The awakening was not a jolt, but a slow ascent from the depths of an artificial coma, each inhalation tugging at his ribs as if his lungs refused to fully deploy. The air he drew in was heavy, charged with a metallic humidity that clung to the inside of his airways, as if he were breathing through a gauze mask soaked in mercury.
Even before his eyelids fluttered, Adrian perceived the intrusion—not as pain, but as an icy pressure, a systematic infiltration. It was not the dry cold of winter, but something more insidious: a freezing viscosity, as though a cryogenic fluid were seeping between the synapses of his cortex, seeking to crystallize there. His nerve endings, usually reactive, responded with an organic latency, as if his central nervous system were battling a data overload. He tried to lift his hand to his temple—nothing. No immediate response. Just a lag, a biological delay between the motor impulse and the muscular execution, as if his body were operating in low-power mode, each movement requiring external authorization.
Behind his still-sealed eyelids, the darkness was not uniform. It was corrupted. Visual artifacts danced in the black: clusters of dead pixels, residual scan lines, electric orange flashes that pulsed in rhythm with the dull beats of his heart, as if his retina were projecting the after-effects of a systemic crash.
This was not a dream. It was a real-time diagnosis, a forced self-assessment of his neural functions, and somewhere, in the deep layers of his mind, a voiceless voice was already whispering error reports in machine language.
[NEURAL ANOMALY DETECTED: CORTICAL SYNCHRONIZATION AT 68%]
[RETINAL BLOOD FLOW: UNSTABLE (VISUAL ARTIFACTS DETECTED)]
— What is...
[INITIALIZING... 3%] [SYNAPTIC CONNECTION: UNSTABLE] [SEARCHING SENSORY DRIVERS...]
Adrian opened his eyes. The first thing that struck him was not the strangeness of the place, but the saturation of the light. The world was overexposed, burned out by a nuclear white. The sun's rays, filtering through a dense canopy, did not merely illuminate; they assaulted his retina with a physical, solid intensity.
He shut his eyelids reflexively, a new wave of migraine pulsating in sync with the data downloading into his mind.
— Lower the gain, he croaked, his voice thick.
It was only a thought formed out loud, but the system intercepted it before it was fully verbalized. A sensation of liquid coldness slid behind his eyeballs. He felt his own iris muscles contract against his will, piloted by an invisible hand. The light intensity decreased in stages, as if a mechanical aperture was closing to protect the lens.
[OPTICAL CALIBRATION: FORCED] [VISUAL FLUX INTEGRATION: 12%]
Adrian opened his eyes again. This time, the image was sharp. Too sharp. Object edges vibrated slightly, surrounded by compression artifacts before stabilizing. Surgical. He could distinguish the veins of a leaf ten feet above, the granular texture of the moss beneath his fingers, dust suspended in the still air. The Bio-Synaptic Link (BSL) did not create vision, it processed it. His brain received the raw flow, and the AI cleaned it in real-time, learning to interpret the signals from his optic nerve second after second.
He sat up slowly. Vertigo seized him, violent, spinning, forcing him to place a knee on the ground. His inner ear searched for gravitational bearings it could not find.
— Where... ?
A part of him—the part that had spent thirty years believing in the laws of physics—screamed that it was impossible. That he was delusional. That the serum had fried his cortex. But he filed that voice away in a mental drawer that he locked. Priority: data.
He scanned his surroundings. A forest. But not an Earth forest. The trees were colossal, their smooth gray trunks soaring skyward like columns of organic concrete. There was no birdsong, only a low, constant background hum that seemed to emanate from the very tectonics of the place.
He looked down at his body. His lab coat was nothing more than a blackened rag. Beneath it, his jogging pants and technical t-shirt had fared better. He felt his ribs. No fractures. No hemorrhage. Just that strange sensation beneath his skin. A vibration. As if his nerves now served as fiber optics for a secondary network.
He held out his hand in front of him. He wasn't trembling. On the contrary, he felt... wired.
— Analyze the environment, he ordered mentally, testing the intruder's reactivity.
The interface responded with a noticeable latency, stuttering on the data display. It was not omniscient. It was discovering this world at the same time as him, fumbling to classify unknown sensory inputs.
[ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN... IN PROGRESS] [ERROR: DATABASE EMPTY] [DEFAULT SPECTROGRAPHIC ANALYSIS ACTIVATED]
[ATMOSPHERIC ANALYSIS...] [OXYGEN: HIGH SATURATION] [POLLUTANTS: NONE] [UNKNOWN TRACERS: DETECTED (1%)]
— Breathable, Adrian breathed out. Rich. Too rich in oxygen. It's going to make me dizzy.
He stood up, more carefully this time. He had to test his motor limits. He took a few steps, his bare feet sinking into the warm humus. Gravity seemed slightly lower than the terrestrial constant, or perhaps it was his muscles, boosted by the fusion with the serum, that responded with too much enthusiasm. Every movement required conscious correction to avoid losing balance. He had to relearn how to walk.
Thirst manifested then, a dry burning in the back of his throat that eclipsed his scientific curiosity. Biological priority: hydration.
He strained his ears. Thanks to the BSL's audio filtering, he could isolate the frequencies. Wind in the leaves. The cracking of wood. And, farther east, the regular lapping of moving liquid.
Adrian set off. He did not run. He walked with the caution of an intruder in a lab whose safety protocols he did not know. He observed everything.
A plant caught his eye. A type of fern whose fronds were not green, but a deep, almost metallic blue. He crouched down. He did not touch it. Rule number one: never contaminate or be contaminated without prior analysis.
He focused his gaze on the plant. The interface zoomed in, acting as a field microscope.
[OBJECT: LOCAL FLORA] [CELLULAR STRUCTURE: REINFORCED CELLULOSE] [ENERGY DETECTION: FAINT ALPHA RADIATION]
— Radiation? Adrian wondered.
There was energy in this plant. Not classic photosynthesis, but an active charge. He stood up. That unknown atmospheric 'one percent' was not an inert gas. It was an energy source that local biology had learned to metabolize.
He resumed his walk, his mind racing. If plants absorbed this energy, then the entire food chain was saturated with it.
He reached the water source ten minutes later. It was a modest stream winding between rocks covered in ochre lichen. The water was clear, crystalline. Too tempting.
Adrian knelt on the silty bank. He did not drink immediately. He dipped a finger in the water. Cold.
— Toxicity analysis.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
[SAMPLE: H2O] [PH: 7.2 (NEUTRAL)] [KNOWN PATHOGENS: NONE] [PRESENCE OF ENERGY PARTICLES: MEDIUM DENSITY (based on samples scanned so far)]
He hesitated for a second. The AI could not identify what it did not know. He thought it over. Severe dehydration in 8 to 12 hours. Possible cognitive failure in 6. These unknown 'particles' could be toxic, mutagenic, or totally inert. But slow poisoning left him time to find an antidote. Thirst, however, did not negotiate.
He shrugged, cupped his hands, and drank.
The water had a slightly metallic taste, as if a coin had been left soaking at the bottom of a glass. The liquid went down his throat, and the effect was immediate. It wasn't just refreshing. It was stimulating. A slight wave of warmth spread from his stomach to his extremities.
— It’s fuel, he realized, wiping his mouth. Everything here runs on this.
He sat down on a flat stone to catch his breath. That's when he saw it.
On the opposite bank, about twenty meters away, an animal had emerged from the bushes to drink. It resembled a small deer, with bark-dappled fur. But what captivated Adrian was the slight aura that seemed to emanate from its antlers. A distortion of the air, barely visible. (Mist Stag - Daim des Brumes)
The animal had not seen him. It was drinking peacefully.
Its antlers emitted that strange glow, like a flame without heat. There was no room for wonder. Only for analysis.
— Define a reference constant, he ordered the AI. Let's take this blue fern as the base unit.
The interface activated, sweeping the plant with a measurement grid. Lines of code scrolled across his field of vision, equations of light density and organic volume.
[ANALYSIS: BLUE FERN (REFERENCE SAMPLE)]
[VOLUME: 0.047 m3]
[ETHERIC LUMINOSITY: 12.3 lux (blue-violet spectrum)]
[ENERGY DENSITY: 0.011 W/m3]
[DESIGNATION: 1 ETHERIC DENSITY INDEX (1 EDI) = 0.011 W/m3]
— Now, apply the same model to the main target, Adrian murmured, his fingers clenched on the damp ground. I want the exact volume and relative luminosity.
The AI obeyed. The cervid was enveloped in a network of green lines, every segment of its body scanned, broken down, quantified.
[TARGET: UNKNOWN CERVID]
[TOTAL VOLUME: 0.89 m3]
[ETHERIC LUMINOSITY: 98.7 lux (concentrated in antlers: 89% of total emission)]
[AVERAGE ENERGY DENSITY: 0.112 W/m3]
[CALCULATION IN PROGRESS...]
The numbers scrolled, assembling into a complex formula projected before his eyes. The AI overlaid the data, adjusted variables, recalculated.
[VOLUMETRIC RATIO: 0.89 m3 / 0.047 m3 = 18.94]
[LUMINOUS RATIO: 98.7 lux / 12.3 lux = 8.02]
[RELATIVE DENSITY: (0.112 / 0.011) = 10.18]
[CORRECTION: LUMINOSITY IS NOT UNIFORM (89% CONFINED TO 12% OF TOTAL VOLUME)]
[RECALCULATING WITH ZONAL WEIGHTING...]
[CORRECTED ETHERIC DENSITY: 0.088 EDI (rounded to 0.09)]
[PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION: GRADE 0.8]
Adrian exhaled slowly, his lips tight. 0.8. This was not a random number. It was the result of an equation, a tangible measurement in a world where everything seemed hazy. He had just invented a scale. A way to quantify the unknown.
— Register this methodology, he commanded, his fingers buried in the cold earth. As of now, all etheric measurements will be expressed as the Etheric Density Index (EDI). 0.1 EDI = the fern. And that creature... He stared at the cervid, now alert, its ears pricked up toward him. ...is worth 0.8.
The animal seemed to sense his gaze. It abruptly raised its head, its nostrils twitching. Then, with a leap, it vanished among the trees, its glow extinguishing like an ember in the wind.
Adrian remained motionless, his eyes fixed on the spot where the creature had disappeared. 0.8. A number. A value. A target.
— And me? His voice was low, almost muffled by the rustling leaves. What is my density?
The AI hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then the numbers appeared, unforgiving.
[AUTO-SCAN...]
[BODY VOLUME: 0.072 m3]
[ETHERIC LUMINOSITY: 0.0 lux]
[ENERGY DENSITY: 0.000 W/m3]
[GRADE: 0.000]
The void. A perfect zero. Not even a residual trace.
Adrian clenched his fists. 0.000. He was nothing. Less than a fern. Less than an insect. An anomaly in a world where everything, even the grass, vibrated with an energy he could neither see nor touch without the AI's help.
The wind picked up, cold, whistling between the branches. Night was falling. And with it, the brutal reminder that he was not adapted to this environment.
He stood up, his joints stiff. He needed data. More measurements. A map. If everything had a Grade, he could classify everything. Predict everything. Exploit everything.
The sun began to set, stretching long, sharp shadows between the knotty trunks. The air became charged with a humidity that would soon chill his blood, sticking his clothes—or what was left of them—to him like a second skin.
He scanned the surroundings. The edge of the forest stretched before him, dense and hostile. The trees, with bark striated with bluish veins, seemed to pulse faintly under the fading light. Ambient Etheric Flux: 0.12-0.15 EDI. Stable. Nothing out of the ordinary, according to IRIS. Yet, something was wrong.
A shiver ran down his spine, independent of the temperature.
Suddenly, the numbers on his retina flickered. The lines of text blurred, replaced by a flashing red error message.
[ALERT: ENERGY SIGNATURE DETECTED]
[DISTANCE: 14.783 km (NW-SE)]
[ESTIMATED GRADE: [ERR]]
[VALUES OUTSIDE MEASUREMENT RANGE]
[RECALIBRATING...]
His breath hitched.
This was not a mere notification. It was a wave. A dull, almost subsonic pressure that traveled through the ground before reaching him through the soles of his worn boots. The air vibrated, as if an invisible giant had struck the ground miles away. The leaves on the trees shivered in synchronization, not shaken by the wind, but drawn towards a distant point, like iron filings under the effect of a colossal magnet.
Adrian fell to his knees.
Not out of fear—not yet. Out of incomprehension. His body reacted before his mind. His eardrums resonated with a frequency too low to be heard, but powerful enough to shake his bones.
[ANALYSIS: UNSTABLE ENERGY SOURCE]
[ESTIMATED POWER: >8.0 EDI (THEORETICAL THRESHOLD EXCEEDED)]
[CONSEQUENCE: LONG-RANGE DESTABILIZATION OF THE ETHERIC FIELD]
His hands dug into the damp moss, his fingers gripping the earth as if to anchor himself. I shouldn't be feeling this. Not at this distance. Not with a Grade of zero. Yet, the vibration persisted, creeping up his arms, making his teeth rattle. It was like standing next to a giant loudspeaker, but instead of music, it was the weight of something immense, unknown, crushing space itself.
He looked up at the sky. The clouds, previously motionless, now stretched into concentric spirals over the northeast horizon, as if being sucked into an invisible vortex.
[OBSERVATION: ANOMALOUS METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENON]
[PROBABLE CAUSE: MASSIVE ETHERIC DISTORTION]
[SECONDARY EFFECT: MINIMAL GRAVITATIONAL PERTURBATION (DETECTABLE ONLY BY HIGH-SENSITIVITY SENSORS)]
Adrian clenched his jaw. The data scrolled, but one thought dominated the rest:
I am a bacterium. No—worse. A dust particle before a hurricane.
And this hurricane was breathing.
The entire forest seemed to hold its breath. The birds were silent. Even the wind had stopped, as if it dared barely skim the limits of that presence. Only the low rumble persisted, that pressure, as if the air itself was bending under the weight of an unknown will.
[WARNING: DETECTION PROBABILITY = 0% (GRADE 0.000 = RELATIVE INVISIBILITY)]
[SUGGESTION: UNKNOWN FAUNA. SEEK UNDERGROUND SHELTER REGARDLESS. URGENCY.]
He stood up with a sharp motion, muscles tense. Logic took over, sweeping away the initial paralysis. Analyze. Adapt. Survive.
The sun was now just a thin reddish line on the horizon, and darkness was gaining fast. Nocturnal predators would soon be on the hunt. But that was no longer his main concern.
He didn't even have a way to start a fire.
He spun around, scrutinizing the forest. The tree roots formed complex networks, some plunging into burrows, crevices. Shelter. He needed shelter.
His eyes stopped on a rocky cluster in the distance, half-buried under vegetation.
Perfect.
He moved forward, each step calculated to avoid dead branches. Minimal noise. Reduced thermal signature. The AI reminded him of the basics, but his instinct screamed at him to accelerate.
The night. The night is coming.
