Chapter 173
Stranger phenomenon
IAM's fingers began to pull slightly on his skin, his nails just barely digging into the surface of his face.
The sensation was wrong. Wrong in the deepest, most instinctive way. Like pulling at something that wasn't supposed to be there.
He was about to pull harder.
But then, his hands began to tremble. Subtly at first, then violently—as if his own body was trying to resist itself.
He froze.
His muscles strained against each other. His fingers jerked back slightly. He couldn't tell if he was pulling away... or if something inside him was forcing him to stop. There was a struggle—an invisible war taking place between his will and the thing crawling just beneath his skin.
And then he understood.
He had heard of this phenomenon—or more accurately, read about it. It was called the Stranger Phenomenon.
The Stranger Phenomenon...
It wasn't just a myth. It was real.
A rare and terrifying effect that sometimes occurred during the transition between novice and experienced—one of the few true dangers of ascension that no one liked to talk about.
The phenomenon began at the very moment when the Avien started to collapse and when the core began to reform. That exact moment of transformation—of crossing a threshold between stages.
And when it did… like your body no longer felt like your own.
Your skin would begin to feel too tight. Or too loose. Your face felt alien. Your sense of self was wrong. And the most horrifying part was that it didn't feel like fear or panic. It felt like a certainty. Like your body had betrayed you, and the only rational answer was to fix it.
To peel it off.
Victims of the Stranger Phenomenon simply began to remove themselves, one piece at a time—searching for something underneath that felt right. But nothing ever did.
Those who survived described a total alienation from self. A dissociation so deep that they genuinely believed the only solution was to unmake themselves, to discard the "false identity" they had found themselves in.
IAM could feel it now—the pull. It was subtle at first, like a low hum at the edge of his consciousness, but it grew rapidly, a sick, oppressive gravity tethering him to his own skin. Every nerve ending seemed to vibrate with it, each hair on his arms standing on end.
His fingers hovered just inches from his face, trembling. It wasn't fear that caused the shake. It was something far more primal—an unbearable, insistent desire to tear away what had become foreign to him. The sensation was magnetic, almost sentient, as if his skin itself was calling to be removed.
He could feel his heartbeat hammering in his chest, each pulse synchronized with the pull, urging his hands closer, mocking his attempts at control. His mind raced, wrestling with the visceral urge while trying to cling to reason, to the fragile understanding that surrendering would mean death.
And yet, the longer he hovered there, the more the compulsion coiled itself around his thoughts, whispering that relief lay just beneath his fingertips. Every instinct screamed to comply, to rid himself of this alien covering that no longer felt like him.
He took a shallow breath.
It was an attempt to right what was wrong, and those who succeeded—who thought they would feel better, more like themselves—simply ended up destroying themselves. They were never satisfied with merely pulling off their skin.
They pulled at their eyes, heart, ears, bones, feet—every part of themselves—as though nothing in their body truly belonged or was right.
In this way, they pulled themselves apart piece by piece until nothing remained, until their very existence was erased. Every tug and pull was a futile attempt to feel whole, yet it only brought them closer to the end.
The result was always the same: death, an absolute and irreversible conclusion to their desperate struggle.
There were very few formal records of such incidents, though it was likely that many more had occurred in due to those with a mindset like IAM's often chose to ascend in total privacy, away from prying eyes.
The few documented cases painted only fragments of the horror, leaving most of the phenomenon to speculation. Each story hinted at the same terrifying truth: the Stranger Phenomenon was unpredictable, merciless, and profoundly isolating.
Even knowing about it offered little comfort, for witnessing its effects was not the same as experiencing it firsthand.
Now IAM found himself trapped in the same nightmare, experiencing the horrifying effects firsthand.
Yet, he didn't panic. Though nearly all documented cases had ended in death, a few rare individuals had managed to survive—resisting the overwhelming compulsion, however nearly impossible it seemed. Survival was not guaranteed, but it was possible.
At first, the sudden onset had caught him off guard, his mind teetering on the edge of panic. Slowly, he forced himself to calm, to focus and to fight the instinct clawing at him from within. He began to consciously resist, anchoring himself to reason and to control.
It was a bizarre, almost surreal sight. In the confines of a relatively small, dimly lit room, a boy wrestled with his own body, each movement a battle of will against the alien force threatening to overtake him.
His hands trembled as they hovered near his face, his muscles tensed and fought against themselves, and every fiber of his being screamed for him to surrender. Yet he held firm, every second a test of endurance and determination.
The room was silent except for the shallow rhythm of his breathing and the unbroken tension of a struggle that was both internal and terrifyingly external.
It was a surreal, almost unbearable situation. In his mind, IAM kept repeating the command: put your hands down. But it was as if a thick, unyielding wall separated him from his own body, leaving only a narrow crack through which the tiniest bit of resistance could pass.
Still, he persisted. His muscles trembled violently with the effort as he fought to peel his hands away, each millimeter of movement a battle against the compulsion that seemed to pulse through his very bones.
One lapse of focus—one fleeting distraction—and his hands would snap back to his face, erasing all progress, dragging him back into the suffocating grip of the phenomenon.
This was no ordinary struggle. This was a fight for survival, a confrontation with a foe unlike any other.
And the enemy was clear.
Himself.