"Gah!" Cain opened his eyes. The entire world around him was blank, in his vision he could see countless hovering silhouettes giving off soul fluctuations all around him.
The silhouettes were mainly gray but they each had different colors mixed in.
Suddenly, the world seemed to reconstruct itself. Buildings and roads materialized in seconds, and the silhouettes gained the aspects of humans, no, they were humans.
Cain found himself on a street, people walking around him and conversing.
"W-Where am I?!" He jumped up, shuffling to a nearby café, and looking at his reflection.
'T-This...this isn't me at all!' Cain's face warped with horror. He saw himself in the reflection, but the reflection did not belong to him, it was an unrecognizable person. The only comfort was seeing his green eyes the same as always.
...
'Ugh...I have a headache.'
Stretching, Cain awoke. He remembered the events of hitting the pile of corpses and entering the place that swallowed the Dream Realm.
'Am I inside that orb now?' Cain stood up but lost his balance, he fell over and injured his arm.
'Ow! Since when was my arm brittle? Wait...why is everything blank?'
As Cain realized the empty world, the sky filled with light, and modern buildings along with people appeared. He stared blankly before noticing he was on a roof.
Then he realized something more horrifying.
'Wait...why the hell do I have wings!'
Below him, a young child pointed and screamed, "Mom! Look! It's a raven! I thought the teacher said they were extinct!"
The mother laughed, "Billy, your teacher said they are endangered, they are close to extinction, I remember reading online somewhere that ravens were hunted for sport and now there's only a few hundred left...but why is there one here? Shouldn't they all have been caught by now?"
Cain had a meltdown, the red in his black irises disappearing. 'I'm a raven?! I'm a damn bird?! There's not a raven next to me, right?!'
Unfortunately for him, he was the only bird on that roof.
...
"Who am I? What's going on..." Cain's green eyes shuddered.
He was a mess wandering through the streets, moving instinctively as different images bubbled in his mind before popping into nothing.
"I'm Cain?! No... I'm Isaac? I need to go to the Bureau for a job...wait no! No, I'm Cain, I have the blood of Manus in me! I can't be a mere government worker!"
With great difficulty, Cain was able to remember himself, but during the process his head got muddled with the other personality of Cain he devoured and the person he seemingly took over, gaining their memories. But all they did was overshadow his emotions with an even greater hatred for the one who stole his Origin.
He hated the feeling of not being whole, he remembered the time he was like it was yesterday. The two were vastly different planes of existing, Cain didn't wish to spend another day like this.
"That thief! He even sacrificed others to get what he wanted! No matter, I'll find him and squash his brains! But...I can't use those powers I had....what happened?"
He looked up for the first time in a while. Cain was surprised.
"Did I walk all the way here?!"
He was standing before the Bureau building.
"Isaac I presume, your the new guy right? I've heard you got full marks at the training facility." A well-dressed man was at some point bedside Cain, coffee in hand.
His words triggered more of Isaac's memories to come out, Cain remembered training, training to hunt down monsters and cultists.
'Did I possess someone who hunts evil? This is a place of mysteries and evil gods?!'
Cain was brought inside and sent to a waiting room, he was to wait for his interview. The man who brought him in praised him for coming a whole hour early. Cain didn't mind either, it gave him time to go through Isaac's memories.
'My family died when I was young to a monster on a rampage, I was brought into a program that trained me to hunt monsters and cultists who worship evil entities. Last week I finished my training and graduated with full marks, now I'm to join the Bureau, an organization backed by the government to hunt and regulate the mystical forces since the majority of people don't know of this side of their world.'
Images of a fire and a grotesque monster with burning fur entered Cain's mind.
'A Lycan is what killed my family, a fugitive who's wanted by the Bureau.'
"Isaac. We can take you now." An attendant came through a door and called Cain's new name, he stood up and followed.
He was led into a cramped room where someone was already waiting. The attendant left and closed the door behind her.
The interviewer organized his papers and spoke politely.
"Mr. Bur, please take a seat."
'So my full name is Isaac Bur?' Cain pulled out his chair and sat down.
The interviewer began, "So I know your past, and I have your marks from the Academy from Lindinvale. They're impressive, but even so, jumping straight into the Bureau doesn't happen, ever. Typically you spend time in law enforcement as part of a special team before showing your talents and getting to this point. But you, Mr. Bur, skipped all that and applied immediately. So, why should the Bureau even consider you?"
Isaac straightened his back and thought for a moment, he then answered with a serious tone, "Because I'm special, not in my past or my grades, but the fact I have sacrificed something. You have that on file too, don't you?"
The Interviewer frowned, "We do, indeed, it's impressive for you to have already begun walking the Path of Sacrifice, even if it's a Path anyone can find themselves on."
In the world, there were many paths, each with a different origin. This was because this world was built from the scraps of thousands of lands, but no one knew that.
Of the many paths, Three were mostly intact, allowing the inhabitants to gain power beyond the rest. One of these paths was the Path of Sacrifice.
It was the strangest and easiest path to walk down, many civilians mistakenly walked down this path and became power-hungry monsters or real monsters.
The Path of Sacrifice was simple, say out loud you're willing to sacrifice something, anything even. In response, the speaker will lose one thing and gain another, but if there aren't specifications bad things will happen, hence most people becoming monsters.
The proper procedure is like a trade, with the speaker listing what they will give up and asking for something in return. This is far harder to achieve so most just speak out what they want and they will lose something of their own. The unlucky ones will lose an important organ or even their life.
Isaac was lucky, when his parents died he screamed out for power and so he gained the chance for it, the Path granting his wish and taking his feeling of love; leaving him without compassion. But what he gained was talent, unadulterated talent.
Since that point, Isaac no longer cared about his parent's deaths, not even the one who killed his family. He simply wished to join the Bureau to put to full use of their resources for his talents.
This was more than enough to sway the Bureau, Isaac didn't need experience when he could learn anything in a matter of hours.
Still, out of the three main paths, Sacrifice was the most mysterious, no one knew where the powers they gained came from nor where what was taken went. It was a total mystery.
Putting the papers down, the Interviewer looked at Cain. His brows knitted. He was a veteran agent and didn't want to see someone young like Isaac get a free pass. Yet had no reason to reject Isaac, he was even told by his supervisors to accept him.
'To let such a young man in...hundreds of experienced veterans try to join every year but he gets in so easily. Talent trumps all I suppose.' He sighed and put down his papers.
The Interviewer calmed down and said, "Isaac Bur, your application to join the Bureau has been approved. We will send your senior agent to get you in three days for training. For now, go home and rest.
Cain stood up from his seat, his mind flushing joyfully, 'I got in. Nice.'