He awoke in the dark; his breath caught as the walls around him bent like dying stars. He was weightless, yes, but restrained in a form-fitting full-body chair that he couldn’t remember getting into.

  The black walls of the ship contorted and lurched, his stomach twisted while gravity seemed uncertain—as if caught between the idea of taking the day off for mental health reasons or showing up and doing a half-assed job. Red emergency lights flashed on and off through the cabin, flickering in and out as if even the ship’s systems were unsure whether they should exist, let alone function.

  Each deep pull of air felt like a struggle; the belts that held him into the pilot’s cradle were uncomfortably tight and prohibited him from drawing a breath deep enough to be called satisfactory. The throbbing of his pulse hammered his skull like hail on a tin roof.

  Where was he? He didn’t know. A ship? Air? Space? Deep water? No memories answered his curiosity. Not even a name. What language was he even thinking in? He only knew one thing.

  He was in a Voidship. What was a Voidship? Vaguely, he knew they were vessels that could cross almost any veil, whatever that meant. More importantly, Voidships only made the screams that provided the backdrop to his current situation during their death knell. Screaming was the final confirmation that a Voidship had died and would imminently cease to exist.

  So, he knew that much.

  The forces interacting on his body provided him with a second fact. He, or rather the ship, was falling. Falling meant gravity. Gravity meant planet—or moon, asteroid, comet, if he were very unlucky—star. He hoped for a planet. One with an atmosphere would be ideal. Otherwise, his life might be too brief to solve any of the incredible mysteries of his predicament.

  The Voidship groaned—the walls bowed under the weight of something far more insidious than a mere atmospheric descent. The vessel wasn’t breaking apart; it was phasing out of existence, losing cohesion and substance by the moment.

  A shattered display flickered at the edge of his peripheral vision, drawing his eyes. The text twisted, distorted, and squiggled like worms. No matter how he focused, the words unraveled before he could understand them.

  The glow of the text bled into the air and remained for a few minutes even after the display fractured and vanished.

  “Shit,” he said.

  The display had been the last piece of what might have been a control terminal to exist, and just like that, it was gone.

  There were no windows to look out, no screens to view, so there was no warning when the ship bucked violently. Gravity was a cruel mistress, and something freed by the ever vanishing structure of the vessel slammed into ribs. The impact jarred something loose in his mind—not a memory, but an instinct.

  He lifted his right hand as much as the restraints would allow, and he reached out, grasping at nothing. For a split second, the space around his fingertips shuddered—as if it were a living thing that he had violated.

  The Voidship’s screams reached a frenzied crescendo. It wasn’t just noise, but something deeper, something wrong. The air vibrated and pressed against his skull, and his teeth rattled. This was a frequency with no place in mundane existence.

  He felt, momentarily, something outside the Voidship. Out in the vast darkness, something waited. Watched. Hungered… and loved him?

  The ship convulsed again, and gravity once more impacted his stomach with debris. Thoughts of hunger and love vanished, replaced by a deep ache. Had he fractured a rib?

  That was only the beginning. The black vessel around him shuddered and writhed, his thoughts turned to static, his nerves burned with electric fire, and the ship broke around him. He had a dim mental vision of force expanding outward and then inward, and only he remained.

  Then, all the sensations faded into silence.

  The static that assaulted his mind vanished, and his eyes fluttered open, then closed again at the rays of retina searing sunlight. This, of course, was wrong. The ground beneath him should not exist—he had felt the Voidship unravel, heard its final scream as reality swallowed it whole. And yet he remained—and so did wherever he was.

  He exhaled, slow and controlled, as his body reported numerous painful contusions with the mere act of breathing—the pain registered distantly, a secondary concern that would be handled in due time.

  A more life-threatening source of pain registered intrusively. When he forced an eye open and examined himself, he saw no pools of blood or broken bones. He seemed physically hale, ignoring superficial damage like bruising.

  Crumpled on the ground, fifty or so yards away, lay a figure. Humanoid. Short. Sturdy. Pink hair. Blood streaked its skin, and pooled on the floor from its ears.

  “Alive after witnessing a Voidship’s death knell? You’re a lucky one.” He spoke to the figure while he slowly worked his way to his feet and walked across the perfectly smooth, reflective bedrock of the crater he seemed to be at the bottom of. Without the constraints of the pilot’s cradle, his body moved spryly and responded surprisingly well to his immediate use of his limbs.

  When he reached the man—a dwarf—he was surprised to see the chest of the stocky bright haired male moving at all. The amount of blood that had seeped from him onto the ground was worrisome. When he poked the dwarf with his finger, nothing happened. He gave the dwarf a quick run over from head to toe, then shifted the dwarf onto his back—to gain access to the pouch on the front of his belt.

  “Good man,” he said. The pouch contained some local medicines. They had the luster and sparkle of various powers—magic, cosmic, alchemical, nanite regenerator swarms. For the sake of the dwarf, the man hoped that’s what they were. There were three red ones, two blue, and one yellow.

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  He broke the seal on one of the red ones, sniffed it, and poured it down the dwarf’s throat. The liquid sparkled while it dribbled into the open mouth of the dwarf, although the way it beaded and flowed, it had a consistency more like syrup.

  A few seconds that felt like eternity later and the dwarf coughed weakly, and he swallowed reflectively. From there, color bled back into his skin, and the rise and fall of his chest evened.

  Still dazed, the man sat back on his heels, studying the dwarf’s face. Memories refused to come. How did he know this man was a dwarf? Who was the dwarf? Who was he? Where was he? But, there was one great advantage he had over a few minutes ago.

  He wasn’t alone.

  The blessed stillness didn’t last long.

  The dwarf breathed easier with each passing moment. All of the pink-haired ones' injuries seemed to be internal. Yet, the rapid rate of recovery suggested a high potency to whatever kind of potion it was he’d given the dwarf.

  Whispers tickled the back of his skull. Not in words, only partially in voices, but mostly in something deeper—a gut deep hunger, a sickly greed, the desperate need to sate the quick thrill of an easy kill.

  The thoughts weren’t his.

  His head snapped up, his eyes narrowed. In the darkness, half-hidden by the jagged formations that littered the cavern, three figures skulked forward. They snuck between shadows—avoided the pillars of light that leaked into the cavern from the crater. Three figures tried to make their way stealthily through the cavern to investigate the apocalyptic death of the Voidship.

  Their minds slithered through his own, sullying him and leaving him feeling dirty. He didn’t reach out for them; they reached out for him, and he didn’t know how to block them. He recoiled from the repulsiveness they broadcast.

  Easy pickings.

  Two bodies, one already down. Dwarves always have good stuff.

  One potion already wasted. Kill them before they waste any more.

  They thought in fragments and primal animal urges, so close to their instincts that they didn’t even realize someone else was listening. Whether genetic, nutritional, or recreational, a cloud hung over their intellect.

  His right hand clenched into a fist. He had no weapons and felt a deep reluctance to draw the weird knife on the belt of the dwarf. The heat of the Voidship’s destruction still clung to his skin, but now something much colder curled inside his chest. Sharp, primal rage blossomed in his heart.

  They were going to kill him.

  They were going to kill Alor—how did he know the dwarf was named Alor? That could wait.

  The scavengers had decided to kill them.

  He found this disagreeable. His fingers twitched—no, not his fingers, something beyond them. The space around him warped as if reality itself held its breath.

  The scavengers rushed out of the final clump of rocks they’d hid behind, weapons drawn.

  They had no time to react.

  A force slammed into them, unseen and absolute. The air cracked like thunder as the three men were lifted off their feet, and hurled to the side. It was as if an angry hand of god casually backhanded them into the walls of the cavern. One moment they charged at him with a mixture of blunt and bladed weapons, the next their bodies were being flung as if tossed by a hurricane.

  Small fissures ran through the rock. One of the scavengers even managed a scream in the short moment before his body collided with the cavern wall. Another flipped midair, limbs flailing, before he vanished down a darkened hole. He never did hear that one hit anything. The third figure, though, got it the worst. He hit the cavern wall spine-first, with a wet, awful crunch. He never moved again.

  He looked down at his hand, still outstretched.

  He hadn’t moved at all. He hadn’t needed to.

  A groggy groan broke the quiet.

  Alor groaned in pain when he heaved himself up into a sitting position. He looked surprised when he saw his potion belt in his lap, surprised and suspicious, but the suspicion faded when he saw the empty vial on the ground next to him. His bleary gaze tried to focus on the distant wall but failed and instead shifted up to the human standing over him.

  “… did I miss something?” Alor asked.

  He glanced down at Alor, then shrugged.

  “Nothing important,” he said.

  “Always, I wake up to such a mess.” Alor said. His fingers fumbled at his belt, taking inventory of his potions and weapon. “You are alive, yes? This is good. But tell me—why is it always like this? Something crashes from the sky, I nearly die, and when I wake up—corpses! Always the same.”

  “Uhm, yeah, pretty sure I’m alive.” The human answered with a bark of a laugh, but then he frowned and raised an eyebrow at Alor. “Does this happen to you often? And why did you ask if I was alive?”

  Alor froze mid-motion. His expression shifted from exasperation to something more calculating. His fingers twitched at his belt, but his gaze lingered on the human, studying him intently.

  “…Ah.” Alor clicked his tongue. “Now, that is an excellent question, yes.”

  “Well,” Alor said. He pat his chest. “It is simple, my friend. The System tells me things. Handy things. And when I look at you, it tells me only your name—Cyrus.” Alor gestured with a flourish as if he were introducing himself. “Mine is Alor, by the way. My name, that is. But anything else it should tell me about you? Well, it tells me nothing but nonsense.”

  “So, either you are extraordinary… or you are very dead. I have never talked to a ghost before.”

  He Cyrus blinked. “…what?”

  “Pff. You see, the System does not lie, but it is sometimes… how do you say? Stupid. It does not know what to do with you. The information flashes like the scribbles of a mad god, encoded in who knows how high of a bit encryption. But if the System does not know what to think of you, my friend, that is an exciting problem.”

  Cyrus looked down at his hands. He could see no cuts or bruises and was definitely breathing. The name Cyrus did seem like it might be his, and if it hadn’t been, well, it was surely good enough for the short term—especially if more people than Alor had access to a System.

  “I don’t feel dead,” Cyrus said.

  “Ah! That is exactly what a ghost would say.” Alor snapped his fingers and hopped up. The dwarf didn’t even come up to Cyrus’s shoulders when he stood straight.

  Cyrus felt his lips tighten and his eyes narrow and quickly tried to keep the skeptical, annoyed look off his face.

  Alor laughed and tapped the side of his head.

  “You see, the System does not lie. If you are not a dead man in denial, then you must be a most interesting man. I would very much like to find out.”

  “You’re having too much fun with this,” Cyrus growled.

  Alor spread his hands in mock innocence.

  “I am a curious man. And you? You are a mystery. I like mysteries. Especially ones that feed me potions when I am on the verge of death.” Alor gestured to the blood pooled on the ground as if this statement were in place of thanks Cyrus had never received, and it seemed quite unlikely he ever would.

  “Look around us, friend. My enormous vein of mithril? Gone. A crater to the sky where a mountain should be, or at least a ship should be. Except, ah, no ship remains. Dead scavengers, thrown like rag dolls. And then, of course, there is you. A man the System does not know what to do with.” Alor’s words darkened slightly. The light humor faded enough to let something sharper, more serious, slip from his golden tongue. He tapped idly at his belt, near where his tools and potions hung.

  “Or,” he continued, his voice softer, but far more pressing, “shall I conclude you are the one who destroyed the motherload of all mithril seams?” The question hung in the air. After a pause and a smile, Alor continued. “If that were the case, I would expect you to make good on my losses.” Alor’s eyes narrowed briefly before his smile returned.

  Cyrus could hear a few of Alor’s thoughts linger in the air.

  The human wears simple pants, boots, and shirt—average quality at best—no potion belt. No weapon. No visible signs of power. And yet, he was the only thing left in the heart of destruction.

  What is he?

  Cyrus wished he knew the answer to that.