“One, two, three”

Atlas closed and opened his eyes, in an attempt to see if it all was real. It was. Looking around, he could see lots of different plants growing. They were not just simple, known plants. Here were plants that should not really exist in our realm. Looking ahead, Atlas saw a tree, which looked just like a typical pine tree, yet the supposed leaves were blue in color. And it seemed like they were slightly glowing. Apart from a bunch of those trees, there were huge flowers. Flowers about 5 meter tall, and looked like dandelions. There were huge rocks lying around, but coated with bluish moss. Ground was a mix of greenish-bluish grass. Atlas could not really tell what color the grass was, but it had a certain magical appeal to it.

The overall picture was something out of this world. It was hard for Atlas to tell, if he was supposed to be small, or nature is supposed to be humongous here.

He knew he should have gone back immediately, but curiosity was stronger than his rational thoughts.

“Well, nothing bad is gonna happen if I just take a small look, right?”

Slowly moving away from the tunnel, Atlas was carefully observing the world around him. It was not that rare for people to find new tunnels here and there, but this should be reported instantly to the government officials, or the clan/company which territory the new tunnel falls into. One step at a time, he was moving towards the big tree. When approached, he tried to gently touch the tree, but when his finger just barely touched the tree, he felt the heat wave go through his body.

“What the?” Looking at his hand he saw that his hand was fine, no burns or wounds. He noted that trees should not be touched. Or at least those with blue shine to them. After a not so pleasant experience, he decided to walk towards the moss covered rocks. For some reason they calmed his mind, when looking at them.

When touching the moss, unlike the tree, he did not feel the burn, rather it was a pleasant feeling of warmth. He lied down on the rock, thinking of how better this was than his bed, for some reason. Lying on the moss and looking at the sky, he for the first in a long time, felt very calm and relaxed. Like he was supposed to be where he was.

Looking at the sky, it was beautiful. Bluish in color, but darker and more saturated than that of Earth’s. And unlike Earth, where one could only see less than a dozen stars, here, he could see countless of them. And it was not even night.

“So relaxing” Atlas said “If I am from Earth, why do I feel so home here? Maybe this is my planet” Atlas jokingly said to himself.

“I guess this could be my planet, my planet zero.” As he said it, his eyes started to slowly close and he fell asleep.

—————————

Next day, at the school, Ms Scarlett was waiting for Atlas to jump over the fence to catch him again.

“I swear, this time I am giving him the hard time!” as she said this phrase, her eyes glowed red. It was no surprise for students, since they knew that she used to be a high level huntress. And she was a fearsome one.

However no one jumped over the wall this time. She waited for several hours, but Atlas was nowhere to be found.

*Weird, although he is always late, he rarely misses school. I have a bad feeling about this* Ms Scarlett thought.

As she was about to leave, she encountered Corey and his gang.

“This brat is not at school today. He probably wetted himself yesterday” one of Corey's friends was saying “He will get his ass beaten anyway. Or maybe he got hit by some bricks or sorta, that would probably be better for him, ay Corey? Dude, what's wrong?”

Corey was looking at something that was in front of them. Due to his military father, Corey was quite a strong power user. He knew his strength and was very confident in his powers. That was the main reason his so-called friends respected him, and others feared him. Yet now he was frozen, like he met some very dangerous beast.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Ahead of the group, was a beautiful woman whose beauty was overpowered by the menacing aura that was coming from her. Her bright red eyes were glowing. And Corey knew what that was. A blood-thirst. Everyone was silent as if waiting for the judge to tell them their fate. The silence which seemed like it was eternity long.

“I’ll ask one time only, where is Atlas?”

—————————

Opening his eyes, Atlas was greeted by a very bright sky, which was almost white.

“Well, I guess this place also has night and day… WAIT, how long have I been sleeping?”

Quickly standing up he took out his phone to check the time.

“14:50 Wednesday”

“Oh no, I slept for like 15 hours! I skipped school… Well, it's not like anyone was waiting for me at home or in school.” Despite being a bit childish and playful, a visible sadness was seen on Atlas’ face.

“Well, I guess it is not time to think about it, I should probably get going”

As Atlas was about to leave, he noticed something. Although not quite noticed, but felt. He suddenly felt as if someone was watching him. This feeling quickly sent shivers down his spine. He looked around to see if there was someone watching him. From the bottom of his heart, he hoped that there was no one, and it was just his mind that was playing tricks on him. Yet he was wrong.

About 5 meters from him, was a strange creature looking at him. It was hard to call it a creature since it did not really look like any other animals. It looked like a stone statue distantly reminding one of a human. Like a very non detailed statue of a human where no details were present. The body was a sharp shape that looked like a human torso but made of stone with all the sharp edges. His limbs were not connected to the body, but were somehow connected by an invisible force. Its hands only had 3 fingers.

The head was somewhat close in shape to a human one, but without a face. No nose or mouth, just the eyes. The weirdest thing about this creature was its eyes. Two eyes that were glowing light blue. No pupils or white eyeballs, just blue glow which resembled neon signs. And coming from the outer edges of its eyes were creating very unique patterns on the head of the creature. Almost like a glowing tattoo on the cheeks which was coming from the eyes.

A creature was standing in front of him, staring. It was so still, Atlas had doubts it was a living thing. But he felt its stare.

It would be a lie to say Atlas was not scared, but he tried to stay calm. “If it wanted to kill me, it already would, wouldn't it?” Atlas tried to calm himself down. “What does it want? Why is it staring at me?” Slowly moving his head, Atlas noticed that the creature was doing the exact same action. He then raised his hand and saw the creature do the same. He put his hand down and the creature did as well.

“What in the world is going on?” Atlas was thinking and continued to slowly move his arms. He was moving and the creature was following him. Then, to his surprise, the creature raised his hand. With a raised hand, it was staring at Atlas until he realized: “Do you want me to follow?”

He proceeded to follow every move the creature did. The moves were quite strange and involved moving around and moving different parts of the body. As if the creature was teaching him something. This was going on for about 5 minutes until Atlas decided to look around for other creatures. However as soon as he turned his head away, he heard the loud roar coming from the creature. He looked at it, and it looked very angry.

“Okay, you don't want me to look away, got it”

Even though Atlas was positive the creature could not understand him, the creature was no longer angry. Instead it started to move slowly toward the boy.

Atlas had no other option but to slowly approach the creature as well.

Atlas remembered his experience of touching the tree and tried to move away. But to his surprise, the creature grabbed his hand and he felt a burst of energy flow into him. It was a very unpleasant feeling and he wanted to pull his hand away but the grip of the creature was too tight for him. The burn started to get quite painful.

“What is going on?!?” Atlas was scared and the best thought he had was to punch the creature and run away, when the creature released his hand. Suddenly very tired, Atlas fell down and to his surprise, the creature just disapeared.

“He just ran away? What even was that? Well, I better get going, I don't wanna stay here for another weird interaction with the flora and fauna. What time is it anyways?”

He took out his phone to look at the time when he saw something he never expected. In the reflection of his screen he saw his own face. But it was different. The very bright, blue glow was coming from his left eye. And the thin line was going down his left side of the face creating a crack like pattern on his left cheek. Similar to that of a statue-like creature.

Atlas was so shocked he dropped his phone and tried to look around. But everything was different. Well, it is better to say, Atlas was different. The world around him started to look different. He started to notice the energy flowing around him, he noticed the very small movement of insects, leaves falling. He felt nature breathing.

He did not understand what he was seeing, but he knew one thing for sure.

“I learned an ability now”