Suddenly, his vision filled with color. He was in an empty hall with a floor and walls comprised of ruddy gray stone. The ceiling was conspicuously missing along with any celestial objects to decorate the orange sky.

Is this Fracture? Jack wondered as he regarded the height of the walls. They were too high for him to climb given the stone’s smooth texture and the hall ran farther than he could see with a slight curve to the left. He smiled despite the rather lackluster environment that welcomed him.

After considering his surroundings, he realized that he could see himself clearly. He had never been able to make out any details in the void, if he’d had a body at all there, and he couldn’t see anything during initialization. He lifted his hands in front of his face marveling at them for a moment.

His skin was blue with a silvery metallic undertone. If he squinted, he could just barely observe jolt of blue energy racing along his veins. He also had hair which came as a surprise when he bent slightly to look at his midsection and legs. A shoulder-length mess of silver hair fell into his face getting into the way and grabbing his attention. However, the most shocking discovery about his body related to the soft, blue glow emanating from his chest.

He couldn’t see it well, but the skin changed in texture and hue in the center of his chest. He ran his hands over it, Almost right above his heart, his skin transitioned from warm, if rough flesh, to a smooth, cool surface like glass or metal. Yet, Jack was able to feel his fingers as they danced across the source of the glow, so he knew it was a part of his body. On a hunch, he tried to focus his mind on the shape and location of the anomaly.

He spent a minute or two willing the core to awaken or activate to no avail. He even tried voicing his commands although that only served to make him feel foolish for the attempt. The failure didn’t bother him though. Rather than getting frustrated, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few seconds savoring the feeling of being alive.

He was so ecstatic about being able to feel the stone under his feet, smell the dust lingering on the stone, and see the different colors of his body and the world that he didn’t think to question his lack of clothing.

Once he finished savoring his newly-found freedom, he inspected a few more parts of his body like his nails which looked like tiny, metal plates with a silver sheen. He also possessed an impressive musculature which he discovered sported a decent amount of flexibility. He tested his movement with a wide range of motion that might’ve made a casual observer question his soundness of mind. Punches, kicks, squats, stretches, and several stances flowed together. He had no idea where these movements represented or how he knew them, but they felt as natural as breathing.

Satisfied, he nodded his head, hope and optimism blossoming in his thoughts.

Onward, always.

The phrase invigorated him. His skin tingled and his mind raced with possibilities. So, without worrying about the troubling implications of the error message given by the voice from earlier. With the goal of progress set, he started walking down the hall.

After a shorter trek than he expected, an archway came into view opening the way to an open space. Jack laughed from sheer excitement at the promise of seeing more of this world. Though some might have considered the red-gray stone and orange sky harsh on the eyes, he saw only beautiful compared to the gray void. His pace increased to a jog as he got closer to the archway.

He passed through the opening, but immediately felt something was wrong. He stepped into a courtyard of some kind, but the walls had been reduced to piles of rubble and on the other side of the room, a broken archway dominated the view easily towering several meters above the one he had just walked through. Beyond the ruined boundaries of the space, an inhospitable landscape of jutting crags and treacherously narrow pathways trailed off into dark chasms.

The chasms made Jack's stomach churn as he remembered the endless fall through the void.

The wrongness surged like a dam breaking with his consciousness and he dove forward into a roll. Something sharp and cold brushed against the back of his neck just as he moved. He tumbled roughly along the floor quickly scrambling to his feet. He eyes darted to the archway that he had exited from and saw two hideous creatures.

Gangling arms with knife-like hands hung from their disproportionately short bodies causing them to drag partially along the floor as the creatures swayed from side to side. Their heads were near-perfect spheres with a single bulbous, bloodshot eye in the center. The skin on their arms and body looked smooth and like glass, but Jack recognized scales on their faces as they glinted somewhat in the orange light suffusing the area. Neither creature stood above his navel in height.

Both of their eyes swiveled to his new location squelching with each movement. Jack couldn't help but take note of the small pile of silvery hair at their feet.

For a breath, he faced off with the creatures, unsure if they would attack or abandon the venture after failing to disable him with their sneak attack. He hoped that they would fall back since he didn’t have any kind of weapon.

He saw a sizeable stone less than a meter from his current location as well as the hilt of something beneath the rubble of the wall a few steps from the leftmost creature. Sadly, as soon as he took notice of those things, the creatures attacked taking advantage of his brief moment of distraction.

Jack dodged the first strike by dropping low as the creature leapt forward and whipped its arms at his head. The sound of stale air being displaced and a fleeting shadow were his only indicators of the attacking creature passing overhead. Seeing the second creature rear back one of its arms to catch him mid-dodge, he threw himself to the side grabbing at the head-sized stone he’d spotted a moment ago.

Unfortunately, his dodge wasn’t particularly graceful or wholly successful. The whip-like appendage struck his leg just below the hip leaving a long cut and causing his muscles to spasm from the pain. The offending creature pulled back its first arm and twisted to send the other arm slicing toward him. Meanwhile, the first attacker recovered from its failed leap and joined its companion in attacking him.

With the equivalent of two bladed whips coming at him from different angles and a ruined wall leading into a chasm as his only escape, a serene state of clarity fell over Jack. Instead of trying to dodge the attacks, he cocked his arm back and rifled the stone, as best he could from his prone position, at the creature closest to the middle of the room. He didn’t wait to see if the throw would strike true as he managed to get one foot under himself before the first attack hit.

He took the strike grabbing ahold of the arm and gritting his teach through pain of the bladed section of the arm digging a gouge into his back. Another strike nicked his arm from the other creature, but he ignored it. He surged to his feet while simultaneously, yanking the creature by the entrance forward with all his strength.

Unable to resist, his assailant was ripped off its feet as he pivoted and twisted to send the disgusting wretch careening toward its companion. As it turned out, his throw had been on the mark and left his target on the ground with a rough wound oozing blue blood. When the two slammed into each other, they made an unpleasant squelch before the one whose arm he didn’t hold tried to extricate itself. Sadly, even if its appendages favored such an action, Jack wasn’t done.

He rushed the grounded pair forcefully twisting the arm in his hand so the wriggling knife hand pointed at his quarry. The creature in his grasp struggled to pull its arm free, but the amount of force it exerted was laughable. Jack figured the creatures relied on the force generated by the whipping motion of their arms paired with the sharp edge to deal damage rather than pure muscle power. That also meant the other creature couldn’t attack effectively since its pinned position would hamper its range of motion.

The thought brought a smile to his face as he fell on the two. He stabbed the knife hand into the eye of its owner sending up a spray of blue and gray liquid as the eye burst. The creature released a low drone which grew louder when Jack continued to drive the sharp implement deeper into its head. Its other arm whirled about ineffectually during its death throes tangling with the arms of its companion.

Something popped into Jack’s head, but his calm mind surpressed it in favor of completing the elimination of all threats.

This made said companion easy pickings for Jack who stood and watched it with the corpse pinning it down struggle before stomping on its head; once, twice, then a third time which elicited another squelch. As he started to relax, a shiver ran down his spine. His instincts drew his eyes deeper into the hall that he came from, just in time to see two more of these creatures coalesce from the shadows of the walls.

He sprinted to them colliding with the first in his path right as it finished forming. He slammed his right hand forward which was still impaled in the head of the now-dead creature. The new arrival barely had time to raise its arms in some semblance of a defense. The corpse serving as an improvised weapon covered Jack’s arm in more gore as he slammed it into its living counterpart. His attack blew past the flimsy guard pinning his foe into the hard stone wall.

A whishing sound warned him of another attack, so he Jerard his head to the left. The razor tip of the other creature’s whip arm sailed by his face slicing a small cut across his cheek. Snarling at the pain, he grabbed hold of the pinned creature’s head and threw it at its partner. As soon as his hand was free, Jack pulled his other hand from the corpse’s eye socket and tossed the body over his head while snatching its other arm in his free hand.

The tangle of overly-long arms and poorly proportioned bodies of his foes droned in a near-comical display of coordination. He almost felt sorry for killing them, almost. The corpse’s bladed hands went to work in his hands like the butcher breaking in a new set of knives. He sliced, stabbed, and tore the unfortunate creatures apart.

When he finished, his calm demeanor bled away leaving him out of breath, bloodied, and with a racing heart. The notifications, previously surpressed, popped into his mind.

As he finished the messages, four small crystals rose from the corpses and teleported in from of him, ultimately settling in his outstretched palm. They were no larger than his fingernails in length and almost as thin. They glowed with a faint, yellow light. Inherently, he somehow understood what he had to do with them. One thought was all it took for the crystals to shatter into fine dust which merged with his skin.

He chose to use his skill in lieu of imbuing the Eidos directly into his designation. The skill took effect and his stomach flipped making him stumble. His hand subconsciously touched the spot just above his navel while the other pressed against the wall to stabilize him. He groaned as the sensation in his gut grew worse. He fell to his knees, both hands now gripping his abdomen.

This… may have been poorly thought out, he thought, right before he vomited clear, slimy liquid onto the corpses of the whipshade stalkers next to him. He closed his eyes hoping no other enemies showed themselves and tried to focus on the Refine Eidos skill in the hopes of stopping the discomfort.