Xaden was still refining the details of his evaluation when the astral scene around him slowly began to change.
The constellations shifted. Colors bled into one another—crimson, black, molten gold. A pressure built in his chest, and the stars seemed to twist into storming, undulating waves, massive and angry.
'Your evaluation is complete.' The unnerving voice announced. Xaden furrowed his brow. He was sure he heard the voice say something else softly, clearly.
'Until we meet again.'
But he could be wrong. Way too absurd. How was he to meet a voice in a manmade system? Perhaps in the next crucible.
'Not creepy at all.' He huffed.
Any light the space had brought vanished into a vast, endless, suffocating nothing.
He didn't feel comfortable addressing it as darkness. Darkness was presumably the absence of light. At that moment, he felt there was never truly any light here.
Then he felt something within him awaken. Something in his soul, breathing down his neck, passing through his thin muscles, tracing the edges of his spine, through his thick skull, and finally reaching his brain.
He felt his body become healthier. Maybe a tiny bit more athletic. His senses sharpened. His eyes opened.
Truly opened.
Then he saw it.
It was an energy, if you could call it that. Endless and untameable like a violent storm. It was a ravaging, hungry storm, like one of the ultra-storms Xaden had encountered back in Sector 45. Except this one was made of a red and black aura.
Xaden's skin prickled; his veins felt like they were afire. The space around him stank of ozone and iron. He could taste the chaos, metallic and acrid, crawling across his tongue and down his throat. Each heartbeat reverberated in the ocean, echoing like a hammer in a cathedral, yet impossibly fast, impossibly loud.
A thought formed slowly in Xaden's mind.
This was existence before meaning was formed. Reality before order was imposed upon the universe.
Heat surged through him, not just on his skin, but in his bones, his blood, his very mind. It wasn't warmth—it was annihilation. It tore at him, latching onto his fear, twisting it, magnifying it. His arms flailed, though there was nothing to grasp. His chest heaved as if the void itself were suffocating him.
The ocean of red waves roared, folding into itself and spitting out shapes. Faces. Hands. Impossible forms that were neither alive nor dead. They pressed toward him, brushing against his mind, teasing at memories, pulling at his instinct to survive. A scream tore from his throat, echoing infinitely.
He closed his eyes. Tried to shut it out. Tried to flee. But the chaos was everywhere, in every sense, inside him, outside him, flooding his thoughts with its infinite, burning presence. Every molecule of his being screamed in panic, until reality itself felt like it was unthreading.
And then—snap.
Xaden gasped awake, eyes spread apart, immediately feeling the white light that stabbed his eyes. He jerked upward just as a woman's voice called someone from outside, wherever this place was.
She tells him something, perhaps to calm down, but Xaden's mind only registers a few words before leaning over the bed and retching out whatever meagre content was left inside his stomach.
Fortunately, it landed inside a steel bucket that had been placed there, almost like it had been anticipated.
"Sir, you need to calm down." The woman said, Xaden then looked at her, truly looked for the first time. Even through the nausea, the headache, the lingering wrongness in his skull, he noticed she was beautiful.
She wore a white lab coat, her dark brown hair braided neatly back, and her complexion carried the rich, golden warmth of caramel—the kind Sue from the tavern reserved for the drinks only the affluent of Sector 45 could afford.
Speaking of which, where was he?
Sterile walls pressed around him. The mattress was thin, but still better than what Xaden had been accustomed to in recent years, and the sheets were tucked neatly. Monitors beeped quietly, oblivious to the storm that had just ravaged his mind.
"You need to calm down." She said, fixing her dark eyes on him. Their ages couldn't be too far apart, Xaden guessed; 18, 19, perhaps in her early twenties.
He glanced down at the name tag on her chest. Healer Jewel Paige, it read.
'Healer...'
Healers were rather highly sought after in their world. Only a select few could receive the healing from them, as there was a comparative shortage of citizens with healing-type abilities.
"Hey. Eyes up here." She said, and Xaden felt a heat settle on his cheeks when he realized the direction he had been staring towards.
Xaden gulped, suddenly wishing her first impression of him wasn't in the steel bucket beside his mattress.
Jewel fixed him with a somewhat questioning glance. She held a thin glass tablet, checking something again and again as if to make sure it was all correct.
She fiddled a bit with the silver piercing on her bottom lip before turning around to grab a bottle of water for Xaden, who thankfully took it and drank every single drop. Not before, rather embarrassingly, gargling some and spitting it into the steel bucket to erase the bitter taste of bile in his mouth.
He smiled nervously at Jewel. "Could I have some more?"
She retrieved it from the cabinet and handed it over to Xaden when someone entered the room. It was a lean man with brown hair and a goatee.
He took one look at Xaden, surprise written across his face.
"Holy shit!" He exclaimed, peering towards his own tablet, then towards Xaden. "You're alive."
Jewel gave him a warning look. "Kaz, that's enough."
"I'm not meant to be?" Xaden tried for a nervous laugh.
"He doesn't know what he's talking about." Jewel snapped, "Kaz, go fetch the Lieutenant."
Kaz seemed taken aback, shocked even, "You want me to-"
"You heard what I said, go fetch the Lieutenant." She shooed him out of Xaden's ward.
"Tell him that Candidate 31 has awoken."
Jewel slammed the door, then leaned against it for a while, letting out a breath of air.
She fixed her attention back at Xaden.
"Sorry about Kaz. He can be quite irritating." She offered him a small smile.
Xaden felt his heart shatter into pieces. Based on the way she spoke, he could tell he was much more to her than simply an annoying coworker. Every thought of her falling for him got thrown right out the window.
'Just my luck.' He sighed inwardly.
"Ok, I know you just went through a terrible ordeal, and I'm sorry to lay this on you. But you may have a small problem."
His heart sank.
"What kind of problem?"
Jewel studied him with her intelligent, dark eyes.
"You're supposed to be dead."