A man.
A knife.
A woman,
backed against the wall, her breathing ragged and trembling. Her nails scraped against the wood as she pleaded for something I couldn't hear.
I froze.
The metallic tang of blood hung in the air. My chest tightened.
I didn't know what to do.
I had no power.
No gift.
No strength beyond what any ordinary person had.
I knew that.
And yet—
My body moved before my mind could stop it.
I ran.
Pain exploded through my side, sharp and searing. My vision blurred. The wet warmth of my blood soaked into my clothes, and a metallic taste coated my tongue.
A groan tore from my throat.
The woman screamed, a raw, piercing sound that ricocheted off the walls.
The man didn't hesitate.
The knife slid deeper. A wet squelch filled the room, the echo of it chilling me.
My knees buckled.
I knew I would die…
But my legs still moved.
Judgement System unlocked.
Condition met: Moral Intervention.
Instruction:
Touch the forehead of the target to enter the state of subconsciousness.
"What—?"
I didn't understand it.
I didn't have time to.
With bloodied hands and fading strength, I grabbed the man's head—
And the world collapsed.
A ringing overtook my ears. The walls, the screams, the dripping blood—all vanished.
Sound itself dissolved.
Light twisted inward, coiling around my vision like smoke.
The air turned cold, as if I had been plunged into deep water. My skin prickled; goosebumps rose across my arms.
In the next instant—
I was no longer standing in the village.
I had been dragged into a different state entirely.
The air twisted.
And suddenly.
I remembered.
Not this place.
Something else.
A life before this.
---
It's been seventeen years since I reincarnated.
And I still remember everything.
The smell of incense from my parents' shrines lingers in my memory, faint yet unshakable.
My parents are deeply religious.
They worshipped every god they could find.
Even the ones no one else in the village remembered...
Alterra, the Goddess of Earth.
Salvinia, the Goddess of Heaven.
Melenia, the Goddess of Hell.
To them, all were equal.
In my previous world, people feared Hell, never worshipped it.
Here, my parents prayed to it without hesitation.
My father is an exceptional swordsman.
My mother is a healer who can mend bones and flesh alike. The faint scent of herbs follows her wherever she walks.
And I—
I was born with nothing.
No mana. No aura. Not even the faintest trace of divine energy.
"…So much for my fantasy."
Day 31, I wrote in a journal filled with an alien script. The scratch of quill on paper grated against my nerves.
I closed the book and shoved it back into the drawer.
The drawer shimmered.
Just for a moment—
Light seeped through the cracks, pale and trembling, casting ghostly shadows across the room.
I blinked.
Rubbed my eyes.
When I looked again, it was gone.
"…I need water," I muttered.
My throat felt dry, rasping with each breath. The air hung thick, almost sticky.
I grabbed the empty bucket and stepped outside—
not knowing that this would be the moment everything changed.
----
I had been teleported.
Not to another place—
but into a completely different state of existence.
The air felt wrong.
Too thick. Too heavy. It pressed against my lungs, making each breath rasp and shudder.
The ground beneath my feet wasn't solid.
The ground pulsed beneath my feet like molten glass, rippling with every heartbeat. I could almost hear colors twisting under my steps.
The ground shimmered like spun glass, soft and unsteady beneath my feet, folding into itself as if the air could hold weight.
Even though.. my hands were trembling I could still see the beauty in this dream—like state.
The system tells me I'm inside the bandit's subconscious mind.
That thought alone made my stomach twist, a cold churn of nausea and fear.
I was standing inside the mind of the man who tried to kill me.
Words appeared before me, suspended in the air—cold, emotionless, like frost etching across glass.
"You have been selected as one of the 100 candidates."
One hundred.
Not chosen. Not special.
Just… replaceable.
Important note: You can only judge three souls per twenty four hours.
Mission Issued:
Judge two souls.
I swallowed.
My throat was dry. Thick. Scratchy, as if lined with sandpaper.
Judge?
I hadn't even been able to save one life.
Special Attribute Acquired.
The space before me distorted, like heat over a summer road.
Something appeared—
Not a weapon—not a familiar shape.
A fragment. Jagged. Incomplete.
Yet the moment I looked at it, my chest tightened, a pinching pressure around my ribs.
Attribute: A Fragment of the Sword.
Forged from the darkness and flames of Hell,
and the shining light of the Beacon in Heaven.
The fragment hummed softly.
like a heartbeat that wasn't mine, echoing in the hollow of my chest.
It watched me.
"The holy beacon…?"
A bitter laugh escaped my lips, trembling and raw. It bounced off the empty, pulsing space around me and returned warped, distorted, like someone else mocking me.
"I guess my parents were right after all."
They prayed to everything. Even this.
The fragment didn't grow. Didn't sharpen.
It just… floated there, weightless yet heavy, silent yet somehow oppressive.
My fingers trembled, the hairs on my arms rising.
The preparation phase was initiated.
Ready up.
The ground beneath me shifted violently.
A deep groaning vibration rolled up my legs and into my chest.
You will face the physical manifestation of the soul's ideology,
mental state, memories, and beliefs—merged as one.
My breath hitched, ragged, echoing in my skull.
"Wait…"
The air began to scream.
A high-pitched, shivering wail, vibrating through my bones.
Shapes twisted in the distance, folding over themselves, shadows crawling, writhing, forming things that shouldn't exist.
A low, guttural hum rose from beneath me, like the growl of something underground.
The smell of iron and burning flesh not real, but felt—made my stomach knot.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
I looked at the fragment again.
It didn't move. It didn't help.
It just floated there."
"I can't fight with this…"
The air thickened, pressing in from all sides, carrying the sound of breathing—my own, and not mine
And for the first time since I died.
I was truly afraid.