It was the bright morning of October 17th. Tymon woke up abruptly. He was breathing heavily, his face was beaded with sweat, and his spirit energy was released.
When he looked around, he saw he was sitting in the exact spot he saw himself fall. However, the area was covered in flowers and healthy trees two centuries later. There were even wild animals roaming. But he could still feel traces of the residual energies flowing in the ground.
Tymon stood.
He noticed his head felt whole now that he had all his memories from his past life. Though his body still needed some catching up, his mind was more experienced. But it was weird. He felt mostly the same even though the past 20 years of his life were just a drop of his now much longer history.
Tymon thought about the memories he'd recovered—especially those of his torture.
He felt an emotion he hadn't experienced since then boil within him – hatred. A burning, white hatred for Avarice, Verin, and everything they've corrupted.
So much anger continued to bubble inside him that he let out a powerful yell that morphed into a roar.
Tymon wanted to make them suffer for the humiliation he went through. For the hellish torture, he was forced to endure. For the undeserving death after all of it.
Tymon had never felt more determined about anything in his life. He vowed to find a way to hurt each of them, and he wouldn't stop until everything important to them was destroyed.
As Tymon opened and closed his fists, he examined his energy. With his old memories, he now remembered how to use many of his abilities.
He summoned dark clouds to cover the sky above him. The clouds blocked out most of the sunlight, creating many shadows he could use. Tymon approached the shadow of a nearby tree and placed his hand on it. The shadow darkened as its texture changed into a dark vapor.
He could now use the shadow to travel to a shadow near his destination. Although it burned through a lot of his energy, he wasn't in the mood to figure out where he was so he could get back to HQ.
Tymon emerged from a shadow in his room at HQ. He quietly began to shed his clothes as he walked to the shower. As he showered, he remained spaced out; memories of what happened repeatedly repeated in his head.
Exiting the shower, he stood naked in front of his sink's mirror, staring blankly at himself. His mind raced as it came up with various ideas to take down Avarice and his empire, but each required something he lacked: power. Unless he could get stronger somehow, retaliating was an impossible dream. That should be his main focus for now.
His eyes and mind refocused as he tossed his dirty clothes into his spatial bag and pulled out clean identical ones. After getting mostly dressed, before putting on his jacket, he stopped and then stared at it. He placed the jacket back inside his spatial bag and pulled out the box Mr. Heart had given him.
Now dressed, Tymon made his way to the kitchen, where he found Alissia and Trik eating breakfast and watching the news.
"Oh wow! That looks good on you. It really suits the whole dark theme you've given yourself," Alissia said playfully, complimenting Tymon's new cloak. It was an all-black cloak that was tattered around the edges. Tymon requested the change from the original design because he didn't like wearing expensive-looking clothes. This felt more his style.
"It's a bit theatric if you ask me, but it does give off a certain heir-of-darkness kind of vibe," Trik commented.
Alissia stared at Trik.
"What," he asked.
"You're one to talk about theatrics," she riposted.
She turned her attention back to Tymon.
"It suits you."
"Thanks," Tymon replied.
"Everything okay? It seems like something's on your mind," Alissia said in concern.
"Yeah, just had a disturbing dream last night, is all," Tymon responded nonchalantly as he moved to find breakfast. He didn't want them to know about him regaining memories of his past life yet. He still needed time to figure out how to move forward, Avarice's purpose behind his experiments, and how that would affect them before making things worse by telling them.
"You and me both," Alissia stated.
"What's that about," Tymon asked, pointing at the news on the tv screen.
Alissia turned the TV volume up.
"... a recent string of murders has been committed by two presumable copycats imitating the infamous Cannibal Twins who terrorized the country five centuries ago. Due to the original twins' bodies never being found, some believe the twins are still alive today. After what we've seen in the last two hundred years, is it that far-fetched," said the news anchor.
"That's concerning," said Trik. "Cannibals who most likely know spirit manipulation."
"Hopefully, they get caught," Alissia said after swallowing her orange juice.
Then the news switched to a more recent story.
"In other news, a horrific car collision occurred uptown late last night near Frank's Ice Cream Shop. A woman and two children were reported to have died from the impact after the drunk man responsible was rushed to the hospital...."
Alissia muted the TV.
In the video of the wreckage, Tymon noticed the red truck he'd seen in the empty parking lot. The video then showed recent photos of the victims and the man responsible for the collision. To Tymon's disbelief, the man displayed was the drunk man he had saved the previous night.
Seeing this shook Tymon's faith in his powers. When he saved that man last night, he accepted the ability to sense how close someone is to death as something that would help him know who to save, but now he knew it wasn't that simple. He understood life wasn't some comic book.
By preventing one death, he caused three.
This epiphany, though small, changed Tymon's entire outlook. Moving forward, he would only view the death he sensed from others as fate. A fate he shouldn't interfere with.
Alissia looks at Tymon sympathetically.
"You can't feel responsible for this," she said as she approached him. "You had no idea that would happen when you saved that man. I would've tried to save him myself if I could."
"You've never killed someone before," Tymon said gravely. "You don't know what it's like to be directly responsible for someone's death."
"You weren't directly responsible," Alissia said reassuringly as she rubbed his back.
"Maybe not this time...Do either of you know about Brayton Village," Tymon asked.