With resignation, I left the shelter, pushing a rickety door that resisted as if I knew outside there was something worse than the confinement. The sky was still as broken as he remembered in the nightmare. Red, purple, gray. Like a painted painting with rage. Understanding that, what I lived, it never seems a nightmare.
Perhaps, everything was real, and my brain was able to process it as a nightmare just to help me assimilate my new reality in the fastest way possible for me.
The floor was ash. The trees, if that could be called, looked like twisted bones covered with dark ivy, of those who could be called as dead trees, because they had no green around them to give signs of life. The breeze smelled to death, and in the distance, that roar was heard again. Closer this time.
I had to prepare, for what? Don't know. I wasn't sure to know the real reason why I had that feeling and that little voice in my head telling me what I had to do.
The system did not lie.
This place was fucking dead, and really, I needed a lot of help.
But he clung to life with nails and teeth. As if this world knew that there was still another chance to live.
And I... now he was part of him.
"Come on, Leila. Or who you get out now... if you are going to die again, at least worth it. Show me what you are really able to do in this world"
And I started walking.
Towards the unknown.
Towards the tower.
Towards the mission.
Towards war.
The first step was more difficult than I expected.
My body - Leila's body - moved as if I were remembering things that my mind still didn't know. Each muscle seemed to have its own memory, trained, tanned by years of battle, survival. But my mind... my mind was still trapped between two realities: the one I lived, and the one I now had to accept as mine.
In the distance, the tower silhouette that my system mentioned before me, broke the horizon as a spear stuck in the heart of the world. It was dark, very high, and wrapped in a kind of fog that seemed to devour the light. I felt that something inside me tense to see her. No fear. Not quite. It was... reverence. Or maybe a memory buried in this new body that now called mine.
I keep asking myself, how shit has this world done to stand and firmly while I woke up to have been chosen from salvation?
"System", I murmured to myself, more for impulse than for reason, because I was still used to it - you can repeat me, what is that tower?
[Analyzing request...]
[Answer found: Restoration Tower. Central point of the world's core. Main objective: Activate the nucleus and restart the planetary life cycle from 0.]
[Warning: Highly dangerous area. Threat level: black quartz class.]
"Class what?", I repeat, feeling more confused than before with every technical word that this happy system gave me when answering.
[Classification of threats. Black quartz class: creatures deformed by the residual energy of the damaged nucleus. Dangerous. Implacable. They cannot be negotiated. They cannot be redeemed.]
Brilliant.
The system had no filter or touch to say things directly.
Would those be mutant creatures?
It may be.
They may be much more than that.
But, in some way, my system had to find a way to help us survive to continue helping this world stand-up and can grow in it a new habitable way of life, away from danger and destruction.
A remote crunch turned my head suddenly. Among the remains of what was once a road sign, a hunched figure emerged, with erratic movements and a red shine in what I supposed were his eyes. His flesh seemed melted, like wax, which has been heated by fire in a candle, with rusty nails randomly embedded throughout his body.
Every step that the ash floor took, scream as if he cried.
I had no weapons. I did not have a plan.
Furthermore, I was just afraid.
And I still didn't know how to use my system to order him to help me with my own defense.
But he also had the body of someone who had been chosen, and who, was supposed to know what to do at a time of suspense like this, where reality exceeded fiction.
And maybe... also his instinct.
As far as he knew, women had a very good intuition of things, what happened to mine now? Would you be asleep and expected the perfect moment to wake up and be useful?
My arm rose by reflex. I didn't know why, but I did.
And the system reacted immediately.
[Activating new passive ability: internal flare]
[Authorized Primary Download]
A spark grew in my palm from the hand, as if it had emerged from nothing.
A brutal heat focused on an exact point, as if the sun had decided to sprout from my skin.
And then, with no more notice, an energy explosion shot like a projectile from my hand to the creature.
The impact was devastating.
The creature shouted - if that could be called a cry of terror - and disintegrated into a cloud of black smoke, leaving behind a metallic stench and a sensation of ... empty.
He had defeated him without giving him the opportunity for a previous attack against me.
I was trembling because of the nerves they were consuming me just before this happened. He had made a great effort. I had never imagined that in another life, I would end with magical powers like the one that has just happened a moment ago.
Will you be related to the new system that I have acquired instantly to awaken in this world?
"Seriously... I did that?", I murmured, nailing my eyes on my hand that is now clean of magic.
[Confirmation: The bearer has activated its first elementary nucleus. Elementary synchronization in progress.]
[Main element: memory fire]
[Unlocked skill: Burning scar]
A warm sensation - and not precisely comfortable, in fact, was perceived a bit painful, as if it were an electro -clash machine that was working inside my body - extended through my column. I also felt it as if something was waking up in me, something asleep for centuries.
"Fire of memory...? What the hell are you, Leila?", I wondered, I felt too confused, I only wanted, at some point in this journey, to get to know the true soul of the Leila that now possessed me.
But I don't get an answer. Only the silence of the broken world and the whisper of the system, as an always present artificial consciousness.
And I kept walking. One step. Then another.
Still processing with difficulty what I was living at this time.
The way to the tower would not be easy.
Not clean.
Not fast.
But now I had a goal.
A skill.
A name.
A new and unknown identity for me that, little by little, and along the way, I would begin by discovering it as the 364 days that I had left to save the world of the end, they were approaching.
Now, I was Leila Vance.
The chosen one.
And for the first time, that name... did not sound so alien to me.
Nor did the idea of wanting to recognize who it really is now sounded so alien to me.
Because to save the world, the our world, I had to see me in need of accepting myself as Leila, otherwise, my sacrifice would be in vain.