When I opened my eyes, the world had changed.

  The cold floor beneath me wasn’t familiar. The towering stone ceiling above sparkled faintly with candlelight. Stained gss windows lined the walls, casting fractured beams of colored light across the polished marble floor. It was quiet—eerily quiet.

  My body felt heavy. My chest ached like something had been ripped out and stitched back in all wrong.

  “Where... am I?” My voice cracked.

  I sat up slowly, pain dancing down my spine like fire. That’s when I noticed the circle around me. Dozens of robed figures surrounded me in a half-circle, kneeling. Some whispered prayers, others simply stared, as if unsure whether to be amazed or afraid.

  One man stepped forward, clearly higher in rank. His robe shimmered with gold trim, and he held a silver chalice in one hand. His face, old and weathered, was locked in a grim expression.

  “The sixth hero has arrived,” he decred, loud enough for the echo to rattle across the stone chamber.

  Sixth hero? I blinked. What was this? A dream?

  No... I remembered everything. My trip to Japan. The temple visit. How I, half-jokingly, pced my hands together and whispered, “I wish I could be summoned to another world... just like in the stories.”

  I ughed at myself then. It was just a silly fantasy, right?

  Apparently not.

  The robed man sprinkled the water from the chalice onto me. I felt something burn on my chest. Looking down, a golden emblem glowed beneath my shirt—some kind of crest I didn’t recognize. The priests gasped in awe.

  Then it happened.

  The gold shimmered... and bled into red.

  Then bck.

  The glow flickered, twisted, like a fire dying in ash.

  “What is this?” someone whispered.

  “No... This isn’t right,” the high priest growled. “He’s cursed!”

  The tension broke all at once. Priests scrambled back in fear. The high priest stepped forward and barked, “Remove him! Now!”

  Two younger clerics rushed forward and grabbed my arms. I tried to stand, to ask what the hell was going on, but they weren’t listening. I was being dragged across the floor, the red-and-bck emblem still glowing faintly on my chest.

  At the edge of the chamber, the high priest raised a hand. The others halted. He stepped close, looking into my eyes.

  “You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said, coldly. “The true sixth hero already returned from the dead. You… you’re a mistake. A fragment caught in the summoning.”

  “What does that even mean?!”

  “It means the gods have no pce for you. And worse... they marked you with divine rejection. Your body will rot. Your spirit will decay. No power. No glory. Just pain.”

  My blood ran cold.

  He handed me a small gss vial filled with glowing blue liquid. “This won’t cure you. But it’ll numb the agony... for a while. Find somewhere quiet to die.”

  With that, he turned his back.

  The heavy doors of the temple smmed shut behind me.

  I stood outside, in a crumbling alley. A foul-smelling city stretched out before me—dirty streets, coughing beggars, buzzing flies.

  Alone. Diseased. Forgotten.

  I was summoned to another world…

  And instantly cast aside.