,....
Kaiser Castro woke with a start—gasping, soaked in sweat, muscles burning like he'd just fought for his life, throat dry as scorched ash. Every breath came shallow, panicked. He felt like absolute shit.
'Where am I?'
'Who am I...?'
He thought to himself.
Images—no, memories—slammed into his skull with no warning.
Cars.
Nuclear energy.
Science.
Atoms.
Russia?!
"What the hell..." he whispered hoarsely. "What is going on?"
Then another surge came—like oil mixing violently with water in his mind.
House Castro.
Ovridra.
Dragons.
Failure.
Assassins.
He clutched his head with both hands, nails biting into his scalp as agony lanced through him. The weight of two lives pressed down on him like tectonic plates grinding into one another.
He didn't know whether to scream or vomit as his head throbbed painfully with the weight of clashing memories. His head felt heavy on his shoulders.
Eventually—somehow—he managed to force his body upright, dragging himself with ragged breaths to lean against the rough cavern wall. Vision swam, blurred. Everything was dim. He tried squinting his eyes to see, maybe even figure out where he is at the moment.
It was humid. Wet. And there was a strange... taste in the air. Somehow recognisable yet simultaneously quite foreign....
Metal?
No... blood!
His fists clenched into a white nuckle grip as his palms started accumulation a slight sheen of sweat.
His eyes widened as his senses snapped into sharper focus. The iron tang was unmistakable.
" How do I know this?" He wondered, creasing his brows feeling very uncomfortable within his own skin.
It was like him, and not him but maybe both of him at the same time simultaneously. His head could only throb harder at his confusing thought.
His heart slammed in his chest. Anxiety clawed at the edges of his mind.
But panic... was weakness. He knew better. Somehow.
He inhaled deeply, deliberately. Then again.
Control.
Focus.
Calm.
'Fear is a tool. But it does not rule me.'
A whisper of a smirk tugged at his lips, even as pain flared across his temples.
"At least I'm still human..." he muttered. Probably. "The fear I'm feeling should be a part of the package."
But where was the blood?
He quickly looked down upon his form to see what was going on. His clothes...well not much was going on in that department, so he started touching his body. No injuries!
His clothes, however, were drenched with what he could only imagine to be blood, sweat and grime. Yet despite the obvious signs, there seemed to be no mortal wound on his creamy smooth skin. He didn't know whether to be happy or concerned.
"This couldn't be G.E.N.E.S.I.S , could it?"
' What is that?' He wondered, he was so confused. But he knew he wasn't wrong. Even if the words slipped out involuntary.
The cavern around him pulsed with eerie light. Strange fungal growths clung to the walls, glowing faintly in shifting hues of blue and violet. They pulsed like breathing things. He wondered where they were getting their hue from, a word tugged in his mind but he could get it around his tongue for the life of him. Not bioluminescence, but something else .
More profound, more mysterious, important to him to its very core, and the thing that let him into this perilous cavern. His eyes shifted once again.
Jutting from the ground and ceiling were vicious red crystals—sharp, primal, humming with unseen energy.
Nyrium. Nyrium?
His brain filled in the name without consent. It slid into place like a puzzle piece clicking into position.
A memory—not his—flashed.
A lecture on elemental conduits from his alchemy class. A noble instructor. Alchemy?!
"Nyrium resonates with Thyr... but remember, it's alive in its own way. It feeds. It adapts."
Thyr? His heart skipped a beat, maybe that's the word.
Kaiser shook his head—or was it Pete who reacted?
The blur was maddening. Faces, feelings, facts all jumbled together.
He was... both?
He was a soldier. A killer. A noble. A disappointment.
He had fought in deserts and danced at banquets. He had screamed in labs and whispered in libraries.
Or was he none? How twisted his brain felt.
He had died twice.
And yet—here he was. Alive, breathing, maybe he never even died in the first place. His headache flared up once again.
A broken soul in a borrowed shell. Or maybe two broken souls now fused into one flame.
Then it hit him fully.
The exile.
The attempt at redemption.
His disgrace.
His brand as a Fade—a noble in name, forgotten in spirit.
The betrayal.
The assassination.
His... death.
A fade?
The world was getting more mysterious yet he knew that his answers were all in there. He just had to dig a little deeper.
Kaiser—and the part of him that was still Peter—clenched his jaw as his breathing steadied.
"I died," he said aloud. The words didn't echo. The cavern seemed to swallow them.
"But I'm still here."
His voice was different. Deeper. Rougher. A blend of two men spoken through one tongue. Or maybe it was only in his head. It felt, strange.
And deep down... he felt something. Burning.
Not anger. Not just yet.
More like a spark.
Something ancient. Coiled. Sleeping. Undisturbed with the affairs of the outside or the situation he's found himself in.
A dragon's whisper?
Residing deep within his soul, or maybe it was a part of his soul, an extension of himself too.
He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and cleared his mind.
....