“Are you sure this is what you wish to do? There will be no turning back beyond this point.” The angel with white wings spoke in a gentle voice, hovering over a young man who gave off a particularly strong aura despite his broken body, his gaunt face caked in dried blood, the dark circles around his eyes showing that he had not slept in two days.

“I am sure,” the man replied.

“Very well, Zack,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I hereby release you from your prison in Tartarus. May you find what you are looking for in the past.”

[A higher being has removed a powerful curse from your body.]

[Obelisk of Renewal has been activated.]

[Resetting all stats to base levels.]

[Deactivating Status Window.]

...

[You are the final surviving initiate of the 174th cycle.]

[Thank you for your service, and good luck.]

[Resetting world state.]

–––

Thirty eight…

Thirty nine…

“Forty!” Zack exhaled, his back hitting the hardwood floor of the hawaiian-themed Tiki Shack gymnasium as his careless jet black hair fell back. A bead of sweat dripped down his face as his lips formed a faint smile. Now, a hint of abs could be seen underneath his synthetic gray t-shirt with black sleeves, a clear sign of progress. He had just completed his fortieth sit-up. That was the most he’d ever done in a single shot.

No one else in the gym was doing push-ups or sit-ups, but Zack Baker couldn’t care less. What he lacked in workout sophistication, he made up for in stubbornness. Coming from a poor family, that was the only way he knew how to succeed in life.

If his parents couldn't afford a tutor, he'd throw more time at the math problem and solve it himself. If they couldn't afford to put food on the table, he'd take on a part time job and put food on the table with his own money.

Now that he was a university student at the most famous school in the country, he had different responsibilities than before, but his mentality never changed. What others were given in life, he had to fight for. Luckily, he was born stubborn.

A weak phantom floated above the young man. The ghastly, fading apparition was a tired, battle-wear version of the young man below. The phantom smiled sadly.

My past self... There is so much I wish to tell you, so much unbearable suffering that I wish you could avoid, but the laws forbid me from speaking to you directly.

You will have to suffer through much of what I had to suffer through, and you will become a broken man. For that, I am deeply sorry.

A ripple appeared in front of the apparition, preventing its words from reaching their intended target.

We come from a place of unworthiness. The council deemed us unworthy of favor. The sponsors cast us away when we were starving and feverish. The gates shut for us when we were in need of shelter. We were always alone. Cold, alone, afraid... But we still survived.

In the end, only we survived.

This time will be different. I can only give you hints, but I know you, Zack. You will be able to read between the lines and do what must be done. Because you are me, and I am you. There is no one I trust more in this world.

I am truly sorry that I cannot help more than this.

The rest will be up to you.

Good luck, and goodbye.

The apparition faded into oblivion with sorrow in its eyes.

Next were pull-ups. Just four months ago, Zack was so weak that he wouldn't be able to do a single one. Now, he could do a few in one go. Still not great, but it was a dramatic improvement from before. His final challenge was a set of burpees. With a leap, he started his final exercise, jumping up and down until he was exhausted.

Phew. Finally done, and his muscles ached quite a bit. Toweling the sweat off of his forehead, Zack glanced at his phone, seeing that it was half past eight. Time to head back to his dorm and do some studying about bonds. Midterm season was still a ways away, but he had to get a head start. He couldn’t afford to lose his scholarship–his lifeline.

Zack wanted to–no–he needed to work hard so that his parents’ sacrifices wouldn’t be in vain. They saved up for years to send him to the big city, to attend the most prestigious university in the country–the fabled Vermillion University–and live a full life above the poverty they endured themselves. He needed to achieve as much as possible when he was here, even if he was pretty much a bumpkin from the countryside who found it hard to fit in with the extreme privilege that his classmates at school came from.

He had already applied to a weekend job as a port loader down at the wharf so that he could send some money back to his parents. They were struggling mightily ever since the cargo ship incident. Mom barely ate and looked pale, and dad’s eyes grew darker by the day. Zack couldn’t look them in the eye without feeling guilty.

“Have a good evening Zack,” the buff male receptionist in a casual unbuttoned hawaiian shirt said cordially as he passed by. Bruce had medium length blonde hair like a hippie, and a golden mustache above his strong cleft chin. “Man, you really come here every day, don’t you?”

“Every single day!” said a young, attractive personal trainer of Korean descent wearing a form hugging yoga instructor’s outfit. Grace had pink dyed hair cut short at the shoulders, a recent change from her natural black hair. The skin on her face glistened, although Zack wasn’t sure if that was due to a post workout glow or a rigorous skin care routine. “I wish my clients came here as often as you do.”

“Well, this place is free for Vermillion students, and it’s nicer than any gym I’ve ever been to back in my hometown. Anyway, I gotta go and do some studying. See you tomorrow Bruce, Grace,” Zack replied politely to both of them. He enjoyed chatting with them, but he really didn’t have much time left for idle chat now that he took that port loader job on top of maintaining his scholarship.

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“As always,” Bruce replied amicably.

“See you tomorrow!” Grace replied, before dashing over to greet another client who appeared to be a young aristocrat.

The door closed as Zack exited, and Bruce shook his head with a smile, gesturing to an elderly janitor that quietly swept the floor by the reception table. “You see that guy? He used to look skinny as bones, and now look at him.”

—

Zack emerged from the Tiki Shack onto a dark street, lit only by a cracked street light standing slightly askew. Needless to say, the area around the wharf was a bit questionable. It had gotten a bit gentrified over the years, with its adjacency to the oceanic views of Vermillion Harbor and the nice sea breeze giving rise to several restaurants and luxury apartments, but it was still common to see the occasional homeless man stumbling by.

Throwing on his earbuds, he looked straight ahead down the street and walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He kept his awareness up, as there were recent police reports of muggings that happened on this street.

Still, he was a guy and he could fend for himself. How bad could walking back home alone be?

There wasn’t even any music playing in his earbuds. He just threw them on to look busy as his brain ruminated on other things. He needed to give his old folks a call later this week, just to see if they were okay. There were times where his dad worked three night shifts in a row, and his mom peddled homemade straw baskets. He saw his mom one night with so many blisters on her hands from weaving that they looked raw. Zack couldn’t thank them enough for giving him what they never had, and he resolved to take advantage of every moment of it. He couldn’t fail.

Unfortunately, fate had other plans in store for him.

—--

A thick, marbled stone table adorned the center of a kingly room, its perimeter dotted with eight seats carved out of stone. Six of the seats were conspicuously empty, while seated in the remaining two chairs were a pair of ethereal figures, one figure much larger than the other.

For some reason, only their shadows could be made out. One was large and unmistakably male, with shoulders and a back as large as a boulder, and a flowing beard that resembled a lion’s mane.

The other was slim, svelte, and coy. Her figure appeared far longer than a normal person’s, with an uncannily thin waistline and a sultry hourglass figure, and wickedly long fingernails that she batted in front of her.

“My apostle must be initiated earlier this time around, if we’re to have a chance…” the lion-like figure growled.

“Perhaps we can try the initiation on the third of July…” the woman replied, her voice raspy. “Although it’s not like my apostle needs any additional help.”

Suddenly, the stone table shook.

The two figures flinched in unison, before an unmistakable expression of rage dawned upon the lion’s face.

He lifted a fist and smashed down on the table, causing a palm sized crater where his fist connected with stone.

“Who?” he roared. “Who started the initiation early?”

—--

A light pitter-patter of drizzling rain began to fall onto the sidewalk, prompting Zack to curse under his breath. He wasn’t expecting this. Didn’t the weather forecast say that it’d be clear for the whole week? Meteorologists must’ve messed up somewhere.

Holding his jacket over his head, Zack ran past the Wharf Street Subway, the entrance to the station surrounded by yellow police tape with CRIME SCENE DO NOT PASS plastered all over it. Something must’ve happened, he thought.

But it seemed a bit weird. There weren’t any police cars around, and he’d gone through that station a few times before. Now that he took a closer look at the station entrance, there was some kind of strange black glob sticking onto the walls like some poorly done graffiti. Maybe it was the rain playing tricks on his eyes.

Or not. The more Zack looked, the more his curiosity got a hold of him. He decided to walk over and take a peek, eager to get out of the rain for a moment.

Now that he approached the station entrance and the stairs down into the underground, he saw that the black glob that he thought to be graffiti before didn’t seem like spray paint anymore. It was kind of shimmering, moving almost… but also inert. How could it be moving? That was ridiculous. Maybe it was some kind of holographic paint.

Either way, the strange substance looked amoebous in nature, unsettling him on an instinctual level. How exactly did this connect with the whole yellow tape thing? Some kind of chemical leak, perhaps. It’s not like the police had several different kinds of tape for different purposes. Actual crime, flooding, fire, asbestos… either way, that yellow tape screaming crime scene was coming out.

He had seen enough, not wanting to get poisoned by the black chemical leak or get involved or implicated in anything. But right as Zack was about to turn around and leave the suspicious subway station entrance, he felt the ground shake beneath him, throwing him off balance.

Must be a subway train approaching, he thought.

But that was wishful thinking. The shaking intensified until it was certainly not just a subway en route and most definitely seismic activity of some sort, and the ground underneath Zack erupted and fissured into a dangerous slant, knocking him off his feet and tumbling with his gym bag to the right, straight towards the station entrance.

“What the fuck?” he yelled, trying to grab onto anything that he could as he slammed right through the yellow police tape. He felt himself rolling down into the subway station, his entire body bouncing painfully down each step on the stairs. He saw a cigarette stub pass by his head, probably squashed underneath someone’s boot earlier this week.

Falling down into the underground station as the shaking threw him into a state of vertigo, Zack’s already sore body got mauled one last time as he landed at the bottom with a painful thump, missing several of the last steps.

The seismic activity had stopped now, although there were still some minor tremors that kept him slightly off balance as he struggled to get back on his feet.

What the hell just happened?

He looked up, eager to get out of this mess and get back to his dorm, only to see that the entire station entrance had caved in on itself. Rubble and debris had completely covered his way out, and the neon sign for Wharf Street Station flickered sadly as dust continued to siphon down from the ceiling.

The ceiling looked as if it was about to collapse, but seemed to be held up by some kind of impossible force. There was still that strange, streaky black stuff across the walls, which reminded him of some kind of alien movie.

He opened his phone quickly, only to see that there was no service. Figured.

Zack’s heart beat hard in his chest. He didn’t like anything about this situation. He was trapped underground, with no way out for what seemed like ages in either direction.

Maybe there was someone nearby?

“Hello?” Zack shouted, cupping his hands to amplify his voice. He waited a moment for there to be a reply, but didn’t receive one.

It appeared that his best bet was to walk to the nearest station on foot. Ugh. To do that, he had to climb down onto the subway tracks, with the vermin and trash that people threw down there. Absolutely disgusting.

As he said that, a rat scurried across the black tracks. Yikes.

Zack sighed. No choice here. Placing down his gym bag, he lowered himself down the ledge, transporting himself from the reasonable surroundings of the station waiting area into the unmentionable filth below on the tracks. But before he let go of the ledge, he took a good look at what was underneath.

The black veinous alien-looking substance extended down into the tracks like a vine through one of the pipes on the side of the waiting area. Now that he looked down, he noticed that the entire track was covered in the alien looking stuff.

Some kind of chemical leak? That’s what the rational part of Zack’s mind told him, but something in his gut disagreed. It just didn’t feel right.

Zack begrudgingly let go of his grip on the ledge, landing with a thud on his feet. His suspicions were answered the moment that his feet touched the ground below.

Ding!

A strange floating blue box written in some kind of runic language appeared before him. Although he didn’t recognize the language, within a second, the runes rearranged themselves until they were in english.

You have left the Surface and entered the Underground.

The next train will arrive in 10 minutes.