System Error: The Wrong Survivor

The Pain of Becoming

The white light swallowed everything.

It poured into me like liquid fire, flooding straight through my skin, my veins, my bones. My nerves ignited all at once, burning white-hot from the inside out. Every inch of me lit up with pain so pure it felt like my body was being rewritten line by line.

I screamed, but the sound came out choked, raw. “It hurts… make it stop!”

The energy didn’t listen. It kept rushing in, thick and endless, pressing against the inside of my skull until I thought my head would split. My bones vibrated, humming like they were tuning to a frequency they were never built for. I could feel them shifting, cracking, trying to grow stronger and failing at the same time.

“Stop… please…” I gasped, curling tighter on the cold floor. “I can’t… I’m not strong enough for this.”

Memories that weren’t mine slammed into my mind next. Not gentle. Not slow. They crashed through like a flood.

I saw cities made of crystal and light collapsing into dust. Towers taller than mountains crumbled while people, no, things that looked like people, screamed in languages I didn’t know but somehow understood. Worlds burned. Whole planets cracked open, their cores spilling darkness that swallowed stars. Endless night stretched forever, and in the middle of it, something ancient watched. Waited. Hungered.

“No… no, those aren’t mine!” I cried out, clutching my head. “Get out of my head! Those aren’t my memories!”

But they kept coming. Faster now. A thousand lifetimes of destruction. Civilizations rising only to be erased. The same cycle repeating across realities I couldn’t even name. And through all of it, that same presence, patient, familiar, watching me like it had done this before.

My back arched hard off the floor. My muscles seized, twisting under my skin. “I’m breaking… I feel myself breaking apart!”

The power didn’t care. It pushed deeper, flooding my chest, my lungs, my heart. Every beat felt heavier, like it was pumping liquid starlight instead of blood. My fingers scraped against the floor, nails splitting as the energy tried to reshape them. My ordinary brown eyes burned at the edges, glowing faintly now, like something underneath was trying to surface.

“Why me?” I sobbed, voice hoarse. “I was nothing… I was invisible… why give this to someone like me?”

The memories answered with more pain. I saw the Abyss Gate, not as a dungeon, but as a wound between worlds. I saw myself, except it wasn’t me, standing in front of a similar seal long ago, whispering the same desperate words I had said outside. “I choose this. Whatever it costs.”

“That wasn’t me!” I shouted, even as my body convulsed again. “I didn’t… I wouldn’t…”

But doubt crept in, sharp and cold beneath the fire. Had I? In some moment of weakness I couldn’t remember? The thought made the pain worse.

My ribs creaked, expanding like they wanted to make room for something too big. My spine felt like it was lengthening, each vertebra grinding against the next. I rolled onto my side, vomiting nothing but light that dissolved before it hit the ground.

“I can’t hold it… it’s too much… I’m going to die here with the rest of them.”

The voice from the seal returned, calm and ancient, wrapping around my thoughts.

“You will not die, Elias. You will become.”

“Become what?” I gasped, tears streaming down my face. “A monster? Something that kills everyone just to get to me? I don’t want that! I never wanted that!”

The energy surged harder, like it was answering my fear by proving its point. My legs seized, muscles locking so tight I thought the bones would snap. My arms jerked uncontrollably. Every nerve screamed louder, a chorus of fire that drowned out everything else.

Another wave of memories hit, darker this time. Not just destruction. Integration. Something ancient merging with something small and desperate. Worlds saved and worlds ended in the same breath. The line between destroyer and savior blurred until it didn’t exist anymore.

“I’m not ready!” I yelled, voice breaking into something that didn’t sound human. “I’m still Elias… the porter… the one nobody sees… don’t take that away from me!”

The pain peaked. My whole body lifted slightly off the ground, suspended in the swirling light. My scream tore out then, not from fear anymore. Not from horror. From transformation. Raw. Gut-deep. It echoed off the pulsing walls like the dungeon itself was screaming with me.

It felt like dying and being born at the same time. Like every piece of the invisible boy I had been was being burned away so something else could take its place.

The light flared brighter, blinding. The memories flooded faster, too fast to fight. Cities. Darkness. Burning worlds. The ancient presence whispering my name like it had always known it.

My scream finally broke.

Everything went black.