In a dark corridor, the only sound that could be heard was the heavy drumming of boots hitting the hardwood floor. If one looked down the corridor, they would be able make out the vague silhouettes of men in riot gear and the rifles in their hands. The hinges on a door were blasted clean off and then a black boot delivered the final blow, throwing the door to the ground and sending a heap of dust into the air. The thick beam of a flashlight entered first, followed by five men walking on pins and needles. After they swept their eyes around every inch of the room, the five men grimaced. They were in a small and simple bedroom without even a closet or bathroom beside it. There were signs of life, such as a glass of water by the bedside and clothes in the dresser, but it looked like no one had visited in days.

“Fuck! I knew he’d been too quiet recently.”

“Could it be a fake?”

“How do you fake that?”

“I’ve seen hoaxes done online.”

“Well it’s right in front of us. Do you see some fancy projector or some shit?”

“If only the evidence was processed earlier and we got that warrant, we could’ve…”

“Then he would have been spirited away in his jail cell. It hardly makes a difference.”

Four of the men bickered while one turned away and slammed his fist into a wall. The other four looked at him, startled.

One of the men leaned towards another and whispered, “What’s with Raphael?”

“His brother got spirited away yesterday.”

“I…I can’t believe he’s in the same place as that scumbag!” The fifth man roared, banging on the wall again.

“He might not be. What was your brother’s index number?”

“BEF-3-25.”

“Then we can only pray that BEF-3-25 is the index for heaven, while CFD-1-35 is the lowest pit of hell.”

Five pairs of eyes fell on the bed at the center of the room. There, ethereal silver and grey lines swirled like schooling fish. These thin lines were fading and would likely vanish completely in a day or two. Enshrouded within them was a series of numbers and letters floating atop the bed like it was the most natural thing in the world. They were the only clue anyone had to this mysterious phenomenon and these ones read ‘CFD-1-35’.

---

The crowd cheered as the echo of the band’s final flourish faded. Drops of sweat dripped onto the stage, but the young man standing at the center of it all couldn’t register any exhaustion. Clad in tight leather, his long blonde hair waved as he raised a clenched fist and sent the crowd into another frenzy.

“Everyone!” His melodious voice swept through the stadium. “We’ve been having some tough times. I know this. You know this. The past six months, I don’t know what this world is anymore, man.”

The cheers continued, but there was an unmistakable air of anxiety in the stadium now.

“People keep disappearing. A few months ago it was a friend of a friend. A few weeks ago it was my bro Jessie. Yesterday…”

The man paused and the crowd fell silent. The lights seemed to dim as everyone heard a sob be choked back through the speakers.

“Yesterday it was my mum.” The man admitted.

Silence returned and the man’s bravado started to vanish like a dying flame. Then, he stomped the ground and suddenly flared up again.

“But I’m gonna’ keep singing! We humans, if we’ve learned anything in the past six months, it’s that we don’t know this world as well as we thought we did. I’m not a genius, I’m not going to solve this mystery. Since I can’t, I’m just going to sing until it’s my turn! And you can bet I’m gonna’ keep singing on the other side too!”

Cheers rumbled through the stadium like booming thunder. The man closed his eyes and felt the insanity and fear hidden beneath those voices. He felt like a raft being clawed at by a throng of desperate survivors. With his wide view, he saw someone in the back of the crowd burst into countless silver and grey lines that encircled a few numbers and letters.

The man on stage laughed. The tinge of insanity in his voice mixed perfectly with the crowd.

---

“Are we there yet?”

“No!” Two high pitched voices shot back.

“Almost.” A deeper voice muttered.

A sleek black car drove along an empty dirt road. Its occupants, a young boy, two girls and a husband and wife, collectively gazed at the shabby buildings that peeked over the horizon.

“I don’t want to spend our vacation in the country.” One of the girls groaned.

“Oh really?” The deep voice sounded. “You should have told me that earlier. Honey, look up the nearest airport and buy us some tickets to Hawaii instead.”

“Really?” The boy’s eyes sparkled.

“No.”

“We really should just blow all our money on a trip to Hawaii.” The other girl muttered. “Who knows when we’ll be spirited away?”

“That’s all the more reason to visit your grandma and grandpa in Red Town.” Their father chided.

Meanwhile, his wife turned back to look at her kids. A clear look of worry flashed in her gaze. Her husband saw it and took a hand off the wheel to pat her shoulder.

“Relax. It’s been six months and smarter people than us have been running the numbers. How many people have actually gone missing? Zero-point-zero-one percent. Not one percent, but a hundredth of a percent. 0.01% of the world’s population. It’ll take five years before we lose even 0.1%.”

The woman’s frown didn’t ease. “But what if…”

“What if we get struck by lightning or get mugged by some crackhead or our plane to Hawaii crashes?” The father shrugged. “Ultimately, the chance of it happening to us is so low that we don’t need to worry about it.”

The buildings on the horizon grew larger and larger until the sleek black car finally entered the rural town. Once they were in, the father found himself frowning. It was too quiet. After driving for ten minutes through the dusty streets, they hadn’t seen another driver or pedestrian. The car turned a corner and the passengers gasped. On the sidewalk ahead of them, there were several sets of silver and grey lines swirling around in the air. These lines were extremely faint and likely wouldn’t last the hour.

“T-The indexes…” The boy’s hoarse voice was like a pin dropping in a silent room.

“DS-3-52. They’re all the same.” His father finished his thought.

They drove for another half an hour but didn’t come across a single soul.

---

A set of double doors opened up and light spilled into a dimly lit corridor. Youthful murmurings followed that light, and soon the corridor was filled by a group of vivacious college students. They happily talked about this and that while stomping out of the basement floor of the lecture building. Most of them had just finished their final class of the day and were eager to spend their afternoon elsewhere.

Behind the main body of students that had already ascended the stairs, there were several stragglers. Three of these stragglers were walking at a moderate pace but they constantly stopped to glance backwards. When they did, a shit-eating grin could be seen on each of their faces.

“Don’t you all have somewhere to be?” A young man who was even further back scolded them.

“Don’t mind us~.” The three guys cackled.

Even as they reached the stairs, the three guys kept looking back and grinning before finally leaving the building and making themselves scarce. After that, there were only two stragglers left: that young man and a young woman.

“Um, don’t mind them.” The young man coughed. “Back in high school, when Donovan got a girlfriend, we did the same shit to him.”

“Hmm?” A pair of beautiful brown eyes opened wide while their owner cocked her head. “That’s a nice anecdote, Jayce, but I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

Jayce coughed again and the young woman’s bell-like laughter rang through the hall. She smirked and drew closer to him, taking his hand. The pair left the building and walked in the afternoon sun.

“Since it’s a nice day and we don’t have anything to do, why don’t we take a walk?”

“You don’t have anything to do.” Jayce shot back. “I have to send in a paper before midnight.”

“That’s hours away, and you’d stay up that late anyway.”

“Just walking around is a little…Should we go somewhere?”

“I don’t feel like going anywhere.”

“It’s hot. My hand will get sweaty. No, it’s already sweaty.”

“I don’t mind.”

The pair continued to walk, hand in hand. Jayce continued to offer weak excuses while his partner pulled him along. Eventually, they ended up in a park just outside of their campus. Sunlight filtered through the trees as they naturally came to a deserted path.

“Hmm, fine, I give up.” Jayce shook his head. “Let’s go for a walk.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Your friends warned me that you were incredibly stubborn, but you’re easier than I thought.”

“I’m not stubborn about everything.”

“Then…I’ll give you a gift. Good behavior must be rewarded.”

“Am I a dog?”

“Do you want a treat?” The young woman’s smirk grew wider as she pushed up against Jayce’s chest. “Close your eyes.”

Jayce glanced around and saw that they were alone.

“Emily…”

“Just close your eyes.”

Closing his eyes, Jayce waited. Three seconds of silence passed slowly. The following ten passed even slower. Confused, Jayce was about to open his eyes when he felt a pair of hands grip his belt buckle. Those small and soft hands deftly undid his buckle before moving onto his pants.

“What the fuck!?” Jayce shrieked, jumping back. When he collected himself, he saw Emily doubled over laughing.

“Ahahaha~ Your pitch rose so high. If anyone came, they’d think you were assaulting me.”

“That was a little…”

“Relax, it was just a joke. Even I’m not crazy enough to start something in broad daylight.”

“Then…If it was at night?”

Emily didn’t say anything, but her smirk remained as the proud centerpiece of her beautiful mien. Feigning annoyance, Jayce took a threatening step forward. Emily released a soft scream as she ran and hid behind a tree. Jayce chased her, only to nearly fall as his pants drooped dangerously low. He clicked his tongue when he realized she’d even undone his zipper.

“Emily, you really…” When he passed the tree that Emily hid behind, Jayce’s voice trailed off.

Silver and grey lights streaked around a set of floating numbers. This once impossible phenomenon hovered beside the tree, neither bending in the breeze nor stirring the dried leaves below. It was as if it was only an illusion layered on top of this world. Jayce’s jaw grew slack as his eyes naturally fell on the number within those silver and grey lines. CFD-1-35.

Information rushed into his brain, as if he could stop his present thoughts by recalling old ones. Six months ago, people started to vanish mysteriously all over the world. This phenomenon was known as being ‘spirited away’. The cause of the incident, means of the perpetrator and location of those missing people were a complete mystery. The only thing human society had to go on were the indexes that appeared when someone vanished. There were around thirty unique indexes that had been recorded and the most popular theory was that they corresponded to different worlds.

So far, no one who had vanished had ever returned.

Jayce was standing there dumbly, burning the index number into his mind, when a sudden feeling of vertigo assaulted him. His vision blacked out into a mess of silver and grey. For a moment, Jayce couldn’t feel his body or grasp his surroundings. Feelings of terror and excitement rose in his chest. He realized that he was being spirited away.

‘I can chase after her!’

Then, an index number flashed in his vision and his heart sank. He lost consciousness soon afterwards.

In the afternoon sun that seemed a bit colder after being filtered through the trees, two sets of silver and grey lines whirled about. Light from these lines shimmered and reflected off each other, but their orbits never intersected. Despite the lines, it was easy to see what they were covering. One set orbited the index CFD-1-35, while the other orbited BEF-3-25.

---

When Jayce regained consciousness, he realized that he was still standing. He could’ve believed that he’d simply dozed off for a moment, if not for the scene before him.

A blood red carpet sat below his feet, covering spotless marble tiles. Paintings and sculptures of unknown places and people decorated the periphery of the hall. Bright gems embedded into the golden ceiling filled the room with light. At the head of everything sat a grand throne of gold and onyx. There was a man sitting atop that throne. His skin was dark and rough, like he’d been charred in the flames of hell. He was clad in pointed obsidian armor with scales carved on it. Two black horns extended from his forehead while a thick, scaly tail coiled around his throne.

“That’s the last one.” His deep voice rumbled like falling rocks.

“Father, I don’t recognize this slave’s race.” A far more pleasant voice sounded out from the man’s side. Jayce turned his head and stared at its source, a young girl with long, enchanting black and gold hair and a matching dress.

“Human.” The deep voice spread through the hall. “Their race was connected to the Nexus around six months ago.”

“Ah!” The girl clapped her hands together and smiled. “I remember they have language, right? Doesn’t that mean they’re a high-ranking lifeform from the Lower Bound?”

“No. They’re only .”

Jayce’s ears buzzed as whatever force that was translating their words stalled for a moment. Apparently whatever that man had just said didn’t have a simple Earth equivalent.

“Seriously…” The girl sighed. “That’s as low as this summoning goes.”

“W-Where am I?” It took every shred of courage Jayce had to speak up in front of that terrifying armored man, but he finally managed it.

“Oh, so you can talk.” The girl nodded. “But be silent for now.”

Jayce tried to open his mouth again only to realize that it was clamped shut. Some invisible force was compelling him to follow the girl’s orders and stay silent.

Leaving her father’s side, the girl walked to the center of the throne room and swept her gaze around. It was only by following her eyes that Jayce noticed two other beings sitting quietly near him. One was a bizarre creature that looked like a cross between very meaty fern and a centipede while the other was a horse-sized dragon with blue feathers instead of scales. The girl looked at each of them appraisingly while her black-scaled tail swished back and forth.

“So these are my pawns. Compared to my siblings, my luck is decent. All of you, know that your master’s name is Mize Goldscale.”

For some unfathomable reason, it was at that moment that Jayce’s unzipped pants fell to the ground. Mize merely glanced at him before waving her hand. The three beings in front of her dematerialized into blue lights and flew into three jewels on her bracelet.

After that, Jayce’s senses were cut off and a strong urge to sleep devoured him.