Tokyo, 2025.
Akira Mori's life was as uninspired as the vending machine coffee he clutched every morning. A junior logistics coordinator for a mid-tier trading firm, he spent his days trapped behind spreadsheets, replying to emails no one read, and nodding along to meetings where nothing was ever decided.
He was twenty-six, quiet, forgettable, and entirely alone.
He ate convenience store bentos at his desk. His phone was a graveyard of unopened chats. His apartment was barely larger than a storage unit, its silence broken only by the occasional rumble of the train line outside.
Nobody would notice if he vanished.
And that's exactly what happened.
It started with a flicker.
He was crossing the street one evening, the city soaked in neon rain, when the world paused. The traffic stopped mid-motion, drops of water hanging in the air like frozen pearls.
Then came the light.
A blinding, violet glow erupted from beneath his feet, forming strange runes in the air around him. Akira barely had time to shield his eyes before the ground fell away.
He was no longer in Tokyo.
He wasn't even on Earth.
Akira crashed onto a cold, marble floor. Pain shot up his spine. Groaning, he sat up—only to find himself in the center of a ritual circle glowing with fading energy.
Above him loomed a shattered ceiling open to an alien sky. Twin moons hovered over jagged ruins. Strange metal spires jutted from ancient stone, like a cathedral fused with a machine.
He gasped for breath. His heart pounded in terror and disbelief.
"Where... what the hell is this?"
Then a voice echoed in his mind.
"Synchronization complete. Candidate matched. Initiating host-link: Witch of Eva Core."
His vision erupted with digital light—floating symbols, arcane glyphs, status markers he couldn't understand. At the center of it all pulsed a crystalline object embedded in his chest, semi-transparent and humming with life.
"Welcome, Akira Mori," the voice said again, gentle but emotionless.
"You are now the Host of the Eva Core: Designation—Witch."
Akira scrambled to his feet, backing away in panic.
"No, no, no—this isn't real. This has to be a dream. Some kind of VR hallucination—"
"Negative. This is the realm of Aetheris. You have been summoned through a dimensional breach. The contract is complete."
And as he stood alone in the ruins of a forgotten world, with twin moons watching like distant gods, Akira realized one undeniable truth.
There would be no going back.