“It’s not you, Al, it’s me,” her words stabbed Al in the heart. She didn’t wait for a reply as the blonde hair lady turned and left without looking back. Al couldn’t say a word as he stood there and stared like an oaf, thinking that this was all a bad dream. His heart ached as he clenched his clothes on his left chest, grabbing the flesh underneath. Yet the great ache in his heart offset the pain of the flesh. He stared at his ex-girlfriend as she left him for good. His heart yearned to call out to her name, but he couldn’t. He knew there was no chance of getting her back, not after she said she needed time a week ago.

The blonde hair vanished in between the sea of people, a sign it was really over. Al hung his head down with his empty eyes staring at the stained sidewalk. It was a shitty day for him, and it was about to get worse.

[Your heartbreak amuse the Forgotten Constellation. For making it smile, it gave you a gift before your irrevocable departure.]

Glowing obsidian purple letters floated in front of him, turning those empty eyes into frowning balls of shocked and curiosity. Yet rather than a gift, the word departure hooked him right from the start. “Departure? What does it mean by—”

Everything stopped. From his voice, his body, down to every people in the whole block. The only thing that could move was his eyeballs, scanning the maximum range of his vision, and to his growing anxiety, he was stuck in suspended animation.

[Alduin Lightfoot, you have been chosen as the 1st batch.]

Different from before, the letters were blue and accompanied by a robotic voice that was neither he or she. Then his vision started to warp, spiraling as if the world itself was collapsing. A second later, he was gone from the sidewalk. Pedestrians started moving again, oblivious to what occur to someone that might have bumped shoulders with them a second ago. Yet, a kid happened to see it all.

“Mom, a man just disappeared,” said the kid. The mother shrugged it off, dragging the kid away, burying the only witness to something that will happened more frequent in the near future.

* * *

A piercing hysterical scream shattered through the air, jolting Al to open his eyes. His gaze raced over the source of desperation, but the darkness blinded him. There was barely any light from the moons above, shielded by the heavy clouds. He could barely see a few feet in front of him and rather than his sight, his ears caught the murmurs around him.

“What’s going on? Where am I?” someone said, trembling.

“Shit, is this a prank?” another sounded annoyed.

“Mom? Dad?” a child calling for their parents.

“The hell is going on here! I’m already late for my fucking interview!” And some of the oblivious didn’t know what just hit them.

Silhouettes of people around him counted more than a dozen and if he could see better he had no doubt there would be more than just a dozen.

“The blue text,” he reminded himself. Remembering the last thing he saw before coming here. “Didn’t it say something about being in the first batch or something?”

“Hey, did you say blue text?” a voice came from Al’s side. He felt a hand grabbed him by the shoulder as he turned and met a stranger’s eyes. By chance, the clouds floated away, letting the moonlight graced upon the stranger’s visage. His blue eyes pierced right at Al as it reminded of him of someone. Again, his heart ached.

“Hey!” the stranger with blue eyes shook Al by the shoulder. Breaking Al from his untimely trip to bad memory lane. “Did you really see a floating blue text?” the stranger asked.

Al shrugged the stranger’s hand off from his shoulder, and looked back at those blue eyes. “Yea, I did,” Al said. “And I’ve a hunch every one of us here saw the same thing.”

“Fuck,” the stranger cursed. Resting his hands on his waist.

Al looked around, and noticed a few people coming together to where he was. Up above, the clouds weren’t playing nice. They rolled over, blocking again the only source of light for those stuck in the middle of the woods.

“Hi, did one of you say something about blue text?” said a man and judging by the outline over his eyes, he was probably wearing glasses.

“Yea, we did,” the stranger said. He with his wide shoulders came closer to the glasses man and shared a few words. At the same time, Al tuned out from the conversation. His mind dug deep in figuring out what was going on as whatever just happened definitely had something in-store for him and the people around him.

Al took a quick scan around him. From the brief turn, he was a hundred percent sure he was out in the middle of a forest. Where ever he looked, tall narrow outlines surrounded him at all angle as he noticed they were stranded in the middle of a clearing as if they were meant to be here.

This can’t be the afterlife, can it? He questioned. Nothing made sense right now and perhaps death was the easiest answer he could come up with. But to be fair, those texts again haunted his mind as his gut feeling told him he was far from being dead, and perhaps death was lurking right around the corner.

By chance, his wandering gaze found something near the treetop on one of the shadowy trees. It felt out of place really. The outline of the top-part differed greatly from the rest of the trees around it as if something was perching at the top. Then, a blob of red emerged from the darkness.

Al narrowed his eyes, staring at that redness in the sea of black. Right in that moment, something blocked his view. The blue text came again and before he could be surprise, the thing he read made him shuddered.

[Your genuine gaze of curiosity brought forth a new skill in your arsenal. You have gained Identify.]

[One-Eye Nightraven. Level ???. Bird of prey of the night. They stalk their prey under the cover of the darkness, and despite only having one-eye, their thermal vision give them an edge in hunting.]

Al’s heart quickened. His fight or flight system kicked in as he turned and ran to the opposite end. But something managed to grab him first. He turned with eyes wide, and saw who was it.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” the stranger with blue-eyes asked. His grip was tight and strong, not letting any chance of Al to go for a mad dash.

“We need to run,” Al said, fidgeting in place. His eyes drawn back to that exact treetop, and boy if his eyes could grow wider he would have by now. Al forced his hand off from the grip of this blue-eye stranger. Glaring at the man.

“Why?” the stranger asked, knitting his eyebrows.

But before Al could answer, a huge shadow fall from the sky. He saw it a second too late as what came after was the silence before the storm. All eyes were on the shadow that towered over them. Heads craned up, gawking as the plea of someone asking for help underneath the shadow was left unheard. All of them witnessed the reddish eye that glowed brighter within the black background.

Al and a few quick wit others let their flight instinct took over and ran towards the closest tree line. The moment he did, a shrieking hysterical scream broke through the empty night as all hell broke loose. People scattered like ants as the shadow picked its menu, stabbing its sharp beak at whoever it fancied.

Al ran and reached the tree line along with a few quick sprinters. They ran past him a few seconds ago, vanishing into the darkness of the wood as he took a good look at what was happening. Again, the clouds were being pleasant. They rolled over and moonlight descended on the chaos.

People ran. But against a creature with that size and that speed, no human could escape its beak. Al saw it firsthand, a fleeing woman being stabbed right from the back as a beak punched a hole right through the woman like she was a cotton doll. Her scream registered in his ears as it dwindled slowly into silence. The One-Eye Nightraven threw the corpse in the air before swallowing her whole down its throat.

Al swallowed a mouthful as his new reality greeted him with the worse way possible. He tore his eyes away from the bloody scene and fled further into the unknown woods.

A bit far into the woods, Al hunched down, catching a breather. His chest heaved for air while his eyes couldn’t stop looking around the darkness around him, wary of what might lurk within those shadows. He found himself a shrub, and hid underneath. Crouching as close to the ground as possible, making himself as small as he could. It wasn’t intended but he just felt safe doing so.

Soon, silence accompanied him. There was no shrieks or screams and no people dying, but that might not be far from happening. Al shook those thoughts away as he reminded himself of something else. The blond hair and blue eyes came to mind, and his ex-girlfriend wasn’t making his mental state any better. Then he remembered those mocking texts that warned of his arrival here.

If my memories still isn’t shit then I think it said something about a gift. The question right now was, what was it? And was it useful to him right now? Al recalled the text about the killer bird detailing something that involved level, and it dawned something on him. It can’t be, can it?

A slight thought of something impossible came to reality.

Name: Alduin Lightfoot

Level: 1

Class: -Please choose your class-

Strength: 5

Stamina: 5

Regeneration: 6

Dexterity: 5

Agility: 5

Perception: 7

Intelligence: 7

Wisdom: 6

Charisma: 4

Stat Points: 0

Unique Ability: Curse of Solo

Skills: None

For a second, he had a surprised look before returning back to normalcy. He read through everything from top to bottom, getting the gist of his status. Yet going down, he found the gift he was searching for, and for something regarded as a gift, the sounds of it were rather unsettling.

Curse of Solo? He narrowed his eyes. Tilting his head to the side. By chance, a new text opened up, revealing what this gift really was.

[Curse of Solo; Gift from an unknown Constellation. Heightened experience gained by 5 times. Skill effectiveness increased by 3 times. Loot quality dropping increased by 2 times. Additional 1 stat point after each new level. Access to private 10-slot dimensional storage. *Warning* The effect of the curse would be annulled if a human is within the proximity of a hundred meter(Off).]

The blessings were too good to be true. Yet down the line he noticed a sentence of very small words that he even needed to squint to read through them. What’s this? He asked, reading the header which said, warning. A second later, he frowned. The fuck is this?

The moment he questioned the gift, he heard a scream passed beside him from the side. Peeking in between the leaves, someone was running away, and it wasn’t a good sign.

The ground beneath him thumped as a huge silhouette ran right across his eyes, chasing after the fleeing man. He covered his mouth and nose, lessening the chance of being heard. At the far distance, the shrill scream of a dying man faded slowly until silence returned once more.

Al waited, and waited. Hiding under a bush with his life depending on it. But out of nowhere, something grabbed him by the ankle, and his heart dropped.