.... Protocol .... Devour%!@!... Seed—Too Slow....

"M541X...."

A terrifyingly loud, broken sound struck Max in his dream, like a bucket of ice-cold water being poured over lava. It jolted him awake, but not in reality. His eyes opened in panic and confusion, only to see himself floating in the air, his body naked and half-covered in black mist.

The mist moved slowly around his skin, almost like it was alive, but Max could not feel any cold or warmth from it. Only pressure. A strange, heavy pressure, as if something was trying to hold him in place while the broken sound kept echoing inside his skull. It did not feel like mana, nor did it feel like the void he had grown used to. This was something different, something older, rougher, almost unfinished, as if he had been dipped into a darkness that was still deciding what shape it wanted to take.

"M541X...."

Is it calling for me? Max thought to himself as he looked around. He could tell he was dreaming, but how could he tell? For a moment, he thought this might be his first ever lucid dream, but everything looked a little too real. He could feel his skin being pricked by cold needles, as if he was being stabbed countless times gently, just to test if his skin was thick enough.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"Your... %!@... rebo—"

The sound came from all directions, still broken, as if it was speaking through a shattered record, glitching every other second. It did not sound like a person, yet it did not sound like a system either. There was emotion in it, but the emotion was buried beneath something ancient and damaged, like a god trying to speak with a mouth that had already been destroyed.

Soon, the same sentence repeated itself again, and again... Max’s ears began to bleed from the same words being forced into him millions of times, echoing across his brain as if trying to etch itself into his soul. Each repetition felt closer to completion, yet every time the word reached the edge of meaning, it broke apart again, scattering into sounds Max could not understand.

Then, everything fell silent.

Eerily silent.

Not a single sound. Not a single movement. The world around Max began to turn white, radiating with ethereal light, too clean and too bright to belong inside a dream. The black mist around his body twisted violently, as if the light was burning it without heat, peeling it away from his skin, only for it to crawl back again like it refused to let him go.

His pupils contracted, the whites of his eyes turning red from sensitivity. It was as if he was being forced to stare directly into the sun for too long, but he couldn’t turn away. He couldn’t move. Whatever was happening to him was not mortal. The light did not simply shine on him. It passed through him, through his skin, through his bones, through the memories he did not know he still carried.

A weird cold touch suddenly brushed against his neck, slowly crawling toward his throat. His windpipe was cut off, making him gasp for air continuously.

"Faster! !5152...—ming....No—T94129ME!!!!"

A terrifying scream roared into his ear. The world around him began to shift, and something dark started popping from random spots in the air.

It was eyes.

Each one had a different color, some even holding colors that Max didn’t know existed in the world. Soon, there were more eyes looking at him than he could possibly count. They locked on him, glaring mysteriously. He could feel a strange pressure, as if his soul was being scanned, measured, rejected, and scanned again. Some eyes blinked slowly, some never blinked at all, and a few stared through him so deeply that Max felt as if they were not looking at his body, but at every version of him that had ever existed.

For one terrifying moment, he saw reflections inside them.

A room he did not recognize.

A floor soaked with something dark.

A hand reaching toward water.

A girl crying without a face.

Then the reflections shattered before he could understand them.

Soon, dark hands manifested before him, one after another, reaching for him from every direction. One picked at his nose, taking it away, then his ear, then another. He could feel everything. Every single part of his body was plucked away one by one, as if ripped apart by raw strength. Even his skin was scraped off his skull, every vein and muscle carefully pulled away, making him wish he could die. It was a pain he wouldn’t wish even on his enemies.

Then it moved to his nerves.

That pain was something he could no longer call human.

And then, it began to dismantle his brain. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

He was alive to feel it all.

Eventually, he gave up trying to scream, allowing the pain to simply flood him until there was nothing left but numbness. An infinite number of hands moved to the eyes, each eye studying his every cell like they were searching for a mistake. Max could feel them comparing him to something. Not someone. Something. A shape he was supposed to match, a name he was supposed to answer to, a seed that was supposed to bloom faster than this.

And then, it all rushed back to him, rearranging him into his own self.

When he was fully rearranged, his expression was blank, as if he was no longer himself. The pain had left him broken and numb, and the shock was something he was not prepared to face. The black mist returned to his skin, calmer now, covering him like a second shadow. The eyes kept watching, but their pressure changed, no longer tearing him apart, only waiting.

"Save me..." a little girl’s voice whispered into his left ear.

"Save me, Max..." It grew a little older as it whispered into his right ear.

It repeated again and again, growing older with each whisper. Slowly, it began to draw Max back to reality, awakening his broken brain. The voice became a child, then a young girl, then a woman, each version begging with the same pain, the same fear, the same strange familiarity that made his heart tighten even though he did not know her.

His eyes widened.

"%!!@%!@%!@%SAVE ME@!$!@$!@$!@"

A terrifyingly loud, ancient, and broken sound shrieked from every direction, filling his ears until they bled.

The world exploded in brilliant light, as if a planet had detonated into a supernova.

"HAAA!" Max shot up from the bed, breathing heavily as he clutched his chest, which hurt as if it was being stabbed. He looked around.

He was back in his room. But then he noticed something terrifying. The black mist still remained on his palm, slowly seeping into his skin as if it had followed him back from the dream.