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[SEC] [Arc 1] Chapter 1 — Ennui and Tea (Overhauled)
🕑 Added 2025-04-24 06:03:33 +0000 UTC[Author Note: This whole chapter got completely overhauled—and it really needed it. Previously, I’d only touched up grammar and flow, without digging into the deeper structural and tonal issues. It didn’t feel like a true reflection of the story’s voice or emotional foundation.
Now? It’s so much better. Entire sections have been rebuilt, over 2k words added (bringing it to over 5k overall), and the pacing flows far more naturally. The tone is sharper, the character voice more defined, and everything fits together more clearly.
I really hope you enjoy the changes—and the new, much stronger introduction to the story. You really should re-read it.]
Arc 1 – Resurgence
I tapped impatiently on the glass table, annoyed, my fingers making sharp little ticks against the surface while I stared into the abomination of a drink in my hand.
“Parsnip and ginger. Blurg.” I pulled a face. “Who the fuck came up with this flavor?”
I frowned into the cup. “Am I really running this low on my stocks?”
My eyes wandered lazily towards the old oak tree standing nearby—its wide branches casting a soft, dappled shadow over the grass beneath the artificial sun. And slumped against its thick trunk, just where she always was, sat a girl.
She looked almost peaceful if you didn’t pay too much attention. Coal-black hair just brushing her shoulders. A simple white robe. Her body was held upright by the long, plain sword buried straight through her chest. Her eyes were still open, blank and dry.
I grinned. “Still not much of a talker, huh? Though I keep wondering if you can hear me or not. Do you remember when we first built this place?”
My tone turned casual, almost affectionate. “It really has been a long time.”
Absentmindedly, I took another sip of the tea and instantly regretted it. Again.
How could something taste both sweet and earthy in the worst possible way? Like someone had boiled root vegetables in spicy bathwater and called it a blend. Or worse—like a bored alchemist’s idea of punishment tea.
I pulled the cup away with a grimace, stared at it, and muttered, “That’s just offensive.”
Still… I couldn’t really act surprised. After all, I’d been here for what? Seven, eight millennia now? Maybe nine. But not more than ten, I hoped. Void, I hoped.
With a sigh, I stood up from the simple garden chair, carefully placing the porcelain teacup back on its saucer like it hadn’t just tried to kill my taste buds. Around me, the leaves drifted lazily in the artificial breeze, each fall slow and deliberate. I let myself get lost in the rhythm for a few seconds—just enough to feel the weight of time pressing in again.
“Well, I guess that’s an early end to our tea time,” I murmured, glancing back at her open, empty eyes. “I’ll come back once I find something drinkable.”
My fingers twitched.
For just a breath, I considered removing the sealing sword. My hand even started to lift. The thought flickered—and was gone just as quickly.
I shook my head. What the hell was that? I must’ve been more bored than I wanted to admit, if I was even entertaining that kind of idea.
But that was boredom for you. The slow, creeping kind. The kind that gnawed at your logic one idle hour at a time. Finishing my collection of books once again really had gotten to me this time, huh?
Slowly slouching out of the sub-space I affectionately called The Meadow—even if it didn’t really have a name—I briefly wondered what to do next… but barely bothered thinking. The answer was always the same.
Back to the library.
Again.
Like always.
It took about thirty minutes to cross the open grassland, my boots brushing through the swaying green. Eventually, I reached the only real landmark in sight: an oval-shaped wooden frame, old and interwoven with wild vines, standing alone like a half-forgotten relic.
The moment I got close enough, the frame shimmered, and a translucent portal flared to life, revealing a white hallway on the other side.
I stepped through.
The world shifted. Endless white stretched ahead—blinding, sterile, and eerily quiet. A few other portals were scattered along the walls like doors, but I barely glanced at them. I never bothered redesigning this space. My atrium, if you could call it that, had stayed the same for millennia. Normally, I’d just teleport around. But today? I felt like walking. Not like I was short on time anyways...
But even then, the entry area of my domain could lead to the most important parts of it. There were only five passages in total—each one anchoring a different sub-space.
The domain itself existed in some kind of space-time fold, tucked away from the outside world. The only real connection was the entrance door—etched into the middle of the hallway that otherwise stretched endlessly in one direction.
The door was made of green pinewood, wrapped in ivy like something pulled straight out of a children’s fairytale. The same design on the other side. When I first built it, I nearly styled it to look like a wardrobe—just for the joke. But, well… no one else here would’ve gotten it.
I continued down the corridor to the second portal on the right—my favorite, and probably the largest sub-space I brought with me when I left the world behind:
The Endless Library.
Crossing the threshold teleported me straight to its heart—a wide, open circular space centered around comfort. Tables. Reading chairs. Shelves. The scent of parchment and ink. The soothing hum of preservation glyphs.
Above it all floated a massive, colorless crystal that gave off the perfect kind of light: soft enough to relax, bright enough to read. Comfortable. Intentionally so.
Of course, this was only one of the reading areas. The main one. The others were tucked away—hidden nooks only I knew. Not that anyone else had ever entered this place. No visitors. No interruptions. Just me.
One might think I’d get lonely. But really, how do you miss something you never had? There might’ve been a time when that wasn’t true. If there was, I don’t remember it. Probably erased it. On purpose..
So it is what it is.
Anyway.
True to its name, the library went on forever—or at least, it looked that way. Every hallway led to more hallways. Every level branched off again. Floor after floor, row after row of tall mahogany shelves—each one filled to the brim. Floating crystals drifted through the air, casting warm light across the books like little orbs of focused calm.
But appearances were just that—appearances. The corridors weren’t truly infinite. Just cleverly looped and folded through space. Still massive, of course. It had taken me thousands of years just to finish the parts I cared about. The rest? Well, that was someone else’s problem. Or it would be, if there was anyone else.
When I first built it, the library held exactly forty-three thousand, five hundred and sixty books. Last I checked, it was somewhere around twenty-five million. Give or take.
If you lined all the shelves up, you’d get over two hundred miles of book spine. Add a little mirrorfold magic and space expansion for good measure, and there you have it—The Endless Library.
I stood there for a moment, letting myself appreciate it. Just a little.
The feeling didn’t last long.
What good was a place like this when I was the only one who would ever see it? I looked down at my hands and laughed quietly at myself.
“So much for not getting lonely,” I muttered.
I ignored it. I always did.
Instead, I wandered off, casually dodging every shelf that looked like it might contain anything political, moralizing, or economically preachy. I might be bored, but I wasn’t suicidal. I hadn’t buried myself in here just to read about the same miserable structures I ran from.
After what could’ve been twenty minutes or twenty days, I sank into a beanbag—deep, dark emerald—like a forest had swallowed it whole. A soft whumph echoed in the silence as I exhaled and sank, just a little more, into the quiet.
I cleared my throat and recited aloud—because why not?
“When the children have been good,
That is, be it understood,
Good at meal-times, good at play,
Good all night and good all day,—
They shall have the pretty things
Merry Winter always brings.
Naughty, romping girls and boys
Tear their clothes and make a noise,
Spoil their pinafores and frocks,
And deserve no Winter-box.
Such as these shall never look
At this pretty Picture-Book.”
I blinked.
...I didn’t remember having that one.
It felt… off. Familiar, but twisted. Like someone had taken something real and nudged the words just a little sideways.
I didn’t open the book again. I just tossed it over my shoulder into the chaos of unsorted literature and grabbed another one. Hopefully something less cursed.
This next one was thick, worn, and promising. I flipped to a random page.
The Girl Without Hands…
Nope. Next.
Of the Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage.
“Seriously?” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose.
Alrighty. One more try.
The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack.
Huh. That sounds… readable.
It was a story about three brothers who each got a magic item from their craft masters: a table that summoned feasts, a donkey that dropped gold, and a sack with a stick that beat up thieves.
Naturally, a greedy tavern keeper stole what wasn’t his, so the youngest brother tricked him and beat the crap out of him with the magic stick until he gave it all back.
And the whole shitshow only started because their father kicked them out for trusting a talking goat over all of his own children—then suddenly decided he loved them again once they came back with gifts and status.
“Charming,” I muttered. “So the moral is... win your father’s love by being materially useful? Or maybe—don't believe everything someone says. Especially not goats. Deep stuff.”
I turned the book over in my hands. ‘Tales from the Silva Hercynia’, wasn’t that the old mountain range where the witches made their home? Mhm, another question for another day.
I set it down and reached for a different one. But as I flipped the first page, something felt wrong. My fingers slowed. I exhaled deeply.
I just… wasn’t feeling it anymore.
The ennui had crept in again, dull and heavy, sinking into my ribs like fog. As I began to close the book, something caught my eye—thin black cracks crawling up from my wrist, threading between the joints of my fingers like spiderwebs of ink.
I groaned. “Really? Now?”
With a flick of my hand, I summoned a flask—deep red glass, plain and smooth. I popped the cork and drank. The contents slid down like warm syrup. A familiar comfort.
Still, I noticed something. The engraving—the stock number—was lower than expected.
“Ugh. Seriously?”
I could feel the effect kicking in already. A fuzzy warmth curled into my skull, and I stood up with a jerk, flinging my arms out wide.
“Huh? What? Did you just ask me the exact contents of this versatile elixir?” I shouted to no one in particular. “Wunh-wunh, national secret! But let me tell you—this thing’s fucking delicious.”
I turned in a slow circle, letting the sound linger.
“Oh, the taste when it meets my lips… that honey-thick warmth crawling down my dry throat… that sweet heat curling in my stomach like a soft blanket on a soul that forgot how to sleep. Yes, naps can be exhausting, don't look at me like that!”
My voice rang through the shelves.
Then silence.
No applause. No groan. No chuckle.
Nothing.
I slumped slightly.
Goddess, I hated being alone.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it?
The liquid helped. It always did. It was warm, comforting… a little too comforting.
Even as delicious as the stuff was, it was also addicting. Worse, I didn’t technically need it to survive—but I couldn’t live without it. Not anymore. Not really.
It wasn’t food, and it wasn’t medicine. Not in the normal sense. It was… me. And now it was almost gone.
That didn’t sit well with me—especially since this would definitely qualify as a life-changing dilemma. I wouldn’t drop dead without it. Luckily, I’m not that fragile. I’d just… stop being me. Quietly. Slowly. All at once.
So no, I totally wasn’t about to start murdering people over it or anything. I was still a decent person. Mostly. Kind of. People probably remembered me as a ruthless but generally polite force of nature.
...Right?
Anyways, I ignored the fact that I’d caught myself talking to myself. Again. Happening more often. Probably fine. Heh. Funky sentence.
Back on track: I needed to restock my dru—medicine. Rationing was clearly not an option. So… what now?
Technically, I had ten years left of supply. But ten years meant nothing to me. And knowing myself, I’d absolutely forget to refill before it ran out. Because time literally didn’t mean anything here. Not really. Not anymore.
Still… sometimes I remembered. The mortal me. The one who used to dream about immortality. I just couldn’t tell how long ago that was. Most of my memories were shards now—blurred edges, fading colors, cracked glass full of repressed thoughts and too many feelings I’d filed under irrelevant. I couldn’t even say for certain why they got that way.
Well… that wasn’t entirely true. I just didn’t want to deal with it. Not now. Not yet. But it still influenced me. Twisted through every choice, every moment. Whether I admitted it or not.
And yet, in the end, I always circled back to the same truth: I hadn’t really changed at all. That same hunger was still there. That gnawing need for more.
I started laughing—loud, sudden, sharp.
Only for a few seconds.
Then it was gone. The quiet crept back in like nothing had happened.
“One vial wasn’t enough, huh?” I muttered, summoning another and downing it in one go.
If anyone saw me right now, they’d think I was perfectly sane. ...If they ignored the muttering. And the talking to myself. And the potions. And the plants. And the books. And the blades. Did I mention myself?
Everything was perfectly fine!
I groaned and summoned a few more vials—just to be sure. One after another, I downed them until the edge started to blur and my thoughts finally dulled. Something had been bothering me for a while now, and no matter how much I drank, I couldn’t quite shake it.
But whatever it was, something was wrong—either with the medicine, the domain, or… me.
But the medicine couldn’t expire. It wasn’t supposed to.
So what the hell was happening?
As I pondered the possibilities, I found myself already wandering—drifting through the shelves without even realizing it. I passed one of the many cozy nooks I’d set up around the library, each decorated in its own chaotic but lovable way.
Plush havens. That was what they were. Little sanctuaries stuffed with bunnies, sharks or foxes—whatever struck my fancy at the time. No master bedroom in this domain, after all. I usually just passed out in one of these spots.
Might be too childish for most beings, but I liked it. It felt… homey.
“Home, huh?” I muttered. The word felt old. Hollow. Just another relic of the oblivion inside me.
I reached down and picked up one of the larger plushies—a vaguely shark-shaped body pillow—and held it in front of me.
“Ya know,” I said to its stitched little face, “I’ve never really been free. Not truly. But in these corners, in these stupid fluffy nests, I felt freer than I’ve ever been since coming into this world.”
I smiled, small and bitter.
“Funny, isn’t it? Caging myself made me feel free.”
I gently set the plushie back in place with its soft little brethren. Then, with a flick of my fingers, I teleported back into the atrium.
Time to check on the medicine.
Just to the left of the Endless Library’s portal stood another entrance—one leading to my workshop. Not as big, not as grand, but still extensive enough to house all my other tools, projects, and half-failed ideas. And, more importantly, my storage area.
Not that any of it mattered to anyone but me.
What I did in that space was nasty, dangerous, and probably illegal across several planes of existence. Magical inventions. Ritual vestiges. Stuff that got you thrown off councils and hunted by divines.
Back in the early years, I spent a lot of time there—building, crafting, experimenting. But that faded. Over time, it all started to feel… pointless.
Why make something when you could just imagine it?
That was the catch of it. In this domain, I could think of a thing and pop—there it was. But imagined objects were hollow. They worked, technically, but they weren’t real. A clock might tick, but the gears were empty. It only functioned because I expected it to.
I once tried to create an animal. Just a simple one. It died in seconds.
That particular failure occupied my thoughts for decades. In the end, I concluded that images couldn’t live. Not really. Not unless crafted with care. With thought. With weight.
But that led to another question: if the animal died… why didn’t the clock break?
After thousands of tests, I figured out the basics:
First, because the clock was dead to begin with. Second, because it only performed one simple task—telling time. It didn’t strain itself. Any more complexity, and it would collapse. Ask it to count hours? Fine. Ask for minutes and seconds? It shattered.
And that was just mechanics.
Magic was much worse.
A magical clock might not even have gears—it could run off time magic alone, with only a stone or mana core inside. But that came with its own mess. Time magic was fickle. Deep. Borderline cosmic.
I smiled faintly at the memory. Back when I still cared enough to try. When trying mattered.
Yes, my domain granted endless creation. But the laws that shaped it? Even I didn’t understand all of them.
I let out a breath, already tired of thinking.
Nowadays, I barely touched the workshop. Most of my attempts to recreate my medicine had failed—every single one, in fact. The theory seemed sound. But the moment I created a vial here, it came out flat. Tasteless. Ineffective.
My suspicion? The mana in this place. Something about the environment rejected the formula. I meant to test it more… but after failing thousands of times, you kind of stop caring. Maybe I’d try again in a millennia or two.
Walking through the portal, I really wished I could just create it. Just think it into existence and be done with it. But even when I tried—when I spawned it here—it came out wrong. Tasteless. Ineffective. Completely useless. It nearly drove me crazy, back in the beginning.
I stepped up to the racks and scanned the rows—bottles neatly aligned, glowing faintly in their places. “It’s less than I thought,” I muttered grimly.
Scratch the ten-year estimate. With how the effects had been dulling lately, I might have far less than that. Still some time, sure. Enough to work with. But if I didn’t act soon, I’d regret it later. And regret, well… regret was a pain in the ass.
I checked a few vials. No clouding. No change in color, taste, or scent. Everything looked fine.
Was I imagining it? Maybe. But I wasn’t taking chances.
I downed a few more, just to be safe.
Before returning to the hallway, I rummaged through some of the nearby boxes—my so-called ‘tea cabinet’. I grimaced at the assortment. Every label sounded like a poorly translated alchemical mishap. Harpy’s Thorn. Root Whisper. Ginger-Fire Parsnip Supreme…
Right. I’d been had. Should’ve known better than to trust that smug harpy merchant.
Grumbling, I grabbed a box at random.
I had only just stepped back into the Meadow when that wave of melancholy hit me—sharp and immediate.
A reminder. A dreadful reminder of what this place was always meant to be: a cage.
Whenever I returned, that same heaviness settled over me. Sadness, thick and familiar. Like the air here remembered everything I tried to forget.
And with it came the voices. Old thoughts. Echoes. Faint and fragmented—never loud, never whole, but always there. Whispering. Pleading.
“Free us. Let us live. Love us again. Hate us again.”
I snorted. “Pathetic. Do you think these little tricks still work on me? If you wanted love, you shouldn’t have done what you did. If you wanted life—you shouldn’t have questioned my—”
I stopped and took a breath. Let the silence wash over me again.
It didn’t matter. They were long gone. Remnants of guilt and grief, stretched into shadows. Just memories. Just pain. Just leftovers I hadn’t managed to erase.
Or maybe I chose not to. Same difference.
Trying not to let it bother me, I returned to my table and dropped the box of tea beside the cup. The silence stayed blessedly intact. The tuned-out voices didn’t push further. I watched the clouds drift slowly overhead, pushed by a gentle spring breeze that didn’t exist.
And for a moment, I could almost pretend it was peaceful.
Outside again, I wandered a little farther down the hall. My eyes fell on the final portal—the one I never used.
The black one.
It didn’t shimmer like the others. It didn’t glow. It just... ate light. Its frame writhed, coated in some slow, shadowy slime. The surface of it pulsed like an open wound.
My breath caught. “Mhm… should I?”
I tilted my head. “Yeeeaaah… no. Definitely not the time for that. Might never be the right time.”
My gaze lingered. “Unless…”
I shook my head. Hard.
“No. Never again. I won't dream of it. Not again. Just… fuck.”
And without another word, I turned away—vanishing from the hall with a blink, leaving that part of me sealed behind once more.
------
Teleporting around my domain while trying to solve my ever-growing list of problems was more exhausting than I’d expected. Thinking rationally? Ha. That was the real magic.
On one hand: I had to restock. No avoiding that.
On the other: the outside world.
It wasn’t that the tea had gone bad. It was that all the good tea was gone—only the weird leftovers remained.
The medicine, too. It hadn’t stopped working… but it was dimming. Slipping. Like its grip was loosening, just a little more each day.
And then there was the boredom. Slow. Constant. Like pressure building behind glass. Something was wrong. Subtle—but shifting. Off-balance.
And going out there? That wasn’t just inconvenient. It was exposure. A fracture waiting to happen. A risk with too many variables.
So no—it wasn’t a question of what I wanted. It was about which choice hurt less.
I threw my arms into the air, spun once, and dropped into a melodramatic pose in front of a fox-shaped mechanical doll I’d been tinkering with.
“Oh, poor me,” I moaned, one hand over my brow. “What ghastly future awaits this tender, suffering flower maiden? What cruel twist of fate have I wrought upon myself?”
The doll did not respond. Rude.
“Well,” I muttered, straightening up, “no evidence, no crime. And I always clean up.”
No matter how spotless my nonexistent record was, I knew one thing for certain: my stability was directly tied to my comfort level. And without my liquid comfort?
I had maybe a few days before things started getting weird again.
Another sigh slipped out. “I really need to go outside, huh?”
Ugh. My head was starting to ache from all this internal compromise. There was no way around it. I’d have to leave.
But before I went anywhere, I needed to prep. That meant reorganizing my inventory, relocating key items so I could access them externally if needed—space magic to the rescue. A must-have for any self-respecting hermit with hoarder tendencies.
Technically, it was only a a sub-branch: storage magic. And technically-technically? It was almost as difficult as time magic. Not that I was a prodigy in either. I was… functional. Which was good enough.
They weren’t my primary fields anyway. Still. Convenient. Necessary. And definitely worth flexing now and then.
I gave the fox doll one last look, patted its head, and blinked into the storage chamber.
After prepping most of what I’d need for the outside world, I let my gaze wander around the workshop, passing over shelves of oddities, tools, and things no one but me would ever call inventions.
Most of them were toys, really. Born from boredom. Stupid things made just to pass time. But not the one I was staring at now.
In the center of the room, suspended in the air, floated a crystal encircled by nine metal rings. Each ring spun in a different direction at a different speed, the farther out they were, the larger they grew. They absorbed energy from the crystal, stored it, and then fed a portion back in—just enough to keep the cycle going. The crystal pulsed steadily, emitting waves of magical force.
It looked elegant. Efficient. Perfect, even.
It wasn’t.
Most of the radiated energy was spent just keeping the crystal from imploding everything nearby. And a portion of the output had to be redirected back to its origin just to prevent total system collapse.
What little power was actually stored? Just enough to light a fire. In maybe… five thousand years.
“Behold,” I said, throwing my arms wide, “my greatest creation: a very expensive, time-consuming way to light a campfire.”
I sighed, placing my hands on my hips. “Incredible. My poor ego.”
But if I was honest with myself, the issue wasn’t the invention. Not really. It was that fucking crystal. That thing wasn’t from here—not from this domain, not from this world.
Possibly not even this universe..
One of my older experiments in dimensional magic had revealed something… out there. Something between layers of reality. A realm of raw, chaotic energy.
So I did the most logical thing—I siphoned some of it. Got the crystal.
I called it the Abyss Stone, even if it wasn’t technically a stone—black, hungry, barely stable. I named the whole unstable mess I built around it Abyssal Depths. Overly dramatic? Maybe. But it fit. There was something in that crystal—something old, eldritch, familiar. And, well… it just sounded cool.
I stared at it a moment longer, then shrugged.
“Meh. Maybe someone out there has solved the consumption issue by now.” I tossed the entire construct to the rest of my supplies. One more thing to maybe, probably, definitely not regret.
That covered most of the essentials. I shouldn’t need much more. Just one last issue I hadn’t solved yet.
Before I left, I moved the outside location of my emerald door to a secret place—a cavern buried beneath a temple ruin. I rigged it with wards, hidden passages, and a bunch of other totally innocuous features to keep it safe. You know, nothing suspicious at all. Just your average cursed sword, sealed wall, and protection glyphs summoning elementals.
It worked. Mostly. The problem?
To the right people… it was screamingly obvious. The door itself couldn’t be reached directly, but the temple above it? That was just sitting there. Same with the cave. I’d even left a sword in a stone as bait. Thought it’d be funny.
And honestly, it wasn’t even that hard. You didn’t have to be a chosen one. Just break the damn stone. Pull the sword. Boom—part of the cave wall opens. Secret path appears. Drama ensues.
And even if you managed to get all the way down here, you couldn’t just waltz in. The overgrown entrance was locked. Obviously.
“Duh, what did ya expect? Of course it would be,” I said to myself at the rather obvious conclusion. “Didn’t wanna have any creepy old fat pigs near me.”
But then I paused. “…Buuuut, you could’ve at least tried to knock. Maybe I’d have opened it.”
My voice caught slightly. Then rose—sharp, accusing, “Even I know how to be polite, okay? So why the fuck did nobody ever come to find me? If you'd really been my friends, you would’ve looked for me.”
The words hung in the air a moment too long, echoing back at me with no mercy—because deep down, I knew the truth. No one came.
And that was my fault—
—Mine alone.
I groaned and rubbed my temples. “Calm down, me. Calm down.”
After a few steadying breaths, I got back to the point.
The real problem was this: Dismissing the door was simple. Summoning it again from the outside, however, was a lengthy process. The entire ritual was slow, imprecise—took days to finish. While I was gone, the entrance would remain exposed, unguarded. Vulnerable.
Yes, I had wards in place. They’d alert me if anyone tried something stupid. But I couldn’t just teleport back on a whim. One of the domain’s quirks: its outer edge created an anti-teleportation field. A safety net. A curse. A double-edged pain in the ass.
Ironically, that was another way someone could find me. Just teleport around the world and notice the one spot where it didn’t work.
Brilliant in theory. A bit risky in practice.
I doubted anyone could break through. My wards were dense. My glyphwork was brutal. Anyone trying would probably vaporize before they made it halfway my domain.
Still… better safe than screaming later. But for now?
It was what it was.
Clearing my thoughts and with nothing else left on my list, I faced the inevitable.
“Time to go out.”
I opened the door.
A rush of cold, musty air met me like an old slap to the face. Stale stone, mineral rot, and damp magic filled my lungs. Somewhere ahead, water dripped steadily onto rock. A deep, rhythmic pulse.
The cave stretched out in jagged stone. Impure magical gemstones jutted from the walls, half-submerged, casting fractured light in greens, reds, and blues. A warped spectrum, like a shattered aurora bleeding out beneath the rock.
I breathed in. I breathed out. Again and again.
One step forward.
The ground was uneven—hard and cracked.
I walked a few paces out into the cave mouth, then stopped. Turned around. Closed the door behind me. Sealed it with a flick of my hand and a locking gesture so old I barely remembered designing it.
And then—
Pain.
My head snapped back like something struck it from within. A sudden, concussive pressure—like a shield being hammered against the inside of my skull.
I stumbled, caught nothing, and hit the floor hard.
“W-what the—what is this?” I choked, eyes wide. My voice came out in a whisper, thin and stunned.
My hands went to my temples, but there was no relief. No clarity. Just weight. My head felt heavier by the second.
Sight—blurring.
Thought—slipping.
And then—just before everything went black—
A voice.
Not my own.
Cold. Mechanical. Detached.
[System Message: Attempting to integrate unknown being “03”]
[Please remain on standby]
[Processing...]
