Edran moved with caution through the dense underbrush, each step tentative, not because he feared what lay ahead—but because he feared what lay within.
The jungle breathed around him. Not just alive, but sentient. The foliage whispered. The earth thrummed. Even the filtered sunlight that pierced the canopy felt like it watched. He'd never known awareness like this, not even in the most lucid dreams. It was intoxicating. It was overwhelming.
*This body isn't mine.*
That truth had settled in his bones since waking. Not like a revelation—but like a memory finally rising to the surface. He was not simply moving. He was *being moved*—by reflexes that were not his own, balance he had not earned, instincts forged from battles he had never fought.
He crouched beside a twisted tree root and pressed his palm against the soil. The dirt responded with a strange familiarity. The tremble in his hand wasn't weakness—it was anticipation. This body knew this world.
*But I don't.*
A vine brushed his shoulder. He flinched, then cursed himself. Too reactive. Too slow. Ravian wouldn't have flinched. Ravian would have moved before the danger emerged.
"I'm not him," Edran muttered.
But even as he said it, he wasn't sure. Not entirely.
He stood and flexed his fingers. The hand looked human enough—scarred, calloused, strong—but it felt alien. His memories flickered with images that weren't his: a man slicing through armored enemies, moving like a wraith, his blade an extension of wrath and discipline. It wasn't fantasy. It wasn't a dream.
It was Ravian.
And now that ghost lived in his flesh.
*Then I need to learn this body. Make it mine.*
He stepped into a sunlit clearing and exhaled. The moment felt quieter, more sacred somehow. Moss blanketed the stone floor. A weathered boulder stood at the edge, unassuming.
He walked to it.
"This is a test," he said aloud, not sure if it was for himself or for Ravian's memory.
He pressed his palm flat against the rock.
No resistance. Just smooth stone. Unmoving. Eternal.
Then he pushed.
A sharp crack echoed. The boulder split with a thunderous shudder, a spiderweb of fractures spiraling outward. Stone shards dropped to the moss with dull thuds.
Edran stumbled back, eyes wide.
He hadn't *meant* to push that hard.
He flexed his fingers again. No soreness. No injury. Just trembling.
"This is too much," he whispered.
His heart pounded. Not from exertion. From fear.
This strength wasn't just overwhelming. It was *dangerous.*
He remembered the voice from the void: *To take life unjustly is to court destruction.*
If he couldn't control this body, then he couldn't control the chaos that came with it. And if he couldn't control the chaos—something else would.
He turned in a slow circle. The jungle watched in silence.
"System," he called out. "You watching?"
No response.
Typical.
He looked down at the shattered stone.
*Power without control is disaster.*
That truth was his now. A warning carved into the earth itself.
So what would he do? He couldn't go back. He couldn't rely on the instincts of a man he wasn't. But he also couldn't pretend to be someone else's shadow. There had to be a third path—one that neither denied Ravian's legacy nor submitted blindly to it.
If he let the power control him, he'd be a puppet. If he rejected it, he'd die uselessly. But if he *claimed* it—if he shaped it in his own image—then maybe… just maybe, he could survive as something more than a vessel.
A choice began to crystallize.
He wouldn't inherit Ravian's path.
He would forge his own.
And when the time came, it would not be Ravian's.
It would be his.
He stepped back into the jungle's embrace.
The journey had begun.
Not toward escape.
Toward ownership.
He would become worthy of the power.
Or he would die learning how.