"Wakey wakey," snarled a sardonic voice.
"Jesus Christ!" Revan shouted, shooting upright in bed. His body was covered in a sheen of sweat which soaked his entire bed. His chest heaved frantically as hyperventilation seized him. He looked around and realized he was back in his apartment—the same one where he'd previously held the pistol to his head.
"Oh God…" he sighed with a level of relief he'd never felt before. "Oh thank God! It was just… just a nightmare… It was just a horrible, fucked up nightmare…"
He ran his hands down his arms, shoulders, and chest, feeling for any presence of thorns. They were gone, along with the eternal darkness where he previously resided. The early dawn light of the rising sun snuck between cracks in his window blinds.
The smell of ammonia stained the air, causing Revan to reassess the soaking puddle he laid in.
"You've got to be shitting me," he whispered under his breath, realizing the liquid he sat in wasn't entirely sweat. He toppled from the wet mattress onto the carpeted floor, then examined the yellow-tinge across his sheets. For the first time since childhood, he'd pissed himself in his sleep.
Naturally, he tried to justify the action by recalling how horrifying the nightmare had been. After all, he'd watched the world end at the hands of some invincible titan whose arrows operated like heat-seeking missiles.
Then, as if that wasn't bizarre enough, some pizza delivery woman from Hell gave Revan a mask which transported him to eternal darkness.
And perhaps the cherry on top were the thorns that dug into his flesh, flaying him whole and searing his insides with poison.
In light of those circumstances, pissing himself seemed somewhat justified.
It wasn't until Revan went to lift himself onto his feet that he saw the back of his hands.
And it wasn't until he saw the back of his hands that his heart sank.
The shock of what he saw was nearly enough to send him falling back on his ass. His eyes followed the swirling black ink which started just below his knuckles and crawled up his wrist, forearm, and bicep. He immediately looked at his other hand and saw that the same tattoo marred his skin in an identical pattern.
He held his breath momentarily as his nightmare seeped into reality. Like the obsidian markings on the Recruiter's body, Revan's exposed skin bore circling tendrils of barbed thorns. They no longer hurt, though as he ran his hand along the creeping pattern, he realized these tattoos were located in the exact same places where the thorns had torn into him during the dream.
And then it dawned on him…
Revan vaulted over his urine-stained bed and sprinted to the bathroom, panting under his breath in disbelief, "No, no, no, no… This can't be happening… This can't be happening…"
He pushed open the adjacent door that led to the bathroom and turned on the light. The same mirror he'd used for several years no longer reflected the image of Revan Kaiser, and any relief Revan felt that the nightmare was over, vanished.
Nothing about the image staring back at him resembled his likeness. Though Chaos had said it would take him back in time to his younger self, Revan's younger self was equally as unremarkable as he'd been when the Apocalypse began. If anything, his younger self had even less going for him—at least the older version of Revan Kaiser had several years of money put away in his savings account and retirement pension.
But it stood to be said that Revan Kaiser had done much more than travel back in time…
He'd transformed into a completely different person…
The man in the mirror was absolutely, unbelievably shredded. Revan had never been overweight, per se, yet there wasn't a visible ounce of fat anywhere on his body. His skin was like an elastic canvas tightened over muscles he never knew existed.
Obliques protruded along his ribcage that looked like the gills of a shark.
He suddenly had the abs of an olympic gymnast—even without flexing they stood out like kernels of corn upon a buttered cob.
There were men who worked out their entire lives yet never achieved the rounded chest, peaked shoulders, or striated biceps Revan possessed.
And the tattoos…
Black thorns covered his entire upper body like barbed wire. The patterns were like tribal runes which weaved and knotted across his skin, curling over his collarbones, shoulder blades, and ribs. Their shape mirrored the tendrils of thorns he had endured in the Void, frozen in ink as if Chaos itself had branded him.
And then there was the mask.
It still clung to his face as though it had always been there, the same one the Recruiter had forced upon him.
In the mirror, it resembled the sleek, angular visage of a great black panther, the eye slits narrow and predatory. The carved lines across its surface caught the bathroom light in sharp glints, and the gold swirls etched along its cheeks seemed to move ever so slightly—alive, watching.
He reached up to tear it away, but as before, his fingers met no seams, no edges, no sign that it was anything but a part of his own flesh. He pulled the tangled mess of auburn hair back to expose his hairline, examining it closer for where the mask ended. But it didn't end. It had simply replaced his face with another—one much more primal and ancient than the pathetic features his parents passed down.
A sound came from the other room—light, deliberate, like bare feet on carpet.
Revan froze.
"Hello?"
No answer.
The hair on his arms prickled as he stepped into the hallway. His tattoos suddenly itched, then burned as he moved closer toward the noise.
The air felt heavier here, stale, as if the dawn light could not quite reach it. Shadows along the walls stretched wrong—longer than they should be, bending toward him like grasping hands.
He reached the doorway to his bedroom, the stench of sweat and ammonia still hanging thick. The blinds swayed without a breeze. And then—
"Wakey wakey," the voice snarled again, low and mocking, but this time close enough to feel its breath.
Revan's eyes shot to the far corner of the room.
Something peeled itself away from the shadows.
It was tall, impossibly thin, its limbs too long to belong to anything human. Its surface wasn't skin but rippling darkness, its outline blurred as if it were half-submerged in smoke. Where its face should have been was only a smear of static, writhing and hissing in place of features. It tilted its head at him with an inhuman, jerking motion.
The first Sleepwraith.
And it had been waiting for him to wake up.