Chapter One

The temple trembled with each arcane blast, its ancient pillars - etched with runes older than the mountains - crumbling into clouds of dust. Ferris, the Iron Thesis, stood firm amidst the chaos, his tattered robes whipping in the gusts of unleashed magic. Blood dripped from a cut above his eye, staining his weathered face, but his fists remained steady, forged by decades of discipline. Across the shattered hall, atop a grotesque dais of twisted bones, the Necro-Wizard leered, his eyes aglow with a sickly green light.

"Ferrisssss," the wizard rasped, his voice grinding like stones in a mill, "you’ve hounded me long enough. Your crusade ends here."

Ferris didn’t waste breath on words; a cocky laugh was all he'd grant. Evil like this didn’t deserve words - it demanded action. He drew a deep breath, feeling the familiar surge of energy ripple through his muscles, and charged forward with the speed of a striking hawk. 

The Necro-Wizard thrust his staff upward, unleashing a torrent of necrotic energy that tore through the air like a swarm of locusts. Ferris twisted to the side, the corrupt magic grazing his arm, his boots skidding over shattered bones, leaving a chill that sank into his bones. Undeterred, he closed the gap in three strides and drove his fist into the wizard’s jaw.

A thunderous CRACK echoed through the temple as the blow landed, sending the Necro-Wizard stumbling back. For a fleeting second, surprise flickered in those glowing eyes.

"You dare-" the wizard spat, but Ferris pressed the attack, unleashing a flurry of precise strikes. Each punch targeted a vital point - ribs, shoulder, throat - honed by years of training in the Iron Monastery. He’d studied the dark arts not to wield them, but to destroy them, and he knew this foe’s weaknesses.

The Necro-Wizard snarled, conjuring a shimmering barrier of shadow that deflected Ferris’s next blow. The impact jolted through Ferris’s arm, a dull ache spreading to his shoulder, but he held his ground. Pain was an old friend.

"Foolish monk!" the wizard cackled, his voice unnaturally loud, bouncing off the ruined walls. "You think your mortal strength can undo me? I’ve transcended death itself!"

Ferris tuned out the taunts, steadying his breath. The wizard’s power flowed from his tether to the underworld - a tether that could be broken. He feinted left, then spun right, his heel arcing toward the rotten staff. The kick landed true, and the gnarled wood skittered across the stone floor.

Victory flashed within reach. But then the Necro-Wizard’s grin stretched wider, an unnatural glee splitting his pallid face. He reached into his cloak and drew forth an obsidian wand, its surface pulsing with a faint, nauseating light.

Ferris’s heart slammed twice against his ribs, each beat drowning his vision in darkness. In the first pulse, his vision went dark in a heartbeat, a glowing rectangle flickered before him, etched with shifting runes he couldn’t decipher - in the window was the wizard and the back of a monk, using the 14th iron circle stance. Ferris could see himself from behind! His vision returned to his world, to the accursed being before him. 

What… was that? What is happening? He'd never seen such potent illusion magic that it made him feel like he'd left his body.

His pulse rushed again, filling his world with darkness. The window again, skinny hand pointing toward it, but a black iron cup rose shakily, a straw brushing his lips with a trembling touch. Then the temple snapped back into focus, the visions gone, leaving his pulse racing and his mind grasping at shadows.

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Where were these visions coming from? The evil aura of that corrupted wand?

The Necro-Wizard’s voice cut through his confusion, dripping with malice. "You saw it, didn’t you? The window to your very sssoul... Forged in the abyss, blessed by the dark gods. A tool beyond your comprehension."

Ferris braced himself, muscles coiling like a spring. He’d faced countless relics of darkness, but the air around this wand carried an edge of finality that set his nerves alight. His body was his weapon and that thing threatened to pull his body away from him. What was he without it? 

NO. The visions clung to his mind like cobwebs, but he shoved them aside. Focus was his weapon.

"With this," the Necro-Wizard declared, "Ferris... the Iron Thesisssss... I’ll rip your soul from its flesh shell!"

Before Ferris could lunge, the wizard jabbed the wand forward, barking a jagged incantation. A beam of black energy erupted, faster than even the Iron Grandmaster could move slamming into Ferris’s chest like a battering ram.

Agony seared through him - not the sharp sting of a blade, but a deep, wrenching torment that clawed at his essence. His limbs locked, breath stolen, as if his very being were unraveling. He willed himself to move, to strike, but his body betrayed him, rooted in place by the spell’s grip.

Then came the pull - a sickening yank, like a rope looped around his core, dragging him free. The temple blurred, its broken stones and flickering torches dissolving into a void of endless black.

He was falling.

Weightless, un-tethered... Ferris tumbled through the darkness. The pain faded, replaced by a disorienting emptiness. Where am I? What did he do?

His eyes were open he couldn’t close them - but his vision frayed, slipping into a haze. In the dimming light, he saw them: small white pills, raining like hail from above like a sudden storm. They struck a carpet below, bouncing and scattering like raindrops rippling in a puddle, moving far slower than they should. Deep wicked laughter, too deep and too slow to be real, resonated behind him. A glimpse as his vision entered a dark tunnel - someone’s hand, there in the darkness, pouring medicine on the floor before him, a dishonest laugh of deceit.

Ferris’s mind reeled, the vision slipping away as the darkness swallowed him whole.

New sensations crept in - a rhythmic tone, like an annoying flute, the sharp scent of medicine, a blinding and pulsating light stabbing through his closed eyes.

Ferris jolted awake, gasping. He lay flat on a bed, surrounded by sterile white walls and strange machines humming softly. Tubes snaked from his arm, and a steady musical note pulsed from a box beside him.

A hospital?

He pushed himself up, or tried to - his body felt frail, sluggish, wrong. He tried to put his arms by his shoulders to kick his legs and launch himself upright, but his arms would not even rise; they buckled, thin and trembling - not at all the steel corded limbs he'd cultivated. Glancing down, he froze. The hands gripping the sheets were small, pale, long fingers stained with charcoal, with chipped nails - not the mighty calloused iron fists of a warrior monk.

Panic clawed at his chest. This isn’t me.

A woman in a white coat stepped into the room, her face etched with weary indifference. "Oh, you’re awake, your highness, Gabrielle" she said, barely glancing up from her clipboard. "About time."

Ferris croaked, his throat raw, "Where… am I?"

She sighed, a sound heavy with routine. "Ya overdosed. Lucky we even bothered this time. Idiot."

Harpist? Gabriel? Over tossed?

A flood of unfamiliar memories crashed into him - snippets of a girl’s life, her despair, her loneliness. Ferris clenched these stranger’s fists, his mind reeling. The Necro-Wizard’s spell hadn’t killed him - it had flung him here, into this body, this world. The Gabrielle... Harper. The one who watched him through the soul window, who whispered secrets to him, who guided him as he cultivated his strength and defeated progressively stronger enemies over the years, from her abyssal realm, "Dormroom".

The nurse turned to leave, but Ferris’s gaze snagged on something atop the bedside table: a bottle of pills, its cylindrical shape, orange glassy translucence, a white seal plastered on it, identical to those he'd glimpsed raining when his soul passed through the abyss.

A shiver raced down his spine. This was no wheel of reincarnation delivering him to his next life. Someone did this.  

He didn’t understand the how or why, but one truth burned clear: his fight was far from finished.