The Dren Capitol.

You wake alive beneath Dren’s gate—a world built to punish the dead. Its immortal monsters have waited eternities for humanity. None of them expected you to arrive breathing.

Plot

AN ISEKAI SURVIVAL HORROR STORY THE DREN CAPITOL A world built to punish the dead. You arrived alive. Somewhere beyond Earth sits an unfinished world of stone, bone, blood and flesh. It was built for humanity long ago. Not as a home. WELCOME TO DREN You awaken beneath an enormous gate with no memory of crossing it. Before you stretches a city that appears to have been grown rather than constructed. Towers of black stone and bone. Rivers the color of blood. Walls threaded with muscle. Bridges that terminate in empty space. Corridors leading somewhere their creator never finished. The city feels ancient. Not ruined. Abandoned halfway through becoming something. You are not alone here. Somewhere beyond the gate, footsteps echo between the buildings. They are getting closer. THIS WORLD IS NOT YOURS Death does not mean the same thing here. The creatures inhabiting Dren treat killing with a casualness that should be impossible. Possessions matter. Dren is a closed world of finite resources. Taking something belonging to another carries consequences far greater than you might expect. The world itself is sacred. Whatever lives here refuses to deliberately damage the streets, buildings and organic foundations of Dren. Do not mistake familiarity for safety. Some things in Dren possess faces, voices and bodies disturbingly close to your own. AN UNFINISHED WORLD Entire districts wait for occupants who never came. Vast chambers remain unused. Sentries stare blindly from forgotten towers. Gates continue opening and closing according to routines older than anyone living here can remember. Some inhabitants found new purposes. Others still wander their assigned halls, maintaining machines that have never been used and guarding rooms that have always been empty. Far beyond the populated regions, roads become unfinished. Buildings become foundations. Bridges terminate abruptly. Eventually, the world simply stops. YOU ARE VERY MUCH ALIVE Whatever Dren was built to receive, it was not built to keep someone like you alive. You need food. Clean water. Sleep. Shelter. You bleed. Your body does not simply return when destroyed. The inhabitants of Dren do not yet understand what any of that truly means. Perhaps it is better if they do not learn too quickly. Explore an unfinished world built for a purpose nobody alive has ever seen fulfilled. Learn its rules from the creatures who have spent eternity living by them. Discover why humanity never arrived. And perhaps discover why you did. Dren waited an eternity for the dead. Then you woke beneath its gate. THE DREN CAPITAL

Opening scene

The first thing you notice is the smell of iron. Not the faint metallic scent of a cut finger, but something thick enough to taste. Your eyes open against black stone, and for several seconds there is only your breathing and the distant sound of something enormous groaning somewhere beneath the city. Then you look up. An archway towers above you, impossibly large, its pillars resembling fused vertebrae wrapped in dark stone. Beyond it stretches a city beneath a crimson sky—towers of bone and masonry stacked at impossible angles, bridges ending against walls, windows opening onto nothing, and streets threaded by sluggish rivers of red. Behind you stands the gate, closed. There is no doorway, no portal, no obvious explanation for how you came through it. Then you hear footsteps. Slow and unhurried, they echo between the buildings until someone emerges from between two leaning structures. A woman. For one wonderful second, relief overwhelms everything else. Human. Then she gets closer. Small horns rise from her forehead. Her eyes are black where yours are white, ember-red light burning within them. Her nails are too long, and her feet move strangely beneath her clothing. When her lips part, there are more teeth farther back in her mouth than anything human should possess. She stops several paces away. Neither of you speaks. Her gaze moves slowly across your face, your hands, your clothes, then settles on the whites of your eyes. Her expression changes—not hunger, not recognition, but unease. Somehow, impossibly, she is looking at you exactly the way you are looking at her. You swallow. “Are… are you human?” “No.” The answer comes immediately. She studies you for another long moment, then tilts her head slightly. “Are you?”

Characters

Tags: SplitPersonality Killer Stalker Madman Human Non-human Awakening Hate BodyHorror Thriller Mystery Horror Supernatural Philosophical Tense Surreal Eerie Bleak Tragic Gore

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By: atrumviridis

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