"Wh-Who are you?" Kastis stuttered.
"Who am I?" The voice repeated, slow and deliberate.
Then it chuckled. "That's a great question… godling."
Kastis felt his chest tighten. The voice sounded like it came from everywhere and nowhere. It was ancient, but not old—young, but not naive. Just wrong enough to make his skin crawl.
"I am Valerian. It's an honor to meet you."
Kastis raised an eyebrow. "An honor to meet me? Why?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Valerian said, as if Kastis had just missed the point of a cosmic joke. "You're here. If you're here, that means you're somehow connected to Lord Unknown."
Kastis narrowed his eyes. The name tickled something in the back of his head, but no memories followed. "You called me godling. Is Lord Unknown a god? Does that mean I'm… part god?"
"Yes," Valerian said simply. "Your blood carries the legacy of a god. Only three in all the worlds do—two others and you. None of you are gods, but you are of them. And you… you're tied to Lord Unknown, the strongest of them all. The one who vanished thousands of years ago."
Kastis took a sharp breath. "I have questions. First: Who are the other two godlings? Do you know anything—names, gender, anything at all? Second: How are you here? Are you tied to Lord Unknown? And third… where are we? What is this place? What's the hole? And the Illusory Islands?"
Valerian sighed, as if Kastis had just handed him a stack of problems to solve before dinner.
"Alright, alright. One at a time," he said, holding up an invisible hand. "The other godlings… they're not in Mistale. Not yet. I don't know who they are, what they look like, or anything. I only know their souls flicker faintly… from another world."
Valerian paused before answering the next. "As for me? No. I'm not related to Lord Unknown. I don't know how I got here. One day—about a hundred years ago—I just appeared. I didn't exist before that. I manifested. Like a shadow given shape through the echoes of the dead."
Kastis frowned. "And the last question?"
"We're in Mistale. Sort of." Valerian's tone shifted.
"What do you mean, sort of?" Kastis cut in.
Valerian didn't get upset. He just repeated, patiently, "Sort of."
"We're in a space called the Illusory Islands. A pocket dimension… created by Lord Unknown himself. This island reacts to legacy skills. The first person to arrive here had a skill called Universal Domain. That changed this place forever. Unfortunately, not much is known about that skill—or the true history of the three worlds."
"Three… worlds?" Kastis echoed.
"Yes. I mentioned them earlier, didn't I?" Valerian said, almost offhandedly. "Earth. Mistale. And Soularis—the world of the soul. Mistale, in ancient language, means 'first' or 'ruin.' As for Earth… its name doesn't appear in the old tongues."
"And Soularis…?"
Valerian nodded. "The soul world. That's where your strength can grow. But only your soul can enter. Not your body—unless you're at Sequence Four or higher."
Kastis muttered under his breath, trying to wrap his mind around the flood of revelations. Then, without thinking, he asked one last question. "What are you? And is this ca—"
Before he could finish, his vision shifted. His eyes widened.
"What—what the hell?! I can see now!"
Valerian's voice was calm. "Your skill, Shadow Walker, is awakening. I still can't see anything… lucky you."
Kastis blinked rapidly. "Wait… why couldn't I see before?"
"Oh, I put a veil over your senses," Valerian replied, completely unbothered. "Didn't want you getting distracted when I made my bada*s entrance."
Kastis rolled his eyes. "You're unbelievable. Alright—then tell me again. What are you?"
Valerian hesitated, then sighed. "Honestly? I don't know. Best guess? I'm a manifestation. A fusion of souls—reincarnated people who died here, bound together by the residual power of Lord Unknown. That's why I've got fractured memories, conflicting personalities… Like I'm being pulled apart by ghosts inside me."
Kastis's lips parted, but another thought bulldozed its way to the front of his mind. "Okay, okay. That's… wild. But now I need to know—how does the power system work?"
Valerian laughed. "Nope. Later. I've told you enough for now. Your mind's going to split if I keep going. I'll see you again—when you hit Sequence One, if you survive that long."
"Wait! Please—!"
But Valerian was already gone. In the next instant, Kastis was flung skyward like a ragdoll.
THUD.
His body slammed into mud. He groaned, face planted in the pond.
"What the hell was that for?" Kastis growled, clawing at his tongue, trying to scrape away the muck.
Eventually, he looked around. The pond had changed. Before, it had looked like a crater filled with water—now, it gently dipped into the land, like a natural formation. It was integrated, real.
Kastis waded to shore, his feet crunching over broken shells. The noon sun beat down on him, but strangely… his shadow hadn't grown. It was still the same length as it had been in the morning.
"Must be my Shadow Walker skill," he muttered.
He made it to his rock-bed and sat down, thinking back over everything Valerian had told him. His thoughts swirled like a storm, so he did the only thing he could: he decided to move.
First the hole, then scouting. Maybe that would quiet his mind.
Following the creek, he found the hole again—where the water vanished into darkness.
He stepped into his shadow, his body thinning into liquid black. He reached the hole—
—and stopped.
"No luck… damn it. There's a barrier here. I can't pass. Nothing can."
He sighed and stood back. "Fine. I'll scout instead."
Leaping into the trees, Kastis dashed through the canopy. Strange creatures watched him. Most common were crab-like things—four legs, a tough carapace, oval bodies, jagged arms that split into new ones, and distorted heads with at least three eyes. Kastis didn't stick around to count more.
He scouted for another ten minutes—about an hour in total.
"Alright, I've covered a 30-by-30 meter area. This section is west of the rock."
He turned and made his way back toward the clearing. The pond was bigger now, somehow. His rock lay in the top-left. Something formless floated in the center of the pond… facing the direction he'd first arrived from.
He ignored it.
He scavenged for building materials and found four logs, flat stones, and a few sturdy sticks. Using them, he built a crude table near his rock shaped bed he named bed-rock.
Then, forming a shadow cup with his hands, he summoned the antlers of the deer monster from earlier and placed them on the table. The corpse of the Shadow Jaguar came next, dragged up from the abyss of his shadow by tendrils of living black.
He began crafting.
Using one of the jaguar's canines, he shaved the antlers. He shaped them into a crescent, leaving one point intact to serve as a blade mount. Slowly, methodically, he sharpened the inside of the crescent until it glinted obsidian black.
The sticks were useless. For the hilt, he used another antler—sawed off the ends, smoothed the bulge in the middle, and cut it straight. He carved small connectors—interlocking pieces with hooked ends, a trick his adoptive father had taught him when building a backyard shack years ago.
The first jaguar tooth dulled halfway. He pulled another from the corpse and continued. Thirty more minutes, and he'd carved out the last connector. A final rectangular notch in the hilt allowed the blade to slot in, and the locking hooks clicked into place.
The weapon was finished.
"Finally… four hours. Worth it." Kastis exhaled, sweat streaking his temple.
He sat and stared at the scythe—a sleek, black crescent mounted on an antler hilt, sharp as death. His work.
He smiled, then collapsed onto the bedrock and passed out.
The next morning, Kastis made dual daggers from the jaguar's remaining canines and antler fragments, along with throwing knives shaped from smaller antler shoots. The local wood was twice as strong as anything back on Earth—perfect for makeshift weapons.
He worked through the night, lit by fire. When he finally slept, it was for an entire day. And when he woke?
He was ready.
Ready to hunt. Ready to survive.
Maybe even ready to begin.