In the stillness of early morning, before the sun had even begun to rise, Kaizen found himself cleaning a garden cloaked in darkness. With a worn broom in hand, he moved through the winding paths, sweeping up fallen petals and scattered leaves.
It was a rare moment of peace—one of the few that slaves like him were ever allowed to have. Slowly, methodically, he cleaned each pathway, the silence broken only by the soft scrape of bristles against stone.
The stars still lingered in the sky, faint and fading. The moon's glow washed over the hedges, casting soft shadows like ink stains on a painter's canvas.
"The noble miss likes this path clean," Kaizen muttered. "What a coincidence. So do I—clean paths make it easier to drag bodies down."
He chuckled softly at his joke, the sound quickly swallowed by the garden's thick silence.
Kaizen continued to clean as he changed his path, his practiced hands dancing with the broom in a perfect rhythm. He glided past every single plant, casting a glance at each one to check its health.
The garden was larger than most people realized. Winding paths twisted like veins through plots of rare flora—exotic blooms imported from across the continent. Kaizen had learned to care for them all. Not by choice, but because neglecting a noble's prized flower could cost him a limb.
As Kaizen swept along a narrow path near the flowerbeds, his rhythmic movements brought him to the edge of the garden. There, his gaze settled on something odd—a small, hunched sapling rooted in a patch of barren earth, where nothing had ever grown before.
"How's this specific plant already on the brink of brown?" he murmured.
Without hesitation, Kaizen set his broom aside and reached for a small watering can stashed beneath a stone bench. Conveniently full, the can sloshed quietly as he began to pour, each drop landing softly on the brittle soil.
As the water soaked in, the plant stirred.
A few of its leaves turned green.
Then, just as quickly, the soil went dry again.
"Strange," Kaizen muttered, but he shrugged and watered it again.
Was it curiosity?
Or something else?
Perhaps it was the instinct of a man whose life was constantly withering—who saw, in a dying sapling, something worth saving.
The same thing happened. A few more leaves turned green. He kept going, refilling the can from the nearby well, determined to see the sapling fully revived.
Finally, after the last leaf had turned green, Kaizen stood back with a strange sense of accomplishment.
He didn't know why the plant had responded so rapidly, but it felt good to fix something—anything—for once.
"Sigh... I got too distracted," he muttered, realizing the rest of the path remained untouched.
He grabbed the can again, filled it one last time, and returned to water the soil.
But this time, something changed.
The leaves stayed the same. Instead, the stem began to stretch. Slowly at first. Then faster. Much faster.
"Okay, what? What is even this tree?" Kaizen said, stepping back in alarm.
The plant grew and grew. Leaves burst forth. Bark thickened. Branches unfurled toward the sky. In mere moments, it had risen past Kaizen's height. Then twice that. Then more.
A low hum filled the air, small vibrations filling the ground. The scent of fresh earth and sap hit Kaizen's nose with unnatural sharpness.
He stumbled backward, watching in stunned silence as the sapling became a towering tree, fifteen feet tall, easily. Vines curled down its sides, and from one of them, a bulbous flower began to swell.
That flower morphed into a fruit. Its skin shimmered a strange, vibrant purple. Apple-shaped.
The vine lowered it toward him like an offering.
"..." He said nothing.
"What? Nothing else?" Kaizen asked the empty garden, scanning the air.
The garden stayed silent. The only sound was the wind whispering through the leaves.
Kaizen stared at the fruit, its surface glistening with dew. It looked like it belonged in a noblewoman's poison ring, not a tree in a slave's morning chore.
"Is that for me?" he muttered, eyeing it warily.
It smelled... oddly pleasant.
Still, Kaizen reached for the fruit.
But just as his fingers brushed its surface, a man's voice rang out from behind him—sharp, commanding, and unfamiliar.
***
The WorldFruit.
It was a mysterious fruit that had been appearing in this world since the dawn of time. It was legendary, yes. It was also rare.
At first, when the WorldFruit appeared, most of those who ate it went into a comatose state. They would stay in this coma for at least two days before they woke up.
After many woke up, they said that they all had a nightmare.
And it was told to them that it was a test. A test set up by an Entity called The WorldTree. If you pass the test, you gain powers. If you don't? You die.
After those who ate the fruit passed the test, they all received a kind of unknown power. But for mysterious reasons, whenever the name of that power was mentioned, the people who heard its name would forget about it. And for whatever strange reasons, they could not use the powers they had here. Hence, they were all considered nothing but idiots.
The only names that people were allowed to know were the WorldFruits and the WorldTree.
And a few days later, the people who woke up from this 'Trial' would suddenly vanish.
Where did they go? Did they die? Nobody knew. Their bodies were never found.
Many have investigated it. Scholars tried to study it. But nothing was found. Alchemists of all kinds even tried to study the fruit, but no results.
Hence, many even called it the Devil's Fruit.
***
"Stop right there!" shouted the man, his voice raising an alarm.
Kaizen plucked out the fruit and, out of instinct, kept it inside his pocket as he started dashing toward the garden's boundary.
Luckily, Kaizen was already near the end of the flowerbed, and the boundary was just a few meters away from him.
He reached out for the wooden boxes lying on the floor, and he piled them together, barely able to climb the wall using them.
He then tossed a kick at the boxes as they fell, and he jumped over to the other side. His hands stung from the scrape of stone, but he didn't stop to wince. He ran.
He then dashed into the forest.
HuffHuff
"If… If I'm not wrong… It's that tree's fruit!" spoke out Kaizen as he kept running at maximum speed, as if the moment he stopped, he would be killed.
He didn't know how long he ran; he just ran desperately. Past roots, thorns, low-hanging branches. Each step forward felt like buying another second of life. After thirty minutes of nonstop running, Kaizen finally stopped.
He knew if he ran even a little more, he would most likely die—not from a pursuer, but from sheer exhaustion.
Kaizen decided to stop by a cave. He crawled inside and hid himself behind a rock, using some leaves as a cover.
He also covered himself in dirt to mask his presence from the predators. That way, his survival chances would increase.
"If I am not wrong, it's The WorldFruit! If what my father said is true, then…"
Gulp.
He gulped at the thought of eating something he would never have dared.
"How could I possibly let go of an opportunity like this?" he questioned to himself.
Kaizen was a slave. A slave to the Blackthorn Noble Family. And if he needed to survive—if he needed to live—then he had to get out of its clutches.
Suddenly, a figure flashed past his mind.
Kaizen shook his head as he slapped his face.
"No… I cannot let my determination falter. I need to succeed in this trial. If I don't, it would just be another failed attempt," he said. "What could I even lose? My life? Hahaha…"
He laughed—even at the fear of losing his life—because he was already as good as dead.
"Well, here it goes…" he spoke.
Munch.Munch munch.
He munched down the purple apple at an insanely fast speed, taking in big bites and swallowing without completely chewing. Surprisingly, he didn't choke.
"Heh… After eating the trash provided by the family, I ain't getting choked by a regular apple," he declared proudly.
After thirty seconds.
"Wait—was it all just a rumor? Did thousands of people vanishing mean nothing but a rumor?" Kaizen exclaimed.
He didn't know what he would do if this fruit were a fake. His mind began spiraling with doubt. But then he laughed again.
"Hahahaha… Hahaha… hahahaha…" That night, Kaizen laughed like a maniac
***.
After Kaizen had eaten the fruit, he kept laughing and crying there like a madman.
His breathing grew erratic. Laughter turned to sobs, then back to laughter again in an endless, painful loop.
He was having a mental breakdown.
Alone—tired, and desperate, his emotions spilled over like a dam broken loose. Slowly and steadily, as he got tired, he fainted. And then it happened.
"Welcome to the Dream of Chains, little human."