The Opening Page

He woke up choking.

Rayhan's lungs spasmed as air forced its way in, tasting of ash and old wood. His body, foreign and cold, jerked violently as he clawed at a rough, splintering floor. He blinked into flickering candlelight, his mind spiraling.

This isn't my room.

He wasn't in Jakarta anymore. The walls around him were stone and timber, thick with soot and mold. Shadows danced with the firelight, and somewhere, something howled—a sound halfway between a wolf's cry and a dying man's scream.

He gasped. His hands weren't his.

Slender. Pale. Callused from years of labor, with knotted veins and grime under the nails.

A mirror.

Rayhan staggered to his feet and found it, cracked and warped, leaning against the far wall. He saw someone else. Dark curls matted with sweat. Eyes sunken, violet in hue. Cheekbones sharp like blades.

Not Rayhan.

Kiran.

A name—someone else's—rose to the surface of his mind like a corpse bobbing in black water.

"No," he whispered. "No, no, this isn't—"

But it was. He knew the name. He knew the world.

Penjinak Iblis.

He had read the novel five times. A cult dark fantasy, beloved for its brutal lore, soul-binding contracts, and its protagonist: Leon, the chosen Beastmaster. But Kiran wasn't the hero.

Kiran was nothing.

Just a servant in a backwater inn. A stepping stone. An NPC.

In chapter three, Leon would pass through this inn. Kiran would help him, offer a cryptic clue about the local Beast activity, and then die in an attack by corrupted creatures—slaughtered to drive Leon forward on his hero's journey.

Rayhan—no, Kiran—collapsed into a chair by the empty hearth. The cold bit into his bones. His breath steamed in the air.

Was this death?

Was he dreaming?

No.

He felt every creak of the wooden chair, every sting of his cracked lip. The pain was real. The hunger clawing his gut was real. The stench of the dying fire was real.

And the Beasts were real.

He heard it now: the snarl outside the walls. The faint, rhythmic beat of something huge circling the town. Not just a monster. A Beast—spiritual, savage, and tethered to the human soul.

His heart pounded.

The door burst open.

Kiran spun around. A girl—maybe sixteen—stood there, drenched in sleet and blood. Her left eye was missing. Something black and serpentine coiled around her arm, whispering in a language that felt like blades dragging across bone.

"Don't just stand there, idiot," she snapped. "Get the chains. It's slipping control."

Kiran hesitated.

She snarled. The serpent on her arm snapped toward him, eyes flaring white.

He moved.

He didn't remember where the chains were kept, but his body did. His memories—Kiran's memories—were settling into his skull like dust. Muscle memory pulled him toward the cellar, where the iron tools of subduing Beasts were kept.

The girl didn't speak as she lashed the thrashing creature to a post, her arm twitching with every violent jerk of the thing.

Beasts were supposed to be majestic. Bound through ceremony, through mutual recognition of soul.

This was something else.

It bled black ichor.

It screamed when she whispered.

He felt sick.

When it was done, she turned to him and spat, "You've seen too much. What's your name?"

Kiran hesitated. "...Kiran."

Her head tilted. That single, intact eye glowed faintly red.

"Kiran? Huh. You're supposed to die soon."

His stomach twisted.

She walked past him without another word, leaving wet footprints that hissed into steam as they dried.

He tried to sleep that night, curled in straw that stank of rot. Memories—his and not-his—drifted in and out. Rayhan's life in the real world—commuting, his mother's face, the novels he devoured—and Kiran's life here, in this damp inn on the edge of nowhere.

He remembered the next event: Leon would arrive in two days.

The attack would come in three.

And he would die.

Unless…

The next morning, Kiran walked through the market, hood low, eyes scanning. He looked for it—the forbidden thing. The shard of deviation. The creature the novel barely mentioned.

A shadow Beast.

They weren't part of the core lore. A one-line footnote in the appendix. Beasts born not from the soul, but from void. Pure hunger.

He saw it near the well.

A shape no one else noticed. Too dark. Too still. It stared back.

When he blinked, it was gone.

He kept walking.

That night, he stood at the edge of the woods.

"Come out," he whispered.

Nothing.

"I know what you are. I know what you can do."

The wind screamed.

"I want to make a pact."

He bled into the snow. A shallow cut across the palm. An offering.

"Not from power. From fear. I don't want to die."

Something moved.

A voice answered—not in words, but in hunger.

You're not supposed to do this.

"I don't care."

You will break the world.

"Then let it break."

The binding ritual was nothing like what the books described. No circle. No incantations. Just a black tendril reaching into his chest, threading through his soul like a needle through silk.

Pain like he'd never known.

Kiran screamed, and the forest screamed with him.

When he woke, he wasn't alone.

The shadow followed him now, always just outside the corner of his eye.

He could hear its breath. Feel its weight.

They were bound.

And something else had changed.

He could feel the others. The Beasts. Their pain. Their rage. Their lies.

The girl with the missing eye returned the next evening.

She wasn't alone.

Beside her stood a woman in a black cloak, face veiled, voice too calm.

"I know what you did," the woman said. "I felt the distortion."

Kiran didn't speak.

"I come from the future of this world," she continued. "And I'm here to tell you: you were never meant to survive. You're off-script."

He stepped back. The shadow flared behind him.

She reached up and removed her veil.

Kiran's breath caught.

Her face was his.

But older. Broken. Eyes pitch black.

"I'm you," she whispered.

"And I failed."