Pain hits hard. Sharp stabs twist through everything.
A shudder ran through Adrian Blackwood as he lay stiff on the unyielding ground. Warm blood spread under his back, draining slow but steady into the cracks below. Above, nothing but dark air - no stars, just emptiness that pulsed with each blink. Sirens twisted through the distance, rising then fading like breath held too long. That knife in his ribs wasn't steel - it was Victor's laugh echoing after the shot. A friend? Not anymore. Just smoke and silence now.
All for greed.
Fading fast, Adrian let go of what he'd almost grasped - some wild twist in how reality held together. Not just new science. More like bending truth itself. Yet here, in the quiet dimming, it meant nothing at all. Pulse dropping low. Mind slipping through cracks.
Then darkness.
A World Unknown
Heat crashed over Adrian like a wave. Smell of wet ground mixed with something metallic stung his nose. Muscles didn't answer right - too soft, too strange. A low sound came from his throat as light stabbed through half-open lids.
A dull red sun sat heavy on the horizon, painting sharp peaks and shattered remains in odd light. Up he pushed, though every arm and leg burned like fire after battle. His eyes dropped downward.
They moved like someone else was wearing them.
Fingers thin, marked by old wounds. Clothed in rags drenched with blood. In standing water, a face looked back - strange, unfamiliar.
A sharp jolt hit his chest. Up he jumped, then wobbled - foreign pieces of thought flooding in like broken glass. Not his past, yet somehow known. A name surfaced: Kael Draven. Royalty cast out. The empire called him betrayer. They dumped him in the Forsaken Lands to rot.
Teeth clenched, Adrian froze. Could this be real? Maybe just a vision - something conjured as life slipped away. Then again, perhaps he'd started over after all.
A sound came from the back just as his mind started to catch up. It wasn't loud - more like something deep, slow, waiting.
He turned sharply.
A hulking shape perched on shattered stone, red eyes burning toward him. Huge it was, a horror woven from charred hair and sharp bones jutting out at odd angles. The name surfaced - Nightfang Stalker - not from thought but memory passed down through blood. This thing hunted where others feared to walk. Hunger curled behind its stare.
Fear beat hard in Adrian's chest. This shell of a body refused to obey. Thoughts scrambled, never shaped for fighting. A blade was nowhere near. Help wouldn't come knocking. Everything came down to gut reactions.
The beast lunged.
Time slowed.
A quiet force woke up, hidden far down where he hardly dared look. Heat built slow, then surged - like fire given voice - racing through his blood without warning.
One idea kept returning. His head wouldn't let it go.
Fate shifts when you move it. Reality bends because of what happens next.
Fingers trembling, Adrian Blackwood - now called Kael Draven - touched a force hidden deep inside. Not until that moment had he dared reach beyond what he knew.