I hurried. If any of it had been true, then it would be there. I ran outside, heart hammering. The morning air was sharp, filled with the scent of damp earth, but as I neared the pile, the stench hit me like a brick wall.
Didn't matter. I dug my hands in. The filth squelched between my fingers, thick and heavy. The smell — well, you could imagine it. But I didn't care. Not when my fingers brushed something solid beneath the muck.
I pulled it free. My notebook. Precious, forbidden, mine. The fabric was damp, covered in rotting plant matter, but I hurriedly unwrapped it, uncovering the pages hidden within. I flipped to the end, my breath uneven. The last pages, where everything I had managed to gather about Ars.
It wasn't much. Years of searching, scraps of stolen words, whispered knowledge. All of it only amounted to one page. The first two paragraphs spoke of awakening. Different methods existed, but the most common, and safest, was through an Ars Stone. The rest? Unreliable, dangerous, uncertain. Some methods didn't work at all.
But the third paragraph spoke of what came after. The System. It instructed me to close my eyes and focus on my head. It claimed that for those who awakened, the head itself would change. That it would no longer be only theirs. That a symbiotic being would take root inside.
I didn't know what symbiotic meant. But if it could get me out of this shit hole, then I was okay with it. I inhaled, steadying myself. And I focused.
The world around me dimmed. My breath slowed. I let my mind sink inward, deeper and deeper, past my thoughts. The battle. The fear. The moment my sword struck true. The words.
Emptiness. At first, I saw or felt nothing. Something moved. A crawl from the base of my neck. A sensation unlike anything I had ever felt. It slithered upward, unseen fingers pressing, spreading, wrapping around the back of my skull.
Higher. Over my temples. Across my forehead. Then down. Over my eyes. I gasped. Heat. Tears spilled down my cheeks, hot, burning, but it was not pain. It moved, it danced, shifting, coiling, weaving over my vision, like something tracing delicate patterns over my skin.
And strangely. I did not find it gross. Nor uncomfortable. It was natural. As if it had always been there, waiting to be awakened.
My eyes shot open. And I saw the world differently. Shades of red bled into my vision, deep and vibrant, outlining everything with a strange, pulsating clarity. The air felt charged, alive, the space around me humming.
And inside me. Strength. It rushed through my veins, surging like fire in my blood. My limbs felt lighter, my breath deeper, my muscles brimming with power I had never known.
I turned. A tree stood nearby. I lifted my fist. And struck. The bark shattered beneath my knuckles, splintering outward in an explosion of dust and wood. The tree groaned, cracking at its core.
I stared. I did that. Euphoria surged through me. This is it. This is real. This is — a wave of tiredness. Like hands pulling me down, dragging the fire from my limbs, weighing down my breath.
My eyes — so heavy — I closed them. For a moment, nothing. Then I opened them again. The morning light. The world, back to normal. The shades of red gone. The air, still. My body, whole, yet exhausted.
I exhaled. It worked. The awakening was real. Finally, I had it. The power to get out of this damned land. For once, I had something. But before I let myself get swallowed by hope, I glanced back at the notebook.
There was more. The last two paragraphs. My fingers trembled slightly as I picked it up again, the pages stiff and still damp. I read carefully.
It spoke of how to use the System. It said I only had to focus one eye. Just one. Any more than that and it would blur, overwhelmed by the red shades that painted the world. Through that focus, I would see the things that contain Ars, information that couldn't be seen otherwise.
More than that, it would show me tiers. People. Creatures. Ranked. I only knew of two — Plagued and Cursed. Even in this forsaken town, there were whispers. Of men whose blood turned to bile, who spread rot with a touch. Of creatures that twisted land and body alike, where fields died and children were born wrong.
Which tier had that creature been? The message said Doomed. That wasn't Plagued. That wasn't Cursed. Was it higher? Lower? Worse? I needed to know. And yet, of my own power… nothing. The notes said little, almost nothing. How to use it, how to train it — blank space.
I stared at the paper, hoping the words would change. They didn't. All I had were rumors. That each awakened power came with a _stain._ Some flaw, some curse, like a cruel balancing act. Something given, something taken.
What was my stain? The message said I had awakened fear. But what did that mean? Was it the moment when I looked into that creature, into its fear? If so, could I see the fear of others? Could I manipulate it? Crush them with their own dread?
How would I even trigger it? The uncertainty coiled in my gut. I had fought, bled, awakened, and now I stood here, holding this power I didn't know how to use. I was frustrated. I clenched the notebook tightly.
One step at a time. I told myself that. I had to. Still, I turned to the last part, the Eruption. Barely anything. A sentence. A whisper. An event, random. Unpredictable. Something that could pull me to the other side.
The Ars world. What was that? A world of awakened? Of monsters? Of truth? Was it where the creature came from? Or where I would go? And if there was another world… then what was this one?
Just the waiting room? A farm for broken men? Was everyone else sleeping? Were they real? Was I real before this? The more I thought, the more the walls of everything I believed began to shift.
If there was an Ars world… then maybe this place, this village, this life, wasn't even real at all. Just the before. Just the test. And what if awakening wasn't a blessing?
What if it was a sentence? Was I meant to leave here? Or was I meant to be something else entirely — something not human anymore? What if this wasn't the end of the nightmare but only the beginning? Fuck it, at least, I was me.
There was one more thing, something I almost forgot. I hadn't even written it down, maybe because part of me didn't want to admit it. Burn the notebook. That was the rule. The first rule. The most important one.
No evidence. No trail. No risk. If anyone found it, especially here, in this place of dull eyes and sharper tongues, they'd report it. I held it in my hands a moment longer, the old fabric still damp from filth, the pages heavy with years of my hunger, my obsession, my hope.
I hesitated. This notebook had been everything to me. My secret. My dream. My curse. But it had served its purpose. Now, it was weight. I stepped behind the house, near the edge of the field, where the wind passed but no one else did. I knelt, placed the book on the dry grass, and I set it on fire.
It caught fast. The fire danced through the pages like it had been waiting. A flash of blackened ink, a curl of old paper, and my past began to vanish. I watched it burn. The years of scavenging, the hours spent listening to half-mad whispers in taverns, the nights staring at cryptic symbols by candlelight, they went up in smoke.
And it felt right. The flames weren't erasing me. They were freeing me. I stood as the last corner of the cover curled inward, ashes scattering into the wind. My past hope was gone, but only to make space for the new.
Then I remembered something else. A scrap of advice, said in slurred breath by a drunkard leaning against the butcher's wall. Most of my notes were from drunkards, if I was being honest. I had collected half-truths from men who could barely see straight, who mistook fantasy for memory.
Was I crazy to believe them? Maybe. But back then, belief was all I had. The man had said: if you wanted to see who you are after awakening, imagine yourself in a dark room. Alone. No sound. No shape. Just yourself and the truth. And if you're truly awakened, the System will show itself.
So I sat. Closed my eyes. Focused. I imagined darkness, not a void, but a room. Four invisible walls pressing in. The kind of dark that breathes. That _watches._ I imagined standing in the center, breathing slow, steady.
It happened. A flicker. A shift. And in front of me, floating in that imagined dark, something began to take shape. A window of light. Words written in pale colors.
Charles
Age: 30
Path: Awakened of the Fear
Core: Common
I stared. My name. My path. It was real. No dream. No madness. This was me.