Chapter Nine — Beginning
Sam's first thought was that he couldn't feel his skin.
Not numbness—absence. As though the boundary between his mind and the world had simply ceased to exist. There was no touch, no sound, no sense of space—only a hollow void pressing in from all sides, trying to swallow what little awareness he had left.
The liquid enveloped him completely.
It was heavy. Invasive. It seeped into places he hadn't known existed, bypassing instinct, bypassing resistance. His breath hitched reflexively, lungs screaming as his body fought a panic it could no longer fully comprehend.
Light fractured around him. Blue bled into green, then back again, pulsing softly with the slow movement of the fluid.
The pressure wasn't painful—but it was relentless. An unceasing insistence that made it impossible to forget its presence. And beneath it, something else stirred.
A cold—like being stuck in the middle of the North Pole wearing summer clothing.
It ignored his flesh entirely—no, bypassed it. It went straight for his soul, forcing itself in as a new constant. A foreign state of being.
Thought grew heavy.
Not just slowed—weighed down. A suffocating pressure wrapped around his very consciousness, pressing from every direction, dulling his will, dragging him toward something dangerously close to sleep.
No.
Sam forced himself to stay awake. To move.
The command reached his limbs—but arrived distorted, delayed, as though his body no longer fully comprehend his will. His fingers twitched.
The liquid reacted instantly.
It tightened. Adjusted. Pulled him deeper into its grasp—physically, and otherwise.
The pressure behind his eyes spiked, sharp enough to steal the air from his lungs—
And then, without warning—
Something clicked.
But of course, these were only Sam's perceptions.
Reality differed… slightly.
————-
Outside.
The instant Sam entered the tank, the contents shifted into an active state.
The boundary sealed behind him without a ripple, the translucent substance folding inward until no trace of the opening remained. Within seconds, his body was fully suspended—limbs slack, eyes closed, chest rising faintly.
The viscous liquid began to sink into him.
Skin first.
Then deeper—muscle, bone—vanishing seamlessly. Its volume in respect to Sam's seemed not to matter.
But then—
It stalled.
The gathered energy hesitated, dispersing outward as though encountering resistance. Readings fluctuated. For a brief moment, the process destabilized.
But then something seized it.
Something that had in its very core the will to 'take'.
The energy reversed direction, drawn sharply inward—pulled—forced deeper into Sam and disappeared past his body, past his soul to the very core of his being.
———
In the adjacent tank, Serena was undergoing the same procedure.
Two readouts activated simultaneously.
ATLAS observed both.
Parameters streamed across its lens—biological adaptation rates, neural conductivity, anomalous resonance patterns. The data flowed within predicted tolerances.
Then ATLAS paused.
In Sam's tank, the energy signature inverted.
A deviation registered.
His readings spiked.
Not just in magnitude.
In depth.
Beyond expected parameters.
Beyond modeled outcomes.
Within moments, the ambient mana—already increasing since the proliferation of rifts—began drifting toward the chamber.
Toward Sam.
The barriers around the tanks activated fully.
Invisible fields flared to life, distortion rippling faintly through the air as layers of containment locked into place. The pressure flooding toward Sam's tank slammed against them—mana surging in violent, erratic currents—but none of it crossed the boundary.
Inside the second tank, Serena remained unaffected.
Her readings held steady.
Normal.
ATLAS registered the discrepancy immediately—briefly contemplating involvement.
But what could it do?
In the end it did as it always does—watch, observe, learn.
Sam.
The moment something inside him clicked, the void shattered.
His awareness was no longer confined to the tank—no longer confined to himself. Space folded inward, sensations rewriting itself into something alien and vast.
He was somewhere else.
Before him existed something his mind refused to name. Not because it lacked language—but because language itself felt insufficient.
Form without boundary. Presence without shape.
And as he beheld it, a single certainty settled into his being:
This was him.
Not his body, nor his soul.
His talent.
Devour.
From its center, reality convulsed.
Like a singularity collapsing in reverse, it expanded outward—violent and soundless—a universal birth playing on repeat. Space fractured as something fundamental reached outward, not to destroy…
…but to take.
Sam's breath stilled.
He dared not release it.
—He did not need to.
Time did not move here—not forward, not backward. It simply… was. And within that stillness, his talent—Devour—continued to expand.
A domineering presence.
Not aggressive.
Not ravenous.
Absolute.
From nowhere, strands of energy descended, drawn inexorably toward its center—feeding it. Every ripple that made contact was stripped bare. Structure unraveled. Intent dissolved. Essence was consumed.
Nothing resisted.
Nothing escaped.
Sam felt it all.
Not as sensation—but as certainty.
Up until—
The flow faltered. Stuttered.
What had poured like a raging river slowed. Thickened. Diminished—until the torrent became a trickle.
⸻
Outside, the tank Sam floated in had begun to clear.
The once-viscous liquid thinned rapidly, its color fading until it was almost indistinguishable from water.
Almost.
The last traces of blue-green luminescence were pulled inward—drawn toward Sam's suspended form—until nothing remained but transparency.
For a single, breathless moment, the chamber was still.
Then—
crack. Crack.
The sound was subtle. Nearly imperceptible—carried on a random gust of wind.
But it did not come from the air.
It came from the tank itself.