Xaren felt his mind drifting in a foggy void, trapped in an endless, surreal dreamscape. The dream was a jumble of images and emotions, strange and nonsensical, but it was gone instantly when a sharp, throbbing sensation pierced the haze, dragging him to consciousness.
He awoke suddenly, disoriented and unable to recall anything from his dream.
The first thing he noticed was how wrong everything felt. His body was confined in a cramped space, surrounded by air that stank of a rancid, sticky fluid. There was no light, only darkness pressing in on him from all sides.
Instinctively, Xaren tried to call out, but the moment he opened his mouth, he choked on the foul liquid that flooded his lungs.
Panic seized him as he thrashed about, trying desperately to escape from drowning in this liquid. His hands struck something—a wall, or at least something like it. It was soft and had an elastic feel.
Ignoring the strange discomfort gnawing at his body, Xaren pounded on the wall with all his strength, clawing at it with his nails until it finally tore open.
A sliver of light seeped through the gap, igniting a spark of hope within him. He shoved his hands into the tear, prying it wider until the viscous liquid around him began to drain out.
Gasping, he coughed up the fluid that had filled his lungs, then widened the gap just enough to squeeze his body through. He tumbled out onto the ground, landing in a small pool of the same vile liquid.
The first thing that struck him was the strange lighting of his surroundings.
'Rainbow?'
Blinking, he looked up and saw a sky that was crimson, not the familiar blue of his memories. It was dotted with countless stars and nearly a dozen moons, each a different colour, casting an eerie glow over the landscape.
He turned to see what he had just emerged from and was met with the sight of a massive flesh cocoon, pulsating faintly as it lay torn open.
Xaren was utterly confused.
His last memory was feeling his life slip away on the battlefield, and now here he was, crawling out of some grotesque cocoon.
'Where the heck am I?
Aren't I supposed to be dead? I'm pretty sure even my Tenacity skill couldn't keep me alive with those wounds.
So where is this? The afterlife? Underworld?'
Xaren looked around to take in more of the sight around him, and he saw he was on a beach of some sort.
Unlike the white sand in his memories, this beach had bright yellow sand particles, large and coarse, resembling the coal he used to burn for warmth at night.
These strange particles emitted a blue gas that drifted lazily into the air, and some of them had melted into a blood-red liquid that flowed sluggishly into the crimson ocean before him.
'Yellow sand that smokes blue and melts into red? What sort of crazy place is this?!'
But rather than the chemical reactions he could not comprehend, what surprised him the most was the sheer number of flesh cocoons on the beach with him.
Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them, lined the shore as far as he could see.
Some were cocoons of flesh, and he spotted a few that looked like giant chicken eggs here and there. Their colours were different as well, having black, red, and even purple and silver.
On a side note, his own cocoon was dark red.
The ocean's tide seemed to be pushing these cocoons and eggs onto the beach, depositing them haphazardly among the yellow sands.
Xaren tried to get to his feet, but the discomfort in his body from earlier came back and he lost control of his limbs, falling to the ground.
'I'm…smaller?'
His sense of balance was off due to his body size being greatly different.
Xaren wasn't the tallest guy around, but the last time he checked his height, he was around 5'10". Right now, however, he was pretty sure he was at least one foot shorter.
Just before he turned his gaze down to try using his hands to force himself up, he heard a loud cracking sound and turned around to see one of the giant eggs right next to his cocoon splitting open.
A small, clawed hand burst through the surface of the egg, jagged nails digging into the shell as it pried it apart.
The sound of the cracking intensified, echoing across the strange beach. The creature inside fought its way out with raw, primal strength, ripping and tearing at the egg with fierce determination.
As the shell finally gave way, the creature emerged, covered in a slick, viscous fluid that dripped from its tiny, muscular frame.
Its eyes, glowing with a faint, eerie light, blinked open as it surveyed the surroundings, hissing softly.
It was small, barely a few feet tall, with sharp features and sinewy limbs. It stretched, shaking off the remaining pieces of the shell before taking its first steps on the yellow sand.
All around Xaren, the same scene repeated itself.
Thousands of eggs and cocoons were beginning to hatch, each one releasing a different creature. Some creatures clawed their way out with sharp, pointed talons, while others used their horns to pierce through the shells.
The air was filled with the sound of cracking, tearing, and the guttural cries of newborn creatures as they emerged from their fleshy prisons.
Some of them were humanoid, staggering to their feet with unsteady gaits, some had beast forms with their four limbs on the ground, while others had humanoid bodies and beast heads.
There were some that looked like insects with many legs and tiny wings cases on their backs.
Their skin tones varied as wildly as their forms. The majority were blackish-red, the colour of dried blood, but others had dark grey, cyan, or even layered skin that overlapped like scales.
The beach, once eerily quiet, was now alive with movement and noise.
At the sight of this, dread washed over Xaren like a cold wave. He recognized these creatures.
'Demons!!!'
Xaren had somehow ended up in what could only be a demon-hatching ground.
Surrounded by thousands of newly born demons, each one potentially dangerous and hungry, Xaren's first instinct was to run.
He had just been killed by a demon and an angel teaming up against him, and he had no desire to face another encounter, especially not here, where he could get jumped by thousands of hungry demons wanting to devour his soul.
He tried to push himself up, summoning all his strength into his arms. But as he moved, something caught his eye—his own arm.
"…h..uh?"
A dumbfounded sound escaped his lips as he stared at his skin. It wasn't the familiar human flesh he remembered. Instead, it was a cold, slate grey.
Raising his gaze, he looked at the nearby demon who was scratching its head in confusion and saw that its skin was also grey.
What's more, this Demon had a pair of small horns on its head and seeing them, a thought came to Xaren's head.
'No way…right?'
Slowly, almost fearfully, Xaren raised his hand to his head. His fingers trembled as they touched two small, pointed protrusions growing from the crown of his skull. They felt like bones but were also harder than bones.
The tips were also a bit sharp and he felt he could cut himself on them.
At that point, Xaren didn't need to think too much.
"…I'm in a demon's body…"
As soon as he grasped this realization, a sharp, searing pain exploded in his skull.
Xaren clutched his head, doubling over as a guttural cry tore from his throat, a sound more primal and rawer than anything he had ever heard himself make.
The pain was unbearable; like his skull was splitting apart as foreign memories flooded Xaren's mind, overwhelming him with information.
All around him, newborn demons clutched their heads in agony, writhing as their heads were flooded with strings of information.
In reality, the pain was not coming from their heads but their Souls!
The soul was one of the three major aspects of one's existence, alongside their physical body and their energy core.
The energy core was within the body, and the body was intricately connected to the soul. Soul-based phenomena were often reflected in the physical body via this connection.
An example would be Skills. Skills were basically specialised proficiencies and abilities that existences possess through various means.
They could be acquired by training & experience, one could create skills too depending on the situation, and most often; innate talent was a huge factor in the type and power of skills gained.
Each skill was a Rune on the wielder's soul that was a combination of energy, 'Experience', and a few other things.
Through the body's connection with the soul, the power of these runes could be exhibited through their bodies.