Prologue

Wake up. You’re not done yet.

A breath— sharp, cold, and unwelcome.

The first thing you recognize is the weight of dust in your lungs, ancient and stubborn.
The second is silence. Not the comforting one, but so complete that it presses against your ribs.

Your eyes flutter open to a ceiling of coarse stone and dark timber beams. Retro Museum-like. As if someone had tried to recreate the past without taking grasp of it.
No glimmering lights. No buzz of machines.

And then—dizziness.

The kind that doesn’t come from motion-sickness, but from being poured out of yourself. Like your soul had been transferred from one container to another, and it hasn’t quite settled yet.

Who are you?

"Arima," you murmur, the name that rising instinctively on your beacon of mind.
It fits… but not perfectly. Like a coat you’ve outgrown or a melody you almost remember.

Yukishiro Arima.

Yes. That was you. Once. Back when the world gleamed with neon and steel, when reality came in pixels and data streams. But this body—this vessel—was not of that world.

It is younger. Slighter. And filled with memories that are not entirely yours.

They seep in slowly, like candlewax sliding down a copper holder.
A boy. A student. Stargazer. He lived in a city where brass telescopes reached skyward like blades, as if to cut open the heavens and peer at what bleeds.

Your skull throbs with pressure. You force yourself upright.

On the table beside the bed: a bottle. Thick glass, old, empty.

You remember drinking it.

Or rather—he did. You did. It's blurry.

Something coils down your spine.
Not sweat. A memory.

It slips in quiet, curling like smoke under a door.
A notes. Folded into a spine of a forgotten book.
Smudged ink. Unfamiliar letter of strange language, but somehow you did able to recognize it.

It's that formula. Not for alchemy. No... Not exactly. What is that?

And the boy drank that potion.

Out of curiosity. And... ambition.

What happened next?

There should have been something. Pain. Light. Collapse. A scream. Something dramatic. Or death.
Instead—there was silence. A clean cut between scenes. No warning. No finale. Just... absence.

You search inward, fumbling through the imaginary fog of mind of yours.

Let's recall. Who are you now?

Yukishiro Arima. Detective. Cynic. Lone wolf. You lived among Tokyo’s shadows, with case files for company and ramen as ritual. No family. No strings. Not lonely, just... detached.

You weren’t unhappy.
You simply were.
And then—you weren’t.

And all of a sudden, your past live gone just like someone press the 'delete' button.

You blink. Back to reality.

The room hasn’t changed. Still wood. Still stone. Still unfamiliar.

You don't know if this is death or reincarnation.

All you know is that you’re here now, with new identity. 

Outside that door, a world waits. A world that is a cradle of mystery.