Prologue: The Past That Felt So Distant
* * *
In a stark and sterile underground laboratory lies concealed from the world, shrouded by jungles, nestled among hills and mountains where birds sing, signing the no tale to the masked secret.
The walls were a blinding white, almost excessively pristine, reflecting the fluorescent lights that hummed above. The air carries a cold, clinical quality, permeated by the faint hum of machinery and the sporadic beeps of monitors.
Rows of metal tables and glass enclosures line the room, each one meticulously organized with various scientific instruments and medical equipment.
In a brightly lit room adjacent to the hallway, researchers in pristine white lab coats moved around as they were engrossed in their tasks, eyes fixed on the screens displaying complex data streams and charts.
Their faces were obscured by masks and goggles, adding an impersonal, almost robotic air to their demeanor. Some were hunched over microscopes, meticulously examining samples. While the others typed furiously on their keyboards as they diligently inputted and analyzed data.
The room buzzed with the soft murmur of scientific jargon. Papers and files, filled with cryptic notes and diagrams, were scattered across desks.
Despite the chaos, there was an unsettling efficiency to their movements. Every action was part of a well-rehearsed routine.
The researchers communicated in hushed tones, punctuated by the occasional beeps of machines or the rustle of their papers. Their focus was unwavering, driven by a cold, clinical determination to achieve their mysterious objectives.
Regardless.
Of what it cost.
* * *
In a stark, white-walled room, an eleven-year-old boy lay bound to a bed.
Steel shackles and weathered leather straps wove around his small frame, a cruel web of confinement. Bruises marred his wrists—red, raw evidence of his struggle—but in a surreal twist, the angry hue slowly faded, sinking beneath his skin, as though some unseen force had drained it away, leaving behind only pale flesh.
His long, black hair spilled down his back like a dark cascade against the sterile surroundings. Clad in a simple white hospital gown, he stared at the ceiling with vacant emerald eyes—empty pools reflecting a world too distant to grasp.
Beside him, a machine hummed softly, steady and indifferent. Its mechanical arm moved with calculated precision, piercing his arm with a needle.
A shimmering purple liquid seeped into his veins.
Then, agony struck.
His body convulsed, wracked by violent tremors, as though gripped by an unseen tempest. Pain twisted his face into a distorted grimace.
Dark veins—twisted, writhing roots—spread from the injection site, crawling up his arm, coiling around his neck, stretching toward his heart.
In that dream-like state, time unraveled. He drifted into a space without shape, without meaning.
And then came the whispers—faint, elusive murmurs brushing against the edges of his mind, pulling him deeper into the abyss.
Blurry images flickered before his eyes, fragments of conversations and scenes from a past he could not fully grasp, memories that felt familiar and foreign.
They might be his―they might not be.
For thirty excruciating minutes, his body shuddered in relentless torment. Then, gradually, the tremors waned, fading into silence. His breath came in slow, shallow rises and falls—the only sign that life still clung to him.
For now, he had once again survived this test.
But the battle within him was far from over.
A freezing weight pressed into his chest—like a ball of ice, burning within his heart. Sharp, darting pain struck without warning, unpredictable in its cruelty.
And it always happened this way.
There was no relief. No remedy. Only endurance.
He had learned to bear it, as he always had.
An hour, if he was lucky.
* * *
While in another place.
In the dimly lit corridor of the underground laboratory, the air was damp, chilled, laced with an eerie stillness. A guard shoved a girl forward, forcing her into a room.
Left with no choice, she moved; her footsteps resonated ominously off the concrete walls.
Beyond her, the scene mirrored itself—other children dragged into similar rooms, thrust inside with equal harshness.
Their wrists bore heavy, unique metal handcuffs, while collars wrapped around their necks, pulsing with ominous red lights.
Blindfolds veiled their vision, plunging them into disorientation.
Within these chambers, the children faced wolves, each one twice the size of an ordinary beast—feral, monstrous, their low growls pressing against the stifling silence.
Chains restrained their hunger, their barely contained madness.
Their fur, light gray and matted with filth, bore a spine-chilling tapestry of scars and crude stitches, an unsettling sight that radiated menace and decay.
Then, with a sharp click, the children's collars powered down. The lights extinguished.
A metallic clank.
It dropped to the floor.
A grinding noise rang out as the handcuffs unlocked, the metal restraints slithering off their wrists.
Calmly, the children removed their blindfolds.
Their eyes, sharp and strangely unnatural, betrayed no innocence—only wariness. They surveyed the creatures before them. A battle they had to win. A looming threat they needed to eliminate.
A shrill tone blared through the chambers.
Followed shortly by a mechanical voice announcing to the children that their time had finally come. It was their test to see if they would survive this obstacle―or not.
This challenge was meant to prove their worth to the organization, or they could only struggle to escape, clawing out of the misery from a gorge designated for those of no use and of no value.
However, saying that they would claw their way out in itself was an overstatement, as no one had ever survived if they ever lost in this trial.
"The fourth additional test on June 13, 2993, batch of 137 group A has officially begun."
Chains hit the ground.
The wolves resumed their growls, tails stiff, bodies taut, poised to strike at their presumed prey.
It had been too long since they were last fed.
And the children before them were the perfect meal.
*Groar*
*Rawr*
Saliva pooled beneath their snarling jaws, dripping between the gleam of sharpened fangs.
Claws scraped against the floor, producing a chilling metallic screech. Then, they lunged.
In a frenzied explosion of movement, the lab erupted into chaos—primal roars, desperate cries, the clash of bodies locked in combat.
The children, altered by the experiments―fought back.
Their breaths came in ragged bursts, punctuated by screams of pain and defiant shouts.
Heavy paws slammed against the ground.
Jaws snapped at empty air.
Bodies collided, striking with brutal force.
They fought with supernatural strength, desperate, savage, survival their only instinct.
*Huff. Huff. Huff.*
Amidst the turmoil, hearts thundered. It was a frantic rhythm, a testament to the life and death battle unfolding in the depths of the lab.
* * *
I had heard that, in the world of the living, there was a thing called luck… perhaps I wasn't so lucky after all, for all I bore then was the silence upon my memories, lost in the back rows of my mind.
-El's First Note-