Chapter 4 — The Two Souls
Ken, after absorbing the girl's ability, felt a strange rocking. It was not a simple addition, but a profound transformation, a reorganisation of his being.
His mind remained anchored in the burning reality of the desert, aware of the persistent pain of thirst and fatigue, but another part of him... was elsewhere. As if his consciousness had split, as if his being could exist simultaneously in two distinct worlds, two dimensions strangely interted in each other.
And yet, this new inner existence was not a break with the outside world. He always felt the scorching breath of the wind caressing his bare skin, the grains of sand stuck like a second rough epidermis, the persistent bitterness in his dried throat. But at the same time... another space had opened, vibrating with a presence that he could not ignore.
An unknown territory stretched before him, beyond ordinary sensory perceptions. A world intimately linked to its being, to what it was at its depths.
Not a fleeting dream that vanishes when you wake up. Not a deceptive illusion created by his weakened mind. This inner world was real, vibrating with palpable energy, living in a way that still escaped it.
He advanced with instinctive caution in this territory without apparent form, but loaded with an overwhelming presence, with a meaning that he sensed immense. A white void, immaculate, extending as far as the eye can see, both of a disconcerting peace and a cold and deaf terror. There, suspended in the centre of this luminous nothingness, floated a huge orb, of an almost blinding whiteness.
Ken approached slowly, attracted by this light like a moth towards a flame. His invisible feet met no resistance, sliding on an immaterial surface.
His heart suddenly ran in his real chest, a repercussion of the wonder and fear he felt in this inner place.
This sphere... he felt it deep inside him, it was his soul. His purest essence, finally visible in his own eyes.
But she wasn't alone.
No. The image struck him with unexpected force, leaving him almost breathless in both worlds.
There were two.
One was of a heavenly whiteness, immaculate, soft and radiant, almost luminous like a distant star, giving off a calm and strangely familiar warmth, an echo of something he had lost or forgotten. The other... was absolute black. Black as the deepest abyss, black as a bottomless abyss where all light went out, cold, absolute, terrifying in its immobility. She didn't shine, she didn't emit anything. It absorbed everything, sucking up the ambient light like a cosmic black hole.
The two orbs floated in a precarious balance, separated by an indefinable distance, as if they both belonged to Ken... without ever touching each other, without ever uniting into a single coherent entity. A strange and disturbing duality.
Why two souls? Why is he such an insignificant being in the great scheme of things? What did that mean?
There was no immediate response in this silent void. The mysteries seemed to multiply with each discovery.
And suddenly, in a corner of this bright void, a form caught his attention. She had appeared almost imperceptibly, like a thought taking shape.
A girl.
She smiled softly, a serene and peaceful smile that did not reach her eyes. She did not speak, no sound resounded in this silent place. She hardly moved, frozen in a soft and melancholic expression.
She was there. Present in his inner world.
The one he had absorbed a few moments before in the desert.
And at this precise moment, a clear and imperative thought emerged in Ken's mind. A deep desire to understand, a thirst for information. An intention as natural as breathing. Like a primitive instinct, he mentally asked his status, seeking answers in this new field of consciousness.
A new translucent interface opened in the immaculate white space, the lines of text forming with strange clarity, clear as the raw light of the outside world:
⸻
Name: Ken
Age: 17 years old
Height: 1.63 m
Weight: 46 kg
Hair: Black that does not give off any light
Eyes: Black as a bottomless abyss
Unique capacity: PREDATOR
Level: 1
⸻
Description of the competence:
This ability is the result of an unnatural union of two species that should never have met. A transgression of the fundamental laws of the living. From this forbidden union was born an entity so dangerous, so fundamentally unbalanced, that even the gods themselves, in their infinite wisdom and terrible power, have relentlessly hunted it down to eradicate it from the very fabric of existence.
Does this unnatural existence represent an unexpected blessing for the world, capable of overthrowing the established order, or an unclean curse capable of consuming it entirely, plunging it into irreversible chaos?
Only time, a ruthless judge, will be able to decide.
⸻
First ability acquired:
Absorbing a dead body makes it possible to steal the person's unique ability.
Mission to increase capacity:
Absorb 1 / 100 bodies to reach level 10. The road will be long and macabre, sown with death and suffering.
⸻
New ability: Jump higher
Level: 1
Description:
There was a girl, there in the other world, whose only dream, the obsession of her existence, was to jump higher than all her rivals to finally win the gold medal at the Olympic Games. A simple, pure, consuming dream.
First ability acquired:
You can jump 5x higher than your normal jump. The power of his dream is now in you.
Mission to increase capacity:
Use this ability in different situations, explore its limits, refine its potential — 0 / 100 uses required. to reach level 10
⸻
Ken looked at the smiling girl in the white void. Her expression was sweet, almost melancholic.
She still didn't speak, no sound breaking the silence of her inner world. But his motionless gaze, his silent presence, his existence even in this space... said a whole part of his history, a fragment of his soul now linked to his own.
And Ken whispered inside him, his voice resounding in the spectral silence:
- It seems... you were a girl who had dreams as important to you as mine are to me.
A seemingly simple dream, but of rare purity and intensity. A dream devoured by death, by the brutality of a merciless world that does not care about individual aspirations.
- A girl who only wanted to become the best, the winner of the Olympic Games...
The immaculate void seemed to vibrate slightly around him, an imperceptible wave travelling through space.
A shiver ran through him, deeper than the cold of the nocturnal desert.
As if his white soul, his own essence, had reacted to these words, to the recognition of this lost dream.
As if the dream of this girl, now imprisoned in him, continued to live in a certain way, seeking to express himself through him.
⸻
At that precise moment, a revelation was imposed on his mind with the force of a flash. A deep intuition, a sudden understanding that went beyond simple logic.
Like an eternal truth that he had always carried in him without being aware of it.
His unique ability was not an external entity, a power grafted into his body.
It was intrinsically linked to his soul, to this double entity that he had just discovered.
She was an integral part of him, of his deepest being. He understood not to
Not to whom he changed the world that he had this ability, no she was with him since his birth it is world lets it express its which in reality And every being in this strange world, every person crossed, every creature encountered, every "stranger" like him - also had a unique ability, a manifestation of their true essence, linked not to their physical envelope, but to what they were deep in their heart.
To their soul.
⸻
Ken slowly lowered his eyes into his inner world.
In front of him, the shape of the girl reinforces his white soul, white light, peacefully, like a precious memory transmitted, never completely lost.
And in the shadow of his mind, in a dark corner of his inner consciousness, the black soul pulsates gently, silent and patient.
She was hungry, he felt it, an insatiable and mysterious hunger.
But Ken, for the moment, chooses to focus his attention on the light, on the fragile hope that this discovery offered him.
⸻
End of Chapter 4.