Chapter 1: Prologue – Exhumed again?

The sky was an eerie purple-tinged black, void of any sort of familiarity, no clouds, no stars, nor even the slightest precursory sign of the moon. Stillness is all there was. A disturbing cold whisked about along with an ethereal, subtle hymn of despair indescribably present all around.

Ah, again! As if going through Epsilon ONCE wasn't enough! TWICE NOW! Twice too many I say! Wa- wait... dead again? N- no no no, surely not... Display Status!

[System Tier I]
Name: Remus
Title: Black Swan

Attributes:-
- Strength | ???/30
- Vitality | ???/30
- Endurance | ???/30
- Dexterity | ???/30
- Speed | ???/30
- Perception | ???/30
- Acuity | ???/30
- Attunement | ???/30

Nope, doesn't confirm anything...

Almost convinced he died again, for a measure of peace Remus panned his gaze upward and reached to check his pulse along his jaw.

Dup dap dup dap- Fuhh, alive still! Ahahaha, almost scared me there. Anyways, hmm... how did I reach here then?

Meandering through contemplation, lost, so dazed that he was unaware of the sudden manifestation of a pulsating prismatic glow replacing the present all-encompassing dark field. Despite the jarring nature of the sudden disturbance, stilled and glaze-eyed was Remus. With each burst of radiance, Remus faded ever-so-slightly until Remus was no more.

____

All there was a strong pine-like smell. Then came erratic bursts of color, surreal blends of images contained within. Blinding flashes of light projected from innumermous angles. Multitudes of sounds came and went with no rhyme nor reason, all dissimilar to each other.

Images of bugs, birds, and rodents superposed all perception, co-occurring with ant-like ministration felt all around. Occasionally such imagery was interposed with blurry shapes of vaguely miniature humanoids speaking gnomic utterances passing by subtlety in the background.

Body experiencing impressions of bing pushed, pulled, crushed, stretched, flipped, twisted, turned, bounced, and spiraled, bound to any and all possible directions in rapid sequence. Then all came to an abrupt halt, calm finally.

With a mind stuck between profundity and banality from the experience endured, it coped by scrubbing of all traces of what had happened. What had happened vanished from the mind completely. What had happened was simply nothing. Remus experienced nothing but calm, for nothing happened.

You are reading story Black Swan Paragon at novel35.com

"Ughh... ouch..."

Now awake, with the courtesy of a piercing headache, Remus just laid there for a while, hand pressing on his forehead. A few moments later, the headache subsided for the most part, thus prompting Remus to finally move. His movement kicked up dush, or rather ashes. A peculiar smell permeated his vicinity.

Remus opened his eyes to a rocky ceiling. His eyes adjusted to the blinding ambiance. Bright-red shaded blistering stone, almost bloodlike with maroon and magenta accents colored his vision. Groggily he got up to take stock of the surroundings. The wall seemed blistering hot at the touch with how faint fumes radiated off them.

Now, where am I? It's absurd that I'm being tossed here and there without consent. And dang, sweaty clothes are the bane of my comfort! Whoever did this is surely uncivilized... and brutal too...

Despite living a hard life in the Murim full of multiple accounts of carnage, never had he seen such a concentrated heinous slaughter of this proportion. Realization hit him like a truck, dawning on him that the odor in the air was of consequence from the scene on display. The scent being putrid but sweet. Equally balanced with something akin to leather being tanned over a flame. So thick the smell that it was almost a taste.

The whole cavern appeared to be full of frozen impressions of anger amongst hills of ashen remains. Some perhaps were irate gazes defiant towards death that claimed them regardless. Hard to tell really when all left of the snarling corpses was charred flesh and bones burning in golden flames.

Despite numbering in the thousands, the subtle variance between the corpses gave no answers to what had caused the flames. The color of the flames entertained the possibility of the cause seeming magical in nature. There wasn’t anything Remus could do for them that didn’t extend beyond the symbolic. Quietly he uttered his condolences with a martial bow.

Well, I don't want anything to do with what set these people on fire, better get going now...

"Display Status"

[System Tier II]
Name: Remus
Title: Black Swan
Level: 0
Class: -

Attributes:-
- Strength | 42/150
- Vitality | 36/150
- Endurance | 33/150
- Dexterity | 31/150
- Speed | 37/150
- Perception | 31/150
- Acuity | 39/150
- Attunement | 43/150
- Soul Fortitude | 1/1

Trait: Vector Manipulation
Augmentations:-