Ares drifted.
There was no light. No sound. No sensation.
Just an endless, suffocating void.
For a moment—maybe a second, maybe an eternity—he wondered if this was death. If his consciousness was unraveling, dissolving into nothingness.
But then—
System: [SYSTEM ERROR: BONDING FAILURE]
[ATTEMPTING RECONNECTION...]
A flicker. A pulse of something—not quite pain, but awareness.
Then—
System: [UNKNOWN ORGANISM DETECTED]
[ADAPTING...]
Ares couldn't move. He had no body, no form, just raw existence suspended in emptiness. But something was happening. A force, a presence, was trying to attach itself to him.
It felt like thousands of tiny threads sinking into his very being, weaving, connecting, latching onto his consciousness like a parasite trying to merge with its host.
But it wasn't working.
System: [ERROR—HOST INCOMPATIBLE]
[SYSTEM STABILIZATION REQUIRED]
Something cracked. The void trembled.
And then—
Pain.
Ares' mind exploded with sensation. His nerves burned. His thoughts fragmented. The presence inside him twisted, shifting, trying to take root.
The system was failing.
System: [CRITICAL ERROR—HOST REJECTION]
A static burst of unreadable symbols flooded his awareness. Glitched warnings flickered in and out of existence, failing before they could be processed.
It was like being caught in a storm of corrupted data, breaking apart and reforming in endless cycles.
He felt like he was falling—no, being dragged.
Somewhere beyond the void, something cracked open.
Then—
System: [RECALIBRATING...]
A new notification flickered into existence.
System: [UNKNOWN ORGAN DETECTED]
[ANALYZING...]
The system hesitated. For the first time, it didn't know what it had found.
More errors. More static. But Ares felt it—something deep inside him, something foreign yet part of him. It pulsed faintly, like a second heart, radiating an unfamiliar warmth.
The system couldn't identify it.
It only knew that it wasn't supposed to be there.
System: [ERROR: UNCLASSIFIED BIOLOGICAL STRUCTURE DETECTED]
[INTEGRATION INCOMPLETE...]
[UNKNOWN ENERGY SIGNATURE PRESENT...]
Light.
Ares' body slammed into the ground.
Air punched from his lungs. Cold, damp earth pressed against his bare skin. His entire body ached, as if every muscle had been torn apart and stitched back together.
He gasped, chest heaving, lungs burning as he sucked in his first breath.
He was alive.
And then, in the back of his mind—
System: [SYSTEM ONLINE...]
[INITIALIZING...]
[ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED]
[UNKNOWN ENVIRONMENT DETECTED]
The text flickered, glitched, then faded.
Ares' fingers dug into the dirt. His mind swirled with confusion. His body screamed in pain.
And for the first time, he realized—
He wasn't in the city anymore.