The best way to explain it is this: pain is an alarm. A scream from the body demanding immediate attention. And my alarm was turned off, silent, ripped straight off the wall. What remained was nothing but the raw awareness of what was happening, an uncomfortable, relentless clarity.
I knew exactly which part of my body was being destroyed, how the fibers were separating, how my skin was giving way... and then, almost immediately, how everything was rebuilt, rearranged in an unnatural way, piece by piece.
I was fully aware of every destruction and every reconstruction, like an architect condemned to watch a building be imploded and rebuilt in the same second, over and over again, until the mind begins to fail and wonder which of those versions, if any, can truly be called real.
Arthur shouted something, words torn apart by the chaos. I didn’t register them, or perhaps I chose not to. Rupert cursed loudly, his voice heavy with fear and rage. Victor remained absolutely silent, a muteness more deafening than any scream. The man with the knife... well.
He no longer had a form that could honestly be called “human” What remained were only particles, microscopic fragments being pulled apart, separated, and crushed at a level so deep that any notion of structure ceased to exist.
There were no bones, no flesh, no outline, only matter dissolving. I already knew. I had known from the start that this would be the outcome. No matter how much he tried to imitate my regenerative abilities, he would never be able to keep up with them.
From the very first strike, he was being torn apart faster than any regeneration could repair. And in the end, when there was no longer a him, there was nothing left to regenerate.
My body continued to regenerate in increasingly rapid cycles, almost anxiously, as if it were competing against something invisible and relentless. Each second carried with it a sensation like static electricity running beneath my skin, it didn’t quite hurt, but it never stopped, vibrating in silence. It was a persistent reminder that I was still whole. Or perhaps... that I was, little by little, becoming whole again.
My Alter Ego closed his hand. In that same instant, the micro-wires snapped back all at once with an almost imperceptible crack, like nerves being torn from the air. The man with the knife ceased to exist.
There was no scream, no blood, no fragments. Not even a single piece remained that could serve as proof that he had ever breathed, thought, or existed at all. Reality simply forgot him.
With everything finally over, my Alter Ego slowly turned toward me. We stared at each other for several long seconds. Though he technically lacked a mouth capable of smiling, and his expression was nearly impossible to decipher, I could have sworn he scoffed, displaying a silent arrogance, as if wearing an irritatingly smug half-smile.
Then my Alter Ego began to dissolve, his form losing definition until it became mist. He returned to me like smoke being drawn into an invisible lung, which, incidentally, I most definitely did not possess.
I ignored his irritating gesture. To be fair, we were still falling toward our deaths, and the experience of having my body severed and then rebuilt hadn’t fully sunk in yet: (That was... quite an experience)
However, my musings were brutally interrupted by a violent blast of wind slamming into my still-reforming face. The air pressure tore at my incomplete skin, more than enough to snap me back to reality: at that exact moment, we were plummeting several kilometers per second toward the unknown.
The words Rupert had thrown into the wind now reached my ears perfectly clearly, since nearly ninety percent of my body had already been reconstructed. Still dazed by the ongoing reconstruction, I heard him shout, his voice thick with desperation: “Jesus! What do we do now?!”
As I had expected, he was flailing his hands wildly while staring into the abyss below, pure horror written openly across his face. The same panic was reflected in most of the reaction team, frozen somewhere between suppressed screams and ragged breathing.
Victor’s anxiety was unmistakable, his fingers twitching nervously, while Arthur kept his eyes locked on the dark below, a single bead of sweat slowly rolling down his forehead, betraying his current state of mind.
Even so, it remained impossible to see anything, the darkness was so dense it was hard to tell whether we were about to slam into something or if there was still nothing but emptiness beneath us.
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That uncertainty was likely what drove everyone into such desperation; it weighed heavier than the fall itself. That was when I began to hear something rising from the depths.
At first it was low, nearly imperceptible, like a distant hum. But as we continued to fall, the sound grew louder and clearer, distinct enough that the others began to notice it too.
“There’s something down there!” Victor shouted, his voice nearly swallowed by the wind as he fell beside me. His eyes were wide, locked on the void beneath our feet.
“Probably solid ground! And I’d bet everything I’ve got it’s very solid ground!” Rupert shot back, his voice booming with nervous energy as the wind stole his breath: “Which, honestly, doesn’t improve our situation at all, since we’re still going to die!”
“No, you idiot!” Victor screamed back, the air ripping through his lungs: “It sounds like dripping... there’s water down there!”
Everyone looked down in horror the moment Victor said it. Personally, I didn’t blame them. Slamming face-first into water at several kilometers per second was no different than hitting solid concrete, at that speed, the liquid surface would be utterly unforgiving, hard as asphalt. To be honest, I suspected that hitting asphalt might actually hurt less.
“We’re going way too fast!” Arthur shouted, his voice nearly swallowed by the roar of the wind. The air sliced into his lungs: “If we hit the water at this speed, it’ll be as hard as concrete! It’ll be like slamming straight into the ground!”
While the three of them were still arguing, the noise below us kept growing, louder, steadier, vibrating through the air like an unavoidable warning. Whatever was down there, there was no longer any doubt: we were dangerously close.
So I simply acted. My body began to release that black smoke again, thick and restless, spilling out of me as if it had a will of its own. Within seconds, the smoke twisted into elongated shapes, like living whips, stretching through the air before snapping tightly around the others.
Every member of the response team, along with Victor, Rupert, and Arthur, was wrapped up almost simultaneously, bound firmly around the waist, unable to move as the smoke pulsed, keeping them under my control.
Of course, that didn’t change the fact that we were still falling. I considered forming wings, like last time. After all, there was nothing really stopping me from controlling the fall, right? Or at least, that’s what I believed.
I tried. I pushed. I focused... until I realized my powers simply weren’t responding. The reason? Definitely my Alter Ego. I barely had time to exchange a single word with it before my body slammed into something brutally hard and abrasive.
Even so, the sensation of heat didn’t come exactly from the impact on my skin, but from what I swallowed during the fall: a metallic, burning taste that turned suffocating as it slid down my throat, scorching me from the inside while the impact echoed through my entire body.
As always, I didn’t feel pain, just that strange sensation of heat... and maybe acid. My whole body shattered inward with a sharp crack, but nothing flew apart, which, all things considered, was some kind of victory. Then came the feeling of sinking. Downward. Deeper and deeper.
All around me was a blurred, distorted darkness, as if my eyes could no longer make out shapes. It was probably water, or whatever it was, closing in on everything as I kept descending, silently, without resistance.
Naturally, it only took my body a few seconds to repair itself. As soon as I could react, I started swimming upward, blindly, through whatever thick liquid surrounded me. It kept forcing its way into my nose and mouth, pouring into me with every desperate movement.
And with each of those attempts, I felt my body burn from the inside out. It wasn’t metaphorical or exaggerated, it was literally burning, igniting, as if corrosive acid had been poured straight down my throat and into my nostrils, consuming everything it touched.
When I finally surfaced, I realized I was in some kind of shallow stream. Water ran off my body as I dragged myself to the bank, planting my trembling hands in the damp soil to pull myself upright.
Above me, all the humans were still suspended, tangled together in a disordered mass. At first glance, they seemed fine, just a bit twisted around each other, faces tense and desperate, but alive. I slowly lowered them to the ground and carefully released them one by one.
Their bodies wobbled for a few moments as their feet touched the ground, as if their legs had forgotten how to hold them up, until they finally steadied themselves. Still, none of them said a word.
“If possible... I’d rather not have to go through that again. I don’t think reliving it would do my mental state any favors” Rupert muttered softly, barely audible.
Everyone’s gaze shifted to our surroundings. Unlike everything we had faced so far, this place wasn’t drowned in absolute darkness. It was still dim, sure, but not enough to swallow everything around us. You could make out distant shapes, silhouettes carved by shadow, even subtle variations in the terrain ahead.
It was only when I joined the others, scanning the area carefully, that an unsettling thought crossed my mind. I was just about to voice it when Victor spoke up, breaking the silence: “Where the hell are we?”
Victor’s question made sense, given the landscape stretching out before us. Black rocks rose around the stream like broken teeth in the jaw of some colossal beast, jagged, irregular, and threatening.
The liquid flowing between them still released thin, constant vapors, as if it were eternally on the verge of boiling, slowly melting the very channel it ran through.
In the distance, waterfalls and streams of lava wound through the terrain, spilling into deep fissures and sending up clouds of steam with every impact. The air was hot and heavy, saturated with moisture and a metallic odor that was impossible to ignore.
I wasn’t sure what it was really like to breathe in that place, I didn’t even breathe, but judging by the tense expressions and uneasy looks on everyone’s faces, it was clear that the air was far from being one of the environment’s more pleasant features.
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