Eyes closed, Aloram smiled. Even during his most euphoric of highs, he’d never felt as he did at this moment. It was as if every pore of his skin was alive and receptive, every fiber of muscle supple and elastic, every neuron functioning in perfect unison. He felt totally in control, alive and alert in a way he’d never before experienced.

His cognition had improved. Thoughts ebbed and flowed from his attention, each a discernible strand in a tapestry of liquid intelligence. Calculating and alert, Aloram felt at once wired, like he’d snorted the purest of cocaine, and calmer than he’d ever achieved, as if lost in a trance of meditation and a heroin high.

Water rippled outwards below him where he floated, levitating, in a full lotus posture above the lake. Fingers flexed and uncurled, and his legs stretched out until he was standing on the surface of the inky water, bare toes kissing the placid surface. Striding across the water, his steps felt light and graceful. Even from the simple act of walking, Aloram could feel the night and day difference in his control over his motor functions.

Confidence surged through him as he opened his eyes, stepping onto the rocky shore at the edge of his lake. Whatever change he’d undergone had made him better, more than human. His body tingled, and a latent power beneath his skin, pulsing in his navel and coursing through his veins, beckoned to him.

Wet, matted hair, long and black, swung into his face and clung dripping to his skin. Despite the obstruction to his vision, he noted a distinct change in his eyesight. The cave, before dim and shadowy in the faint light of the moss and crystals strewn about the walls, ceiling, and floor, was now significantly brighter.

He had no trouble making out the curves and edges of the rocky walls, the ceiling that declined to nothing infront of him and rose in a circular shaft above the lake. Even the shadowy recesses, the corners and crannies that hid from the light, were faintly visible. The cavern into which he’d fallen was completely enclosed by rock, a separate room from the rest of the cave system. A jagged cut in the wall high above the lake and painted by the shimmering blue light of a patch of crystal looked to be where he’d fallen from. Besides that, there seemed to be no other access to the space.

More fascinating than his improved night vision was the pressure in his eyeballs, like the fleshy orbs were being squeezed in an invisible fist— and what they revealed. All around him were tendrils of energy, like threads of yarn with no end and no beginning, intangible and ghostly. The tendrils emanated from everything, each object paired with its own thread, its own essence.

Each rock, each crystal, the moss, the stalagmites and stalactites, the cave walls; everything was pierced by and imbued with a unique thread. They undulated and pulsed in place, their forms shifting and changing from solid to vaporous, coiling and uncoiling, congealing, spinning, expanding and contracting. Each thread-like bundle of ghostly particles shifted in infinite variations of itself, though still somehow retained a singular, vital essence.

Aloram soon had to squeeze his eyes shut as the myriad of shifting energies threatened to confound his mind, improved though it was. Was it an aura? An essence? Prying his eyes open once again, he felt like he was glimpsing the true nature of all things, though he could tell that he was only getting a surface level impression of whatever he looked at. It was as if the energy each object produced revealed its nature, like a mirror reflecting the inner chambers of the soul. Each stone reflected the nature of stone, imprinting his mind with an impression of its being that spanned all of his senses in an instantaneous stamp of experience.

Slowly, he became able to modulate the intensity with which his vision deciphered the energies, like putting on sunglasses to spare his eyes. Despite this, he noticed several things of particular remark. First, the air itself, every atom, was infused with latent energy; he was sure this is what he’d felt immediately upon waking, and what was responsible for the overall sensation of aliveness that this world seemed to exude.

Second, the lake. Its water had turned from a brilliant turquoise to pitch black, and now that Aloram could see the latent energies surrounding him, he noticed the complete absence of life force within the lake. The blackness seemed deeper now, the space an erasure of existence itself in the shape of a lake, instead of a lake itself. The absence couldn’t have stood out more starkly if it’d been a sun in the dark cave— everything was suffused with the energy: Everything except the pool of inky black water from which he’d emerged.

The incongruity prickled at him as wrong, but he felt that he somehow understood it. He’d fallen into that lake, and the memories of what’d happened next were hazy, but intact. Was he responsible for that?

The thought of somehow being the cause for the lake’s abyssal state brought him to the third realization— the awareness of energy circling within himself. This he felt rather than saw, tangible through an inward focus, like listening for one’s own heartbeat. A dark, sinister energy roiled in his core; quiet, hateful, and black like a rotting corpse. It seethed, a condensed ball of scorn and animosity harbored deep within his navel.

He didn’t look away. He stared inwardly at it, his jaw set. There was a shared intimacy here, between himself and the core, like an oath sworn in blood and stamped upon the soul. Aloram breathed out. The energies all around him swirled and danced. The auras of each entity reflected its nature, its being— and this was his. Could it change?

Did he want it to?

This was him. He’d finally been given an answer. He hadn’t tried to avoid who he was on Earth; he’d always known he was different, known he was bad. His parents had let him know that early on, and he hadn’t changed with age. If anything, he’d gotten worse. No, he hadn’t tried to avoid his nature, but he’d had to hide it.

The world wasn’t made for people like him; not anymore. America, at least, was too tame. People like him were dangerous; too unpredictable and violent to fit into the peace-loving, safety-seeking world that’d evolved from too much abundance and safety. Society, community, civilization— these had been his bane. Yes, the world had evolved past the depravity of simpler times where violence and power were the coin of the realm— evolved into a place of equality and peace, and edged him out.

But he wasn’t a part of that world anymore. He was somewhere new. Somewhere, he was sure, that he was free to be whoever and whatever he was. And if I’m wrong, then I’ll carve out a place for myself and others like me. With the alien power coursing through his veins, Aloram felt as if he could do anything. Let them try to stop me.

Muscles relaxed and powerful, he strode barefoot across the rock. He was still wearing only his black underwear, but his newfound power gave him a confidence that ignored the indignity of his dress. Plus, he was alone anyway.

There was a fissure in the wall across from him, too small to fit through. It was perhaps four feet high and twenty inches across in the middle, wider at the base and narrowing towards the top until the wall rejoined itself. A faint gelatinous goo was smeared in a thin film across the stone just in front of the fissure, as if a large slug had trespassed there. The faint glow of light on the other side indicated a larger opening beyond, and he decided to find a way through.

Avoiding the goop, he lowered himself to his stomach to get a better look into the crack, the stone cold against his bare skin. It was only three feet deep before opening up on the other side. Three feet of rock trapped him here— there was no way to reach the circular shaft above the lake, and he couldn’t squeeze through the crack even if he crawled.

He stood up. Looking down at his hands, Aloram turned them over. Thick, hard calluses ran along the inside of his hands in a double line, his fingers scarred and hardened by years of fighting and lifting weights. Turning them over, the other side bore the gnarled skin of his knuckles; the splits and tears had healed, broken, and rehealed a hundred times.

He’d hardened his shins, too, for muay thai years ago and had never given up the practice. The self-induced microfractures from kicking the heavy bag thousands of times a week had toughened his legs to nerveless stone batons, and his hands were leaden bricks of muscle and scar tissue. His shins had become so hard that he’d had to move past the heavy bag and take trips to the local park in the morning; after three years, he’d made a six-inch deep gauge around the circumference of the lone tree there.

Raising his hands in a high fighting stance, weight on his back leg, left foot tapping slowly, he assumed a posture he’d taken countless times before. The impact of fist against the stone sent reverberations down his arm, left his knuckles tingling and sharp with pain. He breathed out in a hiss, biting back the pain, then struck again. This time was a cross, turning his hip into the punch, adding a bit of force.

The skin of his right knuckles split, blood stamping a red dot against the impassive rock. Hot pain flared in his hand, and he clenched his jaw harder, teeth grinding so hard he was sure they’d break. He punched again. Jab cross, Jab cross, one two, one two, faster, harder, his whole body a single kinetic chain ending in the impact of his fists against rock.

The pain ate at him, screamed at him to stop, and he bellowed defiance as he swung, his voice rising in a hoarse animalistic roar of fury. The stone didn’t so much as crack under his onslaught, though his punches were harder than any he’d ever thrown in his life. Blood splattered the wall above the crack where he was punching at chest height, painting it red, and dripping onto the floor.

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He kept punching, reveling in the single-mindedness of continuing to strike despite the pain. Forcing his body to move when it didn’t want to was the closest he’d come in his previous life to meditation, and the liminal space between pleasure and pain where raw willpower reigned supreme was his nirvana.

Beckoned like a starved wolf to raw meat, the illicit power within his core churned. It crept outwards, seeping into his veins, bleeding into him. He felt its power suffuse him, warming him from the inside, licking at him with flames of black fire. Aloram couldn’t see the change, but he felt it as his entire visage darkened, his skin taking on a tainted twilight hue. Thin black lines rose just beneath the surface of his skin, heated his blood, tinged the crimson dripping from his split hands with raven ink.

Stone cracked under his next punch, bits of rock flaking away from spiderweb fractures. The cross that followed shattered the weakened rock, sent chips of grey rubble exploding outwards in all directions, sharp shards cutting him as they flew past.

He punched faster, harder, roared louder, laying into the wall with everything he had. His limbs flew in a mindless orchestra born from decades of throwing combination after combination, enhanced by his new superhuman dexterity. His fists were blurs of black energy and pale white flesh, streaked with the deep red of splattering blood.

Aloram stood on the other side of the wall, an expansive cavern opening wide and high all around him. Arms hanging by his sides, sweat streamed down his body as steam poured from his skin, rising into the air in a cloud of white vapor. Blood dripped from trembling fingers. His chest heaved, and he tried to slow his breathing. Slowly, the black fog that’d grown across his vision receded, and he returned to a state of normalcy.

The pain that’d been wiped away by the excitement of his power returned, a throbbing ache in his hands, wrists, and elbows. His whole body felt hot despite the cool air, and he shivered. Aloram ran his shaking, bleeding fingers through his sweaty black hair, pushing it back over his head and out of his face.

That had felt… amazing. He turned away from the cavern to examine the ruined wall behind him. Debris fell scattered around the mouth of the fissure, which had grown from four feet tall to a little over six, and as wide as his body. He’d punched through a stone wall. A smile played at his lips, and he peered inwards at the roiling black mass of his core. I can get used to this, he thought.

Aloram walked for what felt like hours, navigating the endless tunneling corridors of the cave by crystal-light and his improved night vision. He passed scattered bones of various shapes and sizes, some unlike any he’d seen before, and the noted scrapes and scratches on the walls and floor in several patterns. He passed a long cylindrical skeleton preserved in its entirety; it stretched nearly thirty feet long with a diameter the size of his wingspan and the skull of a giant snake with fangs as long as he was tall.

Despite the obvious signs of life, he hadn’t encountered anything living since the bear, and that felt like a lifetime ago. His stomach had begun to growl at him, and Aloram stooped to inspect a spattering of ankle-high mushrooms. Their aura was a dull grey pool, matching their color. He plucked one, rubbing a finger over the smooth, flat head. It didn’t seem poisonous, so he bit into it. The mushroom was earthy, tasting like stale, moldy dirt. He waited for some outsized effect, anticipating an otherworldly hallucination, but nothing happened.

He chewed on the nearly tasteless flesh, then gathered a handful and kept walking. It was impossible to determine where he was, or where he was heading, so he just did his best to not get turned around in circles. As he walked, Aloram observed the flowing energy surrounding him, watching as it circulated in the air, studying the differences it adopted in shape, color, and behavior between every crystal, rock, and plant he encountered.

He felt at the energy within his navel and tried to influence it with his breathing, wondering if he could learn to cycle it, or grow it somehow. Over time, the aching in his hands began to ease; they felt to have recovered far more than he’d have expected in such a short amount of time, and he figured it must have something to do with the energy. He’d been reckless before, never one to let a little injury stop him from doing what he wanted; if he could learn to heal himself… what sort of doors did that open up?

He opened and closed his fingers, the knuckles protesting the movement, preferring to stay clenched. The bones felt fractured and the skin was raw, but the pain was distant. It was as if he’d punched the wall a week ago instead of just a few hours earlier. Eventually, his hunger eased, and he noticed a dampness that hadn’t been there before, drawing his attention away from his internal meditations.

The tunnel narrowed around him until it was the size of a large residential entry hall. The walls felt moist, and the glimmering crystals of blue and orange translucent energy that’d coated the walls and ceiling became smaller and less frequent, replaced by blue and green mosses that started first in patches and then grew to cover large swathes of the wall. The air smelled wet here, and he thought he must be nearing the surface. A flicker of movement caught his eye, and his gaze snapped onto a large lizard fifteen feet away, perched on a moss-covered boulder against the wall.

Green scales shimmered iridescent in the dim light, dazzling his vision with their twisting reflections. It must be a form of protection, the way its bending the light is definitely intentional. First the bear, now a lizard with illusion magic. Makes me wonder what I’ll be able to do in time. The lizard was the size of a Komodo dragon, if not larger. A long, dark grey tongue whisked out of its mouth, tasting the air, and its yellow eyes fixed on him.

That’ll make for a better meal than these mushrooms, he thought, squeezing the foamy stalks in his fist, momentarily forgetting his hand’s condition and wincing. Now I just have to catch it.

The lizard hissed, and its scales shined brightly, filling the tunnel with blinding green and blue light. Aloram raised his arms in front of his face and backed away, eyes pressed tightly shut.

“Aghh!” he shouted, stumbling back.

White hot pain blossomed in his calf, and he kicked his leg ferociously. He pried his eyes open to see the lizard scurrying away from him, blood dripping from a wound in his leg. It had bit him! The fucker…

Aloram dashed after the lizard, wincing every time the foot of his injured leg hit the ground, but its sharp, clattering claws raced away from him faster than he could possibly follow. It disappeared behind the boulder, and he chased after it in vain. He cast about, scanning the ground, but it had vanished.

“For fuck’s sake…”

Aloram carefully touched the hot wound on his calf, sticky blood clinging to his finger. The bite was bleeding profusely: hot, bright red blood streaming down his ankle and foot onto the stone below. It wasn’t deep, but it burned, and he had the distinct sense that there was more to the bite than just some torn flesh.

He’d scattered his mushrooms all over the floor when the lizard had blinded him. Wonderful. At least it feels like I’m getting closer to the exit, at least. He returned his gaze to the tunnel before him.

Then, a mossy slab of stone swung outwards from the cave wall down the hall in front of him with a loud grinding sound. Aloram froze, crouching. The door stood open, perpendicular to the wall. Its rectangular sides and arched top would have been indiscernible from the rest of the cave if it hadn’t just opened in front of him. There was silence, then the shuffling, scraping sound of boots against stone. Aloram pressed himself against the boulder, peeking out.

A wizened hand emerged, leathery fingers gripping a gnarled wooden staff. Loose black robes hung from the arm. A bald head followed, then a face, wrinkled and aged, lower half covered by a wild grey beard. The man looked to the left, then to the right, then muttered something and the door closed behind him.

He stood with a hunch, leaning heavily on his staff— a rod of twisting wood that concluded in a shrunken, humanlike skull clasped between tangled branches. Black robes draped his body, hiding his features. In his other arm, the man clutched a rugged canvas backpack to his chest.

Aloram watched as the man began to shuffle towards him, fussing with the bag. The man radiated a deathly, rotting, sickening odor that stretched beyond scent and reached into his aura. His eyes were drawn to the withered skull adorning the man’s staff, its dead, eyeless sockets seeming to scan the corridor.

A person… but he doesn’t seem the type to answer questions. Aloram was never overly fond of the elderly, but this man felt wrong, closer to death than any living being had a right to be. He emanated decay; a musty, dank aura hanging about him like a cloud.

He slid his fingers along the boulder, reaching for the ground, not taking his eyes off of the man. He found what he was looking for, a fist-sized rock, and gripped it tightly as he could in his damaged hand. Breathing deeply in, he readied himself.

In one fluid motion, Aloram stepped from behind the boulder and whipped the stone rocketing towards the man’s head. The empty sockets of the shrunken skull flashed violet, and the man’s head snapped up with uncanny speed, locking onto the rock, and he let out a loud, guttural cry, his voice strong and full despite his apparent age.

“Haerosir!” The foreign word shook in the air, and Aloram felt a tremble pass through the cave walls, reverberating through his body.

The rock exploded into tiny pieces, shattering into shrapnel that flew away in every direction.

Shit.

The element of surprise lost, Aloram rushed forwards, sprinting at full throttle. The man’s eyes fixed on him, and he raised his staff, straightening. The violet glow shone brighter, the skull squirming, rising, straining against the tangled mess of roots that held it in place at the staff’s head as Aloram bore down on the elderly mage.

“Saero id nimi, huronaer et adnum,” the man intoned, the words rising in volume, seeming to occupy physical space in the air between them.

The air rent, the ground, walls, and ceiling riven by an invisible ripping force that tore the world apart, splitting the corridor in two, an open abyss opening up between them. A shrieking, grating screech filled his ears as stone split and ripped in ways that shouldn’t be possible, the floor yawning into infinite darkness below, growing wider and wider.

Aloram pumped his arms, drove his feet into the rock, ignored the overwhelming pressure pouring down on him from the man on the other side of the rift. The air seemed to drain of oxygen, decay filling his lungs, his mouth and skin drying, withering. At the edge of the rift, he leapt, arcing high through the air, limbs flailing in the emptiness.

Without meaning to, Aloram looked down into the inevitable void below. Rotted, skeletal arms, bones with ropy tendrils of decayed flesh still attached stretched from the dark ravine beneath him. Pale, emaciated fingers reached for him, thousands of hands pining up from the darkness below, clawing. The abyss was a sea of the dead grasping up to engulf him, and he fell helplessly into it.