The darkness… a place every creature born to see in brightness instinctively avoids. Not because it brings discomfort, but because it stirs something deeper—fear. A fear of what might lie ahead… a fear of the unknown.
But for Dave… the darkness didn't bring fear. It brought peace. Peace in knowing that it was finally over. His life—short, confined, driven by a single purpose—had reached its end.
Or so he thought.
A sharp sting began to rise through his legs, shooting upward, registering in his nerves like a sudden jolt of fire. The pain was immediate and real—so real that his eyes snapped open.
Darkness again.
But this was different.
"Pain…" he muttered, his voice raw and guttural, more breath than sound. He couldn't see. Couldn't make sense of his surroundings. But he could feel.
His legs—no, something was happening to them. The sensation was unbearable. As if they were being crushed, rebuilt, and crushed again in an endless cycle. The agony pulsed through him.
"Ahhh!"
A scream tore from his lungs as the pain surged once more. He tried to move, to push back against whatever force pressed down on him—but he was trapped. It felt like his body had been split apart, his upper and lower halves placed in separate spaces.
He reached out, pressing his palm against something solid just inches above him. There was barely enough room to move. His elbow touched the surface beneath him—it was cold, hard, unyielding, like concrete.
A sealed space. Like a coffin.
He tried to push—push harder—but the slab above him wouldn't budge. It didn't even feel like it could. It was like a wall. Cold. Immovable. Merciless. His human frame was powerless before it.
But the pain… oh, the pain. It didn't stop. It couldn't stop. It clawed through his nerves like fire, and that alone kept him moving. Kept him desperate. He didn't know what was happening—only that he had to get out. And soon.
"Ughhh!" Dave groaned, teeth clenched, as he forced his weight into his elbow, digging against the floor. He pushed harder. Still, nothing changed—or so he thought.
Then something strange began to happen.
That unbearable crushing sensation… it began to slow. Each time his legs were destroyed and remade, it took longer to be crushed again. The rhythm changed. His body was adapting. The pain wasn't fading, not entirely—but there were moments between, slivers of relief he could use.
In those moments, he focused.
He pushed again—again and again—until his elbows screamed, until the tendons felt like tearing. Until the muscles in his arms ruptured.
And yet... after every crack and break came a strange relief, like something was healing him. Rebuilding him. He didn't understand it. He didn't question it. All he knew was that it meant he could keep pushing.
So he did.
His legs shattered and healed. His arms broke and mended. Blood poured from his nostrils, his ears—but then the wounds closed. And still, he pushed. Again and again. His body turned into a cycle of agony and repair.
He didn't know how long it had been. Minutes? Hours? Days?
The darkness remained absolute—no end, no edge, no hint of light. But Dave kept going. Because there was nothing else, but pain in this darkness.
He didn't care whether this was hell or heaven, or if it was punishment from some divine force for what he'd done—for the slaughter of those who had taken everything from him: his parents, his legs, his friends. None of it mattered.
All he wanted was to be free—from the pain, from the suffocating weight pressing down on him, and from the unseen eyes that seemed to glare at him from the abyss.
He just wanted to get out.
And then... it budged.
The wall—whatever it was, cold and unmoving like solid stone—finally shifted, if only a little. But that small movement sparked something in him. A flicker of hope in the endless dark.
That hope lit a fire in his chest. A longing to live. To see light again. To escape this stifling darkness and breathe the open air beyond it.
"Ahhhh!" he cried, voice raw, as he pushed harder. Pain surged through him, but it was buried beneath the rush of adrenaline. His muscles tore with the effort, his bones strained to their limits.
Yet something stirred within him—something strange. A force coursed through his body, knitting torn flesh, strengthening weakened limbs.
Like he was evolving—forced to grow stronger by the sheer extremity of the moment.
The wall began to yield. So did the crushing weight over his legs. He could feel it—less pressure, less agony. Not gone, but changing.
It was like enduring the same pain over and over, yet each time, it hurt a little less.
Finally, with all the strength he didn't even know he still had, he pushed. Whatever had been trapping him gave way, and for the first time in what felt like forever, he could breathe.
But it wasn't the outside world waiting for him.
Above his head, a faint glow filtered in through a small crack. He was still trapped by something—the darkness remained, but so did the light. He reached up and pushed—this time, it was cold, solid... like the roof of some small structure. He blinked through the shadows, confused.
Then he looked down.
His legs were pinned beneath what looked like a chunk of a real wall—concrete, debris, broken edges. It wasn't some metaphorical prison, It was a real wreckage.
"What… is going on?" Dave whispered, his voice hoarse.
This wasn't his lab. This wasn't anything familiar. He was buried in the ruins of some building unknown to him—and he felt like he was still alive.
The pain in his legs had dulled now, more bearable than before. He could feel them again—faintly, but undeniably there. That sensation—of having a lower body again—it startled him.
Still, part of him hesitated to believe. Maybe this was just a hallucination. A trick of the mind. A last, desperate dream as he hovered at the edge of death.
He had heard of such things—of people seeing their entire lives flash before their eyes right before the end.
He might've been feeling something like that… but it didn't feel like one.
Still, he couldn't be sure. The human brain had a cruel talent—it could make illusions feel real under extreme emotional collapse, and sometimes, it could twist reality into something that felt false.
Maybe… this was his false reality. But it didn't matter—because it was still his reality.
Setting both hands firmly on either side of the slab pinning his legs, Dave took a deep breath and began to push. This time, the wall shifted on the first try—it was no longer the immovable object it had seemed before.
With a rough calculation of its shape and width in mind, Dave figured it had to weigh at least 700—maybe even 900 kilos. And the fact that he was actually moving it… felt unreal.
But just budging it wasn't enough.
He needed to free his legs.
Digging in with everything he had, he pulled upward—harder, harder.
"Uggghh!" The sound escaped him unbidden—a deep, long grunt torn from his chest as he strained against the crushing weight.
The unbearable pressure on his legs began to shift. They weren't being crushed anymore. The wall was still pressing down on them, still heavy as hell, but now his legs were taking the weight—fully surviving it.
It still hurt like hell, but compared to the agonizing feeling of being crushed from earlier, this pain was tolerable.
With each push, with every grunt and strain, something in Dave was changing.
His strength—already far beyond normal—was growing stronger, denser, more refined with every second. He could feel it now, clearly. Not just a desperate surge of adrenaline, but real, tangible growth. His body was adapting.
Evolving.
"What's… happening to me? How can I even do this?" he wondered, breath catching as clarity began to push aside the fog of pain. Every time he pressed against the weight, he felt it—the resistance meeting him with less force, his muscles hardening, his bones refusing to break.
It was like his body was learning.
Adapting to the crushing pressure.
Feeding off it.
Evolving—like some kind of supernatural power he'd only read about in those novels during his research break.
"Ahhhhh!"
A loud, guttural shout ripped through his throat as he gave one final heave.
The wall gave way.
It slid aside with a grinding thud, revealing what lay beneath.
His trousers were torn to shreds… and beneath them—legs.
Real legs.
Not the synthetic kind he'd spent years researching.
Not the cold, metal prosthetics he'd learned to walk on.
But real legs—flesh, muscle, bone.
He stared, stunned.
Mind spinning in disbelief.
"What the hell is going on…?" Dave muttered, his voice low and shaken.
There was no pain anymore. Only silence. Only confusion.
Something had happened.
To him.
To his body.
And maybe… to the world.
***
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