Chapter Text
Somewhere in Remnant...
Deep within the woods.
The sky burned faintly above the endless canopy, dusk bleeding into night like a dying wound. For a while, it was peaceful — wind whispering through the trees, a cold current sliding between branches. Then the air shifted.
You could feel it — that creeping heat in the bones of the world, pressure coiling tight until even the birds went silent.
The still forest began to tremble. The trees swayed violently as wind ripped through the leaves, scattering them like shards of green glass into the darkening sky.
It built slowly. Ten minutes of gathering tension — the forest caught in a breath it couldn't release — until a sound cracked the heavens open.
BOOM.
A tear split across the skyline, faint and jagged at first, like a fracture in glass.
Energy bled through, white and violet, distorting the air, sizzling with the raw stench of ozone. The wind howled, the trees groaned — and then the sky itself ripped.
From the gash in the atmosphere came lightning, unnatural and writhing like serpents of energy. They lashed out, stabbing into the earth, carving molten scars into the cold grass. The very air warped with heat and noise, the ground shaking beneath its wrath.
And then something fell through.
A body — limp, torn, and bloody — dropped from the wound in reality, tumbling violently through branches before slamming into a small clearing below. The impact sent a wet, heavy sound through the night, scattering dirt and leaves.
The portal pulsed once. Twice. Then, as abruptly as it came, it folded in on itself, imploding with a shriek of energy before vanishing. The pressure vanished. The wind died.
Silence reclaimed the forest.
No trace of the rift remained.
No light.
No smoke.
Only him.
Hank J. Wimbleton — the Icon of Sin, the most infamous man in Nevada, the man who refused to die — lay sprawled on the forest floor.
His body looked like it had been dragged through ten yards and spat out by hell itself.
The black combat attire clung to him in shreds, riddled with bullet holes and blood. His mask was ripped, one lens shattered, exposing his left eye — dull, tired, but still faintly alive.
The other half of his face revealed the twisted gleam of his metal jaw, the reflection of it catching the pale moonlight. A mechanical grin with no humor left in it.
His left arm was gone, torn from the socket, nothing but a seared stump left behind. His right hand clutched the ropes of his guts spilling from a jagged gash across his stomach. His leg was bent the wrong way. His ribs — visible through shredded cloth — rose and fell in uneven rhythm.
He was alive. Somehow. But barely.
If a corpse could breathe, it would look like him.
The forest watched him bleed.
Steam rose off his body, faint in the cold air. The only sound left was the wet, ragged rhythm of his breathing — harsh, uneven, punctuated by low groans that almost sounded like laughter.
Breath rattled through his lungs, fog curling from his mouth. He wanted—no, he longed—to surrender, to let the cold earth claim him. But the rules of his existence would not allow it. Death was denied.
If he could've chosen, he would've died right there. The ground beneath him was cool — cold, even comforting. The kind of quiet that promised an end.
But Hank knew better.
Death wasn't mercy anymore. Not for him. He had learned that lesson a long, long time ago.
This was the cycle. The loop. The joke that the universe never stopped telling.
The air smelled thick with iron. Blood pooled beneath him, painting the grass a deep, ugly red. His eyes flickered up to the sky, blinking past the haze of exhaustion and pain.
And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he saw them...
Stars.
Not the crimson haze of Nevada's sky. Not the chemical clouds or the dull orange glow of firelight reflected off dust. These were clear — cold — real.
The kind of stars that belonged to a world untouched by human ruin.
For a moment, he wondered if he was hallucinating. It wouldn't be the first time.
Hallucination? Delirium? He had seen them before, had learned to distrust every flicker of light and color, every fragment of sanity in his mind. But this felt different. Real. True.
Pain always brought the visions — warped memories, ghosts, broken fragments of a mind that had long since stopped healing. He had seen angels made of static, and oceans of blood. But this... this felt too consistent. Too vivid.
He blinked again, forcing his vision to steady. Tall trees loomed overhead, thick with green leaves — alive leaves, not the sickly gray husks from home.
He was in a forest. A real forest.
That shouldn't have been possible.
He hadn't seen a healthy tree in years — not since Nevada's sun burned out and the skies turned red. Everything that grew after that was twisted, mutated — shaped by radiation and blood. Nothing pure had survived there.
And yet here he was, lying in grass that smelled of soil and rain, surrounded by trees that looked like they belonged to another century.
The air was cleaner. The temperature mild. The quiet — unbearable.
He tried to make sense. Some trick by his Employers? A cruel, posthumous joke? Or another godlike being, mocking him with a fleeting paradise only to tear it away?
No. He knew better. Peace was poison. Comfort was a trap.
For a second, he almost laughed.
'What, did they finally decide to give me paradise?'
He could almost hear the sarcasm in his own voice. If this was some test — some simulation cooked up by the bastards who toyed with him — then they had a sick sense of humor.
No. This was something else.
He closed his eyes and exhaled, the breath rattling through his chest, he thought. "Maybe it's the last stop."
But even as he thought it, something deep in his bones — something older and crueler — whispered otherwise.
He was never allowed to rest.
The grass beneath him shifted. A faint hum built in the air, static crawling across his skin. The world around him seemed to tighten, the pressure returning in a pulse that grew louder and louder in his skull.
He'd been here before.
Hank drew a shallow breath, his chest rattling. His hand slipped from his wound and fell limp beside him. His last coherent thought before the blackness overtook him was a bitter one:
Hell
He stopped and fell flat.
Hank lay in the center of the forest clearing, his body a twisted, mangled composition of blood, broken limbs, and shredded combat gear. The moonlight fell on him like a cruel spotlight, illuminating every slice, every gash, every abnormal angle of his battered form.
He looked like a macabre portrait from some twisted Renaissance nightmare—artful in its horror, deliberate in its cruelty.
Time dilated. To him, the seconds stretched into hours; to the world, barely a few minutes passed.
Somewhere, far away, a ticking clock echoed its hollow rhythm.
And there he remained, a battered boddy...
Is denied death.
A tremor ran through him. Subtle at first, almost imperceptible, then violent, uncontrollable. Sparks of improbable energy crackled sporadically over his shredded skin. Heat blossomed across his flesh, burning it, charring it, as black smoke hissed into the cold night air.
Guts, exposed and pulsing, bubbled with unnatural fervor, writhing before bursting into flames that licked his torso. Muscle melted, skin liquefied, organs shriveled into a blackened slurry, dripping onto the forest floor. His clothing and equipment, once soaked with blood and gore, flared and disintegrated into ash, scattered away by the whispering wind.
When the firestorm of destruction ceased, what remained was horrifying in its simplicity. A charred skeleton, some muscle fibers and cartilage stubbornly clinging to the bone. The skull remained intact, the artificial metallic jaw pristine and unyielding.
And there, in the right eye socket, a single wilted, lifeless eye stared skyward, unblinking, as if clinging to some distant, unattainable dream—some fragment of a hope he could no longer reach.
Steam hissed from the skeleton, curling into the cold air like ghostly tendrils. Electrical arcs danced across bone, snapping along the spinal column and lingering in the jagged remnants of his ribs. Every crackle, every flicker, felt like a heartbeat, a defiance.
Hank's consciousness, trapped within this impossible reconstruction, lingered at the edges of perception, tasting every sensation, every impossibility, every shred of agony. He could feel himself being consumed, remade, reborn in the furnace of improbable energy. And still, that single eye, wilted and pitiful, fixed on the night sky, a silent witness to the endless, merciless spiral he could not escape.
The blackened skeleton trembled. A low, vibrating hum grew from deep within the bones, like a chord struck across the universe itself. Sparks of improbable energy ignited along his spinal cord, crawling upward and outward, wrapping the charred structure in white-hot electricity.
Bones cracked and snapped in precise, violent rhythm, as if the skeleton itself were remembering its proper form. Calcium and minerals fused, forming a humerus, radius, and forearm, forming a full skeletal arm in mere seconds. Joints clicked into place. Tendons flared into existence, fibers knitting together as muscles twined around bone like living wire.
Skinless nerves sparked and writhed as they rebuilt, racing through the skeletal lattice in pure white light. Veins crystallized, thick with nascent blood, weaving a spiderweb across the reborn frame.
The organs surged back into being, swelling and pulsing with impossible energy. Guts bubbled, lungs expanded with fresh, burning air, a heart exploded into life, pumping crimson through his emerging veins.
And then... the brain.
Brain matter explodes and reforms back into existence, bringing Hank's consciousness and memories back.
A chaotic storm of neurons fired, connecting past and present, pain and memory, instinct and awareness. Every sensation—every torment he had endured—returned in jagged, searing clarity. Pain, despair, exhaustion—all layered atop each other, amplified. His consciousness screamed from the edges of oblivion.
Hank jerked upward, spasming violently, as if every cell, every molecule, was clawing its way back into existence. Electricity danced along his reformed skin, wrapping his body in a visible aura of improbable energy. Bones snapping together, muscles swelling, nerves pulsing, fingers flexing with a new, terrifying precision. Then the rest of his body followed: legs, torso, chest, neck.
The metallic lower jaw bit back into place, teeth glinting under the moonlight. Skin knitting over scars and melted muscle. Blood coursed freely, carrying both pain and life, rushing through veins like molten liquid.
He jerks up, his eyes open, and...
GET UP.
WEAK.
INSUFFICIENT PERFORMANCE.
GET UP.
He felt everything!
Every fiber of him burned, a sensation like being chewed alive and rebuilt from the inside out. Like tiny maggots crawling all over him, laying eggs into any spot and cravis that his boody needed to restore.
His lungs heaved, his heart pounded like a war drum, but he obeyed instinctively. Standing was not optional. Pain was inevitable.
As if his whole body was engulfed by very familiar hellish flames. Along with those embers laughing at him in a very demonic undertone.
Drowning in acid just by trying to form a coherent thought.
Finally, his crimson lenses snapped over his eyes, restoring his world to the familiar hue he had relied on for decades.
Tunnel vision flared, awareness sharpened, instincts coiling like springs ready to snap.
Exhaling warm air that turned to vapor upon contact with the cold atmosphere. His body instinctively going into a combative stance, ready to pierce someone's throat out.
Neverves and senses perked up.
Throwing punches, kicks and jabs spontaneously every direction.
But after a few seconds of hitting nothing but empty space, he finally let himself loose, the state he was in catching up to him.
Hank flexed his fingers. The forest awaited—silent, alive, indifferent. He could feel every fiber of himself again, fully aware, fully capable. Rebuilt.
And still, deep in the recesses of his mind, that wilted, lifeless eye of the skeleton lingered—an echo of the torment he had endured, a reminder that no matter how complete, no resurrection was ever truly painless.
Hank exhaled, letting the mist of his breath curl in the cold night air. He was whole.
He can finally feel his entire self again.
From the regenerated left arm, strong and whole, to the familiar weight of his upper jaw and the metallic lower jaw.
Huh?
'So much for regeneration.'
The words echoed in his mind with bitter amusement. Even after surviving the hellfire of improbable energy, after feeling every agonizing second of his body melting away and reassembling from nothing, the experience still clung to him. The memory of every second, every searing pain, burned in his consciousness.
And yet... what unsettled him most wasn't the memory—it was the forest.
Real trees. Real soil. Grass stretching in every direction. Flora thriving. It didn't make sense.
'So this wasn't just my mind going overdrive? This isn't Nevada?'
Confusion twisted through him like a snake. His mind, trained for years in the chaos and ruin of the irradiated desert, refused to accept this: verdant life, the faint blow of wind through leaves, the soft padding of soil underfoot.
In his memory, the other Western states were deserts and shrublands. Artificial flora in greenhouses was the only life he had ever touched. Anything natural was a luxury for the top dogs to feast and exploit, or was a cruel trick.
He could not possibly be in any other state or country that he could note of.
And yet, here he was. Alive. Whole. Standing in a thriving forest.
He considered the possibilities. Warp gates. Teleportation. Temporal anomalies. He had experienced them before, each a fleeting, disorienting glimpse beyond the bounds of reality—a blink-and-you-miss-it affair. But nothing like this.
Nevada, he knew, was a cage. A prison with invisible walls. Any attempt to leave was met with inexplicable forces, a tug of physics and improbability binding its prisoners. Anyone who tried to escape fell into hysteria, paranoia, madness—or worse, turned broken, like him.
Like puppets on a string.
It doesn't let go.
It's like a curse.
We are cursed...
Yet, despite all the rational explanations, a small part of him—buried under centuries of doubt and rotten hope—was captivated by the beauty around him. The forest was alive. Every leaf shimmered faintly in the moonlight, every branch swayed like a living entity. Even the rustle of small nocturnal creatures felt orchestrated, harmonious.
He wasn't sure if this was still some kind of illusion, his own denial or the lack of sleep and insomnia catching up to him again.
Hank reached out, fingertips brushing the leaves. Texture, life, growth. 'So... this is what it felt like back then?'
The simple act of touching something real, something untouched by destruction, brought a momentary respite from the constant chaos that defined him.
He rubbed his eyes, feeling the skin of his face, the warmth of what was left intact. Then he realized: his signature red goggles were gone.
Damn it.
He had sworn he kept hold of them while falling through that impossible sky. Without them, his tired, baggy eyes were exposed—pitiful. Weakness in plain sight. And weakness was dangerous.
He would not show fragility. He would not allow anyone to exploit him. He was not a pawn. Not a stepping stone. He was an avalanche waiting to happen.
*sigh*
Hank surveyed the forest. Vibrant green leaves, the gentle rustle of wind, the rich, dark soil. Beauty, alien and unfamiliar, pressed in on him. For the first time in ages, he paused, breathing it in. A rare moment of reflection. Of clarity.
He ventured deeper into the clearing, searching for his goggles, when moonlight caught something high above. His gaze lifted—and froze.
A fractured sphere hung in the sky, casting shards of light across the forest and onto his face.
A shattered Moon.
"What..."
"Bullshit, what is this? Did the Improbability Drives cause this? Gravity and oceans would be in chaos if it was."
He pondered to himself in disbelief and mustering out in confusion. Recalling his textbook knowledge on the celestial body.
He reeled his thoughts back ever so slightly. 'Yet everything seems to be completely natural.'
He rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense of it, his mind teetering on the edge of disbelief. Months without sleep had shredded his patience and his ability to process even minor oddities, let alone this.
'This day cannot get any more unbearable... headache, great.'
Staring at the nightly sky, the shattered Moon illuminating on his uncovered peculiar appearance.
*sigh*
'This complicates things.'
He exhaled, trying to calm himself. He needed something familiar, something to ground him. His face was exposed, and that, by his own definition, was a sign of weakness. A weakness he could not tolerate. And he hated it.
He muttered through the fog of frustration:
"I need... my fucking... gla... glasses."
His fists tightened. He wanted to smash something—anything—but the forest offered no convenient target. Only trees, only shadows.
He pressed his hand to his face, trying to focus, trying to center himself.
'I can't even remember what happened before I landed here. So fucking ironic.'
'Witnessing... greenery...'
'Why does something so mundane make me feel sick? Why the hell do I even care?'
Frustration coiled tight in his chest. Rage bubbled to the surface. He punched.
A thick tree trunk exploded under the force, splinters scattering like a violent firework. Leaves swirled around him, carried by his fury and the sudden release of tension.
"Do what comes natural."
The words slipped from his lips, almost a whisper, carrying weight he couldn't yet name. He drove his hand sideways through the trunk, wood ripping apart like butter under heat. Bark and wooden chips flew in all directions. The tree groaned, strained, then collapsed with a thud, leaves scattering, the earth trembling beneath it.
Hank stood amidst the aftermath, calm now, headache dulled. His gaze caught a glint among the foliage.
The red-lens goggles.
His anchor. His anchor to clarity.
He snatched them, brushing off soil and leaves, sliding them over his eyes. Crimson returned. Tunnel vision flared, reality snapped back into focus, the world reduced to the clarity he craved, the familiar shade he relied on. A piece of himself returned, a missing puzzle piece restored.
The only item that helpped him see everything and every being for what they are.
A dark and crimson red.
That was always the primary color of what he saw before and after encountering or interacting with anyone. He made sure things stayed that pleasant color for as long as he's standing.
For a moment, he breathed. For a fleeting moment, the forest, the fractured moon, the impossible peace—all of it was tangible. Real. And he was still standing.
Hank's eyes, now framed by the familiar red lenses, scanned the forest. Shadows danced and stretched, the leaves whispering secrets that no one else could hear. The ground beneath him was soft, yielding, yet every step carried the weight of suspicion.
And then, a glint.
High in the dense undergrowth, moonlight seeped onsomething metallic, lodged deep in the darkened bark of a massive oak.
The Dragon sword.
The blade, a symbol of his prowess and his will. Its handle's end loosely resembling the shape of a dragon's head.
Time slowed. His hand twitched instinctively toward the hilt. That blade—more than a weapon, more than steel—was a part of him, an extension of his will, forged with his rage and his precision. Every scar, every kill, every trial it had witnessed whispered to him through the steel.
He approached, cautious but unhesitant. Even in a place that defied reason, he knew one thing: that sword was real, tangible, essential.
With a firm grip, he tugged. Wood splintered. Bark exploded outward, rain of chips scattering across the clearing. The sword slid free, slicing the air with a hiss that sounded almost alive. Moonlight gleamed across the polished blade, revealing the engraved Thai letters along its spine:
บดขยี้, ทำลาย, ฆ่า
Crush.
Destroy.
Kill.
Such a unique and fitting weapon to describe its wielder in such simple detail.
It was perfect. A statement, a promise, a reflection of him in three sharp, undeniable words. The Dragon Sword did not need to speak. It did not need to justify. It simply existed—and in its existence, Hank's own purpose was reflected.
When the blade is used to its fullest, it shows more emotion then he ever does. Kinda poetic really.
He sheathed it across his back, the weight familiar, grounding. His fingers flexed along the hilt unconsciously. The reunion with his cherished blade felt intoxicating. It saved his ass countless times after all. Not that he needed saving...
And then, something made him pause.
A sound, subtle but deliberate—a snapping twig, the faint brush of movement behind a cluster of ferns. Instinct and paranoia, honed through years of survival, screamed at him. Eyes narrowing behind the crimson lenses, he scanned the darkness.
Carved into the thick bark of a tree, words caught his eye—familiar, almost haunting in their simplicity. He didn't need to read them twice. No one else could have carved them, and no one else could ever understand their weight the way he did.
...Just Do What Comes Natural...
A shiver ran down his spine. The phrase was innocent on the surface, deceptively simple—but beneath it, a malevolent undertone gnawed at him, familiar from nightmares he had long ago learned to endure.
Was he feeling paranoid?
The words reverberated in his mind, bending the forest around him, twisting shadows into shapes he didn't recognize. The ground, the trees, the moonlight—they all seemed... off. His pulse quickened. His grip on the Dragon Sword tightened instinctively.
'I feel like a damn schizo, damn it.'
Hank's thoughts spiraled, a storm of frustration and hyperawareness. Every instinct, every shard of madness honed over decades, screamed at him to ignore the message—but he couldn't. The forest mocked him, and the lingering shadows seemed almost alive.
"Fucking clowns," he muttered under his breath. The words were absurd, ridiculous—but not to him. To Hank, it made perfect sense. Some dangers were never literal. Some absurdities carried their own weight.
He finally pushed himself upright. The tree's carved letters had left their mark—not just physically, but psychologically. With a practiced motion, he slashed the bark with the edge of the Dragon Sword. Sawdust and splinters rained around him as the worded threat was physically torn from the trunk, another fragment of chaos expelled into the forest.
Heathed once again, the blade rested comfortably against his back. Hank exhaled—a long, deliberate sigh, the fiftieth of the night perhaps, though it didn't matter. He was no explorer. He only had survival instinct, thrust into a place he had never been, in territory uncharted even by his precise mind. Trained him to remember streets, alleys, ruins, monsters, faces—but this was different. This was... alive.
He scanned the forest, the moon's slit casting silver across the clearing. Thoughtfully, he murmured to himself:
"Any survivalist with worth of a common sense would tell you to stay in one spot. Construct a makeshift shelter. Signal people."
But the landscape told him otherwise. Clearings stretched across the terrain, moonlight catching patches of soil, disrupting the dark with faint light. Civilization, or at least evidence of it, could not be far.
No devices. No cellular reception. No lifeline. Only instincts, honed to near perfection by decades of chaos, disaster, and encounters that defied logic. Not after witnessing whales falling from the sky, buildings collapsing, and facing... things that shouldn't exist. He thrived in it. He lived for it.
Flexing his arms, cracking his neck and fingers, he felt the familiar hum of readiness, the adrenaline of a predator sensing the unknown.
Vapor escaped his mouth in the cold night air, fogging briefly before dissipating.
He was ready.
Ready to unravel the mystery, ready to confront whatever twisted mechanism had brought him here.
Hank took a final, steadying breath. Crimson lenses catching the moonlight, Dragon Sword secured, mind sharpening with each exhale.
He was ready to get this shit over with, hoping he will find anything interesting in this long-stretching, overgrown wasteland.
TO BE CONTINUED...