Light
I was submerged in it, a brilliant, weightless glare that defied every law of physics I knew. My body felt less like flesh and bone and more like a collection of data points floating toward an unknown destination. "Where is this taking me?" I tried to shout, but my voice was drowned by the sheer speed that I am right now.
My eyes darted frantically, searching for a horizon or a fixed point, but there was only the tunnel—a kaleidoscopic artery of pure energy. I tried to make sense of the stimuli, my mind racing to categorize the phenomenon as a wormhole or a neural hallucination, but the sheer scale of the power around me made my logic feel small. I wasn't just traveling, I was being pulled.
After what felt like an eternity of suspension, the light broke. I didn't land; I simply existed in a new place. It was a scorched, barren wasteland where the horizon bled into a dark sky. Below, the earth had cracked open, and rivers of lava pooled into glowing, stagnant lakes—a landscape that defied every ecological principle of the surface world.
It was wrong. It was unnatural.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I began to search. There was someone I had to meet—someone I had to find. The Will of the Earth, the one who, I believe, has a defense against the Radical Destruction Bringer, a solution But as I turned, scanning the jagged rocks and the shimmering heat haze, I found something that caught my eye, a dark mist, that is staring at me.
It didn't just exist, it watched. It felt predatory. Then, a voice scraped against the air—bitter, entitled, and entirely out of place.
"So this is it? That ROB meant I have to take over the body myself? What a joke. Why couldn't he just facilitate the transfer? Useless, incompetent god."
The mist didn't wait for a response. It lunged. It swirled around me, colder than the lava was hot, and forced its way into my airway. I felt a crushing pressure on my chest—a sudden, acute respiratory failure as the dark presence began to saturate my very cells, trying to displace the 'me' that lived inside.
I was being crushed. The darkness wasn't just surrounding me; it was a localized pressure, like a physical weight pressing down on my consciousness. It felt as though my very identity was being deconstructed, piece by piece, as if a viral sequence was rewriting my neural pathways. My soul was being unraveled, and every instinct I had screamed in a futile attempt to shield my 'self' from the intrusion.
Yet, something was sustaining the mist. It felt like an external force—an invisible hand—was anchoring this parasite to my existence, making my resistance feel like a drop of water against an ocean.
In the final, desperate moments before I flickered out, my thoughts didn't cling to physics or formulas. I thought of home.
I thought of my father, a stubborn, iron-willed man who spent his life in service to others, teaching me that helping people wasn't a choice, but a duty. And I thought of my mother. She was the quiet strength that balanced him, a woman whose kindness was so profound it became my armor. She was the one who taught me to believe in the impossible, to have the courage to believe in myself, even when the world was dark.
That thought ignited something deep within my marrow. It was a spark of pure, defiant bio-energy. I refused to fade. I refused to be a hollowed-out vessel for an arrogant intruder.
With a roar that tore through my mental landscape, I pushed back. I threw every ounce of my will against the "Being," rejecting its presence with a force that felt like a physical explosion. The darkness recoiled, startled by the sudden surge of a human soul that refused to break.
As my consciousness began to fray at the edges, the world didn't go dark. Instead, it erupted. Through the haze of my failing vision, I saw it: a silver titan of light, towering and magnificent. He was adorned with bold red markings and a chest plate of shimmering gold that seemed to pulse with the heartbeat of the planet itself. He wasn't just a giant; he was the Earth made manifest, reaching out to claim what was his.
Time seemed to dilate. In that suspended second, I didn't feel fear. I felt a strange, familiarity. My lips moved, whispering a name I shouldn't have known, yet felt carved into my DNA:
"Gaia..."