The darkness wasn't empty.
It breathed.
Jeremy Song didn't know how long he'd been inside it. Time didn't exist here—only pressure, only the slow suffocation of something that shouldn't have been alive but refused to stop. The void pressed against him from all sides, thick and wet and hungry. It wanted to keep him. It wanted to swallow him whole.
Then—a voice.
Not heard.
Felt.
Deep in his chest. Deep in his bones. Deep in the space where his soul used to be.
"Awaken…"
The word slithered through him like smoke.
"Awaken by great descendant…"
He tried to move. Couldn't. His body wasn't his anymore. Too heavy. Too far away. His limbs felt like they belonged to someone else—someone who had been sleeping for a very, very long time.
"For you…"
The darkness parted.
A figure emerged from the fog.
Tall. Shapeless. Made of shadow and smoke and something older than light. Eyes like dying embers burned in its face—if you could call it a face. Horns curled from its temples, spiraling into nothing.
"…shall be…"
It reached for him.
"GEIST."
───
His eyes opened.
That was the first mistake.
The second was breathing.
Air hit his lungs like broken glass—cold, sharp, wrong. He convulsed, coughing up something thick and dark that splattered across a rusted floor. The taste of iron and rot filled his mouth, coating his tongue, sliding down his throat.
Where—
He couldn't finish the thought.
The ceiling above him flickered with dying fluorescent lights. Concrete walls, eaten by damp and time, crumbled in patches where water had carved its way through. Graffiti layered over old warning signs—symbols he didn't recognize, words in languages he'd never learned. The distant, steady drip of water echoed somewhere in the dark.
An abandoned facility.
He knew that without knowing how he knew.
Jeremy pushed himself up on trembling arms. His body felt alien—too light, too strong, like something had been hollowed out and replaced with something else. Something that didn't belong.
He looked down at his hands.
Pale.
Too pale.
Veins darkened beneath the skin, faintly Reddish Pink, pulsing with something that wasn't blood. They moved when he moved, shifting beneath the surface like they had a mind of their own.
What am I?
The question arrived without context. Without memory. He tried to reach back, to find a name, a face, a self—
Nothing.
Just static.
Just the void he'd crawled out of.
And that voice.
Geist.
What the hell is a Geist?
His breathing quickened. His chest heaved. The room spun around him—those flickering lights, those crumbling walls, that shattered cocoon behind him. Hardened ivory shell fused with something organic, like a horn that had grown around a body. Black fibers stretched and snapped in the stale air. Fluid still dripped from its walls. The inside was wet, slick, alive.
I came out of that.
The thought should have terrified him.
It did.
For the first time, real fear gripped his chest—cold, sharp, paralyzing. His hands shook. His vision blurred.
I came out of that thing. What am I? What did they do to me?
He scrambled backward, pressing himself against a wall. His breath came in ragged gasps. His heart—if he still had one—pounded against his ribs.
Who am I?
The question echoed in the empty room.
No answer came.
───
The air shifted.
Not a breeze—something worse. Reality bent inward, folding like paper, and before Jeremy could react—
The floor vanished.
He fell through nothing.
───
Gravel bit into his palms.
He gasped, scrambling upright, eyes darting. The facility was gone. The dim lights, the rust, the dripping water—all of it replaced by gray sky and dead trees and stone.
Gravestones.
Rows of them, leaning crookedly, names worn smooth by decades of rain. Moss crept up their sides. Weeds choked their bases.
A cemetery.
Jeremy's breath fogged in the cold air. He turned in a slow circle, trying to orient himself, trying to understand how he'd traveled miles in an instant—
Then he saw it.
A headstone. Newer than the others. Clean enough to read.
JEREMY J. SONG
200X - 20XX
Beloved Son. Forgotten Too Soon.
Below that, smaller:
"He painted worlds he never got to see."
His knees hit the dirt.
No.
His hands moved before his mind caught up—digging, clawing, throwing soil behind him. The cold earth packed under his nails. The name echoed in his skull.
Jeremy Song.
That's me.
That's my name.
I'm dead.
No no no—
His fingers hit wood.
A coffin.
He ripped at the seal with desperate strength, splintering the lid, tearing it open—
And stared down at himself.
Burnt. Decayed. Ten years dead.
The face was barely recognizable—charred skin, collapsed features, lips pulled back from teeth in a permanent scream—but the shape remained. The same jaw. The same scar above the left eyebrow. The same hands that had once held a paintbrush.
I died.
The words landed like stones in deep water.
I died, and I came back.
And then—
The memories hit as he saw a Pendant he picked up from the decayed corpse.
───
A girl.
Dark short hair. Soft smile. Laughing at something he'd said. Her hand in his. The way she smelled like rain and vanilla.
Cassie.
He remembered her name. He remembered the way she looked at him like he was worth saving.
Cassie.
I loved her.
Then—
A blade.
Blood on his hands.
A man's face, frozen in terror, as Jeremy's knife found his throat. The gurgle of death. The warmth of blood splashing across his knuckles.
No. That's not—
Another memory.
A woman. Begging. He pulled the trigger. Her body crumpled.
Stop—
A warehouse. Fire. Screaming. He was running—not from something, but with something. A deal. A presence in the smoke. Horns curling through the flames. Eyes like burning coals.
A voice that wasn't human.
"You want another chance?"
"I want to make them pay."
"Then take my hand."
He took it.
And then—
Nothing.
Until now.
Jeremy's hands were shaking. He looked at them—the same hands that had held Cassie. The same hands that had held a knife. The same hands that had pulled a trigger.
I was a killer.
The realization hit him like a physical blow.
I murdered people. I was a hitman. An assassin. A monster.
His breath came in ragged gasps.
What did I do? What did I do?
He stumbled backward, away from the coffin, away from his own corpse. His eyes darted wildly across the cemetery. The gray sky pressed down on him. The dead trees seemed to reach for him.
I deserved to die.
The thought was cold. Final.
I deserved to burn.
And then—something caught his eye.
A glint of metal near the base of the headstone. Small. Old. A locket tarnished with age, the chain snapped. It lay half-buried in the dirt, like it had been dropped there years ago.
He reached for it with shaking hands.
His fingers closed around it. The metal was cold. Heavy. He opened it with trembling thumbs.
Inside—a photograph.
Himself. And Cassie.
Younger. Unmarked. Alive in a way he couldn't feel anymore.
His throat tightened.
She was the only good thing in my life.
And I ruined it.
He stared at her face for a long moment. Something flickered in his chest—warmth, maybe. Or the ghost of it.
Then the cold swallowed it.
I came back for a reason.
The rage crystallized into something colder. Sharper.
Revenge.
The word fit. It didn't just fit—it belonged. It settled into his bones like a second skeleton, giving him structure where there had only been void.
The thing that burned me alive is still out there.
The thing that made me a killer.
I'm going to find it.
I'm going to make it pay.
───
Then—pain.
Agonizing, searing pain.
It started in his chest—that same cold spot where the voice had spoken. Then it spread. Through his veins. Through his bones. Through every cell of his body.
He screamed.
His hands flew to his face as his skin began to burn. Not with fire—with something worse. Something that crawled beneath his flesh, pushing outward, reshaping him from the inside.
No—no—what's happening to me—
His skin rippled.
Turned liquid.
Metal.
Dark Grayish metal like liquid flowed over his arms, his chest, his legs—not armor that was worn, but armor that was him. His very flesh transformed, hardening, smoothing, becoming something sleek and jagged and wrong.
His face burned.
He felt his features shift—his eyes turning Pink, jaw elongating, his cheekbones sharpening, his eyes burning violet from within. Helmet—small, curved—began to push through his temples.
Make it stop—
But it didn't stop.
It finished.
And when the pain faded, Jeremy Song was gone.
In his place stood a figure of dark Grayish metal being —sleek and terrible, with burning rageful eyes and a tattered cape that unfurled from his shoulders like wings of shadow.
The Geist.
He looked down at his hands.
His metallic hands.
What… what did I become?
A voice echoed in his mind.
Not the shadow's voice.
His own.
But colder.
Darker.
"You became what you always were."
───
"Didn't think you'd be up already."
Geist turned.
An old man stood twenty feet away, leaning on a shovel. Wide-brim hat shadowed his face. A worn coat hung from his shoulders, patched in a dozen places. Smoke curled from a pipe clenched between his teeth.
He didn't look surprised to see a dead man crawling out of his own grave.
"Who are you?"
The old man took a slow drag. "Name's Kewok. And you," he pointed the pipe stem at Geist, "are supposed to be a lot more confused than this."
"…I just clawed my way out of a coffin. I just transformed into... this."
"Mmhm. And you're standing there calm as a funeral director. That ain't normal, son."
Geist's hands clenched into fists. The metallic surface of his skin gleamed in the gray light.
"…I don't know what I am. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know anything."
"Then what do you know?"
Geist's jaw tightened.
"I know someone burned me alive. And I'm going to find them."
"And kill them?"
"…Yes."
Kewok studied him for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. It wasn't a mocking laugh—more like the sound of someone who recognized a familiar road.
"Yeah. I said the same thing once."
"You said that to me."
"I was a Geist too. Long time ago."
Geist stared at him. "You?"
Kewok shrugged. "Was. Ain't anymore. Used it for the wrong reasons. Let it eat me instead of the other way around." He touched his chest—the same spot Geist had felt the cold. "You don't master this thing, son. You make peace with it. Or it makes a meal of you."
"And if I don't want peace?"
"Then you're already halfway to the grave again."
Silence.
Geist looked down at his metallic hands. The violet veins pulsed beneath the surface.
"…What happened to you?" he asked quietly. "To make you stop?"
Kewok's expression flickered. For a moment, something raw and wounded crossed his face.
"I hurt people who didn't deserve it," he said. "And by the time I realized it, the damage was done."
A pause.
"I'm still paying for it."
Geist said nothing.
"…There's a city not far from here," Kewok continued, his voice gruff again. "Slums first, then the rest. You want answers about what you are? About the thing that made you?"
He pushed open the shed door.
"That's where you start."
Geist hesitated. "…Why are you helping me?"
Kewok looked at him over his shoulder. Something unreadable in his eyes.
"Because every Geist needs someone to pull them back from the edge. And I didn't have one."
A pause.
"Follow me or don't. Your choice."
───
Hours later, Geist stood on the edge of the Slums.
The city stretched before him—decayed beauty wrapped in neon and concrete. The pendant hung against his chest, warm despite the cold.
He'd barely made it past the first street when he heard it.
A scream.
Close. An alley to his left.
He moved before he decided to. His body reacted faster than his mind—too fast, eating the distance in seconds, boots silent on wet pavement.
He turned the corner.
Three men. One girl pinned against the wall. Her shirt torn. Her hands shaking.
"Please—"
One of the men laughed. "No one's coming, sweetheart."
Geist stepped into the light.
"Hey—who the hell—"
The first man didn't finish.
Geist's hand closed around his throat. Not squeezing. Just holding. The man's eyes went wide as his feet left the ground.
"Put him down!" Another man lunged—knife out.
Geist caught the blade between two fingers.
It snapped.
The man stared at the broken hilt. Then at Geist's face. Then at the faint violet glow bleeding from his eyes.
"What the fuck—"
Geist threw the first man into the second. They collapsed in a heap, unconscious before they hit the ground.
The third ran.
Geist let him.
The girl was crying.
"Thank you—I thought I was—"
She looked up.
And smiled.
Too wide. Too sharp. Her eyes shifted—pupils splitting, irises bleeding to pink.
"—saved?"
Geist didn't flinch.
"…You're not human."
The girl's form rippled. Bones cracked. Her face stretched into something that wasn't a face anymore—a mask of teeth and hunger.
"Neither are you," she hissed. "Let's see what you really are."
───
She lunged.
Claws raked across Geist's chest—and stopped.
The armor held. But beneath it, something woke up.
Pain.
Not from the wound—from inside. Something writhed beneath his skin—tendrils, dark and living, pushing against the surface like they wanted out. His veins ignited, burning violet, spreading across his body like wildfire.
Not again—
The transformation wasn't gradual this time.
It was violent.
Tendrils burst from his back—black, living things that stretched and coiled like serpents. His armor regenerated faster, smoother, sealing over his body in a rush of dark violet metal. His face burned as it shifted—horns growing, jaw reshaping, eyes blazing.
The girl backed up.
"Oh. Oh, you're—"
The tendrils lashed out.
They wrapped around her arms, her legs, her throat. She struggled, clawing at them, but they held fast.
Geist stepped forward.
His voice came out wrong—too deep, too resonant, layered with something that wasn't human.
"…What are you?"
She laughed—a wet, broken sound.
"You really don't know? You're one of us, Geist. A monster. A weapon. A—"
He squeezed.
Her eyes went wide.
"Where's the thing that made me?"
Her grin returned, blood staining her teeth.
"…You don't want to find it."
"I didn't ask what I want."
She laughed again. Then—her body dissolved into that same pink mist.
His tendrils grasped at empty air.
Her voice echoed faintly:
"See you soon… Geist…"
───
Silence.
The armor receded slowly—peeling back, sinking into his skin like it had never been there. The tendrils retracted, folding back into his body.
Geist stood alone among the unconscious men, breathing hard.
She knew my name.
She knew what I am.
And somewhere, in the cold place where his soul used to be, something stirred.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Purpose.
I'm going to find the thing that made me.
And I'm going to burn it the way it burned me.