Atlas Mercer
I'd always felt like death was this distant thing, something that was never truly able to reach me. But here I was, waiting at its door in a dark expanse of nothingness, hoping that whatever waited for me beyond it would be more than life had given me.
But that door never opened.
It just stayed there, shut tight, like death itself had left me sitting in the dark to think about my life. Not that there was much to think about. I lived, and then I died. I never truly made any kind of ripple in the worlds I found myself in, whether that was Earth, Mars, or now this strange place.
So what did it even matter if I died?
There was no going back, so why was death taking so long?
At first, I kept waiting, thinking maybe that stubborn door would open if I just gave it time. But the longer the silence dragged on, the more that hollow stillness began to grate on my nerves.
It wasn't peace. It wasn't relief.
It was just nothing.
And after a while, even that nothing started to feel cruel.
With a slow breath, I pushed myself to my feet and stepped toward the door, half expecting it to react now that I was standing right in front of it.
However, it reacted as one would expect of a door, unmoving, like it couldn't even be bothered to acknowledge me.
My jaw tightened. "Really?" I muttered into the emptiness. "That's it?"
Still nothing.
I raised my hand and struck the door, the sound dull and hollow before it was swallowed right back into the endless dark behind me.
For a second, I just stood there staring at it.
Then I hit it again, harder this time, frustration finally boiling over. "Don't just leave me here."
Then a faint vibration rattled through my head, growing stronger by the second until I felt the mark on my neck react once more, pulling me back from the edge. The dark emptiness vanished all at once, replaced by pain.
A whole lot of pain.
God, why did I hurt so much?
A groan slipped out, and as my vision slowly cleared, the blur gave way to the sight of a bright fire burning before me with far more life than my own broken body had left.
Trying to gather my thoughts, I shifted slightly and brought a shaky hand to my abdomen, only to freeze when I felt the thick bandages wrapped tightly around it, holding everything in place.
That… didn't feel right.
From what I remembered, that thing had torn into me in a way that Benjamin would have never been able to save me with the supplies he had on hand.
But instead…
I felt intact.
The sensation was wrong. Not painless, not even close, but like I was far sturdier than I had any right to be.
Frowning, I pushed myself up a little and glanced around. The others were already moving, repairing what was left of the camp and picking through the remains of the creatures, as if this were just another problem to solve.
But my attention kept dragging back to the injury.
Carefully, I shifted forward and lifted part of the bandage. Blood stained the cloth, but beneath it… something flickered.
For a moment, I could've sworn I saw it.
Something darker than black, like a void pressed beneath my skin—only for it to fade almost immediately, like smoke slipping through my fingers.
I blinked, staring at it.
"…What?"
Frowning deeper, I reached down, ignoring the sharp protest of my body as I pressed against the wound, certain it should've been worse than this.
However, the moment I tried to pull the bandage back further, a rough hand clamped down on my arm.
"I wouldn't do that," Benjamin warned.
I glanced up at him.
"Otherwise I'll have to cauterize it."
I winced at that and immediately let go. "Yeah… fair."
But even as I settled back, something else hit me.
Henry.
Where was Henry?
I pushed myself forward again, only to be stopped when Benjamin's hand clamped down on my shoulder.
"Hey—easy," he said, like he could already see where my thoughts were heading. "Everyone's fine. You included… somehow." He let out a breath and dropped down beside me. "Seriously, you're lucky you've got a body like that. Otherwise, that thing would've split you open."
I frowned, dragging myself back through the last fight and everything right up until I blacked out. "Henry," I murmured. "What happened? Last I saw, it was dragging him away—"
"Well, for starters," a voice cut in, "it was the gunshot that got its attention."
I turned just in time to see Henry step closer, arm wrapped, looking worse for wear but very much alive.
"Though," he added with a crooked grin, "I could've handled it."
Benjamin sighed, dragging a hand down his face. "Your arm says otherwise."
His arm?
Looking up, I found him cradling his wrapped arm. But something about that didn't make sense. When the thing had dragged him off, I was sure it had clamped onto his shoulder. Yet when I looked closer, I almost couldn't believe his luck.
Sitting there on that shoulder was his makeshift armor, now marked with a few fresh scratches.
Scoffing, I shook my head. "Remind me to make some armor for myself," I muttered.
Henry smirked and tapped the piece with his good hand. "Ah, I see you noticed. Well, you see—"
His voice faltered. The smirk slipped as he grimaced, his eyes dropping to his arm with a sudden, uneasy look.
"Is it happening again?" Benjamin asked, his tone sharpening with concern.
Henry only nodded, his jaw tightening as another wave of pain hit him.
Benjamin immediately moved to his side and guided him a little farther off, leaving me there to take in the camp around us. That was when I spotted Ella, completely absorbed in dissecting the massive predator that had nearly killed Henry, its guts spread out in a gruesome mess before her.
Ignoring whatever Benjamin was saying, I slowly shuffled over, much to Ella's surprise. She practically jumped when she noticed me, nearly slipping off the rock she'd been using as a seat.
"Atlas?!" she squeaked. "You're awake."
Slouching down beside her, I let out a long breath. "Yeah… barely."
Her expression hardened almost immediately. "You really shouldn't be walking around. Your stomach was torn apart."
"I know, I know," I muttered. "I just wanted to see up close the thing that nearly killed us."
Seeing I had no intention of going back, she let out a sigh. "Well, as you can see, it's one ugly creature."
Smirking faintly, I studied its face and shivered at the memory of that maw opening wide enough to bite down on me. "Really makes you wonder how something even evolves to look like that."
"I honestly have no idea," she muttered. Then she pushed her blade deeper into the muscle, cutting farther along its chest until part of its ribcage came into view. "Even its insides look wrong," she added with a small huff, slicing around one of the ribs before pulling it free.
She paused.
Behind it was an open space.
"What is this?" she murmured, her brows knitting together.
Carefully, she reached into the creature's chest cavity and drew out a dark green orb about the size of a fist, lodged where its heart should have been.
Ella turned it over in her hands, fascination creeping into her expression despite the gore coating her fingers. "It's not a heart," she murmured, half to herself. "At least not one we'd recognize. It could be some kind of energy storage organ… or maybe even a sensory organ."
"Sounds fascinating…" I muttered, already regretting coming over here.
Before Ella could drag me any deeper into whatever organ-related discovery she'd just made, I planted a hand against the ground and started to push myself up, fully intending to go literally anywhere else.
However, I barely made it halfway up before a hand slammed onto my shoulder and forced me back down.
"What do you think you're doing?"
I glanced up at Amelia. "Leaving."
"With your stomach half torn open?"
"I'm fine."
Her expression hardened, like I'd just said the dumbest thing she'd heard all day. "No, you're not."
I opened my mouth to argue, but she cut me off before I could even start.
"You can barely stand, Atlas."
"Still stood up, didn't I?" I muttered.
That only seemed to annoy her more. Her grip stayed firm on my shoulder, making it very clear she had no intention of letting me get far. For a second, she just stared at me, probably weighing whether it would be easier to argue with me or just knock me back into place.
In the end, she let out a slow breath and shook her head.
"Fine," she said at last, bending down, then grabbed a bundle of sticks from beside the fire and dropped them onto the ground in front of me.
"If you're too stubborn to rest, then you can stay here and make yourself useful. We'll need extra spears."
I looked down at the pile, then back up at her.
Amelia crossed her arms. "Sharpen them."
"Fine," I muttered.
"Good," she said. "Then sit still, and stop trying to wander off, and do that instead."
Smirking, I reached for one of the sticks and grabbed my now bloody knife from Ella's side. "See, I'm being so Productive."
Amelia gave me one last warning look before stepping away.
The second she was out of earshot, Ella let out a quiet scoff.
"You really did try to escape my prattling, didn't you?"
Grimacing, I looked back to Ella, trying to find an excuse, "I… I just wanted to see what Emily was up to, that's all. "
She raised a brow. "I'm not that dumb, Atlas."
Shrugging, I relented. "Eh, it was worth a shot."
Snorting, Ella snatched back my knife and got back to work, leaving me scraping at the spears with semi-sharp rocks, which, considering the strange sturdiness of this wood, was a whole task in itself.
However, as time passed, the others found themselves drifting off to sleep despite the horrors of the night, leaving me alone with the slow scrape of my knife against wood, the growing pile of spears at my side, and the steady ache spreading through my body, the longer I stayed upright.
With a tired sigh, I set the last spear down beside the others and shook out my stiff fingers, letting my shoulders sag for a moment.
It was strange.
Carefully, I pressed a hand against the bandages and felt around the wound, bracing for the same sharp pain as before. Instead, it came back as a dull, distant feeling. Frowning, I peeled the wrappings back just enough to glance down.
My abdomen was still a mess of torn flesh and blood, but it had healed in a way that made it look like I'd been carrying it for over a week. Not the couple of hours I'd really had it
Leaning back, I let myself collapse onto the ground and stared up through the canopy at the night sky above.
What was that place?
Was it a dream?
Or was I really about to die?
It had felt real. And yet it clung to me like a dream all the same.
My fingers drifted to the strange marking on my neck, tracing its edges as I wondered just how much of everything that had happened was because of it… or because of this world.
Then, almost without thinking, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the smooth silver stone, rolling it between my fingers as I tried to ease the lingering ache in my body.
Before tossing it gently into the air, then catching it.
Then again.
And again.
The weight of it, the simple motion, gave my restless hands something to do. Something that didn't require thinking.
Then, on one toss, my fingers missed.
The stone slipped through my hand and vanished into the thick undergrowth beside me.
For a second, I just stared at the spot where it had disappeared.
Seriously?
With a quiet groan, I leaned forward and carefully shifted onto one knee, every movement tugging painfully at the wound in my stomach.
My fingers brushed something smooth, and a flicker of relief rose in my chest, only for it to vanish a second later when I pulled free some strange plant bulb half-buried in the dirt.
Of course it was.
Frowning, I shoved a few leaves aside and reached deeper into the brush until my fingers finally closed around the familiar shape of the stone.
There you are.
Relief washed through me as I pulled it free, brushing the dirt from its surface before holding it up toward the firelight.
For a moment, I just stared at it, rolling it weakly between my fingers before slipping it back into my pocket. Maybe it was pointless to keep clinging to it, but at this point it felt like a keepsake.
Then, suddenly, a yell tore through the silence, snapping me out of my thoughts.
Benjamin.
His voice was thick with panic as he called for help. Ignoring the pain, I shoved myself forward, one hand instinctively clamping over my bandaged stomach as I forced my way toward him—
—and then I saw Henry.
He writhed on the ground, muscles seizing, dark veins crawling up his arm and threading into his neck like ink beneath his skin.
Benjamin knelt over him, trying—and failing—to stop him from tearing at the blackened flesh spreading from the bite. Yet Henry thrashed so violently that Benjamin could barely keep hold of him.
"Atlas, help me hold him down!" Benjamin shouted.
Still reeling, I dropped beside them and grabbed for Henry's arm, but the moment I tried to put any real force behind it, pain tore through me and hollowed out what little strength I had left, my grip slipping as Henry ripped free of Benjamin's hold and lashed out, his fist crashing into my jaw, sending me sprawling backward.
I hit the ground hard, and the impact tore straight through my stomach, knocking the air from my lungs and leaving me curled in on myself, fighting the pull of blacking out.
Through the haze, I caught sight of Henry already scrambling to his feet and making a mad dash for the forest, but he only made it a few steps before Amelia burst through the trees and slammed into him from the side, driving him back to the ground. She wrenched his arms behind him and fought to keep him pinned as he bucked and snarled beneath her.
"Benjamin, what is happening?!" she shouted over him.
Benjamin staggered upright, chest heaving. "The creature must have done something to him…" he sputtered.
Just as Ella arrived with the others—
Henry snapped.
With a sudden, explosive burst of strength, he threw Amelia off his back, sending her slamming into a tree with a sickening thud.
In the same instant, he lunged toward Ella.
They hit the ground hard. His hands raked across her arms, carving deep lines as she cried out. Then he grabbed her bag, yanking and tearing until the strap gave way completely.
He stumbled back, clutching it to his chest, panting like some feral thing guarding a kill.
But then he stopped.
Still crouched low, Henry fumbled with the bag like he didn't understand what he was holding. Frustration twisted across his face, and with a guttural growl, he grabbed both sides and pulled.
Fabric tore apart in his hands.
Ella's belongings were scattered across the dirt.
Among them fell a brilliantly glowing orb.
However, it didn't fall like the rest of the items; instead, it hovered, suspended in mid-air, pulsing softly with its green light.
"That's… impossible," I whispered.
Then, as if guided by some unseen wind, it drifted toward him, glowing brighter, as Henry reached out with trembling, almost reverent hands. The moment his fingers brushed it, the core liquified and seeped into his skin. Light threaded along the path the black veins had taken, pushing the darkness back as it traveled up his arm, across his shoulder, and into his chest.
Then, like someone had switched the lights off, he collapsed to his knees, and just as he was about to fall forward, Ella caught his seemingly lifeless body in trembling arms.