The tingling sensation in his spine was followed by his vision blurring. Well, his brother’s vision was blurring.

Today was one day after the Day of Reckoning. The day when a person experiencing symptoms of mutation would turn into a Shifted creature if he had not entered the Rift for his or her trial.

No one present could have predicted it. These cases were not something that the Government took pride in, so they did not go out of their way to spread awareness in this regard. No one liked publicising their shortcomings.

Ragnar knew all this because he had spent long hours researching these things during his time as a slave. They luckily didn’t lack things like access to knowledge from the internet and proper food and shelter in that place. But that didn’t make their experiences any better.

However, for what happened with his brother and his family, he felt that there was no one to blame other than their luck.

His brother’s body had completely transformed by now and it looked hideous, to say the least. This transformation didn’t take more than a few seconds, not enough for his parents to evacuate or even prepare for what was to come.

Ragnar still could not affect the actions of his brother’s now monstrous body and could only helplessly watch.

He noticed his gaze, that was sweeping the floor until now, move up and land on his mother who currently had countless complex emotions swirling through those previously bright eyes.

Panic, fear, hopelessness, paired with grief, anguish, and… regret. But they somehow didn’t take long to converge into grim determination as a sad smile found its way to her face. She opened her arms, as if inviting the monstrosity in front of her for a hug. A hug that would have previously served as the solution to all her family’s problems, was all she could offer to her son who was about to take her life.

Ragnar experienced everything with the front seat as he felt his thoughts become more shambled then when he had regained his freedom.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He had no way to stop what was about to happen. He didn’t get the chance to think for long as he felt his body lunge forward and wrap its jaws around his mother’s throat.

She died, but she didn’t stop smiling even as her throat was ripped out of her body.

Ragnar’s mind fractured. He couldn’t form any coherent thoughts. There was anger, a lot of it. But he didn’t have a target, nor did he have the means to act.

He could only watch helplessly as his body turned around and looked at his father. He stood there with a rifle and a determined expression that looked somewhat funny with the tears that were rolling down his eyes.

Ragnar did not find it funny in any way though. He could see that his father was trying to hide something from his brother’s eyes.

Him, his child version who still sat on his little chair, completely petrified by the scene of his mother getting ripped apart right in front of him. He was only 7 years old back then, so nothing more could be expected from him.

After getting a glimpse of the little boy, the monster’s mind seemed to go into more of a frenzy than it was already in.

It pounced on his father with his claws. He tried to repel it by firing his rifle at his own son. But it had no effect on the monster as its claws pierced through his father’s chest and then came out the other way.

He lost all his strength and fell down helplessly as he saw the monster move past him. Towards his helpless son.

Ragnar knew that it was just a trial. He knew that it had already happened in the past. He knew that there was no changing it. His parents were gone. They were gone 11 years ago.

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But what was he to do when he still felt a tug at his feet when the monster moved towards the little boy? It was his father, still trying to prevent his one son from killing the other, somehow, even at death’s door.

Nothing.

He could do nothing.

He felt the monster twitch its feet. It sent his father flying at the wall along with the dining table, now dead for good.

He now saw his own eyes in front of him. Young Ragnar was still petrified, now even more by the fear of a hideous monster that had also killed his father in front of his eyes.

Ragnar remembered the look in the monster’s eyes very clearly from all those years ago. The monster’s eyes had shown struggle. He could feel that the monster was fighting something within its mind. That was before it had turned around and left, leaving him alive to live his miserable life.

Although he didn’t know what it was that the monster was struggling with, it was clear to him now that he was reliving this memory.

It was his brother’s subconscious trying to fight against his bloodlust. To leave little Ragnar alive.

Now that he was inside that monster, Ragnar could sense the inner struggle that happened that day.

Then suddenly, He felt the monster’s body and mind go still, completely still.

He stood right in front of his little self, close enough that their noses might touch. This was the point where the monster had turned around and left.

But Ragnar could feel that now he was finally in control of this monstrous body that once belonged to his brother. The Realm had decided to give him control of this body after letting him re-witness the death of both his parents in the most intimate way.

'You want to see...what I will do?’

Ragnar nearly laughed at the situation's cruel irony but no longer had the physical means. Ending his miserable existence then would have been a mercy compared to the wretched path his life took. Becoming a slave, forced to kill innocents for years on end, holding onto humanity by a fraying thread. If only the monster had finished him off along with his parents.

But the Realm seemed intent on pushing Ragnar past the brink. After everything he had suffered, it wanted to watch him destroy himself by his own hand.

‘I’ll show you.’

Ragnar opened the creature's salivating maw, jagged teeth glistening with viscous strands connecting upper and lower jaws.

Then it clamped down, decapitating the frozen, terrified child.

Then he heard the voice in his head along with the symbols that appeared in his mind.

“Your Trial is over.”

The body of his younger self still sat on the small chair, now headless. Suddenly, the remaining body darkened as if decaying rapidly. It didn’t take long to turn completely black and then start disintegrating. It dissolved into a pulsating puddle of black energy.

This puddle didn’t even take a second to expand and devour everything- the living room, Ragnar, the monster.

When light returned to Ragnar’s vision, he found himself floating in the same position in the centre of the sphere. The black energies returned to their rightful place.

A solitary drop of tear rolled down his cheek. He hadn’t shed any after the incident, despite the torturous training and horrible life he had led until now. But this one somehow slipped out.

Ragnar’s head was still filled with glimpses of what he experienced in the trial and it wasn’t going away, not in this lifetime.

He moved his gaze to look at the symbols with wrath visible in his eyes.

The one who could be blamed for the things that happened 11 years ago was right in front of him.

If the EtherShift Realm did not exist. If the Rifts never appeared on Earth. Then maybe, he would still have someone to call his family. And the Realm was the one who made him relive those moments from a first person’s perspective. So, hadn’t he just found another target to put on the things he had to remove from this world, right after that bastard Vorlock.

Thinking to this point, his expression settled down because he remembered,

‘Right, I wouldn’t even remember difference between left and right, let alone the list of names I have to delete…heh’

He looked up and saw the symbols that had appeared among the swirling energies. The Realm had already said that phrase’s content aloud in his mind, but he had completely missed it due to the mess that his mind was in. They read,

“State your purpose in coming here.”

Even though Ragnar was already a jumbled mess of emotions, seeing these senseless words that he wouldn’t expect to ever come from the Realm, he could not help himself from scoffing.

“Yeah, like I had a choice”

There was no reply from the Realm as the previous set of symbols still hung there, like waiting to pass judgement on him, which they were, in a sense.

Ragnar saw no point hiding the truth from an entity that likely knew his thoughts already.

“My purpose… is to Kill. “

‘And you my friend, have just been added to the list as a priority target.’

He did not say the second part out loud, still trying to keep a semblance of propriety with the Realm in his own twisted fashion.

The Realm finally replied after taking a substantial amount of pause, as if considering whether his answer was good enough. It said,

“We can allow you to retain your body and mind if you agree to one of our conditions.”