Chapter 1: Introduction

A story by angel_levi

RETURN OF RYLIN HAN

The smell was choking, but he withstood it. He kept telling himself that this was the final stage for him to attain his freedom.

Nine hundred years in this limbo was enough to rip his soul and tear what was left of his sanity, but he was a force to be reckoned with.

His sight began to dance in a daze of utter confusion, and his breath was locked in his throat, burning painfully through his soul. How many more minutes, seconds, or even years would he have to wait to return to the world that abandoned him?

How many more lives would he have to sit by and watch to die before he is allowed to return in a body, to live like he used to, and to bring back his people from the lost world?

As his consciousness dwindled, and he struggled to keep his eyes awake, the voices started to whisper to him.

The incense burned, and the smell worked into every pore of his body, killing him so he could rise again.

"Chang Ryu." He kept muttering to himself. He never wanted to forget that name because he swore that even if it took him a billion years to return to the realm of mortals, he will find Chang Ryu.

And he will kill him in the most painful ways.

***

"...there's a condition for your return." The voice told him in the sultriest whisper. He struggled to stay awake, he fought to hear what the condition was.

"Chang Ryu." He muttered again in his deliria. It will be a huge loss if he forgot the name and the face of the murderer, betrayer, psychotic sadistic bastard who committed the worse of treasons.

"...for humans to live, and for humans to die..." The words of the whispering voice broke into bits, rendering the meaning useless.

But, he had to know these words by heart because they will be the guidelines for his new existence.

Rylin Han's struggled some more to stay awake, but it was difficult. The smell of the incense had taken over his soul and what was left, lying on the cold concrete floor was nothing but the carcass of the spirit who was locked in limbo for nine hundred years.

***

His eyes opened.

He wasn't sure what era he had come to - was it a frame from his past, or a frame way into the future?

He rose from his lying position and looked around. The atmosphere looked very different from what he used to know.

There was a sterile smell in the atmosphere, and several wires ran into his veins. He looked around, and there was a very large beeping machine in a corner.

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Everything seemed so foreign.

Not sure of what this new world is, Rylin Han jumped to his feet and yanked the tubes from his veins. A strange overwhelming pain shot up his arms, and he was consumed by weakness.

The initial puzzlement was replaced with a broader scope of confusion, and he realized that he might be stuck in another limbo - a limbo where nothing was real.

He stumbled out of the sterile room into long corridors, wondering if the gods that brought him here had done this on purpose to haunt him. This was his punishment for leaving his world too early and in the hands of...

There was a name he wanted to remember, but couldn't.

Why did it feel like he was forgetting something, someone… As he raced down the corridor of strangely built walls, his mind became fragmented, snapping into bits like a dry twig.

'Where am I?' He asked himself.

The questions soon transcended from where to what... To who.

"Who am I?" He stopped in front of a glass wall, and the reflection that stared back at him was so shocking.

He was staring at the reflection of someone entirely different. The person that was staring back at him was a man, probably in his mid or late twenties, with short black hair, brown eyes, with rimmed lenses sitting at the edge of his nose. The reflection that stared back at him didn't look scared like he felt. The reflection seemed angry, cold, and bitter, and there was a dark shadow that hovered over his shoulders. The slender frame of the reflection felt bigger and stronger than he was.

"What am I?" He asked himself, not intending an answer. He looked around again, and there was no one around, just this reflection staring back at him in the most condescending way - like a fellow comrade that had seen years of endless pain and suffering.

"You are death." The reflection spoke back, sending a ripple of fear throughout his system. Rylin fell back on his bottom and skidded away from the reflection, but somehow kept his eyes on it because there were so many unanswered questions.

Death?

How could that be? How could he be dead if he was alive?

"You are not one of them. You are not a mortal until you finish your mission." His reflection said to him.

But what mission? His mind was fragmented into bits, and he didn't know what or what not to believe. With each second he lived, he seemed to be forgetting his roots, the entirety of the pain and suffering he spent waiting for a chance to get out of the limbo.

Why was he forgetting?

As he struggled with his mind, a voice reached him. He turned around, and there was someone, a man, looking at him with wide eyes. "You should be off your feet."  The man said. He was dressed in a white garment and had a name tag; Chang Ryu.

Rylin felt nothing at all. To him, this was a usual occurrence - two random men meeting even though a part of the encounter left shivers down his spine; he blamed it on his fragmented mind.

Rylin was silent. He had a lot of questions, but if the gods that sent him here broke his memory into a puzzle, he'd have to find a way to fix it.

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