What’s going on?

The boy opened two blurry eyes with difficulty, his mind foggy, a taste of iron flooding in his mouth and the throat that felt like it had been ripped open.

It hurts so much...

Memories of an orphanage and then a job as a sailor mixed with those of a vast, torrid desert, mythological creatures and corpses.

He gathered his last memories.

I was no more.

He remembered the Lighthouse, the world of light and darkness, the magical creatures, the monstrosity in white space and that strange change of language. There was also this peculiar laugh similar to glass that would break.

Fragments of memories flooded back and interrupted his thoughts, short flashes, sometimes precise, sometimes not, but all confused him.

Last night, a force made up of the Birdallred patriarch and the high powers of their clan had appeared on Spirime clan territory and marched to the home of the patriarch Spirime.

From his house, Soudec had seen the long cohort strutting arrogantly through his clan's territory. He and many of the other members had meanwhile gathered in the center of the residential district, watching them coolly as they passed.

"Who's Soudec?" he thought confusedly.

And how could they be humans?

Large humanoid figures indeed, but with pallid skin, far too long arms and a deformed body, they looked like thin spectral silhouettes. Their black eyes seemed to reflect a cold malevolence reinforced by their lack of emotions.

After the long procession had disappeared, it didn’t take time before the terrible explosion and the apparition of the strange tide of black energy that killed everyone.

It was truly terrible. He frowned as he recalled how quickly everyone had died.

Other memories came to him.

They belonged to this being, Soudec, who was a stranger to him. Moments from his childhood, interactions with his clan, explorations of a "Rift”.

But soon these memories gave way to others, fresher, those of his last years on Earth.

He was Spica. No, he frowned. I had another name. Why the Lighthouse stole all of that? He was a young man of... He could remember the flag with ease, the white cross on a red background, the same thing for the place where he lived after, the flag with the star-spangled and the stripes, but he couldn't remember the name of these countries, only that he was from Earth.

Yet he was thinking and controlling the body of Soudec, a human of the Spirime clan in the realm of Swordfeather.

The wave of memory that seemed to somehow merge his two memories was beginning to dry up, the slight negative emotions that gripped him were dispersing.

The strange recent events seemed to indicate that in some way he had a new life. In any case, he remembered the murloc's claws that pierced through his throat. He was no more. But he was here. In another world, it seems.

A painful hiss escaped his throat and broke his thoughts, leaving his mind unable to think, numbed by unrelenting pain. A strong nausea took hold of him and prevented him from apprehending his surroundings.

He tried to lean on his arms to get up, but the pain made him groan and give up.

After a few moments spent breathing deeply, Spica tried again, as his whole body flared up in pain. A strong nausea swept through him and spasms ran through his upper body as hoarse groans echoed in his aching throat.

Then, with difficulty, he vomited up a lump of tentacles looking like wriggling coal and some kind of liquid made up of red runes.

He inhaled greedily as he clumsily moved away on his knees, watching the tentacle slowly crawl towards him, leaving a trail of black mucus.

Spica stood up and his gaze froze.

All around him laid a horrific landscape, pallid-skinned corpses, members of Caleb's clan and servants recognizable by their lesser deformities and all manner of creatures lying on the ground.

Piled sometimes one on top of the other and from which, as from all corpses, tentacles protruded similar to the one he had just vomited, all covered by the black veil of the night like a tree would have been covered with moss.

He contradicted himself. It wasn't that the night covered the environment, no, it was that the ground, the thin wooden walls of the villas and the bodies were covered with a complex network of black liquid with a charcoal texture and vaguely similar to misshapen plant matter, sometimes resembling a tangle of spider webs, sometimes a cleverly reflected network of black blood vessels.

He had a vague recollection of what the landscape had originally looked like. The exterior circle was constituted of fifty or so small wooden villas, all identical and arranged in blocks of five around wooden pavilions that stood on a floor paved with smooth stone slabs. All of this was planted on an elevated barren rocky mass, with a view over the immense green forest that surrounded it.

It had the appearance of a horse's back and was connected to the earth by a mass resembling a tail. Far away, he could see the stairs leading to the interior circle located on the upper part of the rocky mass, similar to the head of a horse.

However, the two-floor wooden villas were now in ruins. The wood had sparse areas that had turned to ash or had begun to rot, revealing coal-black veins or stigmata similar to tentacle matter in the walls when they weren't directly covered in the repulsive substance.

A horrible, twisted, hellish version of what the village had been.

He heard a sticky and disgusting sound and turned around. The stubborn tentacle had wriggled closer to his feet, Spica stepped forward and, expressionless, crushed it with his brown sandal.

After making an unpleasant crunchy yet sticky sound, the tentacle liquefied into a black plant matter mixed with a kind of pus of the same color.

Spica looked at the matter between disgust and fascination and withdrew his foot from the thing. The tentacle was reduced to a sort of crushed slime, and was slowly trying to make its way towards the nearest house covered of the substance.

Let's call it "Ichor", he decided, it's better than substance.

The young man breathed in, the smell of putrefied corpses wafting through the air, mingled with a strong odor of ashes.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

He snorted slightly but wasn't too much bothered, far too used to worse.

Right now, I need to concentrate on the current dangers and list what I need to do. Everything else will have to wait until I’ve time.

He inspected himself, a simple white robe with wide sleeves, a large empty pocket and brown sandals.

He knew that every other being Soudec had seen touched by the black wave of light had died on its contact and developed a kind of tentacles but not him.

Why? Could it be because of Soudec's grimoire?

A movement in the corner of his eye caught his eye.

Speak of the devil.

He stepped back a little, scraping his sandal against the stone slabs to remove the remains of the tentacle, and turned his attention back to the marvelous being.

It was a large book with a thick scarlet cover, fluttering like a bird as it forcefully spread and folded its two extremities like large wings. No sound escaped from the book which made it all the more disturbing.

He remembered.

The ceremony, a large number of young people, all deformed with gangly figures, long disproportionate arms, very thin bodies and all expressionless, received a paper and clutched it in their hands as a strange power appeared.

The young man staggered as a torrent of fragmented, splintered information unfolded in front of him.

A flying book that can heal...

It’s his talent, a voice in his head seemed to whisper. Talent, the gift granted to humans. The words that had become his were springing up of their own accord and presenting themselves to him.

They also gave him strange knowledge that he struggled to understand. Talent was a human trait, he knew, but why? And how?

Words sounded false in his head, artificial to a fault as if he simply had a bank of cards with the name on one side and the definition it referred to on the other but never could apply them like he wanted. They could directly deform his way of thinking.

They had no flexibility or variation but sometimes encompassed other things for which no words existed.

Moved by one of the fragments of memory, he inspected his body for wounds, and as he thought, he was left with only faint marks of reddish runes occasionally moving across his torso.

These marks and the kind of rune broth he had regurgitated had all come from the grimoire. To heal him, the grimoire projected a strange red ray, it resembled a transparent broth filled with red paste in the shape of runes.

"Somehow the book should have been able to heal Soudec's body, and for one reason or another I got it," deduced Spica.

When he heard a noise, his gaze fell on the head of a corpse a few meters away, from which a tentacle much more massive than the others was trying to extricate itself from the corpse's throat without success.

So I took over a corpse from another world. Do I really have to live again?

Still staring at the stubborn tentacle, he decided, in any case he had to escape quickly. As he won this new life, he could at least try to create a new path for himself.

Spica could figure several potential dangers.

"For one thing, perhaps the enemy patriarch and the rest of the members he had brought along survived, in which case they might also want to kill me if they found me", he speculated.

He felt, seeing the death of all the members of his clan, that it seemed implausible, but if the horrible black light that had killed everyone had come from the opposing clan, then they might still be alive.

At least the one that uses this ray could be in life.

However, this seemed strange to him. Clans were supposed to ally themselves and fear of the repercussions alone should have been enough to restrain such behavior.

Apart from that, the rest of the enemy clan might decide to investigate when they don't see their clan members return.

I've no idea what they were doing there, but they should have at least some servants or soldiers nearby.

If they arrive and see me as the only survivor in the area, whatever happens to the rest of their clan will be greeted with suspicion rather than kindness, if not outright hostility.

Of course, they might offer me hospitality, but to believe in the mercy or kindness of others, especially potential enemies, is a fantasy I wouldn't allow myself.

Finally, it's hard to say whether other creatures wouldn't eventually show up. From the dust and fragments of memories Spica had obtained, he was nowhere near the average strength of the beings of this world.

As he analyzed the information he possessed, he formulated a plan.

First, I had to find something to defend myself and as much wealth as possible from the clan's chests, and second, I'd have to make a quick getaway to one of Swordfeather’s three cities.

Once I'm rich and safe, I’ll see what I’ll do.

A pensive expression crossed his face.

Caleb died at the end of the day, and now it's dark. I've no idea how long it's been since I arrived in this body. It could have been a few hours or a few days.

The problem is the smell of putrefaction. It takes days for corpses to start stinking so badly. But with magic, Ichor reeking of carrion and body parts turned to ash, perhaps bodies here are quickly recycled and transformed into something else?

Spica summarized, "Danger is everywhere".

As he prepared to leave, he happened to stare at the remaining liquid of the deceased tentacle.

Come to think of it, could I use it?

The ray that killed Soudec was very similar to the consistency the Ichor had taken on.

Spica guessed, perhaps it could be used as poison or bait.

He headed for a corpse some twenty paces away, that of a clan servant. He rummaged through the linen bins that had collapsed near him and took out two white robes.

He then picked up the substance as best he could using one of the robes in which he wrapped the package and then stuffed it into the second robe.

He then carefully placed the package in the large inner pocket of his robe.

Spica then set off without looking back following the cobbled path and walking where he could, slaloming between the corpses and the Ichor, which now seemed to be taking on more and more varied and complex forms, he headed for the clan's inner circle.

He heard cracklings followed by the noisy sound of destruction, one of the last roofs still standing had just collapsed.

Spica suppressed a retch as he skimmed the split head of an uncle or cousin.

A solitary silhouette, illuminated by the light of the golden roof that was the sky, he looked like an abandoned sparkle in the midst of darkness.

Navigating between the destroyed buildings and the Ichor coating that had stained the place an inky black, he moved slowly towards the imposing staircase that led to the clan's inner circle.