The first thing I noticed was the silence.
Not the absence of sound, but a suffocating, oppressive stillness—the kind that clings to your soul. It was the kind of silence that comes after betrayal, after the trust you've built is torn apart by someone you once called a friend.
I remember it clearly, the glint of the knife as it sliced through my chest. The pain was sharp, but it wasn't the wound that hurt the most. It was the face of the one holding the blade. Damien, my closest ally, the one I trusted more than anyone, stared back at me with cold, calculating eyes.
"You flew too close to the sun," he said, his voice as smooth and venomous as the poison that burned in my veins. "You should have known your brilliance would make you a target."
I wanted to laugh, to tell him how cliché his words sounded. But all I could do was choke on the blood filling my lungs.
I was supposed to be the best—the prodigy who climbed higher than anyone in the corporate world. A man who turned ambition into reality, building an empire from nothing. And yet, in my final moments, I wasn't a king on a throne. I was a pawn discarded by the one who'd played the board better.
As the darkness closed in, I felt a strange sense of relief. At least the struggle was over. No more endless days clawing my way to the top. No more betrayal lurking around every corner. I let go, ready to embrace the void.
But the void had other plans.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't dead. Not exactly.
I couldn't move. I couldn't feel my body. No heartbeat, no breath, just... existence. My vision was blurry, but I could make out fragments of what surrounded me: jagged stone walls, glowing veins of light coursing through ancient rock.
Then I saw myself—or rather, what I had become.
Suspended in the center of a cavern, I was no longer human. My form was crystalline, a multifaceted orb pulsing with a faint, golden glow. Tiny arcs of energy flickered across my surface, and within, I could sense something... alive.
Power.
It coursed through me, raw and untamed, as if I were a vessel brimming with untold potential. But it was incomplete, fractured, like a mirror shattered into a thousand shards.
"What... is this?" My voice echoed, not through sound, but as a thought that resonated within the cavern.
No answer came. Only silence.
For what felt like an eternity, I was alone, trapped in this new form. Time lost meaning as I drifted between confusion and anger. Had I been punished? Was this some twisted afterlife, a purgatory for those who dared to dream too high?
But then, I wasn't alone anymore.
A faint rustle broke the silence, followed by soft footsteps. A figure emerged from the shadows—a girl, no older than sixteen, clutching her side as blood dripped from between her fingers. Her breaths were shallow, and her steps faltered as she collapsed just meters from me.
"Help..." she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Something stirred within me, a strange pull that defied reason. Without thinking, I reached out—not physically, but with the energy that flowed through me. A tendril of light stretched from my crystalline body toward her, wrapping around her like a lifeline.
The moment our energies connected, I felt a surge of warmth, a spark that lit up the darkness of my existence. The fractures within me began to mend, and for the first time, I felt... whole.
But it wasn't without cost. The girl's wounds healed, her breathing steadied, and her eyes fluttered open to meet mine. Yet in the process, something within me shifted.
I was no longer just the Core.
I was alive.
As I took my first steps in this new, unfamiliar body, I glanced down at the girl who had unknowingly saved me. She looked at me with a mix of fear and wonder, her lips forming a single, trembling question:
"What... are you?"
I didn't have an answer. All I knew was that I wasn't the man I used to be.
I had been betrayed, killed, and reborn into a world I didn't understand. But one thing was clear: the power within me was real. And this time, I wouldn't let anyone take it away.
Not Damien.
Not this new world.
No one.