A young boy with a lithe body covered in bruising on his pale complexion peacefully walked through the lush forest. He savored the serene atmosphere of the forest, a stark contrast to his own stagnant and weary life.
The boy sighed and finally looked at his phone that hadn’t rung in a little while.
There were two missed calls and one message, which read ‘Please don’t stay out for too long, Kaya’.
“Oh, only two missed calls? I guess they’re finally accepting me sneaking out.”
With a soft smile, Kaya put his phone in his pocket before he continued his stroll through the forest close to the orphanage he had called home for the past six years.
Taking in a deep breath of nature, he sighed it out shortly after. “I feel alive in nature, not being cooped up in my room. All. Day. Long.”
Kaya’s life had been shadowed by an unknown illness, one that painted his body in bruises that appeared without cause or warning. Not from an injury, not even from a careless bump, but from something no doctor or researcher had been able to identify. The bruises would bloom out of nowhere, like stains of pain on his skin, robbing him of the life outside his room.
Looking down at his body, Kaya’s frown deepened. His skin was a horrid abstract painting of red, blue, purple, black, green and yellow, his body painted with the various stages of bruising. He was covered more with bruises than the untouched canvas of his fair complexion.
A rustle broke Kaya’s gloomy thoughts. Looking to where he had heard the rustling, he saw a red squirrel halfway up a tree. Quickly cheering up, he pulled out his phone to take pictures of the squirrel. He liked capturing what he saw outside on camera so that he could occasionally look through them when he was cooped up in his room.
When the squirrel eventually got spooked and ran further up the tree, Kaya continued waling while looking at the dozens of pictures he had just taken.
Distracted and looking down at his phone, Kaya walked face first into a tree, making a few birds flutter away from the hard impact.
“That will leave a bruise” Kaya smiled at the irony, this being the only bruise on his body that he actually deserved.
Oh, and the lack of a reaction from walking head first into a tree? Well, that was actually the one good thing about this mysterious disease. Besides the random bruising, Kaya also didn’t feel any pain. None at all.
Kaya continued walking through the forest while taking as many pictures as he could, of the landscape, the trees, the animals and even the tiny insects and shrubbery, making sure not to walk into a tree this time.
Then, suddenly, a sharp crack echoed through the air, as though the world itself had splintered. The sound was close, and it was loud, making Kaya jump in surprise and hastily snap his head back towards the source of the sound.
Kaya took an involuntary step back from the sheer surprise and fear of what he laid his eyes upon. Right in front of him, not even five meters away, thin jagged lines were forming, carving their way across the space like cracks in glass. These fractures were spreading quickly, crisscrossing and intersecting, making the very fabric of reality seem like it was falling apart. Through the widening cracks, an eerie light began to seep through, bathing everything in its vicinity in a ghastly glow.
With shaking hands, Kaya quickly took out his phone to record what was happening, capturing whatever was happening as testament to himself to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
The cracks deepened, cutting through the air as reality splintered in front of Kaya’s wide eyes. The thunderous sound of tearing space slowly gave way to a strange unnatural hum, like the world itself was groaning.
A jagged tear in the fabric of reality was ominously hovering in the air. The edges of the rift crackled with arcs of energy, the lightning within its folds flickering erratically. Inside it, an endless swirl of dark and light twisted together, creating a mesmerizing, almost hypnotic vortex.
Its center appeared to stretch into a deep void, seeming both distant and dangerously close, foreboding yet inviting. Alluring, even.
Blinking a few times in disbelief, in a state of surprise and shock, Kaya slowly stopped his recording and almost on instinct sent it to the group chat he was in with the only three friends he had. Having put his phone away, Kaya’s eyes got fixed on the rift. He couldn’t help but think it looked exactly like he had imagined a portal to look like from the novels he had read.
Stolen story; please report.
The portal looked so…alluring. Kaya found himself taking a step closer, unable to tear his gaze from the mesmerizing vortex. Another step, almost involuntary, pulled in by its alluring pull. Another step. He was within an arm’s reach now.
His arm started to lift. His mind was telling him that he shouldn’t touch it. Countless red flags were going off in his mind, but he couldn’t help it as his body didn’t listen to him. Out of his control, entranced by the alluring pull of the rift, Kaya kept raising his hand, reaching out to the rift. And then, he touched it.
The instant his fingers as much as grazed the rift, a powerful force seized them, yanking him forward with irresistible strength. There was no time to react as his body was pulled into the swirling vortex. Reality blurred as he was pulled through, the world stretching and distorting, colors bending, a deafening roar drowning out all other sounds, and gravity disappearing as he was hurled through space, the air cold and thin, like breathing in a storm.
Then, as quickly as it begun, the force released him. Gravity returned, there was no more deafening roar and Kaya could breathe again. The only thing that didn’t return were the world and its colors.
Standing in a completely empty dark space, devoid of anything, Kaya’s heart couldn’t help but to start running rampant, just like his thoughts. ‘What happened? Where is this? Is this still earth? Am I even still alive? Did I die? Is this what the afterlife is supposed to look like?’
Kaya’s heart started to calm down, not from calmness and acceptance, but purely from the surrealness of the situation. Around him was literally nothing but pure darkness, but looking down he could still see his body perfectly clear without the tiniest shadow, perfectly lit while this place was devoid of light. He was also standing on…nothing.
[You have entered the awakening portal: Elemental fire – 100/100]
Out of nowhere a soft blue light flickered into existence in front of Kaya’s eyes making him stumble backward in surprise. In an instant the light had extended and stretched into a flat rectangle that hovered in front of him, like a digital painting suspended in the air.
Kaya’s shock and surprise quickly turned into curiosity as he saw the text on what could only described as a hologram. Finally there was something that could shed light on what was happening. He had entered a portal? An awakening portal?
Instead of giving the boy answers, it only filled him with more questions. ‘An awakening portal? What is that..?’ He knew what a portal was, he had read enough fantasy books to know what a portal is, but that was only fiction. That couldn’t possibly be real-
[Error: Unauthorized entry detected]
[System integration in progress]
[Entry permitted under special circumstances]
[Beginning integration -]
Four red holograms appeared in quick succession, breaking Kaya away from his previous thoughts. His nerves came back to him all at once. ‘An error? That didn’t sound right. And what does a system integration mean? And entry allowed? Didn’t I already enter? Wait, what does it mean with integrating-’
Before Kaya could even finish his thoughts, he suddenly felt a strange sensation spreading through his body. It felt warm, but violent. Despite not being able to feel pain, Kaya knew that if he could feel pain, he would be in a lot of it right now.
The intense sensation vanished as abruptly as it came, replaced by a new set of blue holograms materializing in front of him
[Entrée successfully integrated into the system]
[Achievement received: First portal entrée on planet earth][
Achievement reward: special portal change]
Seeing that the holograms had returned back to blue strangely alleviated Kaya’s worries. His nervousness changed into curiosity again.
The first hologram made sense, but at the same time it didn’t. The sensation that he felt must have been the process of being integrated into the system…but what was the system? Kaya knew that thinking about this wouldn’t bring any answers, so he continued to the other two holograms.
The hologram displayed that Kaya was the first person to enter a portal, which made sense because he was right in front of it when it appeared. There were a few stipulations to the message that Kaya couldn’t help but think of.
‘It said I was the first, so that probably means that I won’t be the last. So did more portals appear? And it said ‘planet earth’, does that mean that there are other planets than earth? Aliens are real? Is this how I found out?’ Kaya shook his head after catching himself getting distracted, and focused on the last hologram.
‘A special portal change?’
When Kaya thought about what those words might mean, he finally felt something. Nothing visible was changing in the empty black void, but there was definitely a change happening in the space around him. He didn’t know what he was feeling or how he was feeling it, but there was an unexplainable change in pressure.
[Awakening portal changed from ‘Elemental fire – 100/100’ to ‘Unique – 1/1’]
[Unique awakening trial created: The creator’s duels]
Out of nowhere, in the black empty space not even ten meters in front of him, shadows started emerging out of the void like a dark storm coalescing into shape. Whatever was forming was setting off all Kaya’s survival instincts and made him take an involuntary step back while the jagged outline of the shadow quickly grew more defined as the shadows seemed to solidify.
Then, at once, the shadow shell broke off, revealing the sight of the monster beneath. A massive, wolf-like beast that stood as tall as a horse, with sleek, snow-white fur that seemed to challenge the eternal darkness of the void. Its blue eyes glowed with an eerie cold light, and its jaws were filled with serrated teeth that looked like they could even tear metal apart.
Kaya’s heart raced as a chilling dread washed over him. Every instinct urged him to run, yet his body felt paralyzed, unable to escape the crushing weight of the creature’s menacing presence. He was trapped, utterly powerless against this predator.