Chapter 10: Journey To Death
Darkness.
Then sand in my mouth.
I pushed myself upright and spat. Desert in every direction, flat and featureless, the sky the colour of old paper. No wind. No sound. Nothing moving anywhere I could see.
[Welcome, Host. You have been relocated.]
[The Hell Begins.]
"Welcome," said a voice that wasn’t the system.
"The Graveyard of Forgotten Gods."
A few meters away, sitting on a rock that had no business being there on an otherwise perfectly flat expanse of nothing, was a boy. Maybe fourteen. Dark hair, plain clothes, an open book in his lap. He was reading it.
He turned a page without looking up.
"You made me wait too long," he said. "That’s impolite."
"I wasn’t aware we had an appointment."
He closed the book. Looked up.
His eyes were a color I didn’t recognize, something unnatural.
"Let the game begin," he said, and smiled.
Luna’s smile had at least been communicating amusement. This one had no familiar emotion in it at all.
I opened my mouth.
Every bone in my body cracked at once.
The sound came before the pain.
A broken sound tore out of me. Then the pain arrived. I was on the sand before I realized I had fallen.
The body’s entire vocabulary of suffering speaking at once.
My jaw locked. The tendons in my hands pulled taut until the fingers curled inward and would not open.
Something in my chest gave way. Not my heart, My lungs stopped working.
I was on the sand with my cheek against the hot grit before I understood I’d fallen.
Even footsteps crossed toward me. No hurry at all.
His shoes came into view. He crouched.
"You lasted longer than the last one," he said, Conversationally. As if it didn’t interest him at all.
I tried to answer. My throat produced nothing.
He placed two fingers against my temple and I lost the ability to track time.
There was no word for the sensation. Every nerve in my body fired at once, without the mercy of unconsciousness.
Then it stopped and I could think again.
I heard a sound I didn’t immediately recognize. It took me a moment to understand it was coming from me.
His face above mine was completely still. He wasn’t satisfied. He wasn’t enjoying himself. He was looking at me.
His hand passed through my chest.
No resistance or wound. His hand was simply inside my chest.
His fingers closed around something.
I felt it.
He tilted his head slightly,
"Found it," he said.
Then he clenched his hand, and the world came apart.
"Let us meet again. The one favored by all sins."
My heartbeat vanished.
[Process: Resetting the World → Begins.]
[Day 1 → Wasted.]
[Day 2.]
[Objective: Survive the day.]
[Reward: Continued existence.]
[Your skills have been blocked. If you don’t survive today, you’ll experience it again. Good luck.]
****
I was standing.
Same desert. Same overcast sky. My hand went to my neck automatically, I remembered my neck breaking, and found it intact and unremarkable.
I reached for my mana. It was there, I could feel the edges of it, but something sat between me and it like a door I could touch but not open.
[Skills: blocked. Mana access: blocked. Body: functional.]
[Weapons: none. Supplies: none.]
[Threat level: unknown.]
Then the ground moved.
Sand rippled beneath the surface in a long line, something large tracking beneath it, closing the distance faster than I’d have liked.
[New Quest: Sandworm.]
I stood there and looked at it for a second.
No mana. No weapons. No skills. Against something that, in the original source material, had taken out.
The ripple was thirty meters out. Then twenty.
I picked up the only thing available, which was a fistful of sand, and I started running.
***
(Mysterios Pov)
Is someone here?
I thought the seal made this place unreachable.
Centuries. It’s been centuries since anyone was here.
Who is he talking to?
Comments