BROKEN PATH

BIRTHCRY1 PRELUDE :

BIRTHCRY1 : CHAPTER 0 - BROKEN PATH

The second block of the university once rang with life—staff scolding students, laughter bouncing off walls, attendance calls echoing down corridors.

Now, silence ruled.

The air reeked of blood.

Bodies lay scattered among overturned chairs and fractured desks. Backpacks gaped open, notebooks spilled like fallen leaves, their pages drinking in the red pooling across the floor. Some slumped against lockers. Others collapsed in doorways. A few lay sprawled on benches.

Those who had laughed that morning.

Those who had sipped tea in the faculty room.

One woman—the HOD—had stood by her third-floor window moments before the screaming began. Now she lay slumped against her office door, eyes open, one hand still clutching her phone. The emergency call never went through.

The walls bore witness: bloody handprints, drag marks, impact craters smeared in rust. A PT instructor’s whistle hung from a broken railing, swaying faintly. The fire alarm blinked, useless. No one left to hear it.

Some had jumped. Their broken shapes stained the concrete below.

A phone on the stairs still dialed the police, its tone droning into the quiet.

At the entrance, the gates stood sealed.

Mountains of corpses piled before them.

And there, among the dead, stood Sisu—barely breathing, his white uniform soaked in blood.

He stared at his hands—slick, trembling, red.

The blood spread across the floor, forming a dark mirror.

In its reflection, he didn’t see the monster he’d become.

He saw the other Sisu—

half-bald, eyes hollow and sleepless, shoulders hunched, a faint mustache that never grew. The stammer behind trembling lips.

The invisible boy.

The nothing.

Sisu gazed into that reflection, and it stared back—

a ghost of who he’d been seventy-two hours ago.

His breath hitched.

“I remember you,” he whispered.

The blood rippled.

Then—reality shattered.

The corridor. The bodies. The stench.

All vanished.

He stood alone in an endless white plane—soundless, weightless, wrong.

Silence pressed against his ears like cotton.

Then came a voice—

ancient, weary, familiar.

“Do you even know what you’ve done?”

Genuine-One.

One of his imaginary friends that had guided him through the lonely fifth-grade afternoons, that had whispered kindness when no one else did.

But now, it trembled—heavy with grief.

Sisu’s reply was cold, distant.

“Yes. I know.”

A pause.

“It’s not too late,” Genuine-One pleaded. “You can still stop this. Please.”

Sisu’s gaze stayed fixed on the void.

“If I stop… the pain returns. The lie continues.”

“Sisu—” Genuine-One’s voice cracked. “This isn’t you. This is what they made you believe. You’ve forgotten who you are.”

Silence.

Then, quietly—

“Then why did, You abandoned me.”

No answer.

“When I needed you most, you were gone. You left me alone.” His voice trembled with rage. “Explain yourself, you fuckin–bastard. Tell me why!”

Genuine-One’s voice broke.

“At the time… yes. I left you. And I—”

Then, another voice cut through—

playful, mocking, feminine.

“It’s all your fault, Genuine-One.”

A pause.

“You don’t understand what we share,” Genuine-One said softly.

“Oh? From fifth grade?” She laughed—cold, knowing. “And two days ago—where were you then? He’s not the same Sisu you guided back then. He’s grown beyond you.”

“Sisu, please—”

But the boy said nothing.

That silence was answered enough.

Hope had already died.

The girl’s voice whispered again, colder now:

“Back off, Genuine-One. Leave him. Just like you did before.”