Honestly, there was so much happening all at once that I no longer knew what I was supposed to be surprised by. First, I’d been dragged out of the lab and back into the very forest where everything had started — the exact spot where I’d first appeared.
And now, to top it all off, my powers had just... vanished? I mean, seriously, what the hell was going on here? Each new twist felt like some cruel joke, a test to see just how far my sanity could stretch before snapping.
Those thoughts barely had time to form before they were swallowed by the urgency of the moment. It’s not like I could afford to stop and process everything — the world didn’t seem willing to give me even a second to breathe.
Those creatures — doglike, but far too twisted to really be called that — kept coming closer. Their split-open bellies, lined with rows of teeth, seemed to grin hungrily with every step. The sound of their claws scraping against the ground was steady, almost rhythmic, like a clock ticking down my sentence.
For the first time, I felt that my arm would be the least of my worries if they decided to rip something else off me. That absurd thought led to an even worse one: would I even survive without my head? No. Definitely not. Not in the state I was in now.
In any case, I had no solid way of knowing just how far my powers had been erased. But given that I was standing in the same forest where I’d opened my eyes for the very first time, I figured I was still weeks away from being able to summon my Alter Ego again.
My regenerative ability, for instance, had only manifested after I’d taken the heart of one of those creatures — which meant that, right now, I probably only had the most basic skills I’d started with back when I first woke up in this place.
The problem was, the mutant dogs in front of me didn’t seem interested in giving me the time to confirm that theory. Their twisted bodies moved in silence, except for the wet sound of their paws against the soaked ground and the low growls vibrating in the air.
The moment one of them lunged at me, its belly gaping like some grotesque wound, I didn’t have time to think — I just reacted on pure instinct. To be honest, back then I was incredibly fragile, almost defenseless.
My powers were practically nonexistent and, though my physical strength was above average, that advantage only mattered compared to a normal human. And yet, even at such an early stage of my life, I carried something different — an anomalous ability I never had to earn, steal, or learn.
It was simply born with me, an inevitable mark of my existence. From the very first moment I opened my eyes, I instinctively knew how to use it, even if I didn’t fully understand its scope or consequences back then.
The thought had barely formed when everything happened — fast, instinctive, unstoppable. In seconds, a perfectly golden circle opened up from me, expanding until it reached about a meter in radius. The light that made it up seemed alive, pulsing, almost liquid.
In an instant, the circle engulfed the anomalous dogs, and their movements stopped abruptly, as if time had been ripped away from them. Outside it, everything remained the same — the wind still stirred the leaves, the branches creaked faintly, and the air still carried the damp smell of earth.
But inside my circle, the world was frozen, locked in an almost oppressive silence. Only I could move within it, and the sensation was as strange as it was powerful — as if I had torn through the fabric of reality and created a small bubble where I was the sole master of time.
Apparently, not all of my powers had vanished — just the ones I hadn’t yet acquired at that point in time. Setting that aside, I moved among the frozen dogs. One by one, with mechanical precision, I struck exactly where their hearts should have been, tearing them out without hesitation.
That’s when I noticed something: the hearts were completely colorless, pale and opaque, like nothing more than ghostly remnants of what should have been beating organs. In short, none of those monsters gave me regenerative ability — as if something, or someone, had deliberately drained their essence before I got to them.
In the end, I just sighed and accepted the situation. It’s not like I had many other options: (Alright... let’s see what exactly they were feeding on)
With that thought, I stepped away from the fallen bodies, trying to escape the metallic stench still clinging to the air. Slowly, I approached the spot where the creatures had been moments earlier.
When I got close enough to see what they’d been devouring, my eyes blinked in disbelief, my head tilting slightly as if the small motion might help me make sense of what I was seeing.
Honestly, for a second, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me — that what I was seeing was nothing but a cruel mirage. But no. The scene was far too real to be a hallucination. There, on the blood-soaked grass, lay Laura and Victor.
Their bodies were unrecognizable, torn apart in a way that made my stomach churn, as though dozens of those creatures had decided not just to eat them, but to turn every muscle, every fiber of flesh, into a grotesque feast. The metallic stench of blood hung heavy in the air, and for a moment, it felt like the entire world had gone silent.
Laura was still wearing her white lab coat, now heavy and clinging to her body, soaked through with blood. The fabric was torn in several places, hanging in jagged strips that revealed parts of her torso and arms.
The exposed skin was covered in bruises and deep cuts, and in some places, I could see the pale glint of bone, as though teeth had sunk into her over and over again. The metallic smell of blood filled the air, making the whole scene suffocating.
The coat swayed faintly with the breeze, clinging to her body as if trying to hide what little skin and muscle remained. Her face was so pale it looked carved from wax, and yet her half-lidded eyes and parted lips still carried the desperate illusion of life — as if, somewhere deep inside, she was still fighting to take one last breath, too weak to turn it into sound.
Victor lay nearby, flat on his back, his chest heaving in ragged, uneven intervals, each breath its own battle. His once-formidable armor was scratched and ripped in critical spots, exposing flesh beneath twisted metal.
His open wounds still smoked faintly, releasing a metallic smell mixed with something burnt, as though they’d been made just moments ago. His jaw was clenched tight in silent effort against the pain, and bite marks crossed his neck — deep, uneven, dangerously close to his windpipe, where the smallest wrong move could have made the blood gush out.
The metallic stench of blood mixed with the rancid odor of the fallen creatures around me, creating a heavy miasma that clung to my skin. A chill ran down my spine, as though something unseen had just passed behind me.
There was something deeply wrong about that scene — not just because of the carnage spread across the ground, but because I knew, with absolute certainty, that Laura and Victor weren’t supposed to even be alive when I found them. And yet, there they were, their twisted bodies still trembling, as if refusing to accept death itself.
Laura turned her head with effort, her neck muscles trembling, and her glazed-over eyes met mine. For a moment, I had the clear impression she wanted to tell me something — a warning, maybe a final word — but what escaped her lips was nothing more than a faint sound, almost a sigh, laced with the metallic taste of the blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.
Beside her, Victor tried to move one arm, the motion slow, like he was wading through mud, but he was cut short by a violent spasm that arched his body in pain, forcing a guttural groan out of him that echoed in the silence.
Something inside me seemed to crack at that moment — a dull snap, like something breaking in my mind. A wave of rage surged up through my chest, mixed with a suffocating urgency and a strange sense of déjà vu that prickled the back of my neck.
I had seen something like this before... somewhere, sometime, though my memory refused to show me exactly when or where. My thoughts became a whirlwind; nothing made sense.
Why did I feel like this scene wasn’t new? Laura and Victor... they weren’t supposed to be hurt like this. I remembered saving them, remembered it with painful clarity — every detail etched into my mind. So why did it feel like I was reliving something that should never have happened?
And yet, the feeling just wouldn’t go away. The more I looked at the scene, the stronger the strange sense of déjà vu became, as if some part of me had already stood here before. From the very beginning, I’d thought all of this was just a dream — one of those vivid ones that feel so real you wake up drenched in cold sweat.
I could clearly recall the moment I’d touched the thin glass just before being brought here, and that’s exactly why I’d assumed the anomaly was distorting my perception, making me see things that weren’t there.
But... is that really the case? Is this all just some fleeting dream? As much as I wanted to cling to that comforting thought, something — an uncomfortable, suffocating intuition — told me that wasn’t the whole truth.
Even as that storm of thoughts raged in my head, the world around me shifted once again. The change was so sudden I didn’t even notice the exact moment it happened — I just found myself somewhere else.
I looked around, searching for some kind of landmark, but there was no horizon at all. In fact, there was no visible end anywhere: space stretched endlessly in every direction, infinite and claustrophobic at the same time, like I was trapped inside an endless repetition of itself, a mirrored reflection multiplying forever.
And no matter where I looked, the only things visible were massive black pillars, rising like endless colossi, vanishing both into the sky above and the abyss below. The ground — if it could even be called that — was a sticky, muddy mass of deep black, clinging to every step I took.
There was an almost living feeling to that muck, as if something was shifting beneath its surface. Above, the sky mirrored the same pitch-black tone, with no horizon or landmarks, creating the disturbing impression that this place was the same in every direction, an eternal prison where nothing changed no matter where you turned.
Of course, the place wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Though I can’t say for sure where it is, I’m almost certain I’ve been here before — probably when that shadow in the facility swallowed me, or something very much like it.
The strange part was that leaving this place wasn’t actually difficult; if anything, it was almost too easy. Honestly, I felt like whatever this thing was, it had a better chance of catching me if I were out there rather than in here — wherever “here” actually was.
Then something different caught my attention in the mud beneath my feet. The cold, sticky black sludge began to move, forming slow, lazy whirlpools a few feet away — as if the ground itself was breathing.
The air grew heavy and damp, and a sharp, earthy stench of rot spread around me. First came the bubbles, swelling and popping with a hollow, wet sound, like something was trying to break through the surface. Then two shapes began to emerge, slowly, as though being spat out by the earth’s guts.
They rose little by little, as though dragged out of a nightmare and into reality. First came the arms — thin, slick with dark mud dripping in slow, heavy strings — then the faces. Faces I knew well.
Emily and Laura. But there was something wrong with them. Their eyes were open, locked on me, yet they showed nothing. No emotion, no pain, not even the faintest trace of awareness. It was as if they were just... empty, hollow shells of themselves.
The mud slid from their hair in thick strands, dripping slowly from their chins and forming tiny puddles on the ground. Their mouths opened and closed in eerie silence, as if trying to scream but unable to force the sound out.
They said nothing. They stayed there, kneeling, motionless, their bodies trembling and melting, as if at any moment they’d collapse under their own weight and dissolve back into the damp, fetid muck that had birthed them.