In the depths of a jungle where the sun refused to shine, I ran for my life.

After all, running was all I knew how to do.

A swarm of bats chewed off my arm.

I ran.

A jaguar scratched out my eye.

I ran.

A tortoise emerged from the bushes and smashed my stomach.

The only thing I could do was run.

They were bleeding me dry, one wound at a time.

This was a place I had no power in. Worse yet, in this strange place, I was human.

Because I was human, I could get hurt like a human could. I bled, screamed, tripped and fell to the ground like a human.

Bleeding from countless wounds, I tumbled into a small clearing and collapsed by a lake fed by a raging waterfall.

All around me, countless eyes of all shapes and sizes peered from the shade of the trees, waiting for a moment to strike.

The ones who prevented my immediate death were those who ruled over the masses.

I saw their reflection in the water, then followed the waterfall to the cliff where the four monarchs of the animal kingdom stood.

A white tiger, a black tortoise, a vermilion bird, and an azure dragon. Those were the forms the judges took.

Court was now in session.

The prosecution laid out their case: an unprecedented genocide and the murder of life’s four guardians. The witnesses were all the eyes in the dark, the cries of the dead and dying.

They spoke with howls and yips, but I heard them. The judges spoke without words, but I understood their intent.

I had no purpose to exist, being an immortal creature. The only thing I left behind was destruction and mayhem — this was no longer about just them, but life itself.

The dead could not rest when they met their end by my hand. This alone was a horrendous deed worthy of endless contempt, but to fuel future murders with the legacy of the dead was a crime they could not tolerate.

The heart kept the cycle of life going in a world abandoned by fate. They had fought off the shambling abominations from above for hundreds of years, and should the spiritual leeches be allowed to tap into the pure stream of life, they would consume this earth and leave nothing behind.

For my sentence, the four guardians declared that they would protect this heart from beyond the grave by taking my powers for their own.

Now, it was time for the defense to speak.

—I didn’t know what to say.

There were too many howling voices, too many accusations for me to handle.

Even worse, I couldn’t argue against the dead.

How could I say my happiness and freedom was worth their lives to their faces? There were so many leering faces, so many flames that I had snuffed out in the pursuit of power.

All I did with my power was kill those who could protect all these living creatures.

As I stared down the dead and damned, I couldn’t bring myself to speak a single word.

Thus, the jury spoke.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Thus, my execution began.

The bird pulled off my arm, ripping bone and tendon to ribbons. The tortoise smashed my legs to paste. The dragon burned every inch of my skin.

They gave the honor of taking my head to the white tiger. He approached one paw at a time, intent on avenging his dishonorable defeat.

I pushed back, denying the situation in front of me. This couldn’t be real. None of this could be real. But the details, all the details were perfectly placed, impeccable in tone and colour and scent, amalgamated into an illusion more real than reality.

I was bleeding. Hurting. Rotting in the recesses of grove consumed by mould and mildew. My raw muscles shone like rubies in the eternal night.

What would happen if I died here? Would there be anything after this?

My knowledge reservoirs told me exactly what would happen next. The tiger would claw my neck to tinsel. The bird would take my eyes. The feast would begin, another bloody free-for-all with me as the main course.

Then, nothing.

The end.

It was the obvious conclusion. A logical conclusion to an ill-fated progression of events. Causality at its finest.

I didn’t know how to deal with this. And so, I locked onto the only reference I had on how one should properly confront death.

A long time ago, a man spent the last of his energy writing a message in a bottle that no-one would ever find. Instead of trying to find a way to survive, he passed the faint embers to a strange entity that he just met.

A clean, elegant exit faced without fear.

I didn’t understand.

How could he be so calm? This was death. The end of one’s life, the conclusion to one’s story.

I felt like I should have known this answer, like I faced something alarmingly similar once before.

Where was it? When was it?

—What was going through his head when he faced his end?

“A bullet, to be quite honest.”

When I thought that desperate question, a voice answered me from behind. A firm hand came down on my shoulder, causing me to flinch.

The tiger, recognizing what was behind me, snarled and leapt with glistening claws.

The hand pulled me backwards. I felt the graze of cold claws passing along my neck, and then sank into an ocean of electric blue.

The sensation of cold wrapped around me like a damp blanket, keeping me pinned to the ground. My remaining eye blinked, unable to fully process the change in scenery.

Glass walls pressing against a galaxy of blue strands. A single steel chair with somebody sitting on it.

Me, in a broken, battered human body.

I regained my original body, only to have it shredded apart in a brutal manner.

This was a bad joke. It was so bad that I could die laughing.

After I thought those bitter remarks, the man on the chair looked me right in the eye and said, “Life’s a circus, and you’re the main clown. Get used to it.”

I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. I was bleeding from countless cuts, was missing an eye and both my arms — I couldn’t even remember how to work my vocal chords.

However, it only took one glance to figure out who he was.

He grinned a sharp grin and twirled the plasma pistol on his index finger. “Glad to see you haven’t forgotten me. I always had a good sense for investments.”

Samson. Well and alive, and not missing the upper half of his skull.

“Let’s not bring that up. Not everybody can be lucky enough to leave a pretty corpse.”

And somehow, he could read my thoughts.

“That’s right. It was hard not to, seeing all the unhinged thoughts bouncing around inside your head.”

It’s not very polite to read other people’s minds.

Samson shrugged. “Call it extraordinary circumstances. It’s not like I actually asked to be dragged back.” He gestured towards me, red symbols evolving over the back of his hand. “Here’s a quick hack: don’t think too hard right now. Trigger.”

A red light sank into my mind, blotting out the most recent memories of violence with opaque glass. In only a few moments, my wounds reversed and I was able to stand up once more.

Incredible.

“It’s only a temporary fix,” Samson said. “All I did was seal some of your memories. Painkillers for the mind. Even this space is a very temporary quarantine from yourself — we don’t have much time before they try to erase you again. You’ve got a little while before it comes crashing back down, so try to get those guys out of your head by then, alright?”

I looked down at my hands, inspecting them thoroughly. They were real human hands with real warmth coming off them; I pressed my palms against my cheeks, relieved to realize my face was in working order.

“Am I really human again?” I asked. “Is this real?”

“No,” Samson said. “Fuck no. On both of those accounts. You’re the farthest thing from a human, but I have an obligation to help you out. Gotta protect your investments.”

The little time I spent here felt more real than all of the years I spent wasting away inside of a rock. Disappointing, but it was a nice escape while it lasted.

Even if I had to experience getting mauled to death during that same escape.

“Where are we?” I asked, testing out my vocal chords. They worked as I remembered — though the voice that came out was surprisingly demure.

“Of course you had to ask that question,” Samson answered, less than pleased. “We’re not anywhere in particular. In a physical place but still inside your mind, if you really need an answer.”

Physical place? In my mind? I didn’t know my head was that empty.

“Very funny,” he said, frowning. “This is rather serious, you know. You’re suffering from a cognito hijack, which essentially means somebody's trying to rewrite your consciousness.”

Rewrite my consciousness?

“You’re already losing, mind you. Looks like they’re focused more on killing you than taking over your body; as soon as they toss your body into that reactor, all of this — including you and I — will vanish.”

In the blue strings above me were faint reflections of the real world. The guardians managed to steal my wind and used it to push me towards the beating heart of the reactor, intent on taking me down with them.

Samson hopped to his feet and said, “I’ll explain everything once we get these guys out of your soul. Clean yourself up and get ready — they’re already banging on the doors.”

He tossed a silver glint at me that clattered to my feet. With my new hands, I reached down and picked it up.

A knife.

“The rules of reality still apply here,” he said, aiming at the walls, “‘cept for the part where desires and willpower can take form. But don’t worry too much about that, you can borrow my skills.”

The ghosts of long-dead animals reared their heads through the cracks in our sanctuary, crying out for our blood. I held the knife out, unsure of which restless spirit to start with.

Samson ran past me, performing a jumping kick on the first poor tortoise that wandered in. He followed up with several blasts from his plasma pistol, blowing open a path in the strange cube’s wall.

A gorilla lurched at me from the side, protesting his death. Fearing for my safety, I raised the knife towards it as I ran towards the opening.

When I locked eyes with him, borrowed conditioning emptied my mind and turned my limbs to ice.

I knew what to do.

A slash took the animal’s arm. I stepped in as he recoiled in pain, stabbing him through the eye with the black point.

These were empty shells that held onto vague regrets. They stood no chance against the cruel living, who were happy to turn a blind-eye to corpses and history for the sake of moving forward.

He crumbled, but two more quickly took his place. Cutting my way through, I caught up to Samson and followed his lead.

“This is really a mess,” Samson said between strikes and gunshots. “What, did you try to eat everything you came across? How did you accumulate so much trash here, dive through the dumpsters of hell?”

Eating everything I came across and three hundred years of dumpster diving.

“Y’know what, understandable,” he said, shooting a giant snake into ashes. “Try not to do that in the future.”

Borrowing Samson’s combat experience allowed me to keep up, but I was a mere passenger for the ride. None of these techniques or prepackaged moves were my own — I was an imposter following a prewritten script, an actor playing a role to perfection.

A copycat. A replicant. My focus turned inwards, toward the cloud of thoughts and feelings that made up my current existence.

I was following Samson’s footsteps perfectly, but that brought another question. If this body, this image of humanity wasn’t my own, then whose was it?

“How much time do we have?” I screamed, stabbing through the skull of a red lizard.

“Five minutes, give or take. Hope you’re good at thinking under pressure — one of them’s coming now.”

My first nemesis came roaring on a path between the trees, closing in on us. Samson moved to clear out the oncoming horde, and since I already knew the tiger’s trump card, I picked a random direction and dove.

I made a good choice, because his claws swiped through the space my head was in.

This ghost desired revenge for his death and my untimely toppling of his winner-takes-all kingdom.

My power was not earned, according to him. It was granted by an unjust entity and was not deserved, and thus, he would correct the natural order of the jungle and life flourish once more.

To those lingering sentiments, I leapt to the side and scoffed.

Strength didn’t mean a thing when all you did was sit around on your ass and play king in an empire of blood. He could’ve come back to finish me at any time prior to my second coming, but he didn’t.

Under his thumb did my strength grow. If he lost to me, then it was entirely his own fault for underestimating an enemy.

After all, strength comes in many forms. Intelligence is one of them.

If he couldn’t recognize his own mistakes, then perish.

I threw the knife and scored a direct hit in his throat. Then, as he staggered, I forced the knife upwards and rammed the illusionary knife through bone and cartilage, pushing until it came free with a fountain of red.

Still lamenting the failure of strength, the white tiger crumbled into dust.

“Four minutes!” Samson yelled, looking at a screen on his wrist. It was quiet — while I was busy screaming and crying, he took care of most of the lingering animals. “The last three are working together ahead — you’ll have to take them all on at once.”

Seriously? Couldn’t I pick them off one at a time?

“Lone wolves die alone, as you got to witness first hand. I’m sure if you start running now, you’ll make it before they shove you into the cheese grater. Probably.”

Give me your gun, then.

“This?” His expression curdled, like I just swore backwards. “Hell no. You couldn’t even use it — your raison d'etre will be entirely different from mine.”

Fine then, keep your cool gadgets all to yourself.

If all I needed was a reason to live, I had that in spades.

If this was all in my head, my greatest strength was how much I understood myself.

The three remaining guardians defended the entrance of an ancient stone temple. I took the path steps towards them two at a time, evading the brunt of their barrage.

The dragon, who waited for the tortoise and bird to corner me, blasted me with a pillar of blistering blue flame.

With no time to dodge, I swung the black knife.

The maneuver bought me enough time to tumble out of the way, but the knife and hand holding it shattered into light. Clutching my fractured arm, I kept running ahead.

This was a battle of wills. That was my first actual wound, the destruction of life’s basic instincts.

Every creature wishes to survive. A knife that channelled that desire could defeat mindless ghosts, but it wouldn’t work here.

The guardians were fueled by a greater cause, a wish to preserve this paradise they’ve created. Who was I to stand in the way of the preservation of countless lives?

I fought back with my desire for freedom, to witness the world above and fulfill those simple fantasies that kept me going for so many years.

But no matter what I could come up with, they pushed me back.

One soul’s freedom was nothing to the world at large, a glorious world where every animal had the chance to live and die with dignity.

Idle fantasies were nothing compared to doing the right thing. These animals fought for hundreds of years, cultivating an ecosystem that gave all living creatures a chance to establish themselves and live.

They saw how I broke in. I could’ve used the same method to break through the doors above; they would’ve even offered to help clear a path, should I have asked even once. This was enough to prove that I desired power and power alone, and nothing else.

My path would lead me to destruction of not just this world, but the world outside — if there was still a real world left up there to destroy.

The guardians pushed me towards the heart in real space, burning what time I had left with their unified front. They took my wind and used it against me, using the power of their trust in one another to overpower my lonesome self.

Soon, they’d burn what was left of me with their sacred flame and share my pathetic rock body to carry out their justice.

—Justice?

Justice was what they were after. A justice that was forged in the flames of futile struggle, a meaning given to the cycles of life and death.

These mere animals found companionship and warmth in each other and grew strong enough to protect what they cared about.

Compared to them, my desires were only a tiny spark that would fade with my selfish mind.

They were a star that would burn long after I was gone.

And so, their justice knocked my battered and bruised mind to the ground. I hit every step on the way down, every single branch, every leaf on every single tree.

This entire world stood against me, even in my own mind.

I was alone, carrying the wishes of a dead man and a memory that I could only look at from a distance.

The guardians crushed my dream and came to finish me off.

My dream of summer was all I had. With it, I should’ve died.

But I was still alive.

Despite everything, I was alive.

Struggling alone, I walked an eternity through the darkness and rain, shivering in decaying skin and crying out for a saviour. My very existence was sustained with two crumbs of light, while everything else around me bathed in the glow of a benevolent star.

In a lightless hell, I walked.

Surrounded by corpses and pointless bloodshed, I walked.

Deprived of any stimuli that defined a human, I walked forward.

They almost won, having pushed me to their sacred heart. There was an open chamber which Ether flowed through, the input to this life-giving machine.

There was no justice here. These guardians were animals hopped up on pride and power, conceited fools that believed in ideals they didn’t understand.

I forced myself to my knees, reaching towards my reason to exist, my one and only raison d'etre.

They fought for the greater good, a warm sentiment that was only that: a sentiment.

They preached justice to a soul who was left behind, who struggled every single step forward and memorized the taste of defeat and pain.

Their justice was an automated machine which was greased by the blood of those deemed a threat, a slow and cold grinder that raised no complaints.

If that was all they stood for, then I knew what they feared.

Their finely tuned ecosystems would fall apart without them. Those who cannot control their own circumstances seek to control the lives of others, and with this sacred heart of theirs, this world was theirs and theirs alone.

I was unraveling at the seams — Samson’s suppression was failing, causing my body to break down. Soon, this would all be over.

When I realized that, my scarred fingers wrapped around a sword’s silken hilt.

Anything that could threaten their order was evil.

If they wanted evil to prove their justice against, I’d give it to them. I’d surpass their expectations and become the greatest evil of them all.

I would destroy their world before their very eyes.

A flame can only burn the fuel it’s given. But no flame can last forever.

They knew not of sheer desperation and terror from centuries spent in an undesired prison, nor the crushing wrath of eternity.

Everything they stood for, everything they believed in, it was all meaningless to me. And so, I drew a simple silver blade and walked forward.

A slash took the head of the bird. A stab pierced through the shell of the tortoise and destroyed his inside.

Seeing the sudden eradication of his allies, the dragon retreated into the temple. I followed.

He was crying, so I took out his eyes.

He was flailing, so I tore off his limbs.

His heart was broken, so I got rid of it for him.

They were the pets of humans, animals that were treated properly in a clandestine research laboratory. They learned, and when the time came, they received a human heart.

The experiment was cut short. The earth cracked and the jungle grew from a leaking reactor that had miraculously survived a disaster that rewrote the rules of the world.

Every time they died, they reincarnated in this strange, self-sustaining jungle. After dozens of reincarnations, they grew strong enough to establish order over their animal kingdom.

Theirs was a futile struggle and they knew it well. One day, when the creatures from above attacked in earnest, everything would die. They had already reached their limit, as their lives were sustained by the generator itself. The guardians would perish if they took a single step outside of the confines of their collective heart.

Thus, I freed them from their duties in both body and spirit.

But there was nobody left to free me from mine.

They say shadows cannot exist without light… but I couldn’t see any light.

There was nothing to bring me back from the edge. Still, my body shambled forward.

What was I doing here again? I couldn’t remember anything at all, suddenly.

Who was I again?

Being unable to come up with an answer, the Spirit of the Black Cavern turned and wandered into the jungle, looking for more souls to free from their vessels.

In the depths of a jungle where the sun dared not to shine, a silver blade cut everything in its path.

Whatever the blade touched was destroyed. There were no exceptions.

Trees, wildlife, stone.

Water, air, even light.

The Spirit of the Black Cavern left nothing to chance, having vowed to leave no trace of this world behind.

A strange man crossed the Spirit’s path, having cleared his side of the jungle. Raising his plasma pistol, he called out:

“Hey, lady! Did you win? Why haven’t you… Oh.”

The Spirit answered with a swipe of its silver sword, cutting down the forest around it. The man ducked quickly enough to avoid decapitation.

To the man, the Spirit appeared as a tarnished suit of blackened armor with no face. Tatters of white cloth fluttered in its wake as it closed in for a second strike.

The man pulled out a sword. Their blades clashed in the humid air, but the silver blade was invincible. The man’s weapon shattered into green sparks.

“Shit, should’ve known this could’ve happened,” the man said, falling back. He retreated through the trees, firing purple bolts backwards, but he couldn’t shake the Spirit off his tail.

Worse yet, the Spirit was learning. It grew faster with each consecutive strike, and its bladework became refined. It cut through heated bolts of plasma with ease, completely nullifying the man’s preferred weapon.

Silver smoke wept from the Spirit’s armor as it gave chase. Blades began to sprout from its body, as well as strangely coloured gemstones which burned with an ominous light.

Vermillion and azure. Purple and gold. Orange and jade. These were the colours following after the man.

He looked behind him and shouted, “If you’re still in there, give me a sign!”

Another slice in response. This time, the Spirit slashed his back raw, cutting through all his flimsy defenses.

One strike was enough to begin the man’s final destruction. A white light began to eat away at the wound, slowly consuming him from the inside.

Despite the situation, the man turned around and pinched the bridge of his nose, perhaps in disappointment.

“First you make enough of a ruckus to wake the dead,” he said, waggling his finger in disapproval, “And now you’ve gone ahead and nearly lost yourself. Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Don’t pretend that you aren’t in there — I can sense the faintest fragment of self floating around.”

The Spirit raised its blade, as though challenging the man.

The man didn’t know what the gesture was supposed to mean, but he heard a voice in his ear before he could let loose with a last stand.

A third party that was hiding within this empty shell. An entity whispered a secret to the man, speaking in a tongue that couldn’t be heard, yet was clearly understood.

That’s not going to work, the man mentally replied. People aren’t a flame, throwing more fuel at them won’t help. Plus, how did you even know that was possible…?

A sigh and breath carried on a wind from another world.

The wind blew to the south, to the place where all things meet. It points towards the sea, where rivers and streams all join as one.

Petals must fall for next season’s flowers to bloom.

Another chance for salvation.

Nodding, the man tossed away his weapon and assumed a relaxed stance. “Fine then. This is the very last time I’m helping you.”

Upon hearing those words, the Spirit rushed forth with a skewering strike. There was no way for the man to dodge, so he didn’t try.

Instead, he raised his right hand and formed a finger gun.

A gunshot is a controlled explosion. The barrel guides the bullet towards its destination.

A single shot can change history. Start and stop wars. All depends on the time and place, and the man knew that well.

If you hate this world so much, let’s break it together.

As the two warriors met, the man granted the Spirit’s wish and fired the shot that destroyed the world.