The room was still, cloaked in the quiet heaviness of late evening. A golden thread of sunlight stretched through the narrow gap in the curtains, cutting across the wooden floor and brushing against the edge of the unmade bed.
Zazm Mystic lay motionless, half on the bed, half slumped on the floor.
His coat was tangled around him, his boots still on. The room smelled faintly of snow and bitter medicine. Near his hand lay a scattered trail of small white pills, rolling across the floor like lost pieces of something broken.
The bottle had fallen from his grasp last night, glass shattered and pieces glittering against the wood like tiny stars. His fingers had been trembling when he tried to put it back on the bedside table—pain pulsing behind his eyes, his chest tight and hot with exhaustion.
Then the world had simply tilted.
His legs buckled. His vision blurred. And he collapsed, body landing awkwardly between mattress and ground, unconscious before he could even try to catch himself.
Now, as the silence pressed against him and the light finally reached his face, Zazm stirred.
A sharp breath tore through his throat as he woke, eyes snapping open, heart pounding. For a moment, he didn't know where he was—what day it was.
His hand reached out instinctively, brushing against cold floorboards and pill fragments. That's when the pain returned. A deep, dull ache in his bones like the echo of something powerful burned out too fast. His back screamed in protest as he tried to move.
"Shit…" he muttered hoarsely, dragging himself up slowly.
The broken pill bottle crunched under his palm as he pushed off the ground. His limbs felt like lead, and his head was thick, fogged over like someone had stuffed cotton behind his eyes.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, just breathing, elbows on his knees, sweat cooling on the back of his neck.
Memories trickled in—fragmented at first, then clearer.
Jennie.
The portal.
Her face when it opened. The way her voice shook when she asked who he was.
And then… her words.
Zazm's jaw clenched. He rubbed his temples and looked over at the mess on the floor. The painkillers were done for. The shards of glass looked sharp, almost poetic the way they reflected the orange light.
"I just hope it all was worth it....."
He got up slowly, stretching his arms and wincing as his shoulder cracked. Still in the clothes from last night, still dirty snow clinging to the hem of his coat.
He walked to the window, dragging heavy steps behind him, and leaned against the frame. Outside, the city glowed in muted gold. A few streetlights had already flickered on, early as usual.
His reflection looked pale, worn-out, older than he should have.
"Good job, Zazm," he whispered to himself. "You nearly passed out into another dimension."
He couldn't stop thinking about her face, though—Jennie's. How she had looked when she saw the portal. Like something inside her broke open, or maybe snapped into place.
And then the words she said to him, just before he left her standing on Everest.
He hadn't expected them.
Whatever came next depended on her. But deep down, Zazm knew... she'd already made her choice.
He just didn't know what it was.
Still, she had said something. Something important.
And now… he had to decide what he would do.
With slow, tired hands, he picked up the closest pieces of glass and dropped them into the bin. His fingers were numb, but steady. The pain was still there, sure—but the haze was clearing.
And tonight, he would move again.
Because no matter what choice Jennie made.
The world wasn't going to wait.
Zazm stood up slowly, wincing with every shift of his body. His muscles ached and his joints groaned, but he moved with quiet focus.
One by one, he picked up the shards of glass and what remained of the medicine, dropping them carefully into the bin. The last piece of glass glittered in his fingers before he tossed it away.
He sighed, then looked toward the clock on the wall—and froze.
"5:45?!" he said under his breath, eyes wide. "No way…"
A jolt of urgency ran through him. He yanked off his coat, recoiling slightly at the smell that clung to it—a mix of snow, sweat, and the bitter tang of crushed medicine. His face twisted in disgust.
"I need to wash up. Otherwise i would be a walking skunk."
Still moving stiffly, he made his way toward the restroom, the coat trailing behind him in one hand. But just as he reached the doorway—
A sharp, stabbing pain shot through his arm.
He gasped and collapsed to the floor, the coat slipping from his fingers as he fell. His body hit the ground hard, but the pain in his arm drowned out everything else.
"Ah—!"
His right arm curled in toward his chest, his whole body trembling. He turned his head to look—and there it was.
The mark, it was glowing after the day he got it, it's the first time in the last 2 years it had started glowing like this.
The mark was etched into his skin like it was carved there, pulsing a deep violet-red. The source of his powers. And now… the source of his agony.
It was glowing again. The pain was beyond anything he could bear. His jaw clenched as he tried to keep the scream inside.
His breath was ragged, eyes tearing up. His mind spun with fire and confusion. What was happening? Why now?
The world around him started to blur as his body trembled against the cold tiles. The pressure in his chest tightened—like something inside was fighting to get out.
He glanced at the door, heart hammering, and knew he couldn't risk anyone hearing.
With the last scrap of strength he had, Zazm reached into the air with his free hand. A ripple shimmered in front of him, space folding in upon itself.
The air warped and compressed, like sound had suddenly fallen into a vacuum. No noise would escape this room.
And then—he screamed.
A raw, guttural cry tore from his throat. It echoed inside the warped space, bouncing off walls that no longer belonged to reality. He screamed until his lungs emptied and his voice broke.
His body curled tighter, the mark on his arm blazing brighter, veins glowing around it like cracks in porcelain.
Then, after what felt like forever—the pain started to fade.
Slowly, gradually, the light dimmed. His muscles unclenched. His breath returned, shallow but steady. He lay on the floor for a while, sweat-soaked and shaking, staring at the ceiling like it might split open and explain everything.
But it didn't. And neither did the mark.
He lay there, breath shallow, eyes locked on the ceiling.
The dim light above swam in his vision. Everything felt far away—muted, blurry, almost like he wasn't really in his body. His eyes, usually sharp and filled with quiet calculation, now looked hollow. Tired. Fading.
He turned his gaze toward the arm with the mark.
Still faintly glowing. Still burning at the edges.
His mouth opened like he meant to speak… but nothing came out. Just a dry rasp. A fractured whisper, like wind scraping through cracked stone.
All that screaming had wrecked his throat.
Zazm coughed weakly, head lolling to the side. His sight blurred again. He blinked, trying to focus—but the world wouldn't stay still.
He reached up, hand trembling, and clutched the door handle. He tried to use it to pull himself up, to sit or at least lean up, but as soon as he applied weight—
His knees buckled.
He fell, crumpling onto the floor again.
A sharp breath left his lungs, and frustration began to rise in his chest. His fingers curled into fists—he tried to slam his hand into the ground. Tried to let the anger out. But the hand only barely lifted… and landed with a weak thud. Pathetic.
Still, he wasn't going to stop.
He gritted his teeth and stared at the mark again. The second time. This was only the second time it had glowed like that. The last time it happened… something changed. Something inside him unlocked.
And now it was happening again. He knew he couldn't ignore it.
Something was coming. Or something had already begun.
"I need... to find out," he tried to whisper, but the words didn't leave his throat. Only a pained breath escaped.
He forced his body to move. He reached up again, this time grabbing the door handle with both hands. He held it tight. Tighter.
He wouldn't fall again.
With a strained groan, he began to lift himself—not to stand, but to at least sit. His arms shook under the weight of it. His back screamed. But he managed to slide up just enough to rest his back against the wall beside the door.
He sat there, shoulders hunched, hands still gripping the handle like a lifeline.
Then he let go… and let his hands fall to his lap. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. The pain still echoed in his bones. But his mind was moving again. Slowly, piecing things together.
His breathing steadied just slightly, though every breath still felt like fire. He stared forward—at nothing in particular—just the empty air in front of him, his eyes unfocused. Then, something shifted.
A slow, eerie wave began to ripple through his gaze.
His black pupils started to spread outward like ink bleeding through paper. They crawled across the whites of his eyes, swallowing the sclera entirely.
Thin, vein-like tendrils stretched out until the shape of his mark had replicated itself in his irises—burning black symbols etched across obsidian lenses.
The transformation wasn't quiet. His jaw clenched tighter, a muffled grunt escaping his dry throat as a stinging pain throbbed through his skull. His eyes twitched, strained, but he held them open. He had to.
It hurt like hell.
But it also looked—he'd admit it to himself—badass. In a terrifying, ancient sorcery kind of way.
He exhaled slowly. 'Smart of me,' he thought, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 'Real smart to develop this.'
It was one of the most dangerous things he'd ever made.
These eyes—this transformation—wasn't just for show. It was a survival mechanism. A calculated solution to a problem no one else had.
His space-time abilities required him to interact with the atomic threads of reality itself, to perceive and manipulate layers of existence normal vision couldn't even begin to process.
And looking at those threads with ordinary human eyes? That would've turned him blind. Instantly. Like staring into a supernova with naked eyes.
So he created this.
A focus enhancement skill, anchored through the mark on his arm. It filtered raw cosmic data, converting the volatile strands of space-time into something he could see—and survive seeing.
He blinked once, the mark-shaped irises shifting as if responding to invisible signals. Then he turned his gaze toward his arm, where the actual mark still pulsed with low light.
And now, he could see clearly.
Not just the light or the shape, but the space-time threads bleeding out of the mark like tendrils of energy. Thin strands, barely visible without his eyes activated, flowing and twisting like living strings of fate. They shimmered faintly—some calm and orderly, others wildly unstable, flickering as if reacting to some unknown source.
Zazm narrowed his eyes.
Something had disrupted the flow. One thread in particular was thrashing, tangled with itself, drawing in chaotic energy from somewhere far beyond.
"This isn't random," he rasped out—his voice barely there. "Something triggered it."
And whatever it was, it had enough power to set off the mark for only the second time in his life.
That wasn't something he could afford to ignore.
He leaned back again, still catching his breath, still holding his broken body together with sheer force of will. But his mind was sharp now. Focused.
He watched the threads flow into an extremely dense and small level.
Zazm's breathing grew heavier as he focused harder, the edges of his vision already trembling. The space-time threads danced in chaotic spirals before him, still just out of reach—still too unclear, too ordinary.
"I 'know' you're hiding something," he muttered under his breath.
He zoomed in again, bending the sight granted by his marked eyes, attempting to peel back another layer of reality.
He dove into the atomic level—protons, neutrons, electrons orbiting in intricate patterns—but still, nothing felt... wrong enough. Not enough to trigger 'this' kind of pain, 'these' type of moments.
And that meant there was only one place left to go. Zazm shut his eyes. The world around him vanished into the void behind his eyelids.
Then he opened them again hard. As if tearing open a locked door with brute force.
His entire body jolted as his vision snapped into something beyond comprehension. The mark in his eyes burned brighter, ink-dark and electric, the intricate pattern now shimmering like an alien constellation.
His sclera turned deeper—so black it shone like obsidian glass. The air itself seemed to hum around him, vibrating under the pressure of this forbidden sight.
And then the pain came. Blood dripped from both his eyes, thick trails running down his cheeks, soaking into his jaw and neck. He could barely feel it.
Or maybe he could feel it too much, the agony was so loud it collapsed into numbness. His mouth opened slightly, but no words came out, only sharp gasps and a hoarse rattle from his throat.
Still, he refused to look away.
He forced his bleeding eyes wider, locked them in place, refusing to blink, refusing to surrender.
His vision tunneled inward again. And then finally, he broke through.
It was like falling through a curtain of smoke and landing in a sea of stars.
Particles—no, probabilities—flickered in and out of existence, shifting faster than logic could explain. Shapes bent and twisted. Time blinked. Space folded. The very laws of reality flickered, glitched, broke apart and reassembled themselves on a whim.
He had arrived at the Quantum Realm. A realm of pure uncertainty. A real he tried to reach several times but always failed.
He whispered it to himself letting out a dry laugh, voice cracking and full of wonder:
"hahahaa-- I finally reached it."
His bloodied face broke into a half-crazed grin. The world around him was chaos, but to him it was clarity.
For the first time, he could truly see his threads. They weren't strings anymore. They were 'webs', infinite intersections of possible choices and unstable outcomes, shifting in and out of phase with every breath he took.
Each thread vibrated with potential energy, some glowing steady, others pulsing with red—unstable, corrupted.
And there—it was faint, almost imperceptible—but a dark pulse throbbed through one of the threads. A foreign energy. Something invasive. Something wrong.
Zazm's smile vanished. "That's it," he whispered, his voice trembling. "That's the disruption."
He could barely hold the form. His entire body trembled, muscles on the verge of giving out. His head pounded with an unholy pressure, but now he couldn't stop.
He followed the corrupted thread with his eyes—watched it snake and spiral through the quantum weave like a poisoned vein.
He smiled as he understood what it was, "A clot." he whispered to himself as he saw the black clot in one of the threads.
Sometimes in a human's body blood starts cloating because of several reason, this was the same thing, Zazm overexerted his threads way too much beyond their capacity.
The power was too much and he wasn't ready to get hold of yet but he forcefully pushed it all out and that made his threads clot to stop the powers from flowing more than they should.
"Guess I'll have to thank whoever did this," these marks were something he still couldn't comprehend, they held power but they won't give him the powers at once and would slowly do that.
And it was for the best, if the marks had given him even 1% more power than they should've then their brains would've been blown up into smithereens.
Today he also saw another special ability of these marks, they won't let him die, they stopped the flow of his power by forming clots in the threads so he can't use it.
"But damn these clots hurt," he carefully touched a dull thread and it slowly started to gain his original color.
That one thread affected every other one and slowly slowly all the clots began to dissapper and all the threads started to move normally again.
He lifted his hand to make sure he had all his powers back and they worked perfectly fin-- No even better.
He reopened his eyes arriving back in the world, he looked below him and saw his shirt and face covered in blood but his body wasn't in pain anymore.
He got up and all the pain was gone, but his head still hurts a lot from the blood loss, he slowly walked to the bed while holding his head.
He sat down at the edge of the bed, "These marks.....what are they?"
Today's incident made him remember a question he buried long ago but it burned even more furiously.
"First I'll need to see why this happened...." He started thinking why he could've used so much powers that his threads had to shut it down.
"Teleporting to mount everest was extremely hard but not to the poin--" and then it snapped him.
Yesterday Zazm opened the portal in the middle of the streets where several people could've seen, it but why did he do such a thing?
The answer was clear Zazm bend the space time fabric around him and Jennie and the portal to a point where they became invisible to the actual world.
The space around them was completely disconnected and to all the other people they weren't even present there and that's the same reason they didn't feel cold at a place like mount everest.
"Ha....I'm so dumb...." He hit his head with his palm understanding his mistake he did too much and paid a huge price.
"But it was all worth it," he looked back at what he had learned from today and a satisfactory smile appeared on his lips. He layed down on his face and shut his eyes open.
"I'll rest today can't have myself falling into a state like that again," he put his hands on the back of his hand supporting his head.
---
The streets of Stockholm glowed gently in the early evening light, the sky tinged with a warm hue of gold and pale lavender. Jennie Aurelia walked with her hands in the pockets of her coat, her boots brushing softly against the stone sidewalk. Her steps were slower than usual. Each one felt like a silent argument with herself.
"I'm not going that way today," she told herself firmly.
She passed the familiar art gallery, the windows reflecting the dying sunlight, and continued past the tram stop—each step deliberately veering away from that corner, from him.
"Zazm".
The name alone twisted her thoughts into knots.
She'd promised herself she wouldn't go back there. After everything—after the snow-covered mountain, the impossible portal, and the cryptic declaration about her having powers—she needed distance.
A moment to breathe. To think. But her mind hadn't stopped spinning since last night. 'What did he mean by powers?'
'How could he open portals and bend reality like that?' 'Was that even real?'
'And—what did he want from her?'
The questions screamed louder the further she tried to run from them. Her fingers clenched into fists inside her coat pockets, her jaw tightening with each thought. It wasn't fair.'Why her? Why now?
Her steps slowed.
Then stopped.
She stared at the path in front of her--the one that led safely home.
And then, against every instinct screaming inside her, she turned around.
"Just one look," she muttered. Just one more time.
She walked quickly now, like she was afraid she might change her mind. The streets were mostly empty, quiet except for the hum of a distant tram and the fluttering wings of pigeons. As she neared the corner, her heart beat faster.
The streetlamp came into view. Her breath caught. But the space beneath it was… empty.
No dark coat.
No quiet smirk.
No Zazm.
Jennie stood there, confused at first—then something else slipped in.
She turned slowly, glancing up and down the street. No sign of him. No trace that he'd ever been there.
She bit her lip.
"Maybe… maybe he's just late," she whispered, trying to sound casual to herself. But her voice wavered.
Minutes passed. She shifted on her feet, rubbed her cold fingers together, checked her phone once—then twice.
Still nothing. She looked up at the streetlamp again, now flickering faintly as the moon shined brightly surrounded by the stars. A gust of wind tugged at her scarf.
Jennie sighed and turned away.
Her footsteps echoed softly as she walked home, but her thoughts were loud. Filled with a gnawing curiosity she couldn't shake.
Maybe he'd come tomorrow. Maybe he just needed a break. Or maybe… something had gone wrong.
She shook her head.
'Nah', she told herself. 'He's probably fine.'
Still, as she reached her apartment door and fumbled with the keys, she paused for a moment and glanced over her shoulder—back in the direction of that streetlamp.
She hoped he'd show up tomorrow.
And that he'd bring answers with him.
Because whether she liked it or not…
She wasn't sure she could keep walking away.
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