Cassian’s newfound companions followed along behind him, their steps uncertain. They were a motley crew, each one displaying the telltale signs of integration—the unnatural glow in their eyes, the rapid healing of wounds that should have been fatal. But unlike Cassian, they didn’t seem particularly thrilled about their new circumstances.

He couldn’t blame them. Most people didn’t exactly leap at the chance to embrace agony with open arms. But that’s what made Cassian different, special even. The thought made him smirk as he led them down a cracked, deserted street, each step a reminder of the pain still radiating through his body. It wasn’t enough, though. Not nearly enough.

As Cassian led the group down the cracked and deserted street, something felt... off. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the scuff of boots against asphalt and the occasional creak of a swaying streetlamp. It wasn’t just the eerie emptiness of the city—it was the absence of something so mundane, so ubiquitous, that its vanishing left an almost physical void.

The cars.

Every street was empty of them, from rusted clunkers to luxury sedans. The usual clutter of urban life—parked cars jammed along curbs, the occasional smashed window from a break-in—was conspicuously absent. There wasn’t even the wreckage he would’ve expected in the wake of an apocalypse. It was like someone—or something—had swept the streets clean, leaving nothing behind.

Cassian paused, scanning the area. "Anyone else notice we’re walking through the world’s biggest pedestrian zone?" he muttered, half to himself.

The burly man frowned, glancing around. "You’re right... where are all the cars? Shouldn’t there be... I don’t know, abandoned vehicles? Or at least the husks of some?"

Cassian shrugged, his smirk returning. "Maybe they all went to the same retirement home. Lucky bastards."

But even as he joked, unease coiled at the back of his mind. He’d lived in cities his entire life, and the sight of an empty street without so much as a rusted heap felt deeply wrong. Something about it gnawed at him, poking at a place in his mind he didn’t particularly care to examine.

Then came the hum.

It was faint, almost imperceptible, like the background static of a radio not quite tuned to a station. Cassian froze, his muscles tensing instinctively. The sensation wasn’t sound, not exactly—it was deeper than that, brushing against his consciousness in the same strange way the Higher Being had.

The presence at the edges of his mind stirred, a soft yet undeniable nudge. It wasn’t intrusive, but it was enough to derail his train of thought, redirecting his focus like a hand gently turning his head away.

Cassian blinked, the thought of the missing cars slipping from his grasp like water through his fingers. "Eh," he said, waving it off. "Who cares? They weren’t mine anyway." He resumed walking, the grin on his face returning as he turned his attention back to the cracks in the pavement and the lingering ache in his ribs.

As they continued down the desolate street, Cassian couldn’t shake the nagging sensation that something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just the silence or the missing cars—it was the air itself. There was a tension to it, a heaviness that clung to his skin and settled in his lungs. The world felt... charged, like it was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

His eyes scanned the empty windows of nearby buildings, their darkened interiors staring back at him like hollow eyes. The shadows seemed deeper than they had any right to be, shifting unnaturally with the faintest breeze. It was as if the city itself had become something new—something alive.

Cassian’s instincts, dulled by years of numbness, were now sharper than ever. Every creak of metal, every distant clatter of debris set his pulse racing. Not with fear, but with anticipation. The Higher Being’s presence stirred again, faint but insistent, like a whisper at the back of his mind. It wasn’t speaking, not in any way he could decipher, but its influence was undeniable.

Something was out there.

He could feel it, an invisible current running just beneath the surface of reality, tugging at his senses. The cracks in the sky weren’t just scars—they were gateways, and whatever had come through wasn’t content to stay hidden.

"Look alive, folks," Cassian called over his shoulder, grinning as he caught the startled expressions on their faces. "Or don’t. We’re not exactly picky in this new world, are we?"

The burly man, who had been the first to tentatively agree with Cassian’s philosophy, frowned. "Where are we going?"

Cassian glanced back at him, raising an eyebrow. "Wherever the pain takes us."

That didn’t seem to sit well with the others. The woman, who had been the most vocal among them, shot him a glare. "You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? The pain, the chaos... it’s all just a game to you."

Cassian chuckled, the sound low and almost conspiratorial. "A game? No. More like a really intense workout. You push yourself, you get stronger. You back off, you stay weak. Simple as that."

The woman shook her head, clearly not convinced. "This isn’t a workout. It’s madness."

"Madness, brilliance, potato, potahto," Cassian said with a shrug. "The fact is, pain is the only real way forward. You can either embrace it or get left behind."

One of the other integration hosts, a skinny guy who looked like he’d been through the wringer more times than he could count, spoke up. "What if we don’t want to get stronger? What if we just... survive?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Cassian stopped in his tracks, turning to face them with a grin that was far too wide to be reassuring. "Survive? Is that really all you want? To just... scrape by? Maybe find some nice, quiet hole to hide in while the world goes to hell?"

The man didn’t answer, but the nervous shuffle of his feet was enough.

"Let me tell you something," Cassian continued, stepping closer. "Surviving is for cockroaches. We’ve been given a gift here—a chance to transcend, to become something more. And that only happens if you’re willing to go through hell to get there."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as the group absorbed his words. Cassian could see the doubt in their eyes, the fear of what he was suggesting. But that was the problem—they were still afraid of pain, of suffering. They hadn’t seen the potential in it the way he had.

Finally, the woman spoke up again, her voice shaky but resolute. "Maybe there’s another way. A less... painful way. We should at least try to find it."

Cassian sighed dramatically, rubbing the back of his neck as if he were considering her words. "Sure, you could do that. Wander off, look for the easy path. Maybe you’ll find it, maybe you won’t. But if you do, what’s waiting for you on the other side? A cushy life? A chance to be normal again?" He scoffed. "Normal’s overrated. Pain is where the real growth happens."

The burly man glanced between Cassian and the woman, his expression conflicted. "I don’t know... there might be something to what she’s saying. We don’t have to suffer just to get stronger."

Cassian rolled his eyes, turning away from them with a dismissive wave. "Fine. Go on then. Take the easy way out. See where it gets you." He started walking again, his pace quickening as if he were eager to leave them behind. "But don’t come crying to me when you hit a wall and realize you’re too weak to climb it."

The group hesitated, watching as Cassian moved further ahead. The woman bit her lip, clearly torn, but eventually, she turned to the others and nodded. "Let’s go. There’s got to be a better way."

The burly man and the skinny guy exchanged uneasy glances but followed her lead, their footsteps growing fainter as they headed in the opposite direction.

Cassian didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. They’d made their choice, and it wasn’t his problem anymore. He had bigger things to focus on—like finding the next source of pain that would push him to new heights.

For a fleeting moment, Cassian wondered if he should have tried harder to convince them. Having others at his side might have been useful—strength in numbers, or whatever people liked to say. But the thought was gone as quickly as it came. Allies weren’t worth much if they couldn’t keep up. If they weren’t willing to embrace the pain, they’d only drag him down. No, he was better off alone.

As he continued down the street, alone now, he found himself grinning again. He wasn’t disappointed that they’d left. If anything, he was more energized. They were holding him back, after all, with their weak-willed talk of easier paths and less suffering.

The world was different now, and the rules had changed. It wasn’t about avoiding pain anymore; it was about seeking it out, embracing it, letting it mold you into something stronger, something better. Cassian knew that better than anyone, and he wasn’t about to let anyone or anything stand in his way.

Cassian hadn’t always understood the value of pain. In fact, for most of his life, it was something he could never comprehend. He remembered the doctors’ sterile white coats, their serious faces, and the countless tests they had run on him as a child. He had been special, though not in the way people wanted to be.

Congenital Insensitivity to Pain—the condition that had shaped his existence from the very beginning. Cassian had been born without the ability to feel pain. It wasn’t just that he could endure more than others—it was that pain itself didn’t exist for him. A broken bone, a deep cut, even the sting of fire—it was all the same. Numbness. Emptiness.

He could still recall his mother’s anxious face, her hands always hovering near him, afraid he might injure himself and not even realize it. The bumps and scrapes of childhood that every other kid ran home crying about never fazed Cassian. While others learned to fear pain, he learned to live without it.

But the absence of pain wasn’t the blessing people imagined it to be. It was a curse, a prison he could never escape. Without pain, there was no threshold to push against, no limit to test. As a child, he watched other kids cry when they fell off their bikes, scream when they burned their hands on the stove, and something in him longed for that—longed for the sharpness of existence they experienced but he couldn’t.

He remembered the first time he’d realized what it meant to be different. He was eight years old, playing in the park, climbing higher on the jungle gym than anyone else. He didn’t notice the splinter of metal that cut deep into his hand, the blood flowing freely as he gripped the bars. He climbed, unfazed, until a mother screamed at the sight of the red trail left in his wake.

Cassian had stared at his own hand, watching the blood drip onto the ground, confused by the fuss. He had no idea what pain even was—what it meant to feel alive through something so simple and primal. His mother had rushed him to the emergency room, and that’s when the tests began.

As he grew older, the lack of sensation made him reckless. He pushed his body to extremes, trying to find anything that would make him feel—something, anything. He dove off high cliffs into cold, dark waters; he threw himself into fights, his body absorbing blows that would have knocked others unconscious. But no matter what he did, nothing stirred inside him. It wasn’t bravery. It was desperation.

People thought he was fearless. They were wrong. He was hollow.

By the time he reached adolescence, Cassian realized he was trapped in a body that couldn’t scream when it was broken. It was then the emptiness became unbearable. Without pain, he had no boundaries, no limits. He began to spiral, seeking out more dangerous ways to feel alive. He crashed cars, flirted with death, and teetered on the edge of destruction, but all of it left him colder, further removed from the world everyone else inhabited.

He couldn’t understand their fear. Pain was what grounded them, kept them connected to life. Without it, there was no edge, no thrill, no sense of mortality. He envied their fragility. He craved it.

Then came the illness.

Cassian’s disease hadn’t just stopped him from feeling pain; it had caused irreversible damage. His joints deteriorated without the feedback loop that told him when he’d pushed too far. His body began to break down. By the time he was twenty, every doctor told him the same thing: You’re deteriorating. If you don’t stop these reckless behaviors, you won’t survive.

He ignored them. How could he care when he couldn’t even feel the consequences? Every day he spent locked inside his body was torture—an existence without boundaries, without sensation. Pain was supposed to be what told people they were alive, and Cassian was dead to the world around him.

But the world wasn’t done with him.

The flashback shifted in his mind, pulling him to the moment everything changed. He had been twenty-two, lying in a hospital bed, his body broken but his mind still sharp, still desperate. His legs had been shattered in a car accident, yet he hadn’t felt a single thing. He should have died, and yet there he was, hollow as ever.

And then, they came.

The pain in his body was dulling, the last of his injuries finally healed. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more—more pain, more challenges, more chances to grow.