Pact of the Broken Sun
Chapter 4 - First Echo (2)
Location: Earth - The Undercity Enclosure
Year: Y.P. 100
Designation: The Collapsed Realm
Kaelen Vance awoke with a jolt, a sharp gasp tearing from his throat. He could hear the mournful howling of the wind whipping against the shattered structures outside, as thick, fat raindrops hammered relentlessly against the grimy, warped windowpane. A cold, clammy sweat drenched his entire body, soaking his meager clothes as if he had been caught in the torrential downpour outside, rather than lying in the supposed sanctuary of his cot. He looked around wildly, his eyes darting through the perpetual gloom of the barracks, only to realize with a sickening lurch that he was indeed back in his own bed, within the confines of the enclosure.
"How am I back in my room?" Kaelen mumbled, his voice hoarse, the words barely escaping his parched throat. A chilling thought, fleeting and desperate, crossed his mind. "Was it all just a nightmare? A horrific hallucination born of hunger and fear?"
As soon as the fragmented, terrifying memories of the previous night surged back—the daring escape, the brutal bear trap, the horrifying appearance of the Thrall, its dead eyes, and the agonizing bite—his heart began to pound a frantic, erratic rhythm against his ribs. He could feel his own blood rushing through his veins, a thunderous current. Strangely, despite the vividness of the nightmare-like memory, the searing pain that had crippled him moments before was entirely gone. This absence of agony, more than anything, made him cling to the faint hope that perhaps, just perhaps, it truly had been nothing more than a fever dream.
But then, the undeniable details clawed at his mind: the distinct smell of putrid flesh, the jarring thud of his head against the ground, the blinding pain of the bite. There was no way in the deepest pits of hell that such visceral agony had been a mere fabrication of his sleeping mind. There was only one irrefutable way to confirm whether his reality had truly bent or if his memory was playing cruel tricks on him.
With a surge of desperate energy, Kaelen violently threw the threadbare blanket off himself, his eyes scanning his body with frantic intensity, searching for wounds. But there were none. Not a single scratch marred his skin, not a trace of the brutal encounter. His legs were perfectly fine, unmarked, without any sign of harm from the crushing jaws of the bear trap. He then gingerly touched his shoulder, the exact spot where the Thrall had sunk its teeth into his flesh, tearing away a piece of him. And sure enough, there was nothing there either. Not even a faint scar. His skin was smooth, unblemished, as if he had never been touched.
"I… was it truly a nightmare?" Kaelen mumbled aloud, his voice thick with disbelief, the words echoing in the stale air of the barracks. He then sprang out of his cot, ignoring the sudden dizziness, and frantically looked underneath it. His heart plummeted. The small, battered sack, filled with the meager supplies he had painstakingly saved and pilfered for weeks—his only hope for survival outside—was gone. "There is no way in hell I hallucinated about gathering those things," he whispered, a cold dread seeping into his bones.
The absence of his sack, the concrete proof of his attempted escape, seemed to make him believe that what had happened was indeed terrifyingly real, not a nightmare. Yet, the baffling lack of wounds contradicted everything. His missing supplies pointed to him successfully leaving the enclosure as he had planned and vividly remembered, but the pristine condition of his body screamed otherwise. Kaelen's mind reeled, trapped in a paradox.
He couldn't conjure a single explanation that could possibly reconcile these impossible contradictions. Then, like a sudden flash of lightning, he remembered something else: someone had saved him. Someone or something had pulled the Thrall off him, throwing him aside like a discarded toy just before he lost consciousness. Maybe it was that person, that unknown entity, who had brought him back here. But even if that was true, it still wouldn't explain the miraculous disappearance of his wounds. It defied all logic.
Kaelen stumbled back to his cot, his head beginning to throb with a dull, insistent ache from the sheer mental strain of processing the impossible. But in his panicked, disoriented state, he hadn't noticed something. Something small, persistent, and impossibly yellow, blinking erratically in front of his eyes. No, it wasn't that he hadn't noticed it; he had instinctively dismissed it, assuming his eyes were playing tricks on him because he had gotten up too quickly, or perhaps it was a lingering effect of the concussion. But now that he was back in his cot, trying to calm his racing thoughts, the inexplicable blinking thing continued to hover directly in his field of vision. He could no longer ignore its luminous insistence.
"What in the hell is it?" Kaelen reached out a trembling hand, trying to touch whatever the shimmering, yellow blinking thing was, but his fingers phased right through it, as if it were nothing more than a phantom light. A wave of irritation mixed with terror surged through him.
"So annoying! Just get out of my sight already!"
In response to his frustrated plea, a strange, ethereal text solidified within the blinking yellow light:
[Calibration in progress...]
All of a sudden, Kaelen's head began pounding with an unimaginable, splitting agony. One moment he was fine, albeit confused, the next he was engulfed in pain so intense it threatened to tear him apart. He instinctively wrapped his arms around his head, pressing his palms against his temples, trying to physically halt the onslaught. But the pain only intensified, spreading from his skull to consume his entire body. It felt as if his very essence was being brutally torn apart and then meticulously put back together simultaneously, an endless, horrific cycle of biological restructuring.
He could feel the phantom sensation of his bones breaking with sickening pops, then reforming, knitting themselves back together, only to break again. This excruciating cycle continued for what felt like an eternity, an agonizing metamorphosis, until the persistent yellow light in front of his eyes pulsed once, turned a terrifying crimson, then finally faded into an ominous, absolute blackness. As soon as the light vanished into that profound void, the mind-bending pain ceased as abruptly as it began. He was no longer sweating profusely, his clothes felt dry. His bones were perfectly aligned, his muscles relaxed. Even his heart, which had been hammering wildly, was now utterly still.
Taking a series of shallow, irregular breaths, Kaelen instinctively placed the palm of his hand on his chest, desperately trying to calm himself. But as soon as his fingers pressed against his skin, a chilling realization slammed into him: it wasn't that his heart had stopped pounding… it had stopped beating altogether. There was no pulse, no reassuring rhythm of life.
He immediately scrambled to check his pulse at his wrist, then his neck, but he felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Panic, raw and unbridled, seized him again, threatening to choke him. And as he spiraled into a new wave of terror, a series of stark, black letters materialized directly in front of him, hovering in the space where the yellow light had been. He had never seen those precise symbols before in his life, yet somehow, with an instinctual, terrifying clarity, he knew exactly what those symbols meant. It was as if the knowledge had been directly imprinted into his very being.
[Transformation successful!]
[You have been turned into
[Sending a petition to the Administrator to resolve the issue...]
[Petition rejected... initiating protocol.]
[The system can resolve the issue itself...]
[Issue resolved!]
[You have assimilated the genetic essences of a Tier-C Thrall and a Tier-A Crimson Eidolon.]
[You have successfully integrated dormant genetic sequences of a Tier-B Lunar Striker.]
[Due to the complexity and unprecedented nature of your new DNA, it would take 7 cycles for your full powers to manifest. Until then, you are free to live as a
"What the hell is going on here!?"Kaelen roared, his voice raspy, a desperate plea for understanding in a world gone mad. Just as quickly as it had stopped, his heart slammed back into a frantic, erratic rhythm, pumping blood through his veins once more. The ominous black icon hovering before his face instantly reverted to its previous, insistent yellow glow. The day, which had started as a desperate escape, kept getting weirder and weirder, each passing second pulling him deeper into an incomprehensible nightmare. However, before Kaelen could even formulate another question, a heavy wave of bone-deep drowsiness consumed him, pulling him under. His eyelids grew impossibly heavy, his thoughts scattered, and he succumbed to the overwhelming darkness, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.