"Well, well, well... what do we have here?"
Kael muttered, taking a long sip from his smoothie—still cold, still sweet, utterly inappropriate for the situation.
Around him, panic bloomed like wildfire.
"Where are we?!"
"Is this a dream?!"
"Did we die?! Are we... isekai'd?!"
The voices of his classmates rose in disarray, a chaotic mess of confusion and fear.
Some were crying.
Some were shouting.
Most were just frozen, too overwhelmed to react.
Kael, on the other hand, remained eerily calm—unnaturally so.
His eyes lazily scanned the ominous surroundings while he let the straw do its work.
A wide, dark hall stretched before them, lit only by flickering torches and the eerie glow of a massive Black crystal pulsing atop a ritual altar.
He squinted.
Yep.
Classic.
An Awakening Stone.
He'd read enough webnovels to recognize the trope from a mile away.
Behind it, seated on a throne carved from obsidian bones—or was it just painted that way?—was a woman.
She wore flowing black robes that clung to her like smoke, her beauty so sharp it was almost weaponized.
Her eyes shimmered with something ancient and unkind.
Above her loomed a statue—massive, grotesque, and maddening to look at.
Its face twisted in impossible ways, shifting every time Kael tried to focus on it.
A god, maybe.
Or something pretending to be one.
Either way, Kael didn't like how its gaze seemed locked on him.
Personally.
He took another sip and muttered, "What do you want? This smoothie? Piss off."
The air was thick with dread.
Then he glanced around again—and spotted the rest of his classmates, standing with him inside a Giant summoning circle, still glowing faintly with crimson runes.
The blood on the floor looked fresh.
Probably was.
Yep.
Definitely a cult.
He also spotted Mrs. Rose, their extremely attractive homeroom teacher, who looked just as terrified as the students—though Kael was pretty sure her blouse wasn't buttoned like that before the teleportation.
Not that he was complaining.
The cultists around them wore Crimson demon masks, twisted and grinning, chanting in a tongue that made Kael's teeth itch.
The whole thing reeked of forbidden rituals, sacrifices, and really bad vibes.
Kael slurped again, gaze blank.
"Cool, cool. So I've been isekai'd... into a damn cult."
He didn't know whether to scream, laugh, or ask for another straw.
Suddenly, the woman on the throne stood.
And just like that, silence fell.
A mutual, unspoken agreement that whatever was about to happen probably shouldn't be interrupted.
She scanned the group with a look of mild boredom, like a substitute teacher forced to babysit a class she didn't like.
"Welcome, Beyonders," she said, voice echoing across the stone hall."To the Temple of the Abyss."
Charming.
"I am the Prophetess of this sacred order," she continued,
"And you have all been summoned from your world for a greater purpose.
You are the chosen ones."
Kael took another sip of his smoothie.
Someone near the front whispered, "Is this real? Are we really… summoned?"
The Prophetess chuckled—a low, humorless sound.
"Oh, it's all real, young one. Every drop of it."
Everyone looked unsure.
Nervous glances bounced around the summoning circle like trapped flies.
No one spoke.
No one moved.
Fear clung to the air like smoke.
Kael, meanwhile, had gone quiet.
Not because he was panicking.
He was… remembering.
Just a few moments ago, he'd been in class.
Mrs. Rose was teaching something boring.
Everyone was half-listening.
Kael, meanwhile, had used his last few coins to buy a smoothie and was chilling on the back bench, trying to slurp it without being noticed.
Then: Boom.
A blinding flash.
A physical slam against the wall.
But miraculously—smoothie intact.
He blinked and saw it then: A glowing red circle spreading across the classroom floor.
Runes. Smoke. Screams.
Then: Boom no. 2.
Cue darkness.
Cue cult temple.
Cue Kael, still clutching the smoothie like a lifeline.
The Prophetess smiled.
Not the reassuring kind—the cruel, knowing kind.
The kind of smile someone wears right before they step on your throat.
She'd seen this before, probably too many times to count.
The panic. The hesitation. The fragile hope.
And now, she'd break it.
"Chant with me," she said.
Then, with eerie grace, she spoke a line in a strange, guttural language.
The syllables clawed at the ears like rusted nails:
"Zar'khel imur'an thorei."
The runes beneath their feet pulsed.
The class stood frozen.
Kael didn't need to be a genius to read the room: nobody was about to chant anything.
Not yet.
Then Josh snapped.
Of course he did.
"Enough of this bullshit!" he shouted, puffing up like a rooster in a death match.
"Do you even know who I am?! Who my father is?!"
Mrs. Rose tried to reach for him, panic on her face. "Josh, stop—"
Kael didn't even blink.
He took another sip of his smoothie and muttered, "These types always die first."
And sure enough.
Two cultists in red demon masks moved like shadows.
Before Josh could finish his next syllable, a curved blade swept clean through his neck.
His body collapsed a second later, head rolling like a dropped melon.
It was fast.
Brutal.
Unceremonious.
Silence.
Then screaming.
Lots of it.
Girls screamed the loudest—one right next to Kael, shrieking directly into his ear.
He flinched and, without thinking, slapped her.
Not hard.
Just enough to shut her up.
She stared at him, shocked.
Kael met her tear-filled eyes.
"Can't you see?! I'm trying to focus! Scream another way."
She started crying again.
Kael sighed, taking another sip.
The smoothie was still cold.
Thank the gods.
The Prophetess stepped down from the obsidian dais, her expression unreadable.
"Beyonders," she said calmly, her voice echoing through the torchlit hall,
"You are all precious to us... but only when you obey."
Her eyes landed on Josh's headless corpse, now leaking into the glowing runes.
"If you don't, you end up like him."
That was when the horror really sank in.
Kael could feel it—across the circle, a shift.
The weight of realization finally crushed the last of their hope.
Good.
Now they were ready.
"Again," the Prophetess said.
Her voice rang out:
"Zar'khel imur'an thorei."
This time, shakily, the class began to echo the words.
Kael joined in, half-hearted and unimpressed.
He still didn't like where this was going.
As the final syllables left their mouths, something shifted.
The air... bent.
The runes beneath their feet pulsed harder—like a heartbeat.
Then, from somewhere beyond sound and space, a whisper slithered into Kael's mind.
It wasn't a voice.
It was something else.
Cold.
Ancient.
Wrong.
Kael's breath hitched.
He focused, squinting through the noise inside his skull—
And then it appeared.
###
[⚫ Voice of the Void ⚫]
[Name: Kael Virein]
[True Rune: Unawakened]
[True Rune Rank: Unawakened]
[Soul Core: Dormant]
[Attribute: [Beyonder]]
[Race: Human]
[Bloodline: None]
[Physique: None]
###
Kael's eyes widened.
"A system," he whispered.
Of course there was a system.
How else could this nightmare get worse?
Or better.
Depending on how bored he was.
He took a slow sip of his smoothie, eyes locked on the flickering runes.
This just got interesting.
Really interesting.