Prologue

The Thrill-Seeker

“Time to wake up, Mateo.”

A young woman’s gentle voice whispered teasingly at the edges of my awareness as I woke up. Like nearly every day for the last few years, I felt the comfort of a warm body pressed unto me as the waking world grew less blurry. I stretched the moment, not yet opening my eyes and remaining in the liminal space between dream and reality to enjoy her embrace for a bit longer.

I felt a playful nibble on my ear and turned my head towards the side. I enjoyed the taste of her lips as the waking world pulled me out of my pleasant dreams.

Then I woke up, and I was alone in my bed.

The fading sound of her voice was still echoing in my head as I stirred completely awake and finally opened my eyes. Just a normal morning, it was already something I had gotten used to over the course of many years.

Lucid dreaming, I heard this was called. I didn’t remember much of my dreams so I wasn’t sure if I did any incredible things like I had read online that one could do in lucid dreams, but what I could remember was very vivid, more like a memory from the waking world than from a dream.

Something that I did know for sure was that these were no mere dreams. I was certain that they were something else than just the product of my imagination. I was never alone in those dreams, and it was always the same woman. I was also aware that whenever I met her in the dreams, I knew much more, because I could distinctly recall having long conversations with her, despite not remembering the content of them upon waking up.

There were many mysteries surrounding this lady that appeared in my dreams, but I knew a few things. She loved me, her name was Laura, and she was a witch. In order of importance, apparently, as expressed by herself. Those were the three things that I truly knew about her. Near everything else became a blur whenever I was awake.

However, with the passing of time, I had been able to recall more and more from the time in my dreams. I could remember her face now, which I couldn’t for the first two years. I retained memories of some tidbits of conversation and could recall most of the fun we had been having together since a few years back. I also remembered that the first time she had appeared in my dreams, back when I was around 14, she had looked like a teenage girl, so she was apparently around the same age as me.

Of course, I might just be crazy, but I was confident that I was quite sane.

I had three big secrets that I could not completely share with anybody else, and Laura was the first of them. She was the one that opened my mind to the notion of there being more to the world than what my logical, rational mind could explain.

Magic was real, and I had three pieces of evidence that proved it.

I stretched, feeling a bit sore in a pleasant way. As if I had just finished a routine of exercise or a fun sparring match. With my eyes closed and spreading my limbs over the bed, I could still picture part of last night’s dream and the fun we had.

Then my alarm went off, rudely disrupting my happy recollection.

Fortunately, the phantom sensation of her kiss left a sweet aftertaste on my lips that would keep me company for the rest of the morning, doing wonders to keep me in a good mood.

I still held a healthy dose of paranoia and wariness when I thought about this situation, but I never managed to remember a concrete explanation of her origins and eventually it just got silly to worry about these things. There was nothing I could do about it, I was beyond the point of learning to cope with my situation and reached the point where I had learned to enjoy it.

It wasn’t like something actually bad was happening to me.

If I was haunted by some sexy female spirit or whatever that wanted company for the night, so what? There were far worse things out there. The lady that visited me in my dreams was quite beautiful, so I wasn’t about to complain about that. Because, well, I’m just a man. If a hot chick wanted to be in my bed, I sure wasn’t going to complain.

Admittedly, it had really, really, freaked me out the first few times that I’d had these dreams, but I never got the impression I was in danger. And with the passing of time, I had kind of just gotten used to it. Seven years was a long time.

Honestly, the only part that sucked was that the bed was empty when I woke up, but I had made my peace with that.

This was now just part of my life.

She claimed to be a witch, but maybe I was actually haunted by some female ghost, or a succubus liked to visit me. But I didn’t feel any bad side effects and actually woke up feeling much more refreshed than most people I knew. I had seen what stress could do to people who suffered from nightmares and restless dreams, so I counted myself as fortunate.

Maybe I was simply insane. I sure didn’t feel like I was crazy, but then again most insane people would probably deny being crazy, right?

Considering that I had wasted enough time dilly-dallying in bed, I finally got up.

Absentmindedly, I got my hunting knife from under the pillow and twirled it in my hand a few times even as I cracked my neck and yawned on my way to the bathroom.

This was probably my most precious possession, my one and only hunting knife. It was wickedly sharp, yet I handled it fearlessly as if it were second nature to me. It was a family heirloom and the second thing in my life that made me believe in magic.

I placed the knife on a towel hook, standing tip-first on the smooth cylindrical surface. And, ridiculously, it remained like that instead of tipping forward as logic dictated that it should. That never failed to put a grin on my face.

After I was done with my ablutions, and feeling refreshed by a nice shower, I got dressed, put on some light and comfortable clothes fit for running, and checked myself in the mirror.

My fairly tanned skin was common for the folk of this city, given that we were on the coast, and I often went to the beach to have fun and relax. Though I was close to being the spitting image of my father when he was my age, with the same jawline and leptorrhine nose, the warm amber color of my eyes had been inherited from my mom. They were quite fetching, if I said so myself, and went well with the dark brown color of my hair too.

I kept my hair short because if it got too long it was a hassle to comb it and prevent it from getting in my way when I was training or sparring, and I had been told that it suited me more this way. I worked out a lot, and in fact, I would be on my way for some morning exercise in a bit, so my body was athletic and in top form.

And despite the kind of life I had lived, I didn’t have a single scar on me.

Even though I had pretty intense matches yesterday, I didn’t have even a single bruise. The lack of any visible damage was always good, the lack of pain even more so.

I always healed very fast.

I swept a hand through my slightly wet hair and went downstairs to get some food.

After finishing my breakfast – a hot cup of coffee with milk and sugar joined by a sandwich of mortadella and cheese – I was ready to greet the day. I got some stuff from the kitchen and put them in a fanny pack. A bottle full of cold water, a sports drink, a couple of mint candies, and snacks for the way back after the exercise. I also kept a deodorant spray, bandages, and a couple of other stuff in there because I often used this for my morning runs, so after adding my wallet and cellphone, I was ready to go.

I stretched for a few minutes, limbering up for my morning run, and grabbed my fanny pack. I opened it one last time to double-check that everything was there. Water bottle, sports drink, cellphone, wallet, deodorant, mints, hunting knife, and snacks. Yep, all set.

I locked the door and put my keys on the fanny pack, and went for a run in the cool, fresh air that filled this city in the last couple of hours before dawn. The fresh breeze felt invigorating as I gradually picked up my pace.

At such an early hour, the streets were nearly deserted as most of my neighbors would still have an hour or two before they had to go to work. I lived in a nice neighborhood, low on crime, and I actually met one of the members of the watch doing his rounds and fist-bumped him as I passed by his side.

It was impossible to have a police officer on every block at all times, so in some neighborhoods, community involvement was used to reduce the opportunity for crime to occur. Crime prevention was an ongoing battle across the whole city, but it wasn’t something I was overly concerned with, though I maybe really should be.

My jogging route took me close to the bay, where hundreds of ships full of grinning fishermen were returning with their catch. Their nets were full of fish, shrimps, lobsters, squids, and more, ready to be taken to the market, prepared and stored before being taken not only to the various restaurants and stores that sold such food but also to the containers that would later be shipped across the nation and the world as exportation goods.

The mix of scents in the bay was a toss of the coin each time, sometimes it smelled horrible, with the smell of fish guts, scales, and blood fusing the smell of smoke and sweat and so much more to create a foul thing. Other times, I found that it was strangely invigorating. It seemed my luck was good today, as I inhaled fresh air without any distasteful odors.

I reached a hill from which I had an awesome view of a good part of the city.

Cartagena was a beautiful city, despite all its flaws. The pre-dawn sky lent it a special beauty, the cool indigo of the sky and the rosy light of the distant rising dawn just starting to mix on the sea’s horizon, while the many buildings that made up the City of Cartagena had a solemn air as the shadows seemed to cling to them even as the light started to reach them with more intensity.

From up here, I could almost imagine that this was a peaceful and safe city, full of good and honest people.

The reality was of course more complicated, but such thoughts did not distract me from admiring this view. I also didn’t stop jogging. I could watch the scenery while on the move.

Cartagena was a coastal city, fairly large and built next to a forest and in close proximity to a mountain range, which made it a hotspot for tourism. It was also one of the most important ports of the continent, a place of great commercial value where goods of all kinds were exported, imported, stored, handled, manufactured, reconfigured, and re-exported in absurd numbers every single day.

Trade and commerce were the lifeblood of this city, people from many cultures came and went to partake in its bounty and riches, with fortunes rising and falling in the time it took to sign a paper.

I had been jogging for over an hour when I reached my destination, Alma del Manglar Park.

It was a large park near the downtown area. A favorite for both tourists and locals who preferred open, green spaces and being close to nature, and those who simply wanted somewhere to relax.

Its extensive green areas and its diversity of activities made it the perfect place to enjoy a day in contact with nature. Any day, one would be able to spot beautiful species such as herons, pelicans, and hummingbirds, as well as many small mammals and reptiles.

During the day, there would be kids enjoying slides, swings, and other facilities, while some adults would participate in activities such as outdoor yoga and tai chi, with the occasional couples going to secluded areas for some private fun, and maybe some people being there just chilling and minding their own business, simply reading a book in a quiet corner of the park and enjoying the nice breeze in the shade of the large trees.

Though it had a sort of mystical beauty at this hour, and the cool air felt invigorating with each breath I took, my destination was not the natural beauty of the park, but the man-made structures that had been built adjacent to it.

This park had a fantastic parkour location right next to it. Several walls at varying heights, cubes of various materials, ramps, steel bars, and little pillars placed all around this section made it a great training ground where one could practice and hone their skills, have some fun, and the occasional bruise and scrapes. It was actually pretty safe unless one was careless and started doing some crazy stunt that put one’s safety and others at risk, but those were rare exceptions.

It also wasn’t the only one in the city, and there were plenty of parkour gyms that had professionals to supervise and advise, making it ideal for people who wanted to learn. I had been part of those too, but this place remained my favorite.

It was very large and had more than just things catering to parkour. It was a madman’s playground, filled with lots of things that made for interesting obstacles in all sorts of shapes, integrating both hard and soft obstacles in the training environment to create a wonderful obstacle course that was used for more than parkour, as there were some events with prizes for clearing some parts of it, but it was still mainly something for parkour and freerunning.

It had been built about a decade ago by some bigshot businessman going into politics as part of his campaign for a more modern city. Some had called it a waste, something for the rebellious youth that should rather be studying or working. But the City Council was nothing if not capable of finding ways to make money. The place was a success for many urban tribes and tourists, and for hosting competitions.

Me? I just came here for the thrill.

I grinned as I reached the Parkour Grounds, as the locals had taken to calling it, and sprinted forwards at high speed. I had jogged enough.

Now it was time to truly move.

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Parkour and Freerunning. The ancient and most noble art of running through an obstacle-filled environment in the fastest and most efficient way possible, while looking cool and performing crazy acrobatic flips to look even cooler.

Practicing parkour required – and granted – a certain perspective. Looking at the world in a slightly different way. Analyzing it with one’s mind to find things beyond the obvious. Because parkour involved seeing one's environment not as it plainly was, but rather noticing the many ways that one could use to navigate it. Envisioning the objects in our surroundings and the features of the area not as obstacles but as potential tools for navigating said environment and performing risk-rewards calculations while on the move to select the best course of action, the best choice of movement.

Envisioning a way to go through it in a very efficient, very awesome-looking way.

Simply running very fast is not enough. As an athletic and acrobatic discipline, parkour incorporated flips as a means of moving efficiently, without wasting time reducing one’s speed when turning. It was not something for running in a straight line. Where it excelled was in environments filled with obstacles, places where one needed to jump and change direction and be aware of what’s around at all times in order to take advantage of it to move better.

Not just faster. Not just cooler. Better.

I fucking loved Parkour and Freerunning.

It made me feel like I had wings.

I ran with fast strides, feeling my feet quickly devour the distance as the wind embraced my whole body. My lungs took in the fresh morning air, my heart pumped blood filled with excitement as my muscles roared with vibrant energy. I moved, doing my very best. Just a bit faster than I had yesterday, just a bit slower than I would move tomorrow.

My running form was impeccable, honed through many years of practice. The coordination of my arms and legs, the alignment of my breathing with the rhythm of my feet, my whole being focused on this to achieve the best movement I was capable of creating.

I propelled myself forward as I reached the first obstacle on my way, structures of wood and metal forming ramps and parallel walls interspaced with horizontal bars and vertical poles. I blitzed through them with flips and quick jumps and then reached a set of low walls separated by little gaps, each wall taller than the previous one, making it a sort of stairway leading to a higher ground where more obstacles could be found.

My feet touched the top of each wall for mere instants as I dashed over it like it was solid ground instead of steps separated by half a meter. I reached out with my right hand and grabbed the corner of a huge cube ahead of me and jumped, using it as an anchor to change direction towards the right, and kept going.

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I didn’t roll so much as spin in the air and kicked off the ground the moment my feet were under me, once more accelerating as the move propelled me forward. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so focused on keeping my breathing steady. These drills were always fun.

I kept going through the park, making use of all its features to move faster and better as I plotted my course.

For many long minutes, I lost myself in the joy of movement. I jumped and flipped and rolled, turning and spinning and moving with alacrity, and utterly enjoying every moment of it. Entranced in a world of my own, where all that existed was myself and the flow of movement.

My breathing pattern changed in response to my moves, matching not only my feet but fueling each move I performed. When I pushed off a surface, kicked a wall and jumped, or when I grabbed a pole to turn and reverse direction, all of these were movements that required me to match my breathing to them in order to do them properly. I was no longer purely running.

I seamlessly adjusted my balance, jumping, twisting, and flipping as necessary, moving through the obstacles like flowing wind, changing direction and grabbing at handholds for only the barest moment to perform the needed movement and never slowing down for more than a couple of seconds.

I moved like I was one with the wind, running free.

Then I reached the end of the Parkour Grounds and did the craziest of things.

I jumped clear off the top of the structure, with all the momentum I had gathered in my mad dash. It was the reason I did this at this early hour with nobody around.

There was nothing under me but the fall from a height over three stories high and what waited on the ground was a grassy hill with a gentle slope. It was a crazy jump that would break bones if one was lucky.

Arms spread to my sides and my legs flexed, like a bird descending on its prey, I flew.

For just a few seconds, the laws of physics stopped mattering and gravity lost its hold of me. The runner’s high filled me while I was airborne and gave me bliss like few things in life.

At the highest point of my flight, I saw the sun rising in its full glory, filling the world with light and warmth. I welcomed the new dawn with open arms as the golden glow bathed the city and took a deep breath.

Euphoria.

I knew I had a wide grin and a wild-eyed gaze of pure delight. Moments like these were what I lived for. This was what I chased. It was the reason I trained with passion and dedication.

The thrill.

The exhilarating feeling of freedom and the pure joy of being alive.

But as always, inexorably, the sensation of falling eventually came and the ground approached at high speed even as I continued to move forward. And yet I felt no fear.

Everybody else I knew would break some bones if they tried this. Me? I might as well have wings attached to me. Somehow, impossibly, I landed as if I had wheels under my shoes, gliding with the force of my jump and sliding the soles of my feet over the grass wet with morning dew, instead of crashing and getting horribly hurt as common sense and logic dictated that I must.

It was an impossible thing, defying the logic of this world as I had been taught my whole life. But as I glided on invisible wings and the embrace of the wind, I knew better.

Nothing is impossible.

That thought shone like a beacon of hope within my soul. And I knew in my heart that it was true. I was living it right now.

At this moment, I could feel it even clearer than at the peak of my jump, the wind whirled around me in a way that I knew for a fact that it wasn’t supposed to. I believed that it didn't do this in any other moment, only when I jumped from somewhere high like this the wind would propel me and support me in such a way.

It carried me, instead of letting me splat against the ground, cushioning my fall and gradually killing my speed until the momentum was completely bled and I stopped, standing tall and unharmed.

“Thanks,” I said to the wind, because it was the polite thing to say to someone or something that had just saved my life. I had manners, even if I could be insane.

The wind blew cheerfully, unfettered and free, while I opened my arms wide and took another deep breath. I hadn't tested what would happen if I jumped from an even greater height, because I wasn't an idiot, but the wind didn't just cushion falls. This was not a natural thing. I couldn't be hallucinating this.

There was magic in this world, and one day I was going to achieve more than these fleeting moments of wonder. I couldn’t do it yet, of course. I couldn’t command the wind and get it to do things for me. I could not summon gales of wind nor cause tornados.

Not yet, at least.

But I believed that one day I would be able to do so. One day the wind wouldn’t be simply arresting my fall, but carrying me to fly high into the sky, above even the clouds.

Most sane people would call me crazy for having such wild dreams. But this wasn’t just wishful thinking and fantasy. My ambitions had a solid foundation. These weren’t just the silly thoughts of a chuuni.

I looked at the place where I had landed, over a dozen meters behind the point where I had stopped gliding, and grinned. It was further than the landing point of yesterday.

I got a bottle of water out of my fanny pack and drank a bit, starting my walk back to the park at a more sedated pace. Now that the sun was out, more people would be arriving to exercise and I wouldn’t be able to do crazy stuff such as jumping off like a suicidal idiot.

So instead, I settled for doing calisthenics like a madman.

Every day, I strained for the edges of my limits, and every day thereafter I strived to surpass them. And every day I grew stronger, even if only in the barest, smallest degree. It was a maddening craving. A childish, immature desire that maybe I should have left behind by now.

But I just couldn’t stop. How could I, when I could see palpable results?

I had pushed my muscles to their limits, running and jumping and flipping at a hundred percent of my capabilities, and yet I felt as full of energy as when I had started. I felt stronger, in fact. More alive.

So, like a stubborn mule, I kept straining and pushing myself to the limits of my physical capacity. The best part, the funniest and most insane thing was, that I could actually feel that it worked.

I might be going insane, like a schizophrenic man believing himself a superhuman, but I could feel my physical capacities bordering on the realm of superhuman. Every day I proved it to myself.

I was pretty sure that a normal person wasn’t supposed to be able to have the wind let them glide across the air. It was something baffling and terrifying, but even more so, it was exciting.

I desired strength, excitement, and magic, and this body of mine was giving me just that. Wouldn’t it be simply stupid to complain about it?

About an hour later, I walked back through the filling streets as the new day truly started and the city came awake. Soon, the air would be filled with the rumble and horns of vehicles and the bustle of ten thousand conversations happening at the same time, all mixed up together to create unintelligible background noise.

It was a nice start for a beautiful day, and at this hour there were still few people on the streets in this part of the city. It added a certain air of serenity to it.

That was, of course, when some fucker decided to try to ruin my day.

A dirty-looking guy who had been walking in the opposite direction than me and on the other side of the street suddenly decided to cross the street. His hands were in his pockets and he quickly cast a glance down the street in both directions before he made a beeline for me.

Was it too much to ask that this guy would be just a passerby?

Sure, this part of the city wasn’t the best and cleanest, but it wasn’t exactly the slums either. But no, even a momentarily lonely street granted an opportunity for bastards like him who preyed on others when given a chance. Moreover, I trusted my instincts, and they told me this guy was out for trouble.

I had gotten a bad feeling from the moment I had noticed the man’s approach, I'd felt his gaze on me before his sudden change of direction and got confirmation the moment the guy got closer.

“Hey kid, got the time?”

I fucking knew it.

I stopped walking and quickly reached into my fanny pack with my right hand. The bastard’s eyes flickered to my side, noticing the move, and he obviously didn’t like that reaction. My would-be assailant pulled out his hands from his pockets and revealed a pocketknife, stopping his thin-veiled pretense that he wasn’t here to rob me.

“Wallet and cellphone. Now,” the man snarled and hurriedly tried to close the distance between us even as he spoke the words, but he was too slow.

He probably thought that I was a spoiled rich kid trying to look fit and who only went to the gym to take photos and flirt with the girls. He thought I was easy prey.

I would gladly disabuse him of that notion.

Eyes fixed on the mugger who had a pocketknife aimed at me, I grasped the handle of my hunting knife and pulled it out in a smooth motion, bare and ready to be used. The sight of it made the man step back warily.

Mine was bigger.

Though both were obviously capable of taking a life, a hunting knife was more visually intimidating than a pocketknife. Mine had a fixed blade that included a portion with a serrated edge, and merely having the pointed end aimed at him was enough to make that fucker abort his lunge and back off.

My knife was a family heirloom, passed from parent to child for at least three generations. Or so I had been told by my grandfather many years ago. Its handle was comfortable to hold, like it had been carved just for me. Like it belonged in my hand. It was one of very few things I had from my immediate family. One of the few material things I truly treasured.

More relevant to the current situation, its blade was wickedly sharp.

Even more importantly, I knew quite well how to use it. I had practiced. A lot.

The sight of my knife gave the robber pause. Fuckers like him weren’t accustomed to someone pulling out a weapon on them in reply to their threats. They relied on taking people unaware, attacking fast and by surprise. If one could actually confront them, they were thrown out of their game.

“One chance to leave, dude. I don’t want trouble. Just back off and we both go our separate ways. Nobody gets hurt. How about that?”

Alas, my kind offer of peaceful resolution was ignored. This kind of person was not reasonable by default, and he had already come here with the intent to harm, commit a crime and take what was mine. He could leave, but he already had a knife out. He took his choice in an instant.

The criminal feinted a lunge only to jump back and start skipping in little moves left and right in what he thought was some sort of footwork, probably believing that he would throw me off so he could find an opening.

I didn’t flinch. Didn’t move beyond carefully shifting my stance. It seemed to unnerve the criminal more than if I had shouted. I had seen real knife fighters, and I wasn’t impressed by this guy.

I loved cool stuff, I really did. But there’s a time and a place for looking cool. And a fight was not that. Especially not a serious fight that could lead to death.

In such a fight, the only grace was victory.

My eyes kept focused on him, but otherwise I kept myself calm, breathing steady. This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened to me. Crime being what it was in Cartagena, it might not be the last.

I saw him move as he feinted a stab and I raised my hunting knife with a sharp move, which made him jump back and then I took a single fast step forward before stepping back as he, predictably, went for a real stab.

What exactly made it predictable could have been a combination of factors.

I had been in fights like this before. I had faced danger when I was much younger and much less prepared for it. I had trained in the ways of combat, and seen people who wielded blades with far greater skill than this hobo.

It could be any one of those things, it could be all of them at once. Having experience certainly did wonders for keeping my heartbeat calm and my grip on the knife steady. I was no longer scared of a knife or bared fangs. I wouldn’t be paralyzed by fear nor have my senses be overwhelmed by panic and the roaring of blood in my ears. I was calm and in control, and with a clear head came sharp focus and easiness of analysis.

But in the end, it didn’t matter what let me do it, what was important was that I did it. I read him like an open book and taunted him into a costly mistake. His move might as well have been choreographed.

I swung my knife in an arc, a quick sweep with no hesitation with the blade of the knife pointing up, and got my body out of the way of his stab at the same time by turning my torso and shifting my left leg’s position, just in case he might decide to keep dashing forwards, though I doubted it.

My knife went through the poor bastard’s wrist without halting even a second, cleanly opening his flesh and making his blood start to fall onto the dirty pavement to mix with the other trash and filth already there.

I jumped back, creating more distance from the man even though he had dropped his weapon. There was no need to get closer to him, no need to take any risk. I didn’t need to attack again.

The fight was over, after all.

“I gave you a chance.”

My voice was composed and came out steady despite the complicated emotions running through me. When wielding a weapon, a single move was enough to take a life. That was why it was so dangerous if children played with knives and why even a newbie with a gun was a threat to everyone around him.

It’s why in a fight against an armed opponent, a single mistake could cost one everything.

The guy looked at me with panic at the sight of so much of his own blood, and the fear finally made him run. It was too late for him, but at least I didn’t have to keep fighting. He ran while holding his bleeding wrist, spilling his life onto the floor as he went into one of the myriad side alleys that filled this part of the city.

I watched him go and only once he disappeared around a corner did I turn my gaze to my surroundings. The street was still empty, like it had been when that guy had decided to take that as an opportunity to rob me. Despite the hour, the street was deserted, with not a single person nearby.

How strangely convenient.

I was certain that my failed mugger wasn’t going to come back. He probably thought he would just get a scar from that wound, but I knew better.

Or rather, I knew what my knife was capable of.

I had trained in the ways of wielding knives and daggers in combat. Researched and practiced the many ways that I could use knives and blades in the most efficient manner.

I even dreamed about training sometimes.

Like a desperate dreamer chasing a fantasy.

No sane person should practice how to kill another, especially not in such an obsessive manner, but I did it anyways.

Why did I put so much effort into that?

Because I wanted to be a master of knife-fighting.

And why did I want to do that?

This knife was the reason.

It was a beautiful knife. About ten centimeters long, with a handle carved from the antlers of some big fancy white deer, according to my late grandpa. Its blade was made of some sort of tough, stainless-steel alloy, though I’d always thought that it must be something else, because it honestly seemed like light behaved weirdly as it illuminated that blade. But I was no metal expert, so I could never be sure.

Even so, I did not need to be an expert to know that this was not an ordinary knife.

The knife hadn’t gotten much blood on it; I had slashed the bastard’s wrist in a quick enough move that only the top part of the knife had gotten red as it cut open the guy’s flesh and blood vessels.

Still, there was a bit of blood there. Not for long, though.

At a noticeable speed, I saw the blood on the knife slide off the blade like water off a duck’s back. As if the blade itself was rejecting the dirty substance and throwing it away. I watched the dark red liquid quickly drop to the ground by itself and, satisfied that my knife wasn’t dirty anymore, I put it back in its sheath.

This was the second of my big secrets.

Sadly neither my grandpa nor my dad were around anymore to tell me about the knife. But this was the one thing I had actually studied and tested the most.

Unlike my dreams with Laura where I simply couldn’t remember much, and unlike doing something stupid like harming myself to test the limits of my body, spraying the knife with all sorts of substances was relatively easy.

Nothing stained it, nothing would ever stick to it for more than a few seconds.

I had tried lots of stuff, anything I could get my hands on, and it never got a speck of filth in it for more than half a minute. Everything would just… slide off.

That was cool and all, and definitely screamed ‘magical knife!’ at me. But the most special thing about my knife was its scariest property, which had saved my life on more than a couple of occasions.

This knife was so sharp that it could go through a beast’s thick hide and hard muscle like it was wet paper, and I had never needed to sharpen it because it never lost its edge, but there was a reason I had taken to calling it wickedly sharp instead of a more positive-sounding adjective, and that was because this knife had a certain characteristic that was honestly ominous.

Anything that I wounded with that hunting knife would bleed to death.

Somewhere in those dark alleys, the man that had tried to rob me was probably collapsing to the ground due to excessive blood loss. No matter how much he applied pressure on the wound, it would simply not stop bleeding.

Sometimes, I wondered if maybe my knife was a cursed item. There were times when that thought nagged at me and I got a bit worried. But then shit like this happened, and I was really glad that I had this weapon with me.

It was a magical weapon, and thus it was only natural for me to want to learn how to use it properly, how to master it and wield its full potential. I would be an idiot not to at least try.

I kept walking on, putting as much distance as possible between myself and the man whose life was about to expire. I honestly wasn’t much worried about getting in trouble with the law because of this. It had been a quick thing, without witnesses. And in this city? Worse yet, in this part of the city? A random nobody like that would be just another body to burn along with the many who died every day in Cartagena. Another unresolved case that nobody cared about. Probably would be deemed a suicide and dismissed forever.

And then it happened.

In the brief moment between putting my foot down and taking another step, I felt the moment that man exhaled his last breath.

I closed my eyes as the feeling washed over me. It was a sensation unlike any other. It was electrifying, like a sudden rush of lightning coursing through my veins mixed with the sensation of a stream of cool water running down my spine while a wave of warm air filled my lungs. It was all those things and more.

I felt myself inhaling deep from something that was not air and something like another set of lungs expanded within me. I felt like I was inhaling enough air to fill ten of my lungs and yet I wasn’t overfull, because what was being filled wasn’t my lungs but something else. And it was not mere air that I was absorbing. Essence? Vitality? Qi? Mana? I didn't have a concrete name for it.

With every beat of my heart, a new wave of this energy rushed across my whole being. I felt the pain and fatigue be washed away and replaced with renewed vigor. I felt myself becoming stronger. Enough to be noticeable. By previous experience, I knew that I would be able to run faster, lift heavier weights, punch harder, and even jump higher than I would have been just a minute ago.

My body was now objectively more powerful than it had been just seconds before, in a palpable, demonstrable way.

And all it had taken for it, was for me to be a murderer.

The prospect of what that meant never failed to tempt me. Never failed to scare me. This was my third big secret, and the one that I feared the most. The one that truly scared me.

Every time I killed something, killed someone, I became stronger and more vigorous, faster and more agile, sturdier and lighter on my feet, sharper and more alert, healthier and more dexterous. I became better in every aspect.

I didn’t need to be a Seer to notice the slippery slope waiting for me. It was plainly evident to me. And oh, how it tempted me.

This wasn’t the first time I had killed a person, and maybe it would not be the last. That thought actually didn’t trouble me much. Was I a psychopath for not feeling guilt and regret about killing? Maybe, but I would kill if I had to. My life was worth far more than some nebulous sense of morality and notions of righteousness.

But I did not want to become a murderhobo. I did not want to be a deranged beast looking at the world as only a hunting ground, seeing people as mere prey to be killed for my own benefit.

I knew that I was not a normal person. And maybe I was not a very good person, seeing how I felt no guilt over a murder that I had just committed, but I genuinely did not think of myself as evil.

I…

I did not want to become a monster.

Even so, I couldn’t help but wonder, and imagine what it would be like. If I indulged in these impulses. How far could I go? What kind of strength could I achieve if I went on a rampage? Was there a limit to how strong I could get? How many people would it take for me to be able to reach comics-level superhuman powers? Would it reach a point where blades and bullets would be unable to pierce my skin? Would I be able to fly in the sky?

And all it would take was for me to become a mass murderer.

But would I really be human if I did that? What would I become if my strength came from such wanton murder? I could only think of such a being as a monster that would need to be put down. I did not want to be that. It felt as if I would have to give up my humanity, my very soul for that kind of power.

And yet.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky. The clear blue sky was beautiful at this time of day. Yet I was assaulted by a feeling a strange sense of longing and frustration.

I believed, no, I knew that this world had so much more to offer, that there was far more to this world than what I have been taught growing up. What I had experienced up to this point was just the tip of the iceberg, I was sure. I was living proof of that.

And I couldn’t help but feel impatient.

When would fate finally come calling? When would the world reveal its other side to me? When would I be able to pierce beyond this veil of tedious normalcy that asphyxiated me?

I had the feeling it would be very soon.

The chuuni, fantasy-loving, and thrill-seeker part of me simply couldn’t wait anymore, and eagerly desired for it to be right now. Wishing for something to shatter the dull normalcy of my life and make it exciting in a very palpable way.

The more cautious and rational part of me asked a very pertinent, very important question.

Am I ready?

In response, my crazy part grinned like a ferocious wolf and gave its answer as I felt the beating of my heart increase and the blood in my veins heat up with dreamful excitement.

That was the best part, wasn’t it?

Finding out.