Kyle's nostrils filled with the smell of wet earth—not the copper tang of blood that had been his last memory. The bullets that had torn through his flesh on 58th Street existed now only as echoes, phantom pains beneath skin that showed no evidence of his violent end. Only the cold kiss of concrete against his cheek lingered in his mind—that final sensation before darkness swallowed him whole.
His eyelids peeled open to a canopy of otherworldly foliage stretching toward a sky that wasn't Earth's pale blue but something deeper, heavier, thicker. The air hung dense enough to drink, making the worst Spanish Harlem summer feel like nothing but a warm breeze. Sweat already beaded on his honey-tinted forehead, trickling down his temple in rivulets that tasted of salt. His light brown eyes—the ones his Puerto Rican mother always said were a window to his softer self—scanned the landscape with growing disbelief.
The fuck is this place? The thought hammered against his skull even as his voice scraped against his throat, dry despite the moisture pressing down on his skin from all sides. "The fuck?" His palms sank into soil that was too soft, too yielding, too unlike the unyielding concrete that had caught his body when the bullets found their mark.
Kyle pushed himself up, eyes dropping to his blood-stained white tee, the blood still moist. Shouldn't be wet. Should be dry. Should be dead. His fingers prodded at his chest, finding smooth skin where bullet holes should have been. No scars. No wounds. Just flesh unmarked by a death he still remembered with terrible clarity.
A groan cut through the cacophony of strange bugs and rustling greenery—a sound that didn't belong in this impossible place but somehow anchored Kyle to something familiar. His head snapped left, muscles tensing instinctively, body remembering the lessons of survival even when his mind couldn't make sense of his surroundings.
Dex lay sprawled nearby, his long face twisted in confusion, dark skin glistening with sweat. At 6'2", Dex had always been the tallest of their crew, his strength as much a part of him as the permanent scowl he wore. Same Dex. Different place. Same blood. Beyond him, Marcus swayed on his feet, his short silhouette wavering through the thick heat haze. Despite his compact frame, Marcus's naturally built physique had always made him seem larger than he was—a presence that commanded respect despite standing nearly a head shorter than most in their circle. Another sound—profanity delivered with JT's distinctive Puerto Rican inflection—came from somewhere behind.
We all here. We all died there. We all alive here. The thoughts rattled in Kyle's head like loose change.
They'd all gone down together on that corner, caught in a hail of bullets, victims of a beef that had started over nothing and ended in everything. Kyle's gaze swept over the knotted vines surrounding them, shapes and colors that belonged in no natural history book he'd ever flipped through, no street corner he'd ever defended, no reality he'd ever known.
"Yo, Alv." Marcus's voice pulled his attention back. The nickname—born in ninth grade when Kyle still carried baby fat in his cheeks—grounded him momentarily in something familiar, something real, something that connected this bizarre moment to the life he'd lived before bullets tore it away. "You seeing this shit?"
Before Kyle could form an answer, before he could put words to the wrongness surrounding them, his eardrums vibrated with a sound that didn't belong to any creature he'd ever encountered. Not quite a roar, not quite a scream, but something between that made his body grow goose bumps, that crawled along his spine like icy fingers, that spoke of danger more primal than any street corner showdown. The ground beneath his palms trembled. Nearby the vines drew apart, moved by something unseen, something coming.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he scanned the jungle's edge, trying to identify the threat. Years in the hood had taught him to locate danger before it found him, had programmed his body to recognize the signs of impending violence, had sharpened senses that now struggled to interpret this alien environment.
"This ain't Heaven," JT's voice came from behind, closer now. Kyle turned to see his friend, 5'10" and husky, his brownish-black curly hair cut in a fresh fade that seemed absurdly out of place in this foreign land. Kyle heard the familiar sound of JT's hands patting down an empty waistband, searching for steel that wasn't there, for protection that this world had stripped from them. "And I'm pretty sure it ain't Hell either."
A memory flashed unbidden through Kyle's mind—JT's face twisted in fury as he threw himself into a circle of bodies surrounding Kyle. Eight years ago, outside the corner store on 67th. Kyle had been jumped by some kids from the other side of the projects, a misunderstanding about a girl that had escalated too quickly, too violently, too typically. JT had rounded the corner, seen Kyle going down under a flurry of kicks. He could have walked away, pretended he didn't see, preserved himself. Instead, he'd waded in, fists flying, taking as much damage as he gave.
They'd both ended up with stitches that night, sitting side by side in the emergency room while Kyle's mother alternated between fussing over their wounds and cursing them out in rapid-fire Spanglish. Mi hijo, siempre en problemas. You trying to die young? You trying to break my heart? The memory pulled at something in Kyle's chest—a debt unpaid, a loyalty that transcended the petty beefs and posturing that had ultimately led them all to this impossible place.
Kyle rose to his feet, surprised by the steadiness in his legs. The familiar weight of fear and adrenaline settled in his gut—an old companion from countless corners and confrontations, from a life lived perpetually on alert, from a childhood where danger lurked behind familiar faces and everyday interactions.
"Stay together," he heard himself say, the words bubbling up from some primal place in his brain, from the instinct that had kept him alive on streets that devoured careless boys. "Whatever this is, we stick together."
Dex's bitter laugh cut through the humid air—like a knife through flesh, like bullets through the night, like truth through lies. "Like we did back there? Fat lot of good that did us."
Yea and it was your fault in the first place, Kyle thought, the accusation rising automatically but remaining unspoken. Dex got them in a lot of situations but it also got them out just as much. The balance had always been precarious, the scale always threaten to tip, the debt always in danger of coming due. And maybe it finally had, on that corner where their blood had painted concrete crimson.
They formed up like old times—a tight circle of brothers facing outward, backs to each other, a formation born of necessity and forged in violence. The stance felt familiar in a world where nothing else did, a small comfort amid overwhelming strangeness.
The roar came again, vibrating through Kyle's chest like a bass drop, like a subway rumbling beneath his feet, like thunder in a sky that promised storm. A thought flashed through his mind—sharp, clear, terrible: maybe dying once hadn't been enough to pay for their sins.
The light hit without warning—not from above or around, but seemingly from inside his own skull. Brightness beyond description, beyond whiteness, beyond any reference point in Kyle's vocabulary. Pain lanced through his brain like a hollow-point round, but instead of darkness, it brought a scouring awareness that felt like steel wool being dragged across his naked consciousness, like sandpaper on raw nerve, like truth against denial.
Kyle's eyes clenched shut against the invasion, but it made no difference. The light was inside him, probing, changing something fundamental in his understanding of himself, in his perception of reality, in his place within this incomprehensible world.
Then sound joined with light, a frequency that rattled his molars and merged with the brightness until his senses blurred together. The world disappeared, replaced by a white void where seven black letters etched themselves into the fabric of his being:
SURVIVE
The word hung suspended in his consciousness, an obsidian command, as final as the last bullet, as absolute as death, as undeniable as hunger.
"Do y'all fucking see that?" Kyle's question came out shaky, uncertain, unlike him. His head pounded like the morning after too many shots of Hennessy, spots dancing across his vision, but that word—SURVIVE—remained, branded on the inside of his mind like a scar that ached with phantom pain.
Through the ringing in his ears, he caught only fragmented snatches of the others' reactions. Dex on his knees, fingers digging into soil as if to anchor himself to something solid. Marcus grabbing at his slipping bandana, the red fabric a splash of familiarity against the overwhelming strangeness. JT muttering something in Spanish before switching to English, words that Kyle couldn't quite catch through the buzzing in his head. Their voices reached Kyle as if through water, distorted and strangely distant.
His thoughts moved like molasses, sluggish and slow and struggling. The streets had programmed him for quick reactions—see the threat, make the call, handle it. But he had never experienced anything like this, had never had his senses so thoroughly overwhelmed, had never felt so completely out of his depth.
"Yo—" Kyle began, but the word died in his throat as that strange howl cut through the jungle again. This time, he felt it echo in his chest, the way bass thunders through your ribcage at a block party, the way fear resonates through your body when you hear gunshots too close, the way dread settles in your bones when you know something bad is coming and you can't stop it. Whatever loomed beyond the treeline wasn't going to wait while they sorted out their confusion.
Before his ears could fully recover, Kyle noticed the first warning in the undergrowth. Leaves trembled, as though something massive brushed against them. Branches shifted in unnaturally deliberate movements. Even through the haze in his head, his street-born instincts flared like a match struck in darkness. A hush settled around them—the same quiet tension he remembered from ambushes on street corners, only fiercer, deeper, more primal.
Then it emerged, and his brain refused to process what his eyes delivered. A nightmare in living flesh—eight feet of rippling muscle covered in longer gray fur that cascaded along its spine, blending smoothly into shorter black fur across its flanks. As it turned to face them, Kyle's heart slammed against his ribs like it wanted to escape, like it recognized death before his mind could process it, like it knew this was a predator beyond anything Earth had prepared them for. It stood on two legs like a man but moved with nothing remotely human in its gait. Its face was pure predator, feline but somehow wrong, bigger than any big cat he'd seen in nature documentaries, and twisted horns curved forward like scythes above its eyes.
When it opened its maw, Kyle's gaze locked on rows of teeth designed for one brutal purpose—to tear flesh from bone, to end life, to consume. His mouth went dry, and his heart battered against his chest like a prisoner desperate for escape.
Marcus whispered something nearby—a prayer or a curse, Kyle couldn't tell. The beast's head snapped toward the sound with unnatural speed, with deadly focus, with hunger that radiated like heat.
In that moment, Kyle saw himself reflected in those golden eyes—not as a man, not as a survivor from the Five-Eight, but as prey. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to flee, to put as much distance between himself and those teeth as possible. The streets had taught him to recognize unwinnable fights, to know when standing your ground meant getting planted six feet under it instead, to understand when pride needed to yield to survival.
"Run." Dex's voice reached him as if from miles away, strangely hollow yet urgent. Then louder, more insistent, more desperate: "RUN!"
Kyle's body responded before his mind caught up, before thought could interfere with instinct, before reason could override terror. His feet pounded against the soft earth, lungs struggling with air too thick to properly fill them, too heavy to provide the oxygen his burning muscles demanded. Through the blood rushing in his ears, he registered the sounds of the others crashing through the brush around him, their panicked breathing matching his own hammering pulse.
Then he heard it—JT's scream, a pitch he never heard from him, not even when the bullets were tearing through him on that corner. Not even during all those stitches they'd earned together, brothers bound by blood and loyalty against a world that had never given them an inch. Kyle's heart seized, torn between survival and the memory of JT standing beside him when he could have run, between self-preservation and the debt he'd carried for eight years, between living and loyalty. History repeating itself in the most twisted way imaginable.
"Don't stop!" Dex's command cracked through the air like a whip, like a gunshot, like authority that wouldn't be questioned. "Don't fucking stop!"
He ran until his muscles burned and his lungs felt ready to burst, until his legs trembled with exhaustion, until his body threatened to betray him. When they finally collapsed, heaving for breath that wouldn't come, sweating fear that wouldn't dissipate, processing a horror that wouldn't fade, the terrible truth settled over Kyle like a shroud.
They'd left JT behind.
Left him to die. Left him to those teeth. Left him alone.
Kyle rolled onto his side, stomach heaving until nothing remained but bitter bile that splashed onto tender dirt. The acid burn in his throat couldn't wash away the knowledge: they'd died as soldiers but run like cowards. Somewhere behind them, what remained of their brotherhood lay scattered across a jungle floor that had no right to exist.
The sounds of unseen life forms surrounded them—clicks and chirps and rustling that his brain couldn't categorize, couldn't identify, couldn't process. Each noise made Kyle flinch, expecting death from any direction, anticipating teeth and claws and the end of this strange second chance.
"Should've ran faster," Dex's voice sliced through the heavy silence. The flatness in his tone reminded Kyle of empty shell casings after a shooting—spent, hollow, devoid of the life they'd once contained. "Ain't our fault he was too slow."
Stolen novel; please report.
Kyle's gut twisted at the words, at the easy dismissal of a bond that had survived years on streets that devoured weaker connections, at the casual discarding of a brother who would have died for any of them. But his mind offered no counter-argument, no righteous defense, no moral standing. They'd all chosen the same path in that moment of terror—survival.
"Y'all keep seeing it? That word?" Marcus asked, his voice barely above a whisper. Kyle noticed how his friend's eyes darted constantly, scanning the undergrowth for threats. The nervousness in his movements was contagious, amplifying Kyle's own hypervigilance, feeding the anxiety that thrummed like an electric current beneath his skin.
"Survive," Kyle muttered, the word still burning behind his eyes like an afterimage of the sun, like a brand seared into his mind, like a command he couldn't ignore. "Like some sick joke, right? Die in the streets just to end up in this green hell getting these... these fucking messages in our heads."
"Nah, it's more than that." Dex's words drew Kyle's attention, pulling him from the spiral of dark thoughts. "This shit's weird. That light, that message.."
The flora on every side of them shifted, making Kyle's body tense involuntarily. Something large moved through the undergrowth nearby—he couldn't see it, but he felt the displacement of air, heard the subtle crackle of leaves, sensed the presence of a body larger than their own. His heart leapt into his throat, muscles coiling to run again despite the exhaustion that made his limbs feel like lead. When the presence passed without revealing itself, he released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"This ain't like the streets," Kyle whispered, fingers digging into mud. His shoulders hunched as sweat trickled down his spine. "Back home, I knew which blocks meant death." He tapped his temple, once, twice. "That word burning in my head—'survive'—doesn't tell us how." His eyes tracked movement in the canopy, body tensing with each rustle.
"Survive," Marcus repeated, the word sounding like a question in his mouth, like a puzzle he was trying to solve, like a concept he understood but couldn't quite accept. "But survive what? And for how long?"
“Survive thi-..”
A scream echoed through the jungle— cut Dex off. The sound hung in the humid air like gun smoke, a reminder that each moment of stillness was borrowed time, that peace in this place was temporary at best, that danger lurked around every twisted tree and behind every broad leaf.
Through the thicket and his haze Kyle found Dex already moving, already adapting, already accepting the brutal simplicity of their situation. Kyle found himself following without conscious decision, feet moving automatically, body responding to the rhythm they'd established over years of running streets together. "Survive long enough to figure out what we surviving for."
That word kept flashing in Kyle's mind: SURVIVE. Simple as pulling a trigger. Direct as a knife to the gut. Clear as blood on concrete. They'd survived the streets by becoming what the concrete jungle demanded of them—hard, sharp, dangerous. What would this place require? What parts of themselves would they have to sacrifice next? What would they become to see another sunrise in this world that had no right to exist?
Kyle's hands moved without thought, performing the instinctive pat-down ingrained since childhood, since he'd first started carrying things that would get him stopped, questioned, arrested. His fingers found only empty pockets where his phone should have been, where his wallet usually pressed against his thigh, where the weight of metal sometimes sat heavy against his ankle. Nothing. Not even lint. Like they'd been scraped clean of everything but their bodies, their clothes, their memories.
"The fuck?" Dex's panic-edged voice drew Kyle's attention. He watched as his friend's fingers traced over his own chest, searching for landmarks that weren't there, for the scars that had mapped his history on his skin. "Yo, my scars. All of them, they just..."
His words died in his throat as they crested a small rise in the jungle floor, as the view opened before them, as their eyes tried to process yet another impossibility in a world that seemed built on broken rules and twisted logic.
Every step deeper into the jungle felt like sinking into a fever dream—disjointed, surreal, terrifying in its strangeness yet familiar in its threat. Sweat rolled down Kyle's spine, his shirt clinging to his back like a lover, like a second skin, like a reminder of his humanity in a place that felt increasingly hostile to human existence. The blue light filtering through the canopy turned everything strange—Marcus's familiar face now cast in shadows that made him look like someone Kyle had never really known, like a stranger wearing a friend's features, like a puzzle piece from a different box.
Kyle's arm shot up before his brain fully registered why—a gesture drilled into muscle memory from years of corner surveillance, from a life lived in constant awareness of danger, from experiences that had taught him trust was a luxury he couldn't afford. Twenty feet ahead, through a tangle of vegetation unlike anything back in the concrete maze of Harlem, something was wrong. Bodies. Four of them, sprawled in what might have been a camp once, might have been a sanctuary, might have been a moment of safety before death found them.
"Bodies," he muttered, the word sour on his tongue, familiar in the most terrible way, a recognition that death had found others in this place before them.
Kyle approached like he'd done with the dead before—cautiously, respectfully, but with that detachment his life taught early. Death was just another resident in the Five-Eight, just another face in the crowd, just another fact of existence. These corpses, though... these were different. His stomach clenched as his eyes tried to make sense of what they were seeing. The bones were wrong—fingers too long, joints bent at angles that made his brain itch. The skulls looked like someone had taken a human blueprint and stretched it, foreheads bulging forward, eye sockets set too wide. "Not human. Not even close."
What the fuck are these things? Who the fuck are these things? What the fuck is this place?
Marcus hung back, unwilling or unable to approach the twisted forms that had once contained life. "The fuck were these? They ain't people."
Kyle didn't answer, couldn't find words adequate to the strangeness before them. His mind couldn't find the box to put this in, the category to file it under, the reference point to make sense of it. No frame of reference existed in the twenty-four years he'd spent breathing Earth's air, walking Harlem streets, navigating a world that suddenly seemed distant and unreal.
Dex moved with no hesitation, hands already working through what remained of the corpses' possessions. Kyle recognized the movements—the same way Dex had stripped phones and wallets and guns from unconscious rivals back home, efficient and thorough and without remorse. Some skills transferred regardless of context.
"Don't matter what they was," Dex said, not looking up from his grim work. "Matters what they got."
Kyle swallowed the unease climbing his throat like bile, like nausea, like disgust he couldn't afford. Dead was dead. He'd learned that over too many open caskets. He'd never bothered the dead before—a respect born of superstition and street code—but survival made hypocrites of everyone eventually.
His fingers found a pack beside one of the not-quite-human corpses. The material felt wrong against his skin—not leather, not cloth, but something between, something he'd never touched before, something that shouldn't exist. Inside, something clinked against his knuckles. Three bottles, clear as vodka but with something suspended inside each one—a sphere of reddish-purple substance that seemed to rotate in place within the liquid, that moved without current or stimulus.
Kyle held one up, the weight unfamiliar in his palm. The strange blue light of this world passed through the glass, casting crimson shadows across his dark skin. The sphere inside didn't move or react—just hung there, waiting, patient, mysterious.
"Yo," he called, a strange tightness in his chest, a mixture of excitement and fear and uncertainty. "Look at this shit."
Marcus leaned over his shoulder, his breath warm on Kyle's neck, a reminder of humanity in this place of strangeness. "I've never seen some shit like that before."
Neither had Kyle. Nothing in his world had prepared him for any of this—not the streets, not the system, not the constant vigilance that had kept him alive through two decades in a neighborhood that devoured the weak, that chewed up the vulnerable, that spat out broken versions of those it didn't swallow whole.
They collected the spears from skeletal hands, the stone tips jagged and primitive. Kyle tested the weight of one, trying to imagine himself using it. He'd seen knives before, held guns, but nothing like this. Use what you can, he thought, the lesson of the streets applying even here, the adaptability that had kept him alive still serving him in this impossible place.
The sound hit his ears before his brain processed it—a crash amid the thicket, something big moving fast through the growth fifty feet away. Kyle's heart slammed against his ribs as the thing burst into view, as his eyes tried to make sense of what they were seeing, as his mind frantically searched for categories that didn't exist.
part boar, part lizard, all nightmare. Its hide was a patchwork of scales and coarse hair, its head massive and crowned with two twisted horns. Amber eyes locked onto Kyle. Yellowed fangs hung from its lower jaw, dripping with fluid that steamed slightly where it hit the forest floor.
The beast's chest swelled as it sucked in air, releasing a grunt that Kyle felt rather than heard, the resonance shuddering through his frame.
"Oh shit—" The words scraped past his lips, inadequate for the terror clawing at his throat, for the danger facing them, for the reality of their situation.
The monster charged, closing the distance faster than anything its size had a right to move. Kyle's world narrowed to a tunnel of pure instinct. No time to think, no room for doubt. In the projects, hesitation was just suicide with extra steps, just death on an installment plan, just weakness that couldn't be afforded.
His hand closed around one of the bottles in his pocket, the glass cool against his palm. No idea what it would do, but dying with options unused wasn't how he'd survived the streets, wasn't the lesson he'd learned from watching others fall, wasn't the way he'd made it to twenty-four when so many others hadn't seen twenty.
Kyle hurled it. The bottle arced through the humid air, spinning once before connecting with the creature's scaled forehead. It shattered with a sound unlike breaking glass—more like crystal bells struck by metal, like ice cracking on a frozen lake, like something beautiful in the midst of terror.
The liquid splashed across the beast's face, and the suspended sphere burst on impact. The substance transformed instantly, becoming a vapor that clung to the monster's features. Kyle had seen chemical fires before, watched buildings burn when molotovs found their targets—this was different. The vapor seemed to seek the creature's openings, flowing into its eyes, its nostrils, its open mouth like it had a purpose, like it knew what it was doing, like it hungered as much as the beast itself.
Where the substance touched, the hide bubbled and peeled away. The beast's charge faltered, its bulk stumbling sideways as it released a sound that bypassed Kyle's ears and struck directly at something primitive in his brain.
"Fuck!" Dex's voice cut through Kyle's stunned horror, through his fascination with the effects of the mysterious liquid, through his momentary paralysis.
Kyle had seen that look in Dex's eyes before—part shock, part savage joy. It was the same expression he'd worn when they'd caught that kid from the rival set alone behind the bodega, when they'd cornered him with nowhere to run, when they'd extracted payment for perceived disrespect. Dex had always been quickest to see weakness, to exploit it without hesitation, to press advantage when others might hesitate.
Dex lunged forward, spear extended, and Kyle's body moved before his mind could catch up. Six years running together on those streets had programmed responses deeper than thought, had created connections that bypassed conscious decision, had forged them into a unit that functioned as one when danger presented itself. Where Dex went, he and Marcus followed—a trinity of violence perfected in alleys and abandoned lots.
Kyle's world narrowed to the moment—the weight of the spear in his hands, the smell of the creature's burning flesh, the solid resistance as his weapon found the soft belly beneath the scales. The sensation was nothing like he'd expected, the spear sinking through layers of resistance until it hit something vital, something that gave way beneath his strength, something that couldn't withstand his desperation.
The beast's blood was wrong—too dark and too thick, with a disturbing orange hue. It splattered across Kyle's arms and face, causing a faint burn like a minty sting. It wasn't exactly painful, more like a prickling sensation, not the sear of acid.
The creature's death throes played out in terrible proximity. Its massive body thrashed and shuddered, each movement spraying more of that strange tinted blood across Kyle's clothes, mixing with his sweat, marking him with its death. Its final breath gusted hot against his face, a pungent spice, hinting at old copper and scorched wood and something he had no reference for, something beyond his experience, something that didn't belong in his world.
When it finally collapsed, the impact sent tremors through the ground beneath Kyle's feet. In the sudden silence, all he could hear was his own ragged breathing and the hammering of his heart, all he could feel was the adrenaline coursing through his system, all he could process was the shocking violence they'd just committed and the more shocking fact that they'd survived it.
The beast's massive corpse lay still, its orange blood seeping into soil that drank it without judgment, without hesitation, without the morality that humans imposed on natural processes. Kyle's breath came in ragged pulls, the copper tang of exertion coating his tongue.
Then it began.
From the creature's cooling flesh, pinpricks of white light bloomed like stars being born in the darkness of its hide. Kyle blinked, thinking his vision had fractured from adrenaline or trauma, but the lights remained—multiplying now, pushing through dead tissue, rising like souls abandoning a sinking vessel, like spirits seeking escape, like something miraculous emerging from violence.
"The fuck is that?" His words emerged breathless, but neither Dex nor Marcus answered. Their silence told him they saw it too, that this wasn't hallucination or shock or trauma, that this new impossibility was as real as the teeth that had nearly ended them, as real as the blood coating their skin, as real as the ground beneath their feet.
The motes increased in number and intensity until they resembled a constellation hovering above the corpse—luminous particles suspended in the thick jungle air, bright and steady. They cast an ethereal glow across the blood-spattered ground, transforming gore into something almost beautiful, almost holy, almost worth the terror that had preceded it.
Then they moved.
Not randomly, but with purpose—like bullets with designated targets, like homing pigeons returning to roost, like fate finding its chosen ones. The swarm split into three uneven streams, each one arrowing toward one of them. Kyle's muscles locked, fight-or-flight reflex screaming in his skull, but his feet remained rooted to the ground as if the earth itself held him in place, as if some greater force had decided his path, as if running was no longer an option.
The motes struck him in the chest without collision—only a cold so fierce it gnawed at his core, spreading outward from his sternum to every extremity like frost racing across glass, like winter seeping into a poorly insulated apartment, like death's touch before the heart stops beating. Kyle's jaw clenched against a scream that would have revealed too much weakness, that would have exposed a vulnerability he couldn't afford, that would have shamed him before brothers who were suffering the same invasion.
Within his chest, the motes dispersed, becoming part of his bloodstream, his breath, his thoughts—changing him in ways he couldn't yet comprehend, altering something fundamental in his being, marking him as different from the man who had died on 58th Street.
[Welcome to The Cosmore]
[Location: Cuson Walf]
Age of Location: 8656 years.
[Current Quest]
Survive
[Character Sheet]
Subject: Kyle "Alvin"
Age: 24
Level: 1
Race: Human (Basic 1)
Class: None
Affinity: None
Affinity Rating: 38.4
Core Type: un-awakened
Energy: 0/413
[Stats]
Will: 6
Strength: 4
Intelligence: 2
Vitality: 1
Agility: 4
Dexterity: 2
Resilience: 1
Unbound Points: 8
[Abilities] None
[Skills]
Fighting (Novice)
[Spells] None
[Items of Significance]
Crude Spear
2 Vials of substance (unidentified)
