Kyle's nostrils filled with the stench of wet earth, a far cry from the copper tang of blood that had been his last memory. The bullets that had torn through his flesh on 58th Street were just echoes now, phantom pains beneath skin that showed no evidence of his violent end. Only the cold kiss of concrete against his cheek lingered in his mind—that final sensation before darkness swallowed him whole.

His eyelids peeled open to a canopy of alien foliage stretching toward a sky that wasn't Earth's pale blue but something deeper. The air hung thick enough to drink, making the worst Spanish Harlem summer feel like nothing but a warm breeze. Sweat already beaded on his forehead, trickling down his temple.

"The fuck?" His voice scraped against his throat, dry despite the moisture pressing down on his skin from all sides. His palms sank into soil that too soft, too yielding.

Kyle pushed himself up, eyes dropping to his blood-stained white tee. His fingers prodded at his chest, finding smooth skin where bullet holes should have been. No scars. No wounds. Just flesh unmarked by a death he still remembered.

A groan cut through the cacophony of alien insects and rustling vegetation. Kyle's head snapped left, muscles tensing instinctively. Dex lay sprawled nearby, his face twisted in confusion. Beyond him, Marcus swayed on his feet, his silhouette wavering through the thick heat haze. Another sound—profanity delivered with JT's distinctive Puerto Rican inflection—came from somewhere behind.

They'd all gone down together on that corner, caught in a hail of bullets victims of a beef that had started over nothing and ended in everything. Kyle's gaze swept over the twisted vegetation surrounding them, shapes and colors that belonged in no natural history book he'd ever flipped through.

"Yo, Alv." Marcus's voice pulled his attention back. The nickname—born in ninth grade when Kyle still carried baby fat in his cheeks—grounded him momentarily in something familiar. "You seeing this shit?"

Before Kyle could form an answer, his eardrums vibrated with a sound that didn't belong to any creature he'd ever encountered. Not quite a roar, not quite a scream, but something between that made his hair stand on end. The ground beneath his palms trembled. Nearby vegetation parted, moved by something unseen.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he scanned the jungle's edge, trying to identify the threat. Years in the hood had taught him to locate danger before it found him, but here, the rules were unknown. Every shadow held potential death. Every sound was a mystery.

"This ain't Heaven," JT's voice came from behind, closer now. Kyle heard the familiar sound of hands patting down an empty waistband, searching for steel that wasn't there. "And I'm pretty sure it ain't Hell either."

Kyle rose to his feet, surprised by the steadiness in his legs. The familiar weight of fear and adrenaline settled in his gut—an old companion from countless corners and confrontations. This was different. In the streets, he knew the players, understood the stakes. Here, he was blind.

"Stay together," he heard himself say, the words bubbling up from some primal place in his brain. "Whatever this is, we stick together."

Dex's bitter laugh cut through the humid air. "Like we did back there? Fat lot of good that did us."

Kyle saw the doubt in Dex's eyes, but noted how he moved closer anyway. They formed up like old times—a tight circle of brothers facing outward. This formation had saved them from rival sets, from police raids, from the thousand daily threats of the Five-Eight. But would it mean anything here?

The roar came again, vibrating through Kyle's chest. A thought flashed through his mind—sharp, clear, terrible: maybe dying once hadn't been enough to pay for their sins.

The light hit without warning—not from above or around, but seemingly from inside his own skull. Brightness beyond description, beyond whiteness, beyond any reference point in Kyle's limited vocabulary. Pain lanced through his brain like a hollow-point round, but instead of darkness, it brought a scouring awareness that felt like steel wool being dragged across his naked consciousness.

Kyle's eyes clenched shut against the invasion, but it made no difference. The light was inside him, probing, changing something fundamental in his understanding of himself.

Then sound joined with light, a frequency that rattled his molars and merged with the brightness until his senses blurred together. The world disappeared, replaced by a white void where seven black letters etched themselves into the fabric of his being:

SURVIVE

The word hung suspended in his consciousness, an obsidian command, as final as the last bullet.

"Do y'all fucking see that?" Kyle's question came out shaky, alien to his own ears. His head pounded like the morning after too many shots of Hennessy, spots dancing across his vision. But that word—SURVIVE—remained, branded on the inside of his eyelids.

Through the ringing in his ears, he caught fragments of the others' reactions. Dex on his knees. Marcus grabbing at his slipping bandana. JT muttering something in Spanish before switching back to English. Their voices reached Kyle as if through water, distorted and strangely distant.

His thoughts moved like molasses. The streets had programmed him for quick reactions—see the threat, make the call, handle it. But he never experience anything like this.

"Yo—" Kyle began, but the sound died in his throat as that alien roar cut through the jungle again. This time he felt it in his sternum, like standing too close to massive speakers at a block party. Whatever was coming for them wasn't going to wait while they sorted through their confusion.

His ears picked up the first warning—movement in the undergrowth. Too quiet. Too deliberate. The predatory silence that came before violence erupted on street corners back home.

Then it emerged, and Kyle's brain refused to process what his eyes delivered. A nightmare given flesh—eight feet of rippling muscle wrapped in midnight fur. It stood on two legs like a man but moved with nothing human in its gait. Its face was pure predator, feline but wrong, larger than any big cat he'd ever seen in nature documentaries. Twisted horns curved forward like obsidian scythes above eyes..

When it opened its maw, Kyle's gaze locked on rows of teeth that looked engineered for one purpose—to tear through flesh and bone like paper. His mouth went dry.

Marcus whispered something nearby—a prayer or a curse, Kyle couldn't tell. The beast's head snapped toward the sound with unnatural speed.

In that moment, Kyle saw himself reflected in those golden eyes—not as a man, not as a survivor from the Five-Eight, but as prey. Every instinct screamed at him to run. The streets had taught him to recognize unwinnable fights, to know when standing your ground meant getting planted six feet under it instead.

"Move." Dex's voice reached him as if from miles away. Then louder: "MOVE!"

Kyle's body responded before his mind caught up. His feet pounded against the soft earth, lungs struggling with air too thick to properly fill them. Through the blood rushing in his ears, he registered the sounds of the others crashing through vegetation around him, their panicked breathing matching his own hammering pulse.

Then he heard it—JT's scream, high and desperate.

Something deep in Kyle's chest tried to seize control, twenty years of brotherhood demanding he turn back. But his legs kept pumping, driven by the blind terror that predated conscious thought. Behind him, JT's scream cut off with a wet, tearing sound that burned itself into Kyle's memory.

"Don't stop!" Dex's command cracked through the air. "Don't fucking stop!"

They ran until their muscles burned and their lungs felt ready to burst. When they finally collapsed, the horrible truth settled over Kyle like a shroud—they were down one brother.

They'd left JT behind.

Kyle rolled onto his side, stomach heaving until nothing remained but bitter bile that splashed onto alien soil. The acid burn in his throat couldn't wash away the knowledge: they'd died as soldiers but run like cowards. Somewhere behind them, what remained of their brotherhood lay scattered across a jungle floor that had no right to exist.

The sounds of unseen life forms surrounded them—clicks and chirps and rustling that his brain couldn't categorize. Each noise made Kyle flinch, expecting death from any direction.

"Should've ran faster," Dex's voice sliced through the heavy silence. The flatness in his tone reminded Kyle of empty shell casings after a shooting—spent, hollow. "Ain't our fault he was too slow."

Kyle's gut twisted at the words, but his mind offered no counter-argument. They'd all chosen the same path in that moment of terror—survival.

"Y'all keep seeing it? That word?" Marcus asked, his voice barely above a whisper. Kyle noticed how his friend's eyes darted constantly, scanning the undergrowth for threats. The nervousness in his movements was contagious.

"Survive," Kyle muttered, the word still burning behind his eyes like an afterimage of the sun. "Like some sick joke, right? Die in the streets just to end up in this green hell getting these... these fucking messages in our heads."

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Nah, it's more than that." Dex's words drew Kyle's attention. "This shit's weird. That light, that message.."

The vegetation around them shifted, making Kyle's body tense involuntarily. Something large moved through the undergrowth nearby—he couldn't see it, but he felt the displacement of air, heard the subtle crackle of leaves. His heart leapt into his throat, muscles coiling to run again. When the presence passed without revealing itself, he released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"This is like back home, we know the rules," Kyle whispered, afraid that speaking too loudly might attract attention. "Kill or be killed. Simple." His eyes drifted upward, taking in the alien blue sky, the sun that seemed too distant, too cold.

"Survive," Marcus repeated, the word sounding like a question in his mouth. "But survive what? And for how long?"

A scream echoed through the jungle—not JT this time, something else entirely. The sound hung in the humid air like gun smoke, a reminder that each moment of stillness was borrowed time.

"Maybe that's all there is," Dex said, already moving. Kyle found himself following without conscious decision. "Survive long enough to figure out what we surviving for."

That word kept flashing in Kyle's mind: SURVIVE. Simple as pulling a trigger. They'd survived the streets by becoming what the concrete jungle demanded of them. What would this place require? What parts of themselves would they have to sacrifice next?

Kyle's hands moved without thought, performing the instinctive pat-down ingrained since childhood. His fingers found only empty pockets where his phone should have been, where his wallet usually pressed against his thigh. Nothing. Not even lint. Like they'd been scraped clean of everything but their bodies.

"The fuck?" Dex's panic-edged voice drew Kyle's attention. He watched as his friend's fingers traced over his own chest, searching for landmarks that weren't there. "Yo, my scars. All of them, they just..."

His words died in his throat as they crested a small rise in the jungle floor.

Every step deeper into the jungle felt like sinking into a fever dream. Sweat rolled down Kyle's spine, his shirt clinging to his back like a desperate lover. The blue light filtering through the alien canopy turned everything strange—Marcus's familiar face now cast in shadows that made him look like someone Kyle had never really known.

Kyle's arm shot up before his brain fully registered why—a gesture drilled into muscle memory from years of corner surveillance. Twenty feet ahead, through a tangle of vegetation unlike anything back in the concrete maze of Spanish Harlem, something was wrong. Bodies. Four of them, sprawled in what might have been a camp once.

"Bodies," he muttered, the word sour on his tongue.

Kyle approached like he'd done with the dead before—cautiously, respectfully, but with that detachment his life taught early. Death was just another resident in the Five-Eight. These corpses, though... these were different. His stomach clenched as his eyes tried to make sense of what they were seeing. The bones were wrong—fingers too long, joints bent at angles that made his brain itch. The skulls looked like someone had taken a human blueprint and stretched it, foreheads bulging forward, eye sockets set too wide. Not human. Not even close.

Marcus hung back. "The fuck were these? They ain't people."

Kyle didn't answer. His mind couldn't find the box to put this in. No frame of reference existed in the twenty-four years he'd spent breathing Earth's air.

Dex moved with no hesitation, hands already working through what remained of the corpses' possessions. Kyle recognized the movements—the same way Dex had stripped phones and wallets and guns from unconscious rivals back home.

"Don't matter what they was," Dex said, not looking up. "Matters what they got."

Kyle swallowed the unease climbing his throat. Dead was dead. He'd learned that over too many open caskets, watching mothers collapse over sons who'd been brothers to him. He'd never bothered the dead before, but survival made hypocrites of everyone eventually.

His fingers found a pack beside one of the not-quite-human corpses. The material felt wrong against his skin—not leather, not cloth, but something between. Inside, something clinked against his knuckles. Three bottles, clear as vodka but with something suspended inside each one—a sphere of reddish-purple substance that seemed to rotate in place within the liquid.

Kyle held one up, the weight unfamiliar in his palm. The strange blue light of this world passed through the glass, casting crimson shadows across his dark skin. The sphere inside didn't move or react—just hung there, waiting.

"Yo," he called, a strange tightness in his chest. "Look at this shit."

Marcus leaned over his shoulder, his breath warm on Kyle's neck. "I've never seen some shit like that before."

Neither had Kyle. Nothing in his world had prepared him for any of this—not the streets, not the system, not the constant vigilance that had kept him alive through two decades in a neighborhood that devoured the weak.

They collected the spears from skeletal hands, the stone tips jagged and primitive. Kyle tested the weight of one, trying to imagine himself using it. He'd seen knives before, held guns, but nothing like this. Use what you can, he thought.

The sound hit his ears before his brain processed it—a crash of vegetation, something big moving fast through the undergrowth fifty feet away. Kyle's heart slammed against his ribs as the thing burst into view.

His mind fumbled for comparisons: part boar, part lizard, all nightmare. Its hide was a patchwork of scales and coarse hair, its head massive and crowned with two twisted horns. Amber eyes locked onto Kyle with a hatred so pure it felt like a physical blow. Yellowed fangs hung from its lower jaw, dripping with fluid that steamed slightly where it hit the forest floor.

The beast's chest swelled as it sucked in air, releasing a grunt that Kyle felt rather than heard, the sound vibrating through his bones.

"Oh shit—" The words scraped past his lips, inadequate for the terror clawing at his throat.

The monster charged, closing the distance faster than anything its size had a right to move. Kyle's world narrowed to a tunnel of pure instinct. No time to think, no room for doubt. In the projects, hesitation was just suicide with extra steps.

His hand closed around one of the bottles in his pocket, the glass cool against his palm. No idea what it would do, but dying with options unused wasn't how he'd survived the streets.

Kyle hurled it, his body remembering how to throw before his mind caught up. The bottle arced through the humid air, spinning once before connecting with the creature's scaled forehead. It shattered with a sound unlike breaking glass—more like crystal bells struck by metal.

The liquid splashed across the beast's face, and the suspended sphere burst on impact. The substance transformed instantly, becoming a vapor that clung to the monster's features. Kyle had seen chemical fires before, watched buildings burn when meth labs exploded—this was different. The vapor seemed to seek the creature's openings, flowing into its eyes, its nostrils, its open mouth like it had a purpose.

Where the substance touched, the hide bubbled and peeled away. The beast's charge faltered, its bulk stumbling sideways as it released a sound that bypassed Kyle's ears and struck directly at something primitive in his brain. The wail of something dying badly.

"Fuck!" Dex's voice cut through Kyle's stunned horror.

Kyle had seen that look in Dex's eyes before—part shock, part savage joy. It was the same expression he'd worn when they'd caught that kid from the rival set alone behind the bodega. Dex had always been quickest to see weakness, to exploit it without hesitation.

Dex lunged forward, spear extended, and Kyle's body moved before his mind could catch up. Six years running together on those streets had programmed responses deeper than thought. Where Dex went, he and Marcus followed—a trinity of violence perfected in alleys and abandoned lots.

Kyle's world narrowed to the moment—the weight of the spear in his hands, the smell of the creature's burning flesh, the solid resistance as his weapon found the soft belly beneath the scales. The sensation was nothing like he'd expected, the spear sinking through layers of resistance until it hit something vital.

The beast's blood was wrong—too dark, too thick, splashing across Kyle's arms and face. It burned slightly where it touched his skin, a sensation like mint but sharper, more chemical.

The creature's death throes played out in terrible proximity. Its massive body thrashed and shuddered, each movement spraying more of that strange blood across Kyle's clothes, his skin. Its final breath gusted hot against his face, carrying an odor like copper and rotting fruit.

When it finally collapsed, the impact sent tremors through the ground beneath Kyle's feet. In the sudden silence, all he could hear was his own ragged breathing and the hammering of his heart..

The beast's massive corpse lay still, its alien blood seeping into soil that drank it without judgment. Kyle's breath came in ragged pulls, the copper tang of exertion coating his tongue. Victory's rush flooded his veins as he stared down at what they'd done—this killing that felt right, necessary, earned. The thing had tried to end him. They'd ended it first. Simple street logic applied even here.

Then it began.

From the creature's cooling flesh, pinpricks of white light bloomed like stars being born in the darkness of its hide. Kyle blinked, thinking his vision had fractured from adrenaline or trauma, but the lights remained—multiplying now, pushing through dead tissue, rising like souls abandoning a sinking vessel.

"The fuck is that?" His words emerged breathless, but neither Dex nor Marcus answered. Their silence told him they saw it too.

The motes increased in number and intensity until they resembled a constellation hovering above the corpse—luminous particles suspended in the thick jungle air, bright and steady. They cast an ethereal glow across the blood-spattered ground, transforming gore into something almost beautiful, almost holy.

Then they moved.

Not randomly, not in panic, but with purpose—like bullets with designated targets. The swarm split into three uneven streams, each one arrowing toward one of them with unerring precision. Kyle's muscles locked, fight-or-flight reflex screaming in his skull, but his feet remained rooted to the ground as if the earth itself held him.

The motes struck him in the center of his chest, but there was no impact—only a cold so intense it burned, spreading outward from his sternum to every extremity. Kyle's jaw clenched against a scream that would have revealed too much weakness. The lights didn't stop at his skin; they passed through it, through muscle and bone, seeking something deeper.

Within his chest, the motes dispersed, becoming part of his bloodstream, his breath, his thoughts.

[Welcome to The Cosmore]

[Location: Cuson Walf]

Age of Location: 656 years.

[Current Quest]

* Survive

[Character Sheet]

Subject: Kyle "Alvin"

Age: 24

Level: 1

Race: Human (Basic 1)

Class: None

Affinity: None

Affinity Rating: 38.4

Core Type: un-awakened

Energy: 413/413

[Stats]

* Will: 6

* Strength: 4

* Intelligence: 2

* Vitality: 1

* Agility: 4

* Dexterity: 2

* Resilience: 1

* Unbound Points: 8

[Abilities] None

[Skills]

* Fighting (Novice)

[Spells] None

[Items of Significance] None