“Raymond!”

“Raymond!”

“RAYMOND!”

Raymond woke up with a start. The loud voice had shaken him awake however it went quiet after that. He was still too groggy to make that out.

He realized some moments later that someone was calling his name and there was a certain urgency behind it. He tried to look around but a sudden pain rendered him unable to move. Only his head, he could move only his head to look around, however, he found no one nearby him.

“Fuck!”

“Where am I?”

“What did that crazy Rose do now?”

Raymond observed his surroundings from the side of his eyes only to find that he was all alone and lying near the edge of a cliff. He tried to get up but once more a wave of pain ran through his body.

“FUCK!”

A scream escaped him as he tried to lift himself up. He tried again to move, this time his hands but once more the soul-snatchingly, dreadful pain left him incapable to make any motion.

“Move fucking dammit!”

After a lot of tries to move, while pain shot through him in droves, Raymond gave in. He was helpless and had to lie there like a log. The only movement he could make without being paralyzed by the gargantuan pain was to move was his neck.

Raymond couldn’t fathom the weirdness of the situation. He couldn’t move any part of his body except for his head because of the soul-numbing ache that shot through him. However, the pain itself was strange, it only triggered when he tried to move his body, the rest of the time he didn’t feel it at all.

“Some kind of poison?” He mused.

It was over a good fifteen minutes since he came to and in that time the only information he could gather about his situation was that he was lying near the edge of a cliff and that an unbearable pain shot through his body if he tried to make any movement, apart from his head of course.

“Where is this anyway? I don’t remember any such place near our camp...”  He tried to recall any such place in the map he had seen but to no avail. “Maybe the map was incomplete?”

Raymond couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation and decided after some thought that rather than moving recklessly and falling off the cliff, he better take stock of his whereabouts and maybe that can help him solve the puzzle of this pain.

He keenly observed his surroundings by moving his head around. And what he found out gave him the chills.

There were very few patches of vegetation around him, and what little grass or plants there were, had a hue of black in them. The soil beneath him was a dark shade of brown and the orange sun was hidden behind clouds, or that’s what he thought it was.

There was a thick, black miasma hovering above which was blocking the sunlight, and he was nearly 300m above the sea level. There were several such cliffs that he could make out in the distance but surprisingly there wasn’t any sign of even a single animal, nor any birds for that matter.

“What the fuck is this place? Why is it so... desolate?”

Raymond was used to the snowy white surroundings of Ryhor, and the harshness of the cold. This place, though, was exactly opposite to his homeland. It was hot, and dry, and everywhere his eyes could see was covered in black, no matter if it was up above the sky or down below at ground.

The eerie situation frightened him a little but the scariest thing for him was that he couldn’t circulate his mana. Any awakened without their mana were like chicken on a chopping board. Mana was as important as breathing to them.

Anyone familiar with this phenomenon would have understood that either their mana circuits were damaged or that the concentration of mana in the surroundings was so high that it was making their mana run berserk. It was because they were absorbing the surrounding mana unintentionally in its original mixed and unrefined form.

Generally, any mana present in the air was a mixture of all kinds of attributes, such that no matter the situation any awakened could at least find trace amounts of their own attribute. What it meant was that there was always some amount of each and every kind of attribute present in the natural mana, no matter how little.

That’s what Raymond recognized as common sense; however, it didn’t seem to fit the present situation...

He was trying his best to refine the mana and absorb the earth attribute from it but to no avail. There was no earth attribute mana present to refine. And as a result, his mana circuits were slowly absorbing the black miasma, which seemed like mana, without refining. This caused a blockage in his mana circuits and subsequently, he couldn’t circulate his mana.

It would have been fine if he had woken up early and protected himself from the miasma by shielding his body with his own mana, however, it was also a blessing that he woke up when he did, otherwise...

As seconds passed, he was absorbing more of the black miasma and it was preventing him from circulating his own mana. This repeated itself over and over. It was a vicious cycle, he was trapped inside, and the culprit behind it was the black miasma.

“Fuck! At this rate...”A sudden thought shook Raymond to the core. “If I don’t do something to counter this situation, I will get bloated and my mana core would explode because of too many impurities!”

A sense of urgency and fear attacked him from all sides. He couldn’t help but be scared, as the only way out was if he was able to move and run away from the miasma. Alas, he couldn’t even move his fingers let alone his feet. As time ticked by a real sense of foreboding surrounded him.

“Move dammit! Move!” He cursed out profanities as he tried to somehow budge. He wanted to get away from this place as soon as possible.

He had given up on fighting the black miasma with his own mana, and put all his effort in moving, or rather running away. It wasn’t because he didn’t know proper mana control or that he was too frightened to think, no, far from it, his mind was working as sharply as ever. And the best option right now was to run away before he was really in danger of losing his life to that black miasma.

“Who the fuck dragged me here in the first place, and what kind of poison did they feed me?”

He suspected Rose at first but she wouldn’t play this kind of stupid prank. Though she often competed with him and liked to show off her superior strength, she understood when to stop.

And also, after last night, Raymond believed she wouldn’t do this... at least not to this extent.

Finally, there was the voice at the start which woke him up. It was as if someone was looking for him and getting anxious that they couldn't find him. He wanted to know the identity of the person behind that voice, and maybe they can help him out of this situation.

However, he soon realized that he was all alone with nobody in sight and he couldn’t also place all his hope on the mysterious person. It would be daft of him to think so... still, he really wanted to know who had woken him up, and also to thank them otherwise he would be dead before he even knew what happened.

“Thank them, huh? It’s not important right now...” Raymond slowly crawled backward from the edge.

The pain in his body was unbearable but he kept crawling forth. It was as if he was being slashed by a sword each time he moved even a finger, he even thought that he would start bleeding all over sooner rather than later. Such was the intensity and realness of the pain.

“Death by a thousand cuts, I guess I know what that feels like...”

Slowly, he crawled like a worm on the ground. The black miasma still showed no sign of thinning. The pain was getting more intense by the second and blood flowed out of his nails. His head felt as if it would explode; as if someone was pressing it from all sides, like someone wanted to make mincemeat out of it. The pain was grating on his skin and it had started to wear him down. He couldn’t handle the constant ache that his body was in.

Raymond felt like he was crawling straight into death’s mouth, felt like giving up and accept his death. His body ached all over and he was moving ahead just by sheer will, however, his will was shaking and the supposed weight tied to his hair was keeping him from moving forward. Tears rolled down his face and his feet became bloody.

His heavy eyelids started to shut and his heart rate slowed down. His vision blurred and his tongue rolled out. Gradually he closed his eyes and accepted his death, only so it could give him respite from the pain...

However, suddenly a vision of a woman woke him up! A new energy coursed through his veins as he restarted his crawling.

“Not yet! Not yet! Not until... I can’t die yet!” He kept muttering to himself and it proved to be his strength. With bleeding nails and mutilated arms, he continued to crawl.

“Raymond!”

His eyes opened wide as he once more heard that voice. He, with some effort, lifted up his head to see that his mother was standing beside him.

“Mother?” Those words escaped his mouth unwittingly. However, he realized that it wasn’t his mother as soon as his eyes saw the colour of her hair.

Samantha had blonde hair, but this woman had black hair. Other than that, their features were nearly identical, eerily so.

“It’s you!” All of a sudden Raymond screamed. “You’re... you’re from that dream!”

“Is this a dream too then?” He asked himself this. However, the answer he reached was a resounding no... “How could there be a pain so real?”

“Raymond...”

The woman had a melancholic disposition. She looked at him with some praise in her eyes, however, all Raymond could think at the moment was one thing only and he blurted it out, “How are you fine standing in this miasma?”

Sigh.

The woman sighed heavily after which suddenly her whole body started radiating white light. The shine was blinding. Raymond closed his eyes and wanted to shield them further with his hands but the ache wouldn’t let him.

When he opened his eyes, the shine had reduced some. What he saw then surprised him enough to scream out loud, “Why is the black retreating from you?!”

The woman sighed again. However, this time there was no radiant light or anything similar.

“Raymond...”

“Why do you look so disappointed? Fuck! Don’t give me that look! I hate it the most!”

Raymond gritted his teeth. Even though he looked immensely miserable, like a bug crawling on the ground, and dealing with an ache like no other, he still abhorred that look.

Since childhood, he had been compared to his twin and his cousins, and since he wasn’t the most talented, or could be said that he was the least talented among them, he had to deal with sighs and gazes of disappointment directed towards him. And he hated it to the core.

The woman didn’t seem to mind his words; however, her gaze grew softer. She walked up to him and then touched him gently at his back.

Suddenly, her hand radiated and Raymond instinctively shut his eyes. When he opened them, she was back at her previous position, some three feet or so away.

“You can move now...”

“Huh?”

Raymond gingerly folded his fingers and then gently tried to move his arm. The pain was gone!

“What did you do?” He asked in surprise and glee as he stood up on his own and dusted off his garments. The blood on his fingernails had dried up and most of his cuts and bruises had healed themselves.

“You are a Healer? Light attribute?”

The woman didn’t reply to his question and began to walk away towards the edge of the cliff.

“Hey, wait! Tell me how you got rid of the black miasma and why do I feel like I can do it too?! Hey, wait!”

Raymond quickly followed behind her. He was intrigued by her methods and wanted to know more about her. However, he still had some reservations about trusting her wholeheartedly. And her looks being eerily similar to his mother played a part in him keeping a divide between them.

“Hey! Answer me! Hey!”

Raymond felt like a little kid clamouring for his mother’s attention. The woman though kept walking away from him and towards the edge. She finally reached the end and then turned around, “Here!” She exclaimed.

“She talks!!!” Raymond commented with sarcasm. “Can you at least tell me your name?”

The woman seemed to be lost in thought as if remembering something from an age long lost. “Scarlet,” she hummed softly, almost as if to herself.

“Scarlet? Scarlet... never knew anyone with that name...”

There were many questions yet he wanted to ask Scarlet, like how did she find him, how did she get rid of the black miasma, how did she heal his injuries, where they were, how did he get there...Nevertheless, he kept quiet about them.

He still remembered the dream last time where she had shown him quite a horrific sight, and he was afraid to look at where she was pointing towards. He was afraid to find something he wasn’t able to deal with his own power and afraid that it would be the last thing he ever saw.

Still, mustering up the courage he took the fall and went ahead. He followed her direction and looked down towards where the cliff started.

The sea winds were fierce and made it tough for him to keep his eyes open. When he looked down with some difficulty, he was shocked to see that the whole sea was covered in black miasma.

He gulped inwardly at the sight. Somehow, this scene impacted him more than the one where he had seen a city being destroyed.

Any high-level awakened could theoretically destroy a small to medium-sized city, granted what he saw then wasn’t your run-of-the-mill city, however, at the end of the day, it was a city.

Yet now, he was seeing with his own eyes, how the black miasma had covered the sea, he was shocked speechless. He turned to Scarlet and found her pensive-looking eyes and a face with an expression full of worry.

“Look there...”

Raymond obliged and looked at a particular spot. There he saw a green tree rising up from the sea with its roots deep down, he guessed. The tree looked perfectly fine and well. Its green leaves looked lush and its branches healthy. However, within moments it turned to a dead tree after the black miasma came in contact with it.

“What the fuck!”

Raymond was astounded. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A perfectly fine tree turned dead in moments, and he had been struggling against that thing for hours, at least that’s what it felt like to him. How could this be possible? A lively tree, just by coming I contact with that black miasma... how did I survive that long? Is it related to the mana inside me? But the tree seemed to also have some mana...

His mind was running a mile a second. The most dreadful of scenes played before his eyes. He could well imagine what would happen to him, his family, his people if they came in contact with the black miasma, after all, he had experienced it himself.

And yet, it wasn’t all. The real horror was that they couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t think of a way to stop it. Other than, of course, Scarlet, who was standing by his side.

“Is there a way to stop it?” He asked solemnly. The thought that this could be happening right nearby where they were camped after the victory in their war with Tristinia, made him shake in his boots.

“There is...” Scarlet replied absent-mindedly.

“There is?! Really?! Tell me!” Raymond was excited to learn that there was a way to deal with this apparent miasma of death. He didn’t want to experience that kind of pain ever again, where even death was a relief. He had lots of things he wanted to do yet, and to die before accomplishing them was just not acceptable.

Scarlet turned towards him and gave him a long, contemplating look. She seemed to be thinking about how to word her response. When suddenly with a grave and serious tone, she said, “You,” and pointed right at him.

“Me?”

“Yes, you!”

“But how? I don’t know-”

“You have to become stronger, stronger than ever, stronger than everybody else!”

“Huh?” Raymond was lost, lost for words. He didn’t usually indulge in flights of fancy of being the strongest in the world. He just wanted to become strong enough, strong enough to not bring shame to his family, and strong enough to gain recognition from her. And now he was getting told to become the strongest... he didn’t know how or when...

“You have to awaken! And become strong! Remember, awaken!”

“But, I am already an awakened, I have the earth attribute!”

“Remember my words!”

That was all Scarlet said before she pushed him over the edge.

“WHY!” Raymond shouted as his body hit the sea.