Barely conscious, a young man lay sprawled in the mud, his vacant eyes fixed on the sky above.

It wasn't raining, even though dark clouds blanketed the heavens. Yet the faint patter of dripping water echoing near his ear tricked his senses into believing he was caught in a downpour.

He had awakened a few minutes earlier when his body struck the ground, but despite the pain, he hadn't made a sound.

He breathed with difficulty, exhausted and wounded, unable to move.

Furthermore, he could feel his blood flowing out of him, taking his life with it.

Shadows fell around him like heavy sacks, and each dull thud as they hit the ground sent a small shudder through his body. Even so, he remained perfectly silent, knowing his life depended on it.

His mind felt empty, numb, as though it had severed itself from reality to protect him. All he could see was the overcast sky through the mouth of the pit where he lay.

Hours passed, and every sound faded away. The only thing he could hear was the dripping, growing less frequent with time.

He had no idea how many hours had gone by, but day had given way to night. Then night gave way to another day.

Just a couple of hours after sunrise, the rain finally began to fall, and the cold drops striking his face fully woke him.

He could barely remember how he had ended up there. He was lucky he still remembered that his name was Izan.

"Where am I? Why does it hurt so much?" he whispered.

Only silence answered him.

With great effort, he raised his right hand toward the sky and stared at it as though it belonged to someone else.

His hand was stained crimson with blood, mixed with mud that the steadily intensifying rain was slowly washing away.

The sight stirred fragmented memories that gradually began to fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

"My grandmother always told me Izan means steadfast and strong," he murmured to himself. "That's why I had to live up to my name."

A bitter laugh escaped his lips, only to vanish as tears filled his eyes.

"What a joke!" he shouted. "Strong? Steadfast? Bullshit!"

His arm fell limply to the ground, cushioned by something soft, and he immediately broke into inconsolable sobs.

"Strong? Me?" he muttered bitterly. "I'm nothing but a coward!"

With tremendous effort, he managed to sit up, finally seeing the faces of the corpses surrounding him.

"Are you watching me, Grandma?" he screamed at the sky. "I'm a coward who hid and let all my friends die!"

Izan was the only one still alive among the twenty bodies piled inside the deep pit.

Rainwater slowly began to collect around them, while the young man shivered from the cold, fear, and frustration.

When he finally regained enough strength to move, he tried to stand, but his legs cracked beneath him, sending unimaginable pain through his body.

He rolled up his pant leg to inspect the injuries and found both legs swollen and covered in bruises. He didn't need to be an expert to know they were broken.

"In the end... it was all for nothing," he thought. "I'm alone, wounded, and there's no way out." He let out a shaky sigh, his eyes damp with tears. "If I'd fought back, at least I would've died quickly."

Both his body and his spirit had surrendered. Knowing the inevitable end awaiting him, he decided it would be better to take his own life than to die slowly from hunger, drowning, or infection.

He searched the pit until he spotted a dagger sheathed at the waist of one of the corpses.

It was several meters away, so, filled with determination, he dragged himself through the mud despite the agony.

Among the dead, he recognized familiar faces.

Faces twisted by agonizing deaths.

They were his university classmates.

"Why did we have to come to this damned world?" he said through clenched teeth.

He struggled forward until he finally reached the body.

The pain was so unbearable that he longed to bring everything to an end.

His trembling hands managed to pull the dagger from its sheath.

For a brief moment, he looked at the person who had once been part of his life, but he couldn't bring himself to look at the face, afraid of confirming what he already suspected.

The long brown hair, tied in a loosened ponytail, was all the evidence he needed.

He looked away.

He swallowed.

Furthermore, he tightened his grip on the dagger and aimed it at his throat.

After hesitating, he lowered it to his chest, where his heart should be.

Then he looked at his wrists and considered cutting his veins instead.

But the fear and indecision refused to leave him.

Where would it hurt the least?

Which would be the fastest?

What if fear made him fail and only left him suffering even more?

Those questions raced endlessly through Izan's mind.

"I'm so scared... I can't even bring myself to end my own misery," he said before breaking down in tears once more.

The rainwater had gathered into a wide puddle roughly three centimeters deep, covering the entire floor of the pit, though the rain itself had already stopped.

The last of his strength finally gave out.

He collapsed onto his back and lost consciousness.

He slept for another ten hours before a sharp pain in his stomach woke him.

Ravenous hunger.

There was still some daylight outside, but down in the pit, everything remained shrouded in darkness.

He forced himself to sit up again, pain shooting through his broken legs as the icy water pooled beneath him, chilling his body. Lost in thought, his lifeless eyes settled on the cold body of the girl who had once been his closest friend.

Although her face was buried in the mud, he knew exactly who she was. He simply couldn't bring himself to look at her, as though avoiding her face would let him cling to hope a little longer.

But the urge to see Clara's face one last time proved stronger.

With great difficulty, he turned her body over and revealed the face of his dearest friend.

Clara had died with a strangely peaceful expression. Though her abdomen had been pierced by a spear, she had accepted her fate in her final moments, breathing out the last breath of her radiant life.

Seeing her in the fading daylight, Izan didn't cry.

He couldn't anymore.

There wasn't enough water left in his body to waste on tears. Dehydration had dried not only his eyes, but also his lips and mouth, which felt as though they were filled with sand.

"Whenever life became difficult, you were always there," he said.

He gently caressed his friend's face. Cold as his fingers were, Clara's skin was colder still.

Looking at her peaceful expression, he remembered one of the darkest moments of his own life.

When Izan was fifteen, his mother died from an unexpected cancer that had gone undetected until it was too late.

His father's emotional distance, combined with having to face that loss alone, had driven him to make many terrible decisions. The worst of them was seriously considering taking his own life.

Even so, one small event had given him the strength to face his pain and keep moving forward.

It was a sunny afternoon, two months after his mother's death, when his best friend Clara had practically dragged him to the park.

They talked for hours that day. Clara did most of the talking, but one thing she said stayed with him forever—and now, in this moment of despair, he remembered her words with perfect clarity.

"Look at the sky. Look at the people laughing. Look at the green trees. Look at the flowers in the park." She smiled. "It's a beautiful day. But you're so busy drowning in things that can't be changed that you're missing all of this."

Izan looked at her without answering, and she continued.

"Life is beautiful, and it's worth living. Sure, terrible things happen. Of course there are experiences nobody should have to go through. But life is full of possibilities, full of choices, full of moments. It's not worth staying trapped in the bad ones."

"Maybe you're right."

"Maybe?" she replied with a laugh. "There's no 'maybe.' Of course I'm right."

Then she turned toward him and grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Promise me something, Iza. Promise me you'll hold on to life." She looked him straight in the eyes. "You matter to me too, dummy. I don't want anything to happen to you, and I don't want you to give up on living just because some bad things happened."

"I don't know if I can promise something like that..."

"Promise me!"

"I promise..."

Izan returned to the cruel reality before him.

Looking into Clara's face once more, he whispered,

"Yes, Clara... I promise. Even though it's harder now than ever."

His eyes drifted to the murky brown water filling the pit. He instinctively tried to swallow, only to realize there was no saliva left.

Determined to stay alive, he leaned down and drank the filthy water.

He had never tasted anything so disgusting.

It was sour, and nauseating, with an overpowering taste of earth.

Even so, he drank until his thirst was gone, forcing himself not to vomit.

Then he lay back down beside Clara's body.

The stench, the pain, the hunger, and the cold were intense enough to keep any ordinary person awake.

But Izan closed his eyes, imagined himself somewhere far away from that place, and fell asleep once again.

The only thing working in his favor was the weather. Though the sky remained overcast and rain often fell, the climate itself was fairly warm. The icy puddle numbed his body, but not enough to cause hypothermia.

And so the days passed.

Barely surviving, surrounded by corpses that slowly began to rot.

During the day, the growing heat evaporated the standing water, raising the humidity and accelerating decomposition.

At night, the cold froze his blood, wrapping everything around him in darkness.

Even so, the worst part was the silence.

An oppressive silence.

He tried to break it by talking to himself or humming the songs he could still remember, but with each passing day, he felt himself slipping closer to madness.

He slept whenever he could, barely moved at all, and avoided looking directly at the corpses.

During the first few days, the smell of death destroyed any appetite he had.

But as time passed, he could no longer resist the instinct to eat.

Desperation...

Madness...

In the end, both consumed him.

On the final day, a single memory kept repeating itself in his mind.

Some time after he had recovered from the depression caused by his mother's death, Izan and Clara had joked about that conversation in the park.

"You were so dramatic," he teased. "You said something like, 'Hold on to life,' didn't you?"

"I was," she shot back. "You should've seen your face. You looked like a zombie." She shrugged. "Besides, I meant every word."

"Oh yeah? But how far are you supposed to take that?" he wondered. "Like... if I lost both my arms and legs, living would be pretty awful."

"Well, sure," she replied with a wink, "but you could still watch movies and TV shows."

"Hmm... I'm not convinced. But yeah, I guess that's what I'd do."

Then Izan remembered something and gave her a mischievous grin.

"What if something like that famous plane crash happened to me? You know, the one they made movies about. The Uruguayans who crashed in the Andes and had to eat the people who died."

"I know exactly where you're going with this," Clara grumbled, slightly annoyed. "But yes, Iza. I mean situations like that too. If you were in their place... why wouldn't you do the same thing they did?"

Izan laughed but nodded in agreement.

"Even if I die before you do, and you end up in a situation like that, I give you permission to eat my body," Clara declared proudly. "That'll show you I'm serious about wanting you to stay alive."

"Ugh, gross," he joked. "Though... if I really had no other choice..."

Izan looked once more at Clara's lifeless body as his stomach begged for food.

He picked up the dagger.

Repeating Clara's words to himself over and over, he sliced through her skin and cut away a piece of flesh.

He stared at it for a moment before making his final decision.

"I promised."

He desperately devoured the raw flesh from Clara's body. The taste was revolting, but he didn't care. He simply kept eating.

When he finally did stop, he had no time to dwell on what he had done.

A violent impact struck inside his head.

It felt as though it had come from deep within his own brain.

The world spun around him, but he managed to stay upright.

Then another impact came.

This one was stronger.

He collapsed into the mud, clutching his head as though it were about to split apart.

Izan had no idea what he was experiencing.

Had he known, he would have understood that, in this world, he had awakened a heretical ability.

A forgotten and a forbidden ability.

By consuming Clara's flesh, he had not only eaten part of her body.

He had devoured her soul as well.

And with it...

All of her memories.

Memories that were now merging with his own.

That day, Izan became a Soul Weaver.