Heavenly Gate: A Demonic Journey

In a world devastated by war, the ashen sky hung low, obscuring most of the sun's rays and casting the land into eternal twilight.

What remained of this once-prosperous planet was a barren, lifeless landscape, where only a handful of creatures struggled to survive in the endless ashen wastelands.

The planet's surface was scorched and cracked, and its atmosphere was thick with the stench of death and decay.

It was a world where hope had long since faded, and survival was the only goal for its last surviving creatures.

Beneath the ashen morning sky stretched a boundless scorched forest—a grim reminder of what the planet once was.

The air was thick with the acrid smell of burned wood and ash, a suffocating odor that clung to everything and made breathing a struggle.

The forest's ground was cracked and blackened, littered with the burned remains of what had once been a thriving ecosystem.

Silence dominated the scorched forest, broken only by the occasional sound of dying embers and the distant, guttural growls of unseen creatures.

Amidst the charred remains of the decayed forest, a malnourished fifteen-year-old boy was seen carrying a worn-out bag filled with various supplies.

As the boy approached a dilapidated orphanage, he slowly mustered his strength to open the large iron door that guarded it. After a brief struggle, he managed to pry it open slightly and took his first step inside.

The place was in ruins, filled with dust and various damaged objects. Among them were a four-legged table missing one of its legs and a potted plant, long dead from lack of sunlight.

After navigating the orphanage for a while, the boy opened a hidden door that led to an underground room.

Slowly descending the concrete steps, the boy struggled to see in the dim light, but he pressed on, knowing his friends' lives hung in the balance.

Finally reaching another door, this one wooden, he opened it to find three malnourished teenagers inside.

There were two fifteen-year-old malnourished boys tending to a similarly aged malnourished girl who was suffering from a high fever.

One of them was Levi York, a smart, black-haired, black-eyed fourteen-year-old boy with a knack for finding solutions in the direst of situations.

The other was Hank Xander, a brown-haired, brown-eyed fifteen-year-old boy who had endured much while trying to protect his younger sister in this cursed world.

Lastly, there was Rosalie Xander, Hank's younger sister—a cheerful, green-eyed, brown-haired fourteen-year-old girl who was currently suffering from a high fever.

Rosalie, who was crying in her brother Hank's arms, her strength fading, whispered, "Am I going to die, big brother? Hank? Levi?"

Hank tried to calm her, his voice steady. "Of course not. You're going to live. Why would God let someone like you die? Look, Ethan brought back supplies to help you recover." He gestured toward the malnourished boy, whose name was Ethan.

Ethan, who had gone through hell and back to find the supplies needed for Rosalie, forced a smile onto his tired face. "Of course, I brought supplies for my cute Rosalie. Now close your eyes and rest. Your big brothers need to talk about some things."

He motioned for Levi and Hank to come closer and spoke in a low voice. "These are the last supplies I could find. There's nothing left in this area. Do you guys have any ideas on what we can do?"

Levi thought for a moment before responding in a low voice. "It's true—there are no supplies left here, and the wild dogs in this territory are becoming more aggressive by the day. But we can't travel if Rosalie doesn't recover. Her weak immune system won't survive the journey."

His words, though discouraging, were true. The group was trapped between two dire choices: abandon Rosalie and live another day, or stay and risk starving to death.

Ethan, by risking his life today, had only managed to bring back a small amount of water and medical supplies to the group.

Silence hung heavy within the decaying walls of the orphanage before Ethan broke it. "I'll go on another supply run tomorrow while you two take care of Rosalie. You have no objections, right?"

The group fell silent, understanding the sacrifice Ethan was making. By venturing out again, he risked his life—whether at the hands of other humans or the bloodthirsty animals that roamed the land. Ethan's malnourished body could barely escape them, let alone fight them off.

"If you have no objections, then I'm going to sleep. I'm exhausted from today's events."

As Ethan lay down to rest, the two boys turned their attention back to Rosalie, tending to her with quiet determination.

———

As Ethan drifted into sleep, his mind wandered to memories he had long chosen to suppress.

Ethan harbored a secret, one he guarded closely and vowed never to reveal, no matter the cost.

The truth was that Ethan wasn't from this world. In his previous life, he had been a thirty-year-old man named Ethan Cross, who had died in an unfortunate workplace accident.

Somehow, when Ethan first opened his eyes, he found that he had been reincarnated into a strange, almost parallel version of Earth as a baby, while retaining all his memories.

Yet Ethan's life wasn't peaceful in this world; quite the opposite, in fact. The parents of his new life were killed when he was five years old, leading to him becoming an orphan and having to survive in an already crumbling society.

Originally, the world that Ethan reincarnated into seemed normal enough. It even made him excited to have such a second chance at life.

However, unfortunately, Ethan didn't know that such a technologically advanced and relatively peaceful world would transform into anarchy.

A world where human civilization had been forcefully regressed to the Dark Ages due to the emergence of an emotionless and mysterious godlike entity known simply as the Heavenly Gate. 

The first documented appearance of this entity was on September 1st, 2014, when it threw the world into chaos, disrupting its balance by abducting nearly a billion humans during its first "operation," as people called it. 

The individuals it abducted were simply known as participants—people forcibly sent to other worlds by the Heavenly Gate, tasked with completing a mission in order to return to their homeworld. 

Those who succeeded in its missions returned to their homeworld, retaining any superpowers or supernatural items they had gained during the mission.

But for those who failed—whether through death or an inability to complete their mission—it was game over. They were either trapped in the other worlds forever or faced permanent death. 

The Heavenly Gate was merciless toward useless people, after all.

That was also reflected in its total indifference toward the repercussions its actions had on humanity, as its existence led to massive societal upheavals.

After all, the sudden disappearance of so many humans caused worldwide panic and hysteria, leading to massive food and water shortages, pushing the already crumbling human civilization to the brink of collapse. 

The Heavenly Gate's motives for its actions remain unclear even to this day, but one thing is certain: every time it activated, it transported humans to completely unfamiliar worlds, forcing them to complete dangerous missions.

Adding to the horror, the Heavenly Gate broadcasted the participants' struggles to the rest of the world, fueling fear and further chaos in an already crumbling society.

Nowadays, even though the Heavenly Gate has toned down its requirements to only taking 100 million people each time it activates, it still doesn't change the already imminent destruction of the human race. As things currently stand, there are no more than a few thousand humans left on the planet.

This is humanity's last chance—to either save their world or die trying.

When Ethan was young and had just reincarnated into this world, he dreamed of being the hero of his own story. But reality proved far harsher than any fantasy.

While other people gained overpowered abilities and led luxurious lives after reincarnating, Ethan was left scavenging for the basics like food and water in this hellish world.

When he first regained consciousness as a child, he was filled with optimism. He dreamed of living a better life—studying hard, attending a prestigious university, and building a loving family. But that dream was shattered the moment the Heavenly Gate took everything from him.

The younger, more hopeful, and innocent version of Ethan would probably despise the person he had become. But that naïve reincarnator hadn't seen the horrors Ethan had witnessed.

At just five years old, Ethan watched his loving parents—the only family he had in this new life—get abducted by the Heavenly Gate and brutally murdered. He saw everything play out on a screen, helpless to do anything but watch.

From that day on, Ethan was thrown into a world of cruelty. The orphanage where he grew up became a breeding ground for despair. Food and water were scarce, and human life meant little. Ethan had witnessed the darkest sides of humanity—rape, murder, and cannibalism—all within the first few months after the Heavenly Gate's first operation.

Even when things started to stabilize, Ethan's life never truly improved. Hunger gnawed at him constantly, and he did unspeakable things to survive—murder, theft, whatever it took. Yet he adapted, because that's what humans do: they endure.

The only advantage in Ethan's new life lay within his memories of his previous one. The fictional stories from his past world—anime, books, and comics—became an unlikely guide for him.

This was because the worlds the Heavenly Gate often sent participants into mirrored the plots of those fictional works. It was a thought both fascinating and terrifying to Ethan.

But Ethan knew better than to rely solely on this so-called 'advantage.'

After all, the Heavenly Gate had a nasty habit of throwing ordinary humans into extraordinarily dangerous worlds. Many of these worlds made gaining superpowers nearly impossible, and surviving as a regular human was a Herculean task.

Take World 1, for instance. When Ethan was five, the Heavenly Gate operated for the first time, abducting a billion humans. The world they were sent to? It was an alternate version of Earth from the Dragon Ball universe.

At first, everything seemed like a dream. But within a year, Frieza—a planet-destroying alien—arrived and obliterated the planet, killing everyone living there, including the participants. Later, Goku—another space alien—resurrected the planet using the Dragon Balls. But none of the one billion humans were revived.

That memory still haunts Ethan to this day, especially the theories he had heard afterward about World 1.

It was theorized by some people that the reason the Dragon Balls couldn't bring back the one billion abducted humans was because they weren't of that world.

That realization hit Ethan like a truck. He had hoped—no, he had begged—for his parents to return. But his pleas fell on deaf ears, leaving his heart and mind broken into countless pieces with no one to help him piece them back.

Ethan still has nightmares about that event every night. He dreams of the way his mother's hand trembled as she reached out for him, her voice breaking into a scream that was abruptly silenced by the flickering screen. His father's face, frozen in terror, is etched into his mind like a scar that never heals.

That was the day Ethan began to grow gradually insane. He stopped crying and stopped pleading for things to change.

His face grew indifferent, and his gaze turned cold. All that remained in his mind was his need for survival and his endless hatred toward the Heavenly Gate.