Kujima awoke, but this was no world he knew.

  The void around him wasn’t darkness—it was the absence of everything. No sky, no earth, not even a sense of up or down. His body... or what he thought was his body, flickered in an abstract, translucent form. Not dead, not alive—just adrift.

  “Welcome, Harden.”

  A voice, crystal clear, echoed in the nothingness. Neither deep nor high, not masculine nor feminine. Just... everywhere.

  “Harden? Who’s there?” Kujima’s voice reverberated against nothing. He spun in place, searching—but there was only himself, suspended in an endless fall through an ungraspable space.

  “I am everywhere,” the voice answered. “I am God. This is what your kind calls the afterlife.”

  Kujima frowned. “Do you greet everyone like this when they die?”

  “No,” the voice replied. “Most drift quietly into oblivion. As they were before they were born, so they become again. You are different.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are a Harden. A bastard of the bloodline, yes—but Harden nonetheless. That is why you remain.”

  Kujima tried to walk, but he wasn’t walking. He was falling. Always falling.

  “Get to the point, then. I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “Very well. I will explain.”

  Lights—glittering specks like stars—began to gather before him, swirling until they coalesced into the shape of a man. An older figure emerged, with a weathered face and a beard streaked with gray. He hovered in the air, as intangible as Kujima, and yet real.

  “Aelverion, founder of your bloodline, made a pact with me long ago,” said the man. “He feared death. So I granted him continuity. Whenever one Harden dies, their essence gathers in this realm. When all have fallen, the final soul will awaken—and the war will begin.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Kujima blinked. “But I have no powers. No skills. I can’t fight.”

  “That is your misfortune. Everyone arrives in the form they died in. No enhancements. No second chances.”

  Kujima crossed his arms. “Let’s say I win this war. If I have a child afterward, they’d be Harden too, wouldn’t they?”

  “They won’t exist,” the man said simply. “The line ends with you. The field won’t permit new descendants.”

  "And if the bloodline continues endlessly?"

  "You will wait. Time here is untethered. It will pass like a heartbeat. And when the last Harden dies, your battle will begin. You have only one life in this realm. Die once, and it is over."

  The man raised his fingers to the sky. Sparks ignited around them, searing the void with blinding light. A vortex opened beneath Kujima, pulling him downward—light tearing the void apart.

  Kujima opened his eyes. For the second time.

  This time, his body felt real. Tangible. Flesh and blood. He was lying in grass, the blades brushing his face, the sunlight warming his skin. A breeze danced across a vast meadow that stretched beyond sight. In the distance, a forest loomed—its trees tall and ancient, their branches casting golden shadows in the sunlight.

  “So... the last Harden has fallen,” he murmured. “And now the war begins. A new world, born from nothing. From me.”

  He stood, wiping his hands on his tattered clothes. Survival was his first priority.

  He set to work.

  He picked up a stone and began cutting at the nearest tree, fashioning makeshift tools. Hunger gnawed at him. With little else, he foraged—roots, berries, bitter greens. They sustained him, barely. That night, the cold bit into his skin. The next morning, he awoke vomiting. His body wasn’t used to this.

  He needed water. Real food. Strength.

  A faint murmur reached his ears—a stream. He followed it, branches clawing at his arms, until he found the source.

  A crystal-clear river flowed between rocks and moss. He dropped to his knees and drank greedily. It tasted purer than anything he’d known. Then he saw them—fish, large and slow, gliding through the current.

  His mouth watered.

  He broke off a long branch and sharpened its tip with a jagged stone. Primitive, but serviceable. He took position at the river’s edge, lowering his body. He breathed in, deeply... then held still.

  A strange sensation washed over him. Something foreign. As if the world held its breath with him. As if, for a moment, he was invisible—one with the land. He didn’t know what it was, but it pulsed through him like instinct.

  A fish passed before him.

  With one swift motion, he thrust the spear downward. It struck true. Blood painted the water in swirls.

  Then—something flickered before his eyes.