PAIN BOUND

Ken wakes into a world that no longer fits the one he remembers.

There are gaps where people used to be — faces he can almost place, warmth he can't explain the absence of. And underneath all of it, a pain that never fully leaves him, like something ancient stirring just beneath his skin, waiting.

When the boundary between Eldoria and Aetheris begins to collapse, monsters spill into the streets of his ordinary life, and Ken is forced to fight for the people still in front of him — even as something quietly, deliberately erases the ones who came before.

A parasitic beast bound to his very survival.

A curse that turns love into a countdown.

And a stranger from another world who once loved someone Ken doesn't know he carries inside him.

Strength here isn't given. It's extracted — through blood, through loss, through pain that refuses to let go.

How much can a person lose before there's nothing left to save?