Nothingness. Blackness. A void. Amrite floated, or perhaps fell, through an endless chasm that seemed to stretch beyond time itself. His consciousness, fractured and scattered, began reassembling itself into fragile pieces, like shards of glass hesitantly returning to form. He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound was stolen before it could exist - a silence so profound it devoured even the thought of noise.

“Is this a dream? Or am I dead?” The questions circled his mind like shadows chasing one another, as an unseen, undeniable force dragged him deeper into the abyss. His thoughts were sluggish, wading through a thick, impenetrable fog that dulled his senses and stifled clarity. Yet, through the haze, memories began to surface, faint and fragmented, like echoes of a distant life: the bitter taste of his first stolen puff of a cigarette; his mother’s hand, warm and steady, as they walked to school together; the triumphant leap over a crack in the pavement during a childhood game. And then his father’s voice, sharp and thunderous, roared his name in panic as a car screeched to a halt just a cold breath away before it could reach him.

An overwhelming sense of déjà vu glued itself to him, making him feel he had been here before.

Overlaying his vision of this vast expanse of darkness some writing appeared directly in the centre of his sight.

Voyage number 7 has been initiated. Please choose a location to be deployed.

As Amrite struggled to make sense of the strange words before him, an abrupt, almost imperceptible shift occurred. The atmosphere around him changed, though he couldn’t tell how or why. In an instant, his body - or what he thought was his body, for there was no sensation or sight where it should have been was hurled downward at an incomprehensible speed. Panic surged within him, but when he again tried to scream, an eerie silence swallowed the sound before it could escape. The void consumed all.

How long had he been falling? Minutes? Hours? Days? Time had lost all meaning. With no sense of touch, no physical anchor to grasp onto, Amrite could rely only on his mind - a mind he was beginning to realise was unravelling under the weight of this alien experience.

Far below - or was it far above? The darkness was interrupted with a kaleidoscope of lights that began to flicker into view. They danced in the distance, appearing as mere pinpricks at first, but as he plummeted toward them, they grew more distinct, more vivid. Blues and purples, whites and pinks, shades he could not name - they shimmered in myriad sizes and shapes. At first, they seemed simple, like child’s playthings, basic geometric figures, but the closer he fell, the more complex they became, twisting into forms he had never seen, things his mind struggled to comprehend.

A wild purple cloud pulsed before him, expanding and contracting as though it had breath. A jagged green line flitted across its surface like a darting snake. Nearby, a red spiral spun on multiple axes, each revolution chaotic, shifting in rhythm and speed. Then came more bizarre forms: a silver pyramid with an impossibly sharp point hovered motionless for a second before it fractured into a thousand splintering triangles, scattering like broken glass. A giant golden orb, its surface rippling like liquid mercury, warped and stretched as if it was alive, pulsating with a strange energy. A twisting helix of molten orange coiled through the air, weaving between shapes, its ends forever elusive, never meeting.

And then, more bizarre still; if that was possible - a figure, half-formed, half-transparent, moving backward through space, its limbs bending and moving in ways that defied logic, trailing long streams of fluorescent pink moving forwards and backwards at the same time. Behind it, or perhaps in front of it, a swarm of rotating hexagons buzzed like a hive, their edges lined with electric blues that flickered and died in rapid succession.

Amrite felt something stir deep within him as he passed these radiant shapes. Emotions, raw and unfiltered, began seeping into his psyche. Anger radiated from some, happiness from others, sadness from most. The emotions bled into his thoughts, but offered no clues as to their origin, leaving him helpless to untangle their meanings, unable to settle on any of them as they passed through him. His gaze landed on a small, glowing white light, trembling with an overwhelming sadness. A sadness that felt familiar, intimate. As he stared into it, the light began to shift, pulsing faster until - without warning - it shot toward him.

Fresh terror claimed him too late. The light engulfed him in a single, blinding instant, erasing all thought, all resistance. And then, just as suddenly, he was there. A body. Breath. The sharp, visceral sensation of lungs filling with air seized him, and his gasp cut through the silence like a blade.

Air, pungent and alive, rushed in to assault his senses. Scents; earthy, acrid, with a sharp tang of alcohol, and unfamiliar smells still - flooded his nose. Sounds crackled around him, vibrant and cacophonous, as if the world itself were exhaling. Warm, golden light kissed his skin, wrapping him in its brilliance, as a soft, warm rain fell around him, each droplet blurring the line between sensation and shock. The two collided - light and rain, heat and wetness; enveloping him in a world that hadn’t existed just moments before. The sudden deluge of sensation was unbearable, stabbing into his newly-formed self with merciless precision. His stomach churned violently, rejecting the shock of existence itself. He staggered forward, convulsing, and expelled whatever remnants of this stranger’s life still lingered within him.

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Laughter morphed into raucous cheers, a chorus of congratulatory yells echoing through the air as cups were raised in mock tribute to his fresh disgrace. His retching became their rallying cry, a perfect excuse to tilt back their drinks and drown themselves in revelry.

Amrite ran. It was pure instinct, blind and unreasoned. His legs propelled him forward, his feet striking the ground with a rhythm as frantic as his beating heart. He stumbled, tripped, and scraped against the unforgiving earth, but each time, he got back up and ran again. The confused faces of passersby blurred past him, meaningless phantoms in his periphery. All that mattered was running.

His stomach clenched violently, another wave of nausea threatening to cripple him. He fell once more, hard and graceless, but even then, his legs found strength. He pushed off the ground, surging forward, faster and farther than he had ever thought his body capable. He fled the bustling streets and into lush greenery surrounded by trees, careening through bushes that tore at his skin, until at last his legs betrayed him. They buckled, and he collapsed, spent, onto the wet green grass.

With the desperate run behind him and nothing left but silence, the weight of everything crashed down on Amrite. At first, the tears came slowly, slipping from the corners of his eyes like reluctant raindrops. But then the sobs deepened, gathering force until they erupted into the kind of cry that twists in your gut, choking the air from your lungs.

All those moments in the void when he’d wanted to scream, to weep, to be heard, came rushing back, each one another shard of unspent agony driving through him. The silence that had swallowed his voice, the nothingness that had held him captive, finally split apart. Now, in this moment, his overdue cries poured forth, raw and unrelenting, filling the emptiness with the sound of his breaking.

Amrite blubbered his loss of sanity. The raw emotions he felt when falling through that abyss that felt far too real, and now where even was he? Was this a dream? A joke? Death? It didn’t feel real, but at the same time, these experiences weren’t without substance. The things he saw he couldn’t even recreate in his imagination, far too complex for his mind. And now what? He was in the middle of nowhere, alone and shockingly out of place.

By the time Amrite’s tears dried, dusk had begun to settle, and as if the sky sought to mourn in his place, the rain gathered strength, falling with renewed force. His plea of desperation now dried up, Amrite finally acknowledged a new detail he was forcefully ignoring up until that point. The slender fingers that looked so alien to him, yet were undoubtedly the hands he was controlling. The brown tattered dress that he had ripped and punished from his run. Hair far longer than his and far too dark.

A puddle had formed from the rain not far from Amrite. Amrite looked into the water, and finally noticed the feminine eyes staring at him from underneath the water. His heart started pounding faster, but he didn’t break eye contact with the woman in the water, not daring to look away.

Amrite studied the woman reflected in the puddle before him. Her face bore a stark black blotch over one eye and it was only now, as the tempest of his emotions began to ebb, that the sting seeped through, quiet and insistent. Long, tangled brown hair framed delicate features, her bare feet sinking slightly into the mud. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, yet her eyes, shadowed and weary, seemed to hold a weight far beyond her years.

As his gaze lingered on the reflection, something strange caught his attention. In the periphery of his vision, a faint, almost imperceptible mark hovered - a shape not unlike a question mark. It stood out sharply against the backdrop of reality, intrusive yet oddly compelling. Amrite focused on it, and as he did, the mark swelled, unfurling itself into a cascade of information that overlaid his sight.

* Birth name: Maya Shoemaker

* Age: 17

* Class: Unawakened

* Subclass: Out of bounds

* Level: 10

* Attributes

* Standard Attributes:

* Strength (1)

* Dexterity (1)

* Constitution (1)

* Intelligence (1)

* Wisdom (1)

* Class Attributes:

* None

* Earned attributes

* None

* Abilities

* Standard Abilities:

* Denied

* Class Abilities

* Denied

* Earned Abilities

* Denied

* Proficiencies

* Denied

* Denied

* Racial Traits

* Tenacious

* Status

* None

“What the actual fuck… Maya Shoemaker?” Amrite stared at the words in disbelief, surprising himself with the feminine voice that rang true in his ears. Amrite stared at all the information, overwhelmed by all of the details that appeared.

“ This... This can’t be real.”

Before letting the agitation spiral out of control once again, Amrite closed his eyes and took deep, deliberate breaths, trying with every ounce of his spirit to find some reason, some sense and some control in this situation. When Amrite opened his eyes again, it had become darker and the cold was beginning to set in.

“Is this a game? A… a status sheet?” Amrite said out loud, questioning himself and seeing if his words were even real.

He pinched himself hard, wincing as the sharp sting shot through his skin. The pain was real, but not the only reminder of his reality. His arms and legs throbbed with soreness. When he inspected them, he discovered a patchwork of bruises, angry and purple, mirroring the one he knew marred his face. Each bruise was a sign - whatever this place was, it was no dream.

Amrite’s gaze drifted upward. Not far off, a group of figures emerged, their silhouettes shifting like shadows between the trees. The sight sent a surge of desperation clawing at his throat, threatening to unravel the fragile calm he had fought to reclaim. He swallowed it down; steadying himself against the panic that loomed like a rising tide.

“I need answers,” he muttered, his voice low and resolute, the words barely more than an exhale. His eyes stayed locked on the approaching figures as he drew a slow, deliberate breath. I won’t let myself unravel without answers. I won’t.

Straightening, he rose from the wet greenery, each movement surprisingly fluid - almost unnatural. A flicker of confusion crossed his mind. Where was the familiar stiffness, the dull ache he’d carried for years? The thought slipped away as quickly as it came, overtaken by the weight of what lay ahead.

Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he clung to the faint hope that this was all a fabrication - a lucid dream or the haze of some drug he couldn’t recall taking.

But even as he grasped at these explanations, he knew they were lies, thin veils over a truth he couldn’t yet face. The puzzle pieces refused to fit, and the logic that should have bound them had dissolved into something vast, incomprehensible.

He didn’t care if the truth shattered him; he would find the answers or be consumed trying. The answers would be his, no matter the cost.