Adam was swallowed whole by the blackness of the wormhole, tumbling through an endless void where stars shimmered on liquid-like walls.
The dizzying sensation of spinning took hold, making him feel as though he were falling, despite the absence of ground or direction.
His voice echoed as he yelled, "Aaaaah!" but there was no one to hear him in the eerie, endless tunnel.
Then, with a sudden pull, he was ejected from the darkness and into light.
Before he could comprehend what was happening, he was plummeting from the sky, gravity seizing him and pulling him downward.
The wormhole that had spat him out closed behind him as if it had never existed.
Twisting mid-air, his head tilted back as he fell, desperately trying to take in his surroundings.
Below him sprawled an alien world. A barren, mountainous terrain covered in a dusting of snow and scattered rocky hills stretched out beneath him. Panic struck—he was hurtling straight toward it.
"Oh no, oh no, oh no!" he stammered, as the reality of his situation set in. "I'm going to die. There's no way I can survive this!"
The ground rushed closer, the wind whipping against his face. He instinctively threw his hands in front of him, as though they might shield him from the inevitable impact.
With an earth-shattering force, Adam crashed into the ground. A thick cloud of dust exploded around him, and the earth beneath him buckled, forming a crater five meters deep.
Miraculously, he felt... nothing. No pain, no broken bones. His eyes fluttered open in shock—he should be dead or at least in agony.
Slowly, he lifted his head and looked down at his hands. They moved. His fingers flexed, each one obeying his commands as if nothing had happened.
"What… How am I…?" he muttered, bewildered. He touched his arms, shoulders, legs. Every part of his body seemed perfectly intact. He wasn't paralyzed. He wasn't even hurt.
Propping himself up, he noticed the massive crater around him—a testament to the force with which he had struck the ground. "Did I… do that?" he whispered in disbelief. There's no way…
Glancing down at his school uniform—a light blue shirt and standard pants, offering no protection from the cold air—he realized the chill barely bothered him. The sheer strangeness of his surroundings demanded his attention.
Pulling himself up, Adam took in his surroundings. Sparse, frost-dusted hills stretched out endlessly.
The place was utterly barren—no signs of life, no plants, no buildings, just a vast, cold space. An unsettling silence hung in the air, making everything feel otherworldly.
Where am I? he wondered. And why was everything so quiet, so still?
Tentatively, he took a step forward. The moment his foot touched the ground, he shot forward in a powerful leap, soaring twenty meters through the air.
His eyes widened as he looked down, realizing he was still airborne before coming down, landing with a force that caused spiderweb cracks to spread out from where he hit the ground.
"What… just happened?" he whispered, shock coursing through him. It was as if he had become stronger, faster, as though the laws of physics no longer applied to him here.
In the silence of the strange world, Adam took a deep breath, trying to calm his thoughts. But questions crowded his mind.
What kind of place was this? And where was this strength coming from? Was it the wormhole, or something about this planet?
Adam scanned the vast emptiness, searching for any sign of life or shelter. Small hills capped with frost surrounded him, and jagged mountains loomed on the horizon, coated in ice and rock.
There were no signs of civilization—no roads, no buildings—just an endless, desolate terrain.
Wrapping his arms around himself, he felt the cold biting through his thin uniform. "I need to find shelter… or at least figure out how to control whatever's happening to my body."
Taking a cautious step forward, he was mindful of his movements.
But even when he tried to be gentle, his foot still launched him into a powerful leap. Soaring through the air once more, he glanced back mid-flight, watching the crater he'd left behind shrink as he flew beyond it.
With each leap, his heart raced faster. Every landing cracked the ground beneath him, and every jump sent him further and faster. Am I… superhuman?
Adam took a cautious step forward, trying to control his strange new strength.
Yet even his lightest steps still sent him a few meters into the air, as if gravity had little hold on him.
He paused, focused, and attempted to place his foot down with an extreme delicacy.
This time, he managed to stay grounded, though his steps still had an unusual weight and power to them, making the ground respond with unnatural shifts beneath him.
After a few meters, Adam lifted his foot a bit too high and, without thinking, let it land harder than intended.
The earth sank where his foot landed, forming a small depression, his weight pressing down as if the ground itself were pliable clay.
"What… is going on here?" Adam muttered, frustration mixing with confusion. He tried to pull his foot free, but the force he used was excessive, and suddenly he launched into the air, rocketing upward nearly a hundred meters.
The landscape below him rapidly shrank, and the wind whipped around him as he soared into the open sky.
For a brief moment, he drifted upward, caught between amazement and bewilderment. Why can't I control this? he wondered, realizing that his attempts to regulate his movements felt like trying to balance dynamite.
Gravity soon took over, and Adam began his descent. He braced himself as he hurtled toward the ground, landing with a thunderous impact.
Though the resulting crater was smaller than before, a dense cloud of dust billowed out from the point of impact, momentarily obscuring him.
The land trembled under his feet as the dust began to settle, revealing Adam standing within yet another impact crater.
In this barren, silent world, his every step carried the force of a battering ram, yet his body remained miraculously unharmed.
It was clear now that he had entered a place where his own strength was both a gift and a burden—one he would have to master to survive in this strange, desolate land.