Transmigrated as the Cuck.... WTF!!!

"Huff… huff… huff…"

Verena and Mia tore across the dunes, lungs straining, legs burning, their forms blurring into streaks of desperation. They didn't think about direction, nor distance—only escape. Away from the Sand Globe. Away from that storm. Away from its gaze.

They had no time to question. No courage to look back. The idea of glancing over their shoulders felt like suicide. Their world shrank to one thought alone: keep running.

The desert beneath them blurred into nothing more than shifting grains. Every step sank, every push forward felt like wading through mire, yet they didn't stop. They couldn't.

They didn't even notice when the presence of the Sand Globe faded behind them. The terror lingered like a phantom weight pressing down on their hearts, convincing them it was still right there, watching, hunting, ready to turn them into stone if they faltered for even a breath.

Thud—!

Mia's foot caught on a slope of treacherous sand. Her body pitched forward violently, collapsing with no grace. Her face smashed into the dune, the coarse grains sticking to the sweat already coating her skin.

"Mia!" Verena's scream ripped from her throat, but it hurt to even raise her voice. The cry scratched against her parched windpipe like glass shards. She stumbled, knees buckling, before she staggered down and lowered Celeste and Evelyn to the ground as gently as she could.

Her chest heaved. Her body shook. A violent tremor passed through her shoulders, and then—

"Cough! Cough! Cough!"

A harsh fit overtook her. The coughs wracked her frame, each one slicing into her throat until flecks of red stained her lips. A few drops of blood splattered against the pale sand.

"Shit…" she rasped, the curse costing her more pain than it was worth. Regret flashed across her face immediately. Even her anger, even her despair, burned.

Mia groaned weakly from where she had fallen, her body twitching in small convulsions. Verena's vision blurred, but before she could force herself back up, movement stirred beside her.

"Wait… what happened? I… I don't remember anything. Also… where are we again?"

Celeste's soft, disoriented voice cracked the silence. She blinked blearily as she sat up, rubbing at her heavy eyelids with the back of her trembling hand. Her gaze darted around sluggishly, struggling to focus.

The moment her eyes adjusted to the sight around her, Verena coughing blood, Mia sprawled and half-buried in sand, Evelyn slumped unconscious, her pupils widened in alarm.

"Wait—where's Leon?" she blurted out, twisting her head frantically from side to side. Her breaths grew shallow, her panic rising as the truth crashed over her: only the girls were here. Leon was nowhere to be seen.

"Tsk." Celeste bit down on her lip, frustration bleeding through the panic. She forced her body to move, ignoring the weight dragging on her limbs. She hurried to Mia's side, crouched, and looped her arms beneath the smaller girl to haul her upright.

Her brows furrowed immediately. "What the hell…?" she muttered under her breath.

Mia was light but right now her weight felt off. Forcing her upright sent prickles of unease crawling across Celeste's skin.

Gritting her teeth, she lowered Mia back down carefully, brushing away clumps of sand clinging to her cheeks and hair. Then her attention snapped to Evelyn, who groaned faintly, eyelids fluttering.

Slowly, Evelyn stirred, one hand clutching at her scalp as though trying to rip something out. Her voice was strained, hoarse, like every word carved into her throat.

"Ughhh… my head… it feels like someone was screaming inside it."

The tone, the rawness, made Celeste's stomach twist.

She quickly moved closer, crouching by Evelyn and rubbing small circles on her back in a reflexive attempt to soothe her. "What do you mean? Screaming? I didn't… I didn't feel anything—"

Her words cut off abruptly.

Memory, faint, jagged, fragmented, stabbed through her skull like a shard of ice. Her eyes widened.

Something. Something they had seen. Just moments ago. A storm, a sphere, a presence. The image flickered for less than a second before—

Gone.

The thought dissolved into nothing, as if scraped clean from her mind. Her mouth hung open. She wanted to reach for the image, hold it, make sense of it, but there was nothing left. Only a hollow blankness where memory should have been.

Her breath trembled. She swallowed hard, but the dryness in her throat made even that small act painful.

"What… did we see?" Celeste whispered, her voice trembling. Her expression paled as the realization clawed through her: she couldn't remember.

The terror wasn't just in what had happened—

It was in what their minds refused to let them recall.

Evelyn groaned again, pressing her fingers against her temple as though trying to physically cage the sound inside her head.

"Don't think about it too much… aaaahhh… it's a good thing you don't remember it. Otherwise, you'll be hurt too." Her voice trembled, caught somewhere between warning and despair.

Verena's head snapped toward her, eyes narrowing despite the burning ache in her chest. "What are you talking about? There were no screams there… Cough… cough…"

The retort came out broken, shredded by her parched throat. Each syllable made her ribs jolt with pain, but even that didn't stop her from forcing the words out. Mystery was gnawing at her harder than any wound.

Evelyn dragged in a deep breath, shuddering on the exhale. Then another, heavier, as though preparing herself to let the words exist outside her head.

"When we were right beside Leon… staring at the Sand Globe… I heard a voice. No— not just a voice. A raging scream. It roared inside my head. It was… incomprehensible, completely alien, but it felt like it wanted to crush me."

Her voice faltered, her body curling slightly with each remembered syllable. "Even now, just thinking about it makes me… shudder."

She really did. Her shoulders flinched at an invisible weight, as though the sound had clawed at her bones and left scars that hadn't yet healed.

Watching her, both Verena and Celeste could tell she wasn't faking it. She had no reason to lie, and more importantly her fear was too raw, too visceral to be anything but real.

Celeste, who had been rubbing at her temples with frustration, finally spoke. "I don't even remember. Whatever happened in that moment Sand Globe, Leon, anything. I just remember… collapsing. My whole body shutting down, like the world blinked out." Her brows drew together, strain written all over her expression.

Evelyn turned sharply to Verena. "You really didn't hear anything? Not even a whisper?"

Verena shook her head, chest still heaving. "Nope. Nothing. Maybe… maybe because I was a little farther away from you three? That's the only explanation I can think of. But I swear, I didn't hear a single thing." She tried to steady her voice, but guilt was strangling it, twisting every word into a confession she didn't want to make.

Celeste's gaze slid toward her, sharp and questioning. "Also… where is Leon?"

The question cut into Verena. She swallowed hard. Her throat felt like dry stone. Under the weight of Celeste's eyes, which were normal, just steady and curious, Verena's mind twisted them into daggers. To her guilt-ridden mind, they looked like accusations. Deadly stares.

"I… I… I… I don't kn—" The words jammed up in her throat, tumbling out in broken fragments, half-formed and incoherent. To anyone listening, it sounded like nonsense. To Celeste, it sounded like hesitation. Suspicion flickered across her face.

"You don't know?" she repeated, this time heavier, as if pressing down on the cracks in Verena's tone.

Before Verena could collapse under that weight, another voice cut in softer, but firm enough to carry.

"She left Leon behind. Because I said so."

Mia had finally pulled herself up into a sitting position. Her small frame looked fragile against the endless desert, yet her words carried weight that froze the air.

Her steady eyes met theirs, and in that moment, she wasn't the weak one of the group. She was simply the one stating fact.

Celeste's mouth opened to retort, but nothing came out. The words withered in her throat as realization took their place. She knew what it meant to leave Leon behind. She knew the weight Verena must have felt in that split-second decision.

So instead, Celeste turned to Verena and bowed her head. "Thank you… for choosing to save me. Even though I'm angry that Leon was left behind… I'm not ungrateful enough to ignore what you did. You chose me. You gave me another chance to live. For that, I'll thank you." Her voice was tight, every syllable stretched between resentment and sincerity.

Behind her, Evelyn blinked through the haze of her headache. She alternated her gaze between Celeste and Verena, struggling to piece together the unspoken truth.

Then, slowly, she nodded. Understanding seeped into her expression, replacing confusion with something heavier. "Thank you, Verena… for choosing me too."

Her hand never left her scalp, fingers digging in as if massaging the pain would erase the voice lodged in her skull.

Celeste moved closer, crouching beside her. "Does it really hurt that much? Like… a lot?"

Evelyn grimaced, shooting her a flat glare despite the pain. "Yes. It does. Also… what kind of question is that supposed to be?"

Celeste scratched the back of her head, a rare sheepishness slipping through. "I honestly don't know how to comfort people. So I don't know how I'm supposed to react here."

Evelyn groaned and leaned forward until her forehead touched her knees. "Then don't. Just stay quiet and let me have some peace of mind."

Celeste blinked, then shrugged. "Fair enough."