Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
But they keep comin’.
I don’t have a plan. I don’t ever have a plan. I don’t need a plan. Because this is what I was made for. Instinct. Programmed muscle memory. I leap, fingers catchin’ a jagged edge of bent steel, boots scraping for purchase. Haul myself up, muscles screaming, lungs burning. Higher. Faster. The horde of snarling mutant augments below, reaching for me and scrambling to follow.
I swing over a twisted beam, boots landin’ hard on a grated platform.
A killing perch.
A place to bleed them dry.
The closest one behind me climbs, faster than I expected. Hands graspin’, reachin’.
I drop low, swing under the beam, come up behind. Hook his ankle, twist. Bone snaps. He falls screaming.
One down. Let’s fuckin’ go.
I swing back up onto my platform and this is when I hear the chant again. It never stopped, my mind just blanked it out. It’s back now.
All the mutants in the crowd are going wild. Wild.
Rise a god! Rise a god! Rise a god!
I pause, even though the horde is still comin’.
What does that mean?
But there’s no time, the horde is here.
I let the fray come to me. One at a time, I take them out. Killing without thinking.
Somewhere beneath the skin of reality, another world hums. A different underground.
Another frequency.
A cavern cathedral, its ceiling strung with chains of glowing pearls, swaying in an unfelt wind. Below, a procession of monks draped in red-stitched robes moves in silent prayer, their faces hidden, their hands clasped around knives carved from bone.
One cuts his palm, lettin’ blood drip into the roots of a massive, pulsin’ crystal. The crystal drinks deep. It shudders. It sings.
I blink the scene away.
A mutant lunges.
I twist, crush his throat, move on.
The energy is thick, pulsin’, pulsin’, pulsin’…
Chanting. Chanting. Chanting… everything is vibrating. Not from the impact of the stompin’ mutants, but from sound.
The voices.
The monks are seated in a perfect circle, heads bowed, mouths open. No words. Just tone. Resonance. The chant isn’t spoken—it’s sustained. A living frequency, hummin’ through the bones of this place, stitchin’ it together.
I watch, unseen. Unheard. But I feel it—inside my chest, in the threads of my own body.
Rise a god! Rise a god! Rise a god!
It’s not a prayer. It’s a command.
It vibrates across dimensions, through worlds, bleedin’ into the roar of the arena, into the mouths of the mutants above me.
The Spark hums in my veins, trying to sync, trying to answer. Trying to understand what it is I’m supposed to become.
I blink—
A hand grabs my ankle.
I’m back.
The augments are still coming.
I twist, snap, kill.
But my mind is still with the monks.
Their chantin’.
The crystal drinking blood.
It’s wrong.
Spark hums, this sound groans.
It pulses like a dying star, pullin’ instead of givin’, devouring instead of burnin’.
I step forward—
And fall into the cave…
My feet touch the floor. Silent whispers, like I’m not even here. Just a shift, a slip, like reality openin’ itself to make room for me.
I am not in the arena.
I am not anywhere.
But I’m in this cave.
My head whips around, trying to understand. Wondering what the fuck is happening to me back in the cage. Am I dead?
I want to think about that. To understand it. But I can’t stop lookin’ around. I can’t stop takin’ it all in. The cave stretches wide before me, carved out of dark stone, slick with condensation, walls hummin’ with somethin’ unseen. The air is wrong. Thick with heat, with static. The scent of iron, wet stone, something burnt.
The monks are kneelin’ now. A perfect circle around the crystal. Their robes are deep red, stitched with gold, pooling at their feet like liquid. Their hands—pale, veined, and human—grip bone-carved knives, their movements ritualistic. Rhythmic.
One by one, they reach forward, until their hands are hovering over the giant crystal. Then they slice open their palms, letting the blood drip onto the megalith.
It lands with a sound that shouldn’t exist. Hiss. Sizzle. Like water hittin’ coals, like somethin’ breaking apart on a molecular level.
The thirsty crystal drinks deep.
It pulses.
Not like the sparkstone cave.
This is not Spark.
It groans. A deep, reverberatin’ sound that pulls at somethin’ inside me. Not a song, not a hum—a hunger. The monks do not react. They do not waver. They keep chanting, their voices merging into a single resonance, a single frequency that shakes the marrow in my bones.
Rise a god! Rise a god! Rise a god!
It calls to somethin’.
I step closer, watchin’ the way the crystal feeds. The way the blood is gone before it touches the surface. The way the monks never hesitate, never falter, never pause to question.
I reach out.
The monk closest to me doesn’t move. He doesn’t acknowledge me. Doesn’t even flinch.
But when my fingers graze his shoulder—
Somethin’ gives.
Not a snap, not a tear. Just a shudder.
Like a plucked string.
And then—
He comes apart.
Not like a man. Not like flesh tearing or bone breakin’.