Book One: City of Sacred Hymns

Chapter One: The Burning Pyre

Thick smoke billowed, each breath sounding as heavy and ragged as a broken bellows, as if scorching the throat and lungs. Ethan Carter's consciousness quickly grew hazy.

"Can't, can't fall asleep, or I'll die."

"Stay awake, I must stay awake!"

……

The endless crimson suddenly dimmed, and the deepest, darkest black emerged. Ethan Carter, like a drowning man, struggled to grasp anything he could to change his powerless drifting state, to escape this indescribable darkness.

Suddenly, a spot of glowing red light appeared ahead, like the rising sun at dawn.

Bathed in its glow, Ethan Carter felt a bit of strength return, and then, as if fighting for his life, he moved toward the red light.

As Ethan Carter took this step with the help of the light, the glow grew ever brighter, shifting from crimson to pure white, shattering the darkness into pieces and making it vanish in an instant.

"Ah!" Ethan Carter sat up abruptly, gasping for air. He had just dreamed of a terrifying fire, and before the flames even reached him, he had already fallen unconscious in the dream from inhaling too much thick smoke, left only to wait in a blurry, desperate state for the fire to spread. It was just like those times he'd experienced sleep paralysis—clearly aware he was dreaming, but unable to break free, powerless to control anything.

The dream was so vivid that Ethan Carter was left shaken. Since he didn't feel any sign of a real fire, he sat there in a daze for a long time, unable to snap out of it.

As his rapidly beating heart gradually calmed, Ethan Carter gathered his thoughts and remembered he had been working on his graduation thesis overnight in the university library's 24-hour reading room. He mocked himself inwardly: "No wonder I had such a realistic nightmare, with all these irregular late nights lately."

But when Ethan Carter looked ahead, ready to pack up his reference books and head back to his dorm, an unfamiliar and unimaginable scene struck his mind like a sledgehammer, leaving him stunned and blank.

In front of him, there was no longer the beautiful wooden desk of the library, no messy piles of reference books, no thesis drafts ready to be typed into the computer—only a dark, tattered, fraying blanket, which was covering him.

The place he was sitting was not the library's backed chair, but a narrow wooden bed.

"Where is this?!"

Although Ethan Carter was a bit introverted and shy, and not the quickest to react, even he could tell something was very wrong: even if there really had been a fire and he’d been taken to a hospital, this place was nothing like a hospital!

His heart tightened. He hurriedly looked around, instinctively scrambling to stand up.

The moment his feet touched the ground, Ethan Carter felt an overwhelming weakness and dizziness. His legs gave out, and he nearly collapsed.

Ethan Carter quickly reached out, bracing himself on the bed to steady himself. His face was deathly pale, his mind unsettled. That brief glance had already taken in his surroundings completely.

A shabby, narrow little room. Besides the wooden bed he was on, there was only a rickety wooden table that looked ready to fall apart at any moment, two stools that were still in decent shape, a slatted box with a hole in it, and on the other side of a shaky wooden door, a stove whose original color was unrecognizable and a clay pot hanging above it. The firewood beneath the stove had long since burned out, with not a trace of warmth left.

Everything was so unfamiliar that Ethan Carter had no way to tell where he was. The constant waves of weakness only made his mind more chaotic:

"Where on earth is this?!"

"My body feels like I've just recovered from a serious illness, much like after that bout of pneumonia in high school."

……

Countless thoughts echoed in his mind, but Ethan Carter had never encountered anything so bizarre. His somewhat introverted nature left him at a loss for what to do next, and a deep panic quickly fermented within him.

The only thing to be thankful for was that nothing unpleasant had appeared, allowing Ethan Carter to instinctively take a few deep breaths and slowly calm his panic. Just then, shouts could be heard from far outside the little house:

"They're burning a witch! The Adelan Church is going to burn a witch!"

"Everyone, hurry!"

"Burn that damned, evil witch!"

Fear and excitement, two completely opposite emotions, were clearly evident in the strange accent. Ethan Carter's panic was interrupted, replaced by curiosity, and he muttered to himself, "A witch? What kind of world is this?"

As an adult who enjoyed novels, a bad premonition began to form in Ethan Carter's heart. But before he could think further, with a bang, the poor, battered wooden door was suddenly flung open, and a boy of about twelve or thirteen burst in.

"Logan Bennett big brother..." The boy, with short brown hair and wearing a knee-length linen shirt, saw Ethan Carter standing by the bed and exclaimed in surprise and delight, "You're awake?"