Tavin had been staring at the door for twenty minutes.
It hadn't been there yesterday.
The air in his grandfather's old farmhouse had always felt heavy with secrets—silent corners, crooked doorframes, the persistent smell of cedar and something faintly metallic. After the funeral, he thought returning here might offer closure. Instead, he found a door in the basement that shouldn't exist.
It was embedded in the far wall—eight feet tall, framed in black stone and iron, pulsing with faint purple veins. Alien markings shimmered across its surface in rhythmic patterns, as if the door were breathing.
He hadn't come down to solve mysteries. He'd just wanted to check the fuse box.
But the moment he saw the door, the rest of the world faded. It wasn't just new—it was wrong. Like it had been waiting for him.
A single indentation sat at its center, the size of a fingertip.
Something in him whispered: Touch it.
He obeyed.
The world shattered.
There was no falling. No motion. Just a sudden, brutal tearing of sound and color, as if reality had been ripped like paper.
Tavin gasped. Or maybe screamed.
He wasn't in the basement anymore.
Instead, he found himself lying flat on his back, soaked in sweat and something thicker. The stone beneath him was warm—too warm—and wet. He blinked against the searing light and sat up slowly, clutching his head.
A waterfall thundered nearby. Behind it stood a towering cliff, and surrounding him—an endless, vibrant jungle, alive with twisting vines, monstrous leaves, and glowing fungi.
The platform he lay on was a black pyramid, cracked and moss-eaten, its surface etched with faint purple glyphs that pulsed in time with his breathing. Twin torches, positioned beside him, burned with unnatural violet flame.
"I'm dreaming," he muttered. "Definitely dreaming."
A hum began in his chest. Then his spine. Then behind his eyes.
It wasn't sound — it was data.
Symbols. Words. Images.
A mirror throne with no one in it.Silver threads coiling around a girl's eyes.Ten voices crying out across worlds.A single phrase, fractured and insistent: "The darkness... unending..."
Then came the pain.
A surge of fire ignited in his left arm, white-hot and crawling beneath his skin. He cried out, twisting as unfamiliar lines began carving themselves across his forearm in glowing ink. Symbols. Geometry. Language.
And then—his mind exploded.
"Designation: Pōwehi..."
"Accessing Creator lineage..."
"Initializing Primary Substrate... Darkness Manifested."
"User: Tavin. Class: Dark Creator. Code: Embellished."
"Begin assimilation."
Words, concepts, memories that weren't his poured into his brain like boiling water through a funnel. He screamed. Convulsed. His vision blurred as voices spoke in tongues he almost recognized. Names. Histories. Wars. The sensation of falling through lifetimes.
He vomited over the edge of the pyramid.
He collapsed.
Footsteps.
He could barely lift his head, but through the haze of pain and information overload, he saw two figures walking toward him from the jungle.
One was tall. Impossibly tall for a woman—broad shoulders, a wild, dangerous aura. Hair black as midnight. Eyes a piercing forest green. Her presence alone made his instincts scream dangerous.
The other was smaller, more compact, with the same pitch-black hair, but deep sapphire-blue eyes. Younger. Sharper. More alert.
They knelt beside him. Muffled voices danced around his ears, strange syllables rising and falling like a forgotten song. But as he listened, something began to click. A pattern. Familiarity. Then—words.
"He is the Pōwehi," the taller one said.
"He is thirty years late. Let him fend for himself."
And just like that—darkness took him again.