A Few Words Up Front
I never meant to tell a clean story.
If you can’t stand filth, the darkness in people’s hearts, or nights when you’re afraid to turn off the lights, then close this book now.
A hole appeared in the sky. Everyone under thirty opened their eyes and found themselves in the mist.
There was a wall there, plastered with bloodied words: Welcome to the Land of Godhood.
Godhood. What a lovely sound.
But everyone who has passed through that door knows that the one thing the place isn’t short of is gods. The ground is littered with gods sealed by the dead, waiting for you to steal their shells. Each team has to make its way through fifteen stories devised by ghosts, each more dangerous and deadly than the last. The ghosts have to kill within their stories, but they follow rules, and those rules are their chains. Figure out those chains, and you’ll have a chance to steal their power.
Here’s one rule: the fewer living teams left in a story world, the more a ghost’s abilities are suppressed. The surviving teams can claim more and pry open greater authority. So in the end, the ones who have their sights on you aren’t the ghosts. They’re the people in the room next door.
I’m writing this to tell you one thing: the most terrifying thing in the mist has never been the ghosts. It’s the human heart. A person’s mouth can devour people more readily than a ghost can. Ghosts have to follow rules when they kill. People don’t.
If someone steals all the ghosts’ powers and makes them their own, have they become a god, or were they already a ghost?
His master never told him the answer.
His master only ever told him this: A person’s whole life is a lie. You lie to others, and you lie to yourself. When you reach the end of it, you have to think carefully about who you’re really deceiving.
That’s the story I want to tell.
Believe it or not, it makes no difference. Either way, welcome to the Land of Godhood.
