He was in the ruins of a tavern, his back pressed against the splintered wood of a dead bar, and he was trying to figure out if he had gone insane.
One fact stood in the center of his thoughts, stark and irrefutable: an executioner's axe, swung with intent to kill, had crumpled against his shoulder.
His mind, a lifelong specialist in worst-case scenarios, ran through the possibilities. He was dreaming, an elaborate and terrifyingly detailed hallucination brought on by the trauma of… what? A boxing match? No. That felt like a lifetime ago. He was dead, and this was some bizarre, tactile purgatory. No, the fear felt too real, too sharp.
That left one option, the most terrifying of all: it had actually happened.
He needed proof. He needed to repeat the experiment under his own control, away from panicked crowds and furious Wardens. He needed to know the rules of this new reality before it found another way to kill him.
His eyes scanned the debris-strewn floor. A universe of trash: broken pottery, charred wood, and the glittering remnants of shattered bottles. He crawled forward, his knees crunching on rubble, and picked up a shard of thick, green glass. Its edge was sharp, a wicked little crescent that glinted in the dim light.
He held it between his thumb and forefinger. His hand trembled. Every instinct he possessed, honed over two decades of dedicated cowardice, screamed at him to drop it. Self-harm was an alien concept. He was a master of self-preservation, which mostly involved avoiding anything that could possibly lead to pain.
But the fear of the unknown was worse.
He took a slow, shaky breath and pressed the sharp edge of the glass against the back of his other hand. He started gently, his eyes squeezed shut, bracing for the familiar, stinging bite of a cut.
Nothing.
He pushed harder. The pressure increased, the skin of his hand tenting slightly under the force. Still nothing. It felt like trying to cut stone with a blade of grass.
He gritted his teeth, a fine sweat breaking out on his forehead. Harder.
With a surge of desperate resolve, he shoved the glass against his knuckles with all the meager strength he could muster.
It didn't shatter. It didn't break. It simply… ceased to be. The glass flaked away at the point of contact, disintegrating into a fine, glittering powder that cascaded harmlessly over his skin. He watched, mesmerized, as the shard vanished, turning to dust against his flesh until all he held was a small, blunt nub.
He dropped it. The tiny piece of glass hit the floor with a soundless poof of green dust.
It wasn't that his skin was tough. It was that the objects themselves… failed. Their physical integrity collapsed. Force, energy, structure—it all unraveled when it touched him.
He wasn't strong. He was a walking nullification field. A human-shaped black hole for kinetic energy.
A wave of euphoria washed over him, dizzying and potent. I can't be hurt.
It lasted for three seconds.
Then, the cold, familiar grip of paranoia, his oldest and truest friend, wrapped around his heart. If he couldn't be hurt, what did that make him? A god? A demon? To the people of this world, it made him a monster. An anomaly. Something to be feared, yes, but also something to be captured, studied, dissected, and controlled.
Power you can't hide is a leash.
His life on Earth had taught him one valuable lesson: weakness is a form of camouflage. No one expects anything from the coward. No one sees the weakling as a threat. They pity you, they dismiss you, they look right through you. In a world of predators, the most pathetic-looking animal is often the one left alone.
A quiet vow formed in the stillness of his ruined sanctuary. A rule, forged from a lifetime of fear and a moment of impossible revelation.
Never show them. Never let them know. Never bleed.
He would be the same Ravi he had always been: a handsome, useless weakling who somehow managed to survive through sheer, dumb luck. Accidents would happen around him. Enemies would stumble. Weapons would break. He would panic and flinch and cower his way through every fight, and people would call it a miracle, a jinx, a blessing from a mischievous god. They would never call it strength. Because the moment they did, his life would be over.
He was so lost in his revolutionary thoughts, in the forging of his new identity, that he missed the sound of shuffling footsteps outside the tavern entrance.
A shadow fell across the doorway. A man, gaunt and stooped, crept inside. His clothes were little more than stitched-together rags, and his eyes had the feral, desperate gleam of a starving dog. In his hand, he gripped a crude dagger fashioned from a sharpened piece of rebar.
His hungry gaze swept the room and landed on Ravi. A slow, ugly smile spread across his cracked lips, revealing yellowed teeth. "Got nothin' to give, do you? You're another piece of ruin trash, like me." He gestured with the dagger. "But you're wearin' boots. Hand 'em over."
Ravi's heart leaped into his throat. His body instantly defaulted to its factory settings. He scrambled backward, his hands held up in a gesture of pure surrender. "No, please," he whimpered, the fear in his voice entirely genuine. "Take them. Just don't hurt me."
The man's smile widened. He liked the fear. "Good boy," he rasped, stepping forward. "And maybe that shirt, too. It's better than mine."
He reached out a grimy hand to grab the collar of Ravi's tunic. Ravi, true to his nature, flinched violently, throwing his arm up to shield his face in a classic gesture of abject terror. It was not a block. It was a cringe.
The man's fist, still clenched from his advance, connected with Ravi's raised forearm.
There was a sickening, wet crack that echoed in the silent tavern.
It wasn't Ravi's bone.
The man let out a shrill, piercing scream of agony, staggering back and clutching a wrist that now bent at an impossible, horrifying angle.