The glass didn't just break; it shattered with a violent, concussive force that felt like a bomb detonating in a cathedral. A tidal wave of viscous, amber-hued fluid erupted from the cylinder, dragging Ronan with it. He slammed into the cold, metallic floor, the impact vibrating through his bones with a strange, harmonic hum. For a moment, he could only lie there, gasping and retching as the thick liquid drained from his lungs.
Every breath was a struggle. On Earth, the air had been thin and rain-scented; here, the atmosphere felt heavy, almost oily. It tasted of ozone and burnt copper, with a sickly-sweet undertone of rotting lilies.
"What..." he croaked, his voice sounding deeper, richer, and entirely unfamiliar to his own ears.
He pushed himself up, and the first thing he noticed was the lack of pain. The persistent ache in his lower back from years of hunching over manuscripts was gone. His joints didn't creak. Instead, he felt a terrifyingly smooth fluidity in his limbs. He looked down at his hands. They were slick with amber slime, but the skin beneath was flawlessly smooth, and mapped with a network of faint, violet veins that pulsed with a rhythmic, ethereal light.
"Silas... what did you do?" he whispered, his mind racing back to the lead-lined trunk and the obsidian heart.
The room he was in was a graveyard of machinery. Massive, rusted consoles lay overturned like the ribs of a dead beast.
Thick, bioluminescent moss crawled over the walls, pulsing with a rhythmic green light that provided the only illumination. He saw skeletons—dozens of them—slumped over workstations. They weren't wearing the clothes of his time; they wore reinforced leather and strange, crystalline fabrics that had survived the decay of centuries.
As he stood, a sudden, sharp sting pricked the back of his retinas. A translucent, golden box flickered into existence at the edge of his vision. He recoiled, swatting at the air, but the box followed his gaze.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[HOST: RONAN VANE]
[STATUS: CRITICAL STABILIZATION COMPLETE]
[LEVEL: 1 - THE SPARK]
"Level 1? Spark?" Ronan backed away, his heart—the new heart—thumping a heavy, metallic rhythm against his ribs. "Is this a projection? A hallucination?"
A sharp, wet scratching sound echoed from the darkness of the hallway.
Ronan froze. His historian's brain, trained to observe patterns, noticed the silence of the room was suddenly broken by a rhythmic click-clack of something hard hitting the metal floor. From the shadows, a creature emerged that defied every biological law Ronan knew.
It was roughly the size of a wolf, but its skin was a raw, bruised purple, stretched tight over a frame of jagged bone. It had no eyes, only a vertical slit for a mouth filled with rows of needle-like teeth. Its limbs ended in blackened, hooked talons.
[THREAT DETECTED: GRAVELING]
[STRENGTH RATING: LEVEL 1]
The gold text hovered over the creature, but Ronan didn't understand the "rating." All he understood was the primal, jagged hunger in the creature's posture. It hissed—a sound like steam escaping a pressurized pipe—and crouched.
"Wait," Ronan held up a hand, his voice trembling. "I don't... I'm not a threat."
The Graveling didn't care for diplomacy. It leaped.
It moved with a frantic, jerky speed. In a moment of pure panic, Ronan threw his arms up to shield his face. He expected the searing pain of talons, the weight of a predator crushing his chest.
Instead, he felt a surge of heat erupt from his core. The violet veins in his arms flared into a brilliant, blinding neon. When the creature collided with him, it didn't feel like a heavy animal; it felt like a toy.
Ronan's right hand shot out instinctively, his fingers closing around the creature's throat. He felt a jolt of violet electricity arc from his palm into the beast. There was a sickening crunch, and a burst of dark, foul-smelling liquid sprayed across the floor as the Graveling was thrown backward by the sheer force of his grip.
It slammed into a server rack and fell limp, its body twitching once before going still.
Ronan stared at his hands. They were shaking. "What was that? What did I just do?"
He looked at the creature, then at the golden text still lingering in the air. Graveling. Level 1. He looked at his own status. The Spark. He didn't know what "Level 1" meant in the grand scheme of things. He didn't know what the "Miasma" was, though he could feel the thick, energized air heightening his senses to a point that was almost painful. He only knew that the man who had been clearing out a basement in England was gone.
He began to search the lab, his movements cautious. He found a discarded cloak of a heavy, grey material that felt like spun metal and wrapped it around his bare shoulders. He picked up a shard of black glass that had fallen from a console—it was sharp enough to shave with.
As he moved toward the exit, his eyes caught a flickering monitor. It was the only piece of tech still drawing power. He leaned in, his historian's curiosity momentarily overriding his fear.
The screen showed a map of a city, but it was unlike any city on Earth. It was a series of concentric circles, each labeled with a number: 1 through 10. The outer rings were bathed in a deep, angry red, while the center was a calm, crystalline blue.
"Is that... a hierarchy?" he wondered aloud.
He swiped at the screen, and a final log entry appeared.
"The air is no longer ours. The Miasma has claimed the lowlands. Those who cannot ascend to Level 6 will not survive the night. We have buried the Heart. May the First Men forgive us."
"Miasma. Level 6. First Men." Ronan repeated the words, committed them to memory. It was a puzzle, and for the first time in his life, his survival depended on solving it.
He turned away from the screen and headed for the sloping tunnel that led upward. The air grew thinner and colder as he ascended, and the smell of the "sweet rot" grew stronger.
When he finally stepped out onto the surface, the breath was stolen from his lungs.
He was standing on a jagged cliff. Below him lay a valley of ruins—toppled spires of white marble half-submerged in a sea of thick, swirling purple fog. Trees with black, pulsating bark grew through the windows of shattered skyscrapers. In the sky, two moons hung like pale, judging eyes, and the stars were obscured by a shimmering, Aurora-like haze of green and violet.
He looked at his arm. The violet veins were glowing brighter out here, as if the very air was feeding them.
"I have to get back," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I have to find a way home."
But as he looked out at the alien horizon, at the monstrous silhouettes moving in the fog below, Ronan Vane realized with a sinking horror that he didn't even know which direction 'home' was. He was at the bottom of a world that functioned on rules he didn't know, powered by a force that seemed to be rewriting his very soul.
He was a Level 1 in a world that looked like it started at 10.