When Adam started to wake, he could only feel a disturbing and oppressive aura all around him. Before Adam could try to remember where he was or what happened to him, an eerie song of control and death pervaded his mind as it tried to control his soul! Adam was immediately alarmed by this and tried to fight back in whatever way he could, but he had never been taught how to defend his soul against an attack like this. He really had no idea how to go about it. No matter what he tried, that eerie song seemed to cover more and more of his soul. Eventually Adam put all of his strongest emotions and memories together in the same place and protected only those with a zealous fervor. If even just a hint of that eerie song touched them, Adam would draw up the memory and try to recall it to the point where it was vivid and lifelike to keep it pure. He would not let that song corrupt his thoughts and memories about Helen, his mother, or the others!

Adam was so consumed with fighting the song that he did not have the chance to spread his elemental sight around. He also didn't notice when someone walked into the room he was in. Adam only noticed when an odd voice that didn't even sound human assaulted Adam's ears: "Awake and putting up a fight, are you? Soon you will wish you hadn't!"

Adam couldn't even respond since he was fighting that eerie song. A clink of metal was heard right before Adam started to feel searing pain in his left arm, just below the elbow. As Adam cried out in pain, that odd voice said: "See? I don't mind, though. I hope you will give me a nice sonata of screams before we finish!"

The owner of the voice continued his work and Adam felt more pain and continued to scream. The pain was so intense that Adam could not even think about that eerie song or fighting against it! Thankfully, with the pain being this strong it actually pushed the eerie song back. With Adam's mind so full of pain, there was no room for the eerie song to pervade his soul further. Adam felt like he was in pain for an eternity before he started going numb. Just before he lost consciousness, Helen briefly flashed before him in his mind as he thought: "I just want to go home..."

Adam woke up again sometime later. Adam had no idea how much time had passed since he lost consciousness. “At least that person isn't torturing me..” He thought.

That eerie song continued to try and take over his soul, but Adam found it just a little easier to deal with it now. After having to deal with all that pain, perhaps his soul had been tempered a small amount. Now that he had some room to think, Adam tried to figure out what had happened. He now remembered the duel with that ghoul commander... he had thoroughly lost, and not just the battle. He lost his arm and even a leg! Then the commander knocked him out! But what happened after that? As Adam spread his elemental sight out he discovered that he was currently without clothes, but something else made him astonished! He discovered that where his left arm and right leg used to be cut off, there were foreign limbs grafted on to him! These foreign limbs had a different amount of spirit essence contained within them than the rest of his body, they contained a high concentration of death essence! It looked like the death essence in these foreign limbs was joining that eerie song and trying to spread through his body! It was very slow and not too successful, so Adam did not need to immediately worry about it, but it was still frightening!

Adam brought his left hand up and tried to clench his fist. It barely had any feeling in it and was sluggish in his control. His right leg was very much the same. Adam recalled the torture he had gone through before he lost consciousness. The pain at that time was located in his left arm, where it had been cut off. Perhaps that person wasn't really torturing Adam, but attaching this new limb!

Adam started to spread his elemental sight out further to try and get a grasp of the area. Adam was shocked to find that everything around him was primarily made of death essence! There was hardly a hint of any of the other types of spirit essence anywhere! Even though this was true, this death essence somehow was able to take shape and form a room that Adam was currently in... none of this made any sense whatsoever to Adam. Sure, a high amount of earth essence makes the ground you tread on and water essence makes the water you drink, but who has ever heard of this much death essence!? Death essence forming a solid object had never been recorded in any of the annals of SILU! The death essence was also thick in the air and Adam truly had no idea how he was still alive...

The eerie song that was trying to pervade its way into Adam's soul came from all the death essence around Adam. Wanting to get out of here, Adam stiffly got up from the hard surface he had been placed on as a bed. He slowly approached the door to the room. With the eerie song attacking his soul, his elemental sight was not as strong as it used to be. With the thick amount of death essence forming the room, Adam could not see anything outside of the room like he would normally be able to. Adam pressed his ear to the door to see if he could hear anything. There was a mumbling: “Why do I have to guard the stinking kid? He should just let his soul be taken over already!”

“Hmm, so there is a guard..”

Adam looked back to the surface he had just got up from. Nearby was a tray full of sharp instruments. Adam's skin prickled as he felt sure that those were the tools that caused him so much pain. Adam grabbed one of the sharper implements and approached the door again. He gently put his hand on the handle of the door and held the sharp implement over his head in a ready position. He then took a deep breath to calm himself. He waited until the guard started mumbling to himself again to open the door. He quickly opened it and saw a ghoul commander who turned to face Adam, startled by him opening the door! Adam's heart plummeted as he felt he would probably lose to the commander, but he still brought that sharp implement down straight at the commander's exposed throat! Luckily, Adam had the element of surprise and this commander wasn't as much as a battle addict as the one Adam fought before. This particular commander had slower reflexes and wasn't able to evade Adam's strike that instantly pierced his throat! The commander's surprise turned to anger as he tried to grab Adam! With his resilience as a ghoul, while this injury was serious it was not as debilitating as it would be for a normal human. Scared, Adam started to savagely twist the implement deeper into the ghouls throat and manged to somehow sever his spinal column there! The ghoul immediately crumpled and fell to the floor, dead.

Outside the room, Adam could see long corridors stretching out to the sides that were equally made from the same material as the room he was in. Adam was at a loss as to where to go. Adam bent down and took the sword that was strapped to the commander's belt. Adam didn't like touching this sword, but it was the best weapon at hand. The eerie song that wanted to control Adam was louder when he was touching the sword. The same was true for the armor the commander was wearing, so Adam decided he would just have to continue on naked for now as it was too much of a risk to wear that armor.

Nearby, there was a window in the corridor. Adam put his head out so his elemental sight could get a better lay of the land. Hopefully he could figure out where he was. After Adam stuck his head out, he realized that all those shocking things he had found since he first woke up here were just the tip of the iceberg. Around five meters below the window, a stretch of land expanded out that was also entirely made of death essence! Adam finally came to a conclusion: “Is this perhaps... the spirit plane of death?”

Adam couldn't help but feel despair. Long ago, Cathryn had mentioned that almost nobody had ever come back after going through a portal to a spirit plane and those that had were all insane. If this really was the spirit plane of death, how could Adam ever get back? Right now all Adam knew was that he couldn't stay here. This was a place that housed ghoul commanders, so it most definitely would not be good. Adam figured the five meter drop from the window was doable without him suffering any injuries. He first threw the sword out the window and watched where it fell. The sword sunk a little into the ground like it was made of sand. Adam then jumped out the window himself onto the sand. Adam rolled when he hit the sand to disperse the energy from the fall and ended up face down in the sand by the time he stopped. With the sand covering a good portion of his body, that eerie song grew incredibly strong as the death essence sought to corrupt him. Adam quickly jumped up and realized not donning the armor of the commander truly was the best idea. Adam picked up the sword before continuing forward into the sandy expanse of land. Adam could only hope he was not in the center of a compound and that a wall was somewhere before him. He was naked out in the open and for all he knew everyone could see him! Adam thought that even if that truly was the case, it would not be the worst thing that had happened to him recently.

If Adam could truly see, he would probably be more shocked than he was now. The sand before him was the color of ash; primarily dark gray with many black specks in it. Behind him was a giant complex that jutted out of the sand and was abyssal black in color. Above his head... there was no true sky! The only thing that existed above this land was roiling currents of pure death essence! There existed neither hot or cold, nor light or dark. Everything in this plane was merely allowed to exist based on the whims of the spirits. In every spirit plane, the spirits had created some form of a physical land mass. The inhabitants of this land were not the spirits themselves, they lived in the roiling spirit essence above the land! Instead, the land was for guardian beasts or demonic beasts to live upon instead of living in the world of men. Most of the inhabitants, however, were the ghouls of mankind! Occasionally a small rift would open up between the planes and the world of men and a few people would disappear into these rifts. The rifts never lasted long and the disappearance of people was never explained and was left as a mystery. After becoming a ghoul, they lived incredibly long lives and over the ages massive hordes of ghouls had come to inhabit the various spirit planes. The land was large, though, so it was not overrun by ghouls. Just in some places, one could find a number of ghouls that stretched as far as the eye could see!

Before too long, Adam heard a rumbling voice coming from behind him: “A candidate that we recently brought in has escaped! His soul is still in the process of being corrupted. If you find him, try to bring him back alive. If not... well then, that is his fate!”

Adam started to hasten his pace. If someone looked out the window, they might just possibly see Adam! Not even ten seconds after that, Adam started to hear something weird. It was close to, but very different from the eerie song of death essence that surrounded him. It almost sounded like incessant chatting in his ear. When he heard this, Adam's mind started to go fuzzy and thinking became hard! Before Adam could even mount a mental defense, he felt his consciousness slipping away. He could only think: “NO!” before everything went black again.

Stolen story; please report.

Adam slowly started to regain consciousness again. It felt like he was mindlessly wandering, while occasionally bumping into something. Even though Adam's mind had started to wake up, he still did not have any control over his body. Adam's mind was still groggy and not fully together, but he still managed to spread out his elemental sight just a few meters around. He had a slurred thought: “Jus' what am I bumpin' into?”

As soon as he saw where he was at, Adam felt like a bucket of ice water was poured down his back! Surrounding him was a group ghouls and with Adam's limited sight, he had no idea how many were around him! The 'things' he was bumping into were actually these ghouls! Whenever he bumped into one, it would just give a curious and confused look as it backed up from Adam before meandering on its own way. All the ghouls were mindlessly roaming about like Adam seemed to be. Adam's mind had become much more awake when he saw all those ghouls. Adam had no idea how he got here and why he was walking about, but right now he desperately wanted to run and hide. unfortunately he still lacked control over his body! Whatever was preventing from controlling his body was gradually lessening, but it was truly slow. At the same time, his elemental sight started to expand as he gained more control over himself. This helped Adam to guess that there were around one hundred ghouls around him! He still had that commander's sword, thankfully, and it seemed like he was dragging it across the ground behind him.

While he was waiting to regain full control of his body, Adam was worriedly looking around at the ghouls around him. He was hoping that when he finally gained control of his body that he would have found the easiest way to get outside of this horde. As he was looking around, Adam noticed the ghouls had started to part ways, as if to allow someone to pass by. Adam looked closer and found it was a ghoul commander! Adam started to inwardly sweat and was urging his body to move in the opposite direction of the commander, but to no avail. Adam heard the commander talking aloud to himself: “Now, just what oddity has found its way into my little horde?”

Just a few seconds after this, the last of the ghouls between Adam and the commander parted ways and the commander finally saw Adam! Surprise dawned on the commander's face. He then pointed at Adam as he said: “You! Bring me that sword you are holding!”

Adam felt an odd sense wash over him as his body was compelled to comply with the commander's words! His body sluggishly started to move towards the commander as Adam continually fought for control over it. Adam arrived in front of the commander who had his hand outstretched to receive the sword. Just as Adam was about to hand it over, the last vestiges of what was preventing him from controlling his body seemed to fall away. Instantly, instead of handing the sword over, Adam dove at the commander sword first! This thoroughly surprised the commander since a ghoul had never disobeyed his orders before, let alone actually use a sword as a weapon! Adam managed to easily penetrate the commander's throat with the tip of his sword and severed his spine at the neck! The commander dropped dead, but Adam had no sense of relief or accomplishment. He was still surrounded by a horde of ghouls over one hundred strong!

As soon as the commander died, all of the ghouls stopped in their tracks! They looked over to where Adam was with confusion. First as if they were looking for something, which was then followed by simple confusion as if they had no idea what Adam was. Most of the ghouls who were farther away began to wander again. They even started to wander outside of the horde. Before, it was like there had been an invisible fence around them but it was no longer there. A few of the ghouls even started to fight among themselves. The ghouls closest to Adam, however, continued to look at him with confused expressions.

Adam lifted the sword up and pointed it at the ghouls, ready to start a life or death fight. Something interesting happened, however. When he pointed the sword out, any ghoul it pointed at would back up as though it was still terrified by the authority of a ghoul commander that the blade represented! Thinking along these lines, Adam stooped down and drew out the sword of the commander he had just slain. Now with two swords in hand, Adam could point at either side of himself and 'push back' more ghouls at once! Adam then started to move in the direction he thought would let him meet the fewest amount of ghouls. As he moved along, the circle of ghouls around him followed! A few of the ghouls had left, not wanting anything to do with a commander. The rest that remained were slowly starting to show aggressive faces. A few of them even crouched down and started moving while using both their hands and feet, similar to a monkey. They even started growling!

At one point, one of the ghouls finally decided to attack Adam! It jumped at Adam with its hands extended to grab him! Even though Adam had been preparing himself for a fight, this startled him! Truthfully, Adam was hoping to avoid the fight. His sword song would only work with the sword that was once his father's. It would not work with the swords he was currently holding! Still, they were spiritually reinforced and would more easily cut through the ghouls, but it would make it significantly harder to move than what Adam was used to. In order to gain some momentum in his swing, Adam turned his body one full circle as he swung one of the swords out at the ghoul. The sword cut clean through the ghoul from its right shoulder down to its left waist! Gore and black blood flowed out, with a significant amount falling on Adam. As he was covered in it, he felt that eerie song grow strong again. That was the last thing he needed, a distracting fight with his mind while he also needed to fight ghouls!

After Adam killed that ghoul, many of the remaining ghouls that remained confused about what Adam was instinctively left. All that remained were ten ghouls that were surrounding Adam with aggressive growling. Adam had also made his way out and away from the horde of ghouls during this time, so he was just a little more relaxed. He still had to contend with the ghouls before him, but at least he was no longer totally surrounded.

Adam totally focused his elemental sight on the ten ghouls around him. He had a distinct advantage that he did not have to look at them with his eyes and he could see them all at once. If any one of them started to attack, he could immediately counterattack them!

Before too long of a time passed, one of the ghouls suddenly jumped in to start his attack! This started a chain reaction where one ghoul after the other also came in for an attack! This was the worst situation that Adam had predicted. He had been hoping they would only attack him one at a time, then he could easily deal with them. Unfortunately, it looked like it was not going to work in his favor. Adam started turning his body to gain momentum again, as he planned his counterattacks. He started out with both his swords on his left side as he turned around. For the first ghoul, he brought his left sword up, cutting through it's armpit all the way through its shoulder before it finally cleaved its head! For the second ghoul, Adam swept out his right sword cutting straight across its chest at the level of its heart! This was a move that normal soldiers would not be able to typically make since they would have to cut through many bones to reach the heart like this. But with a spiritually reinforced weapon, it was fairly easy. With the massive disruption of its main blood arteries and its heart, the ghoul instantly collapsed. For the third ghoul, Adam brought his left sword down from the swing he used to kill the first, cleaving the skull of the third ghoul! Adam then spun around the body of the third ghoul that had yet to collapse. Adam used it as a shield against the other ghouls and struck out with his sword as he was turning around the third ghoul, decapitating the fourth ghoul!

At this point, Adam was finally outside the circle of ghouls. The other six ghouls had been lunging toward the center of the circle and missed their attacks when Adam had escaped around the third ghoul. Having cut apart so many ghouls in such a bloody manner, Adam was now covered in black blood that made for quite a fearful sight! Even the ghouls looked at Adam with a tinge of fear that they would never feel for any normal person. Adam was still alive and not fully corrupted and the ghouls could sense that. In their depraved existences, they would mindlessly attack anything that was not corrupted. However, Adam had two of his limbs replaced and were full of death essence which made them confused about Adam's existence. He was both corrupted and not, at the same time. Now, he also stood with two commander swords in hand and covered with corrupted black blood. Even though Adam did not have the feeling of a true commander that could compel the ghouls, they felt fear for Adam like they had for commanders. After a moment's hesitation, the ghouls immediately turned around and ran out of fear!

Adam didn't relax until the ghouls were out of his sight. Adam then started to relax as exhaustion started to hit him. That eerie song was stronger than ever as the black blood covered his body. Adam immediately turned around and started trudging in the opposite direction to get away from this place as fast as possible. As he walked along, he was constantly fighting against the song with his mind. There was no water anywhere to wash the black blood off and Adam feared trying to rub it off with the sand beneath his feat. If the sand just stuck to the blood and became like sticky mud, it would actually make things worse!

After a few hours of walking, the eerie song had died down as the black blood dried out. Adam had no choice but to sit down as he felt exhausted. He fought to stay awake, as only bad things ever happened here when he was not conscious. Adam tried thinking of a few things to keep him awake. His first thought was:“I wonder how Silber is... did he make it away okay?” After that, Adam started thinking about what might have happened to the city after he was knocked out. Adam was thoroughly disgusted that Heider would sink so low in their tactics against Luxom. Adam had bought their propaganda and thought them the just heroes, like the rest of the common folk of the kingdom. Adam only now realized his naivete. Even as Adam tried to stay awake with these thoughts, he slowly but surely fell asleep. At least this time, he didn't pass out from pain or weird influences from the spirit plane of death, he simply fell asleep from exhaustion. As he was falling asleep, he felt a deep longing to return home to Helen...