Omen's hands shook as he held the piece of paper. The sentence burned into his mind, echoing again and again:
"He who feeds shall be fed upon."
It didn't make sense to him.
Was it a warning a curse…or even a promise?
He didn't know.
What the boy did understand was the fact that the words twisted inside of him like a bad aftertaste.
He tried to look away from the empty sockets where the eyes should have been but then felt something tremble on his hand.
It took less than a second as Omen threw the skull from he sat on the sofa.
'No, I must be dreaming-' The boy tried consoling himself, but he still couldn't move his eyes away from the object lying on the floor.
Omen froze.
'No. This can't be real.' He continued trying convincing himself. Then, the boy walked back to pick the skull and sat on the blue, velvety sofa again.
Just when he tried to keep it on the centre table, Omen realized something scary.
He tried to pull back, but his hands seemed fully glued to the skull.
The air currents felt thick all of a sudden and the room around him wobbled like water. The walls, the sofa, the faint smell of stale milk, all melted, blurred, and vanished suddenly.
Before Omen could even realize what was happening, the floor, walls and even the black robe he wore started to blur out.
It took no longer than a second for the boy to find himself free falling through space.
Not through air but a kind of darkness so complete it pressed against his skin, until he felt the hollow of the skull swallowing not just his body, but his very consciousness.
.
.
.
2 hours later
Black was all around Omen, his eyes twitched before he realized that they were actually closed.
Slowly blinking them open, the boy saw a kind of light he had never seen before.
It wasn't warm or even comforting.
No, it was a sickly blue kind of a glow, flickering and uneven.
The 18 year old boy coughed, his throat lurching on a stench that scratched at his throat.
Blood, rot, and decay was all around him.
It wasn't until his hands hit the cold, wet ground that he realized the fact that he wasn't on his blue sofa anymore.
The world seemed almost…wrong.
Everything around him was coloured in shades of red and black , broken bodies littered the ground. Limbs bent at unnatural angles, and corpses piled as far as he could see like trash.
The boy crawled blindly, hitting something sharp. Slowly, he twisted his neck, meeting a hollow skull whose mouth was frozen in a silent scream.
A river of dark fluid snaked between the piles of broken bones.
"BLLEUUAARGHHH" Omen gagged loudly, the cereal he barely ate falling back twofolds on the corpses around him.
The boy's stomach twisted violently as he felt his gut lurch.
"God…what is this place?" Omen screamed in horror as a neighing sound echoed through the darkened skies and the mortal plane.
A horse twice in size as the 18 year old boy came running towards him, the crunch of bones and brain matter sounding every time it galloped.
Paling at the sight of the huge monster like horse speeding towards him, Omen instantly started running.
He turned around and jumped through the bony obstacles whenever necessary. It was only after he'd run a good distance did he realize the abundance of dantians in this unknown physical realm or plain.
As for the horse, not only was it twice Omen's size, but had bluish flames coming out of its eyes. It was a pure white horse with a flaming blue mane that looked completely agitated.
The boy tried to turn left to dodge the sharp bite of the horse but was instead bulldozed on his stomach.
Skidding across the broken and wet corpses, Omen scrambled through the debris, away from the horse.
"N-No! Ssta-stay away from me!!!" The boy screamed as the horse towered his figure.
Having no place to run to, the long, white haired boy flinches, closing his eyes on instinct as the stench of the horse's body rolls on his tongue.
The 18 year old boy kneeled frozen in fear, regret of how if only he had awakened his attribute 5 years ago, he would have a means to fight back circling inside his head.
"AARRGHHHHH"
"WHY GOD?!"
"WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME WHO YOU PUNISH?"
"I AM THE HEIR OF THE MORTLEHYMES!"
"I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE STRONGEST."
"…then why did you take my dantian from me?"
The boy hadn't realised that the horse in front of him had stopped advancing and was only slowly staring at him now, its eyes glinting at something.
Omen had always lamented his luck. He was supposed to recieve the rarest attribute of all, the heavenly lightning.
But because of being born with a weak dantian, not only did he fail to awaken the attribute but even his vessel, his dantian was broken apart into pieces.
A slow, gruesome pain hacked at his brain as the scary and humongous creature dug it's teeth inside his neck, blood oozing out in streams.
"Why is this happening? Am I supposed to fight? Am I supposed to run? No…Stella…" Omen's thought became a jumble of fear and franticity.
A genuine, heartbreaking cry rose from inside the boy's throat as he cried his heart out.
Ever since his parents were declared dead, the boy acted strong, like everything was fine, but only he knew how close he was to giving it all up.
And as snot and blood covered his face and body, a miraculous thing happened. The horse which had looked like all it wanted was to kill Omen until now took a slow step back, his injuries healing.
The said animal looked at the boy in tattered robes with a kind of intelligence he couldn't believe it had possessed as his surroundings beginning to change.
Gone was the piles of corpses and the streams of blood flowing down the mountains above.
Instead, in a sudden change of events, Omen found himself standing atop one of the very mountains he was looking from below.
Even the sky had turned visibly lighter, almost the shade of a kind of violet hue.
There, standing beside him was the 13 foot horse, its furs white and mane a flaming blue as it stared right into Omen's eyes.
The boy still didn't know what exactly had happened but he understood the fact that it was indeed the horse which had chosen to save him.
Slowly walking closer to it, the 18 year old puts his head against the horses, "I don't know what you did…but thanks for saving me."
"Neeirrrgggh!" The horse neighed, its eyes hinting towards the rag-like bag tied to its body.
Omen walked to the huge creature's back and had to jump twice before catching it.
Inside it were two things, the creepy skull which he had recieved from his parents and an unassumingly normal book which seemed stitched with human skin itself-
Ignoring the urge to gag, Omen read the smudged words written on the front page of the cover.
The Reverse Cultivation Sutra.
***