain muttered under his breath as he forced himself to look up, only to be met with an endless stretch of scorched land.
The earth was cracked and dry, jagged rocks jutted out at uneven angles, and patches of blackened ground spread across the terrain like something had burned it down to its very bones.
In the distance, heat waves rippled endlessly under a merciless sky, the sun, or rather, two suns, hanging overhead like they were trying to crush the world beneath them.
There were no buildings, no roads, no trace of civilization, nothing at all.
And the more Cain looked around, the clearer it became that this wasn’t the city, not even anywhere close to it.
His breath slowed, just slightly, but his mind raced faster.
The last thing he remembered was the alley, the fight, and the stone, the exact moment his fingers touched it.
Cain’s eyes widened as the memory hit him all at once, his gaze snapping down to his completely normal hands. There were no veins, no black lines, and no sign of whatever it was that had crawled into him.
His voice came out hoarse as he stared at them in disbelief.
"What the hell did that thing do to me...?"
For a second, nothing answered him, and just as the silence started to stretch, a faint flicker blinked at the edge of his vision, making him freeze.
He tried to figure out what was happening, only for another flicker to follow, sharper this time, like static cutting through his sight, as if something was struggling to load in front of him.
Words began to form in the air, but they came out broken and distorted, cutting in and out like a damaged signal.
[...ndidate...]
[...itializing...]
[...rror...]
[...Reboot...]
Cain frowned, his eyes narrowing as he instinctively took a step back, staring at the strange text forming in front of him as it flickered and glitched again before finally stabilizing into something clearer.
[Candidate Detected]
[Initiating Trial Protocol]
[Hero Candidate: Cain Wright]
[Trial Ground: Ember Isle]
[Objective: Purge All Hostile Entities]
[Reward: Hero Qualification]
Cain stared at the screen for a long moment, his brain struggling to catch up with what he was seeing.
His eyes traced the words again as if they might change if he looked hard enough.
"...Hero candidate?" he muttered, the phrase feeling strange and out of place in his mouth, like it belonged to someone else entirely.
Nothing about this made sense.
Trial, purge, death... none of it lined up with what he had thought that serum was supposed to be.
And the more he thought about it, the more it hit him that this wasn’t even a serum in the first place. It was just a damn rock... a rock that somehow dragged him into whatever this was.
His jaw tightened as unease settled deeper in his chest, and he took a slow step back, shaking his head like that alone could make the screen disappear.
"Yeah... no, this... this isn’t funny, man."
He was standing on some unknown island, surrounded by nothing but heat and silence, staring at a floating screen that was calmly telling him to wipe out everything on it if he wanted to become a hero.
A hero?
What even is that?
After being branded useless, beaten, and thrown aside like he never mattered, after awakening a pathetic E-rank ability that barely qualified him to stand on the same field as real hunters, hearing that word now, in a place like this, felt like a bad joke.
Was this some kind of setup? Some twisted experiment? Like some type of survival reality show?
The more he considered it, the more the idea stuck in his head.
If that stone had dragged him here, then whoever created it could be watching right now, sitting somewhere unseen and treating this like some twisted form of entertainment.
His gaze immediately swept across the area as he scanned the rocks, the ground, the uneven terrain, anything that could hide a camera or a recording device.
But there was nothing. Not a single unnatural object, no blinking light, no lens catching the sun, just endless heat and silence pressing in around him.
That didn’t ease his worries. If anything, it made things worse.
And as that unease began to settle deeper into his chest, he heard a low, scratchy sound, close enough to snap his attention instantly in that direction.
Something had just moved between the rocks.
"Who’s there?" he called out, but no answer came.
The thing moved again, this time from behind, forcing him to turn sharply, every nerve on edge as he braced himself for whatever was about to come at him.
A moment later, it stepped out, and Cain’s breath caught as he finally saw it clearly.
At first glance, it looked like a rat, but something about it was off in a way that made his stomach tighten.
Its body was too lean, almost skeletal, with patches of burned, blackened fur clinging to its skin like it had been dragged through fire.
Its eyes glowed faintly with a dull orange light, and when it opened its mouth, he caught a glimpse of its dark, charred teeth, faint strands of smoke curling out with its breath, making it painfully obvious that this was no normal animal.
"What... what the hell are you?" Cain muttered as he slowly stepped backward.
But just as the words left his mouth, the rat lunged without warning.