Death.

That was all he knew at that moment. A sinking realization that he was dead. He did not feel like he was being released from a mortal cage and being let free into the cosmic ocean, He did not feel like he was being judged for every sin or virtue. He did not even feel like he was sinking into sleep, never to awaken again. For him, death felt like having his mind ripped from its body, like it being pried out and the subtle connections that made his body his being snapped, one at a time. The sinking in his soul and the pain from his death made him want to scream and rage. But he could not scream or rage.

He had no mouth to scream.

Eventually, the tearing gave way to a blindingly painful aching over his entire being and he tried to figure out what to do. Around him was an ocean of hazy blue, with figures of a much deeper blue around him and occasional sparks and holes of red, green, purple, and yellow lighting up the monochrome world. Moving was futiile, something he was sure of, so he simply let himself float.

Floating around, he felt the pain become slowly worse and worse. Searching for the source, he found himself staring at his soul and marveling at the red structure that sat there. An aura of red radiated from his soul, bathing the area around him in some strange energy that seemed to ever so slightly attract the blue. His actual soul was a sphere of strings that raveled themselves around each other, but moved like water nonetheless.

With a painful sting he saw a small string of red soul detach from him, falling and melting in the blue sea around him. Then came a pain almost as bad at the death he suffered. A memory was torn from his mind, gone forever. The pain and the sinking in his soul and the sight made him panic. With a scream his mind commanded the parts of his soul to stay where they were, to not let the blue take anything else from him. It was futile. The watery strings began to rotate slightly off center as the hazy blue sea found the cracks in his aura. Just then, another, thicker string in his soul began to fall. WIth a mental cry, he ordered it not to move, not to fall. It was not his soul that moved, but it was the blue. It surged through his aura and changed, sparking and changing into a pitch black. It charged forward and latched to the falling string, sticking to it like glue and holding it in place relative to the rest of his soul. 

He breathed a mental sigh of relief, but felt something very wrong with the glue-like blackness. It was foreboding, worse than actually dying, and gave him pause. Just as he thought that, another string, a thick one that ran into the upper part of his soul, began to drift away. He commanded the hazy blue sea and held the seemingly important string in place. Before he had time to celebrate, the black glue began to stretch, ripping at points. 

Panic returned once again and as he added more and more black glue to the string, it tore faster and faster. Panic took hold and he whipped his mind to the hazy blue sea. He tried to command it to fix him, to bring him back to life, but it would not budge. The black tore more and more and he replaced it faster and faster, with even the first string beginning to fall from the grasp of the black. Other parts also began unraveling, and the whole thing began to fall apart. No matter how fast he commanded, he could not fix the whole thing. With his mind collapsing around him, he made a final plea to the blue.

‘Help… please…’

A surge of blue filtered into his soul’s fading aura, darkening into a deep, rich purple that he only thought possible in the imaginations of man. His surroundings changed, the hazy blue becoming darker, richer, but it still surged all the same. The purple fascinated him, forcing out any other thoughts as it gathered on the edge of his soul.

A voice entered his mind, but it did not come from the purple, [What do we have here…?] a female, echoed voice said.

[Hmm…] another, male voice replied, [Apparently, this little one came from a fabric tear; died when trying to save a friend, apparently.]

The soul ignored the words, focusing entirely on the purple sparks that gathered around himself. WIth a huff, the female voice spoke again, [Really? He’s just ignoring me? What’s so important that… Ohh… now that’s interesting]

[What do you… Hmm… that is unique. I am surprised that he created a mana type so easily…] the male voice replied, [It usually takes us a few decades to come up with a new one that isn’t based on a mundane phenomenon. What if-]

[Please, don’t bore me any more than I already am doing all of this paperwork.] the female voice interrupted, annoyed, [What I think is interesting is the amount of mana it’s taking to convert it. He would have drained that Sandbox dry if he tried it in the planetary realm just making this much. And it looks like he’s still going!]

He ignored the two voices, finding their commentary distracting from what was really important: the purple ‘mana,’ as they called it. It gathered faster and faster and the pain of his unraveling soul seemed meaningless. 

[Oh?] the female voice said, [I believe that he is going through awakening pains while his soul is falling apart. The fact that he is not dead is quite impressive.]

They paused for a second, [Sa’ar’kik…] the male voice said slowly, [Can you get a sample of the mana with a reproduction shard? I think that we have a base to iterate upon for the war.]

He continued to ignore the talkative voices and focused on the mana in front of him. After minutes of gathering, it seemed as though there was enough mana for whatever rules dictated the universe and it rushed into his soul. A stray thought entered his mind.

‘What do I want, and what would I give?’ his mind thought, ‘Wait, that wasn’t… whatever. What will I give? I don’t know, but I just want to live my life!’ he shouted in his mind. His pleas seemed to be answered as the rush of mana filled his soul, keeping it together as new thoughts entered his mind. They were instructions: find his body, spark red, spark black, spark green, spark purple. As the instructions consumed his mind, springs in his soul were slowly eaten away by the deep purple mana, replaced by something similar, but ever so slightly different from what they were before. He did not notice, however, as he had one goal in his mind.

‘Find body. Spark red. Spark black. Spark green. Spark purple. Live once more.’

As his soul began to search, the voices began to speak once more, [Alright, I’ve got the mana in this shard. So, should we send him to the Sandbox?]

[Hmm… yes, I believe we should. First, however, I suggest giving him a bit of a boost in terms of the system.]

[Ohh, do tell!]

[We can lift all of the restrictions on mana and such for him and him only; it’s only fair after what he gave us. Speaking of which, did you see what happened to his soul?]

[Obviously! I’m the one with a few dozen eyes, you’re the one with only two,  Great God of the Death Tides. But as for what happened… I don’t know. I am certainly interested in what will happen down there; maybe if we use a bit of metamancy, we can change that little portion of it.]

[That is for later, Sa’ar’kik. We must let this wayward soul back into the Sandbox once more, lest he become a Riftborn.] With that, the voices seemed to vanish, and a slight ache showed on his soul. Looking, a series of what could be described as runes were etched into the strings that held his soult together. After a few moments, the pain disappeared, and he felt like he was falling. 

Ignoring the feeling, he felt like he was coming closer and closer to what he wanted to find. He fell and fell, soon landing on some sort of solid ground. He looked around and felt like he had found what he was looking for. Below him a slight whiff of death could be smelt, burning in the sun. 

Instead of thinking, he followed the steps: red, black, green, purple. Not in that order, but in whatever order felt natural. Red, black, green, purple. Red, black, green, purple. After a while, something happened. It felt like the burning and the death condensed around his soul. They were followed by the red, the black, the green, and the purple until they all crystallized together into something that held his soul together and protected it. 

His eyes flickered to life, sand and the plane and odd metallic creatures lying dead all showing into his eye sockets, purple flames flickering within. What caught the soul’s attention, however, was the floating box that hung in the air in front of him.

[Greetings, extradimensional being. You have been transported to this world, through one method or another, and are receiving the Sa’rk system for the first time. A brief summary will be provided. Welcome to Granulous.]