Since all of the ravenous beetles had rushed to bar Rob’s way to the wall, there were no beetles behind him to obscure his way.

  So he shot backward through the air like an arrow let loose.

  Half amazed and half terrified by what he'd just done, Rob watched the wall grow farther and farther away, the black land below racing past like a great slithering serpent.

  In the back of his mind, the faint pulse of the system's notification tugged for his attention. Ignoring that for now, he focused on the strange sensation that had guided him so far. There was a vague feeling that he needed to look for something. For what, and how, he couldn't tell.

  Eyes sweeping frantically across the endless expanse of living black, Rob tried to locate any sign, any mark that could explain this strange instinct gnawing at him.

  Finding nothing and perceiving his speed beginning to wane, Rob's heart raced.

  Realizing that searching by normal means was just a waste of time, he shut his eyes once again. He focused inward, reaching deeper into that instinct that had led him to this point.

  And fortunately, it didn't let him down.

  Soon after, he felt it clearly—his pulling and pushing power had latched onto something. Without hesitation, Rob threw his arms back, gathering every bit of power he could muster, and pulled himself toward that unseen area.

  And he was just in time. Because a heartbeat later, his previous location tore open in a roaring explosion of movement. The beetles burst from below like molten lava spilling from a volcano.

  Rob tumbled through the air, a cry tearing from his throat as his body slammed onto a tiny white island.

  Rolling to dissipate the force of the fall, he , somehow, managed to spring back to his feet.

  He knew that he hadn't escaped danger yet, so he searched with both his eyes and instincts for another one of those white islands. And luckily for him this time, he spotted another one much faster.

  By now, Rob began to somehow understand what kind of abilities the golden bird had granted him. So it didn't take long before he bent his knees, leaping upward and pushing with his power toward the closest white island. Behind him, the black tide swallowed the island he had just left, devouring it whole and surging after him in waves.

  And so, the chase continued, Rob leaping from island to island, the swarm of beetles trailing behind like his hungry, tireless shadow.

  "Dammit, I can't keep this up."

  He was still clumsy with these pulling and pushing stuff, sprawling all over the ground like a sack of rice every time he landed. He also realized that he wasn't using them efficiently, overexerting himself sometimes and underestimating the needed power others. And even if Rob could utilize this ability without any deficiencies, this kind of power wasn't infinite. It consumed something to fuel its wondrous magic, and he had a pretty damn good guess about what that was.

  Therefore, he took a risk.

  Closing his eyes in such a perilous situation, Rob reached inward, relying on the uncanny instincts he now possessed. Another gift from the bird, if he wasn't mistaken.

  Letting this mythical sensation guide him, he finally found something worthwhile.

  There, in the distance, he sensed a big bulk of mass he could pull and push against.

  "A real island." He breathed the two words out.

  His eyes snapped open, blazing with golden light. A true, wide island, big enough to run, to hide, maybe even find a way out. More importantly, it was too massive for the gluttonous beetles to consume in mere seconds.

  Sadly, he was too far away to use his new ability to pull himself toward it, so he had to get closer first.

  And that's exactly what he did.

  Rob soared through the air from one small island to another, and despite the deadly chasers behind him, he couldn't help the wild, unrestrained smile curving his lips.

  The wind howled through his hair, the earth gave way beneath his feet, and he moved like a living missile cutting through the sky. In that moment, Rob felt unstoppable, untouchable.

  He simply felt reborn.

  Yet still, in the middle of it all, he remembered his old life. He couldn't help but imagine himself wielding this power in a football match.

  "Hehe."

  A stupid grin found its way to his face at the image of himself leaping from one side of the field to the other, the ball between his feet, and then, without moving a muscle, sending it blazing past a helpless goalkeeper.

  Landing on one of the last smaller islands before reaching the big one, Rob tried to clear his mind of this nonsense and focus on surviving.

  Kicking the earth, he was again in the embrace of the sky, eyes narrowed against the rushing wind as he searched for his next foothold.

  "Strange!" he muttered. By now, the big island should have been in full view, yet there was no sign of white anywhere.

  Unless—

  "There!"

  He shouted as he finally laid eyes on his destination.

  "But why is it…"

  The island was real, thankfully—he wasn't led astray. But what baffled him was that it was colored black, just like the rest of the sea of beetles.

  At first, he feared it was also covered by those creatures. But then he rejected that idea immediately.

  He noticed that his new abilities didn't work on those insects. He had tried to push them away before, to create some sort of passage, but they hadn't shown any sign of feeling his power.

  And now, his instincts told him clearly that he could use his power to pull himself toward this island.

  "So it should be clear, right?"

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Rob at least hoped so.

  ***

  The pale white streams of light showered down upon the smooth, rocky shore of the black island. Only a faint, almost unnoticeable line of refracted light marked where the island’s jagged obsidian ground ended and the sea of living, monstrous insects began.

  Glittering and shimmering with the reflected glow of silver lights, the shore spoke of serenity and a peaceful land that seemed untouched by danger.

  Or so it might have seemed.

  For while a few scenes whispered of harmlessness, a hundred others promised unseen horrors and unimaginable ends.

  A cold, rotten wind haunted the place, howling against the protruding, spiked rocks. A deadly, soundless silence screamed of lifelessness—commanding any living soul to flee, yet warmly inviting the dead to come and feast.

  After the wind gave another tireless, stubborn gust against the unyielding rocks, stillness claimed the place once more.

  Then, the motionless, dead sea of beetles stirred.

  From it crawled a ghastly, wriggling shape. It twisted and struggled mightily, as if resisting some unseen force dragging it back into the depths. For a moment, it seemed as though the thing would fail to emerge. Its violent struggles weakened, and its shadowy form began to sink once more.

  “Blop.”

  A wet, squelching sound echoed across the silent shore as the emerging creature burst out of the black sea and hurled itself onto the island.

  Twitching and spasming beneath the gaze of the white sun, the creature revealed itself to be a human.

  Not a complete, living human—no—just the corpse of a ravaged, broken one.

  Flailing and waving its bony limbs, the corpse didn’t seem to realize it was out of the fight yet. It remained in this disgusting, pitiful, and vomit-inducing state for a while before it finally flopped onto the ground. Untangling its mess of half-eaten limbs and lying on its hollow, open stomach, it began to slowly crawl toward the inside of the island.

  But it didn’t drag its decayed, revolting body more than a few inches before a shadow leapt from behind a nearby rock and came crashing down on it in a blur of movement.

  Rob, seeing a perfect chance to rid himself of one of those revolting creatures, burst from his hiding place and came down knees-first onto the creature’s back. Before it could react, HE unleashed all his wrath and violence in a fury of punches and stabbing blows.

  Without even realizing it, his hand curled into the shape of a claw, and from the back of it, bluish-white, knife-sharp talons burst forth. Then, as if he had been doing that all his life, he flexed his wrist, severing the corpse’s head in one swift motion.

  Panting, he stared at his hand in astonishment and disgust.

  “Amazing.”

  His right hand had grown longer, glowing faintly as bluish-white talons extended from his finger bones before his eyes. Rob wanted to marvel endlessly at his new claw-like hand, but the twitching head of the corpse wasn’t courteous enough to wait for him silently.

  His eyes narrowed, anger and disgust burning in his gaze.

  “Why won’t you just die, you creepy thing?” he growled, driving a punch that shattered the skull before him. Not stopping there, he followed with another dozen blows just for his own peace of mind.

  And still, it wasn’t enough.

  Staring hatefully at the ruined head—now nothing more than splintered bones and splattered brain—Rob fumed with frustration at those damned creatures. Because as he watched, something black moved within the shattered head.

  A beetle crawled out from the pile of bones and flesh. Larger than the rest in the black sea, it was roughly the size of a grown man’s palm. He expected the ghastly creature to attack him as soon as it appeared, but surprisingly, it didn’t.

  Instead, the sickening creature began to slurb up the remains of the corpse it had been inhabiting.

  “What foul creatures,” Rob cursed, crushing the vile thing under his foot, ending it for good this time.

  Every time he thought he had witnessed enough ugliness from these despicable creatures, they insisted on showing him more.

  He had been watching them for a while now from the shore of the black island, and he wasn’t surprised that those moving corpses were somehow controlled by the black beetles.

  Despite the heart-stopping terror that had seized him the first time he saw a corpse emerge from the black sea, he soon realized it had to be the creepy insects’ doing.

  This could also explain why the black beetles didn’t devour his body instantly when they first engulfed him.

  They hadn’t wanted to eat him—it turned out they wanted to literally get into his head first.

  This, along with the fact that the outer layer of that sea was made of dead beetles—as he had noticed much later—meant that most of those which reached him were already lifeless husks, while the ones who got to him first had most likely wanted to invade his head. Fortunately, Rob managed to resist for a few seconds—until the luminous bird arrived.

  He had pieced all this together while resting beneath the shadow of a jagged cliff, watching and waiting. And now that he’d slain one of those corpses himself, he had confirmed that most of his guesses were correct.

  Lifting his foot, Rob staggered backward. He felt bile rise in his throat. He reached to cover his face, then froze. The sight of his own hands stopped him mid-motion. What came into view were his own thin fingers encased in a corpse’s remains. Dead flesh and dried blood clung to his otherwise pale skin. The lifeless remains lingered under his nails, blackening every inch. They stained every single part of his arm dark red and pale gray.

  Rob retched violently.

  His filthy hands gripped his knees as he heaved to the side, but nothing came out—nothing but the bitter sting of acid in his throat and the hollow heaving of an empty stomach.

  And with each heave and painful clench of his stomach, images kept flashing into his mind—images of him being wiser—Visions that struck sharper than any blade:

  The blind boy’s vacant, fearful face when he left him.

  The old man’s panicked, angry expression when Rob refused to turn back and approached him anyway.

  The look of regret and disdain that flashed in that mad girl’s eyes when Rob insisted on continuing down.

  It was clear now that his stubborn decision to explore deeper in search of land had been foolish.

  And this was the result.

  “A land!” Rob bitterly chuckled to himself as he collapsed powerlessly to the ground.

  The irony wasn’t lost on him. He had done all of that—left a blind boy to die alone, slain an old man, and rejected every other path—just to find solid ground. A place that wasn’t part of that endless, cursed wall. He’d hoped to find a safe haven to shelter in for a while. Instead, he got this: a land of hellish nightmares full of moving corpses.

  He shut his eyes for a moment, breathing slowly, forcing the shaking out of his lungs.

  Then he stood up, tried to scrape and dust himself as clean as possible, and went to find a place to hide. For some reason, the black beetles themselves refused to follow him onto the island. But the ones that had found hosts in corpses roamed here freely, making this hell their new home.

  Rob took a few steps toward the depths of the island, then stopped.

  He turned back toward where he’d crushed the beetle earlier, something catching his eye.

  Bending low, he furrowed his brow, curiosity flickering through the anxiety in his face.

  “Wow!” Rob breathed. “So cool.”

  Leaning closer, his nose almost touching the ground, he examined the glowing object hovering mere inches above the surface.

  Ethereal and gently shining with a bronze metallic hue, the rectangular object radiated a soft halo of light in a small circle around itself.

  Spellbound, he cautiously extended his hand to grab it. Oh so gently, his fingers neared the glowing card, fearing that if he moved too quickly, he might break it.

  He needn’t have worried, though. For no sooner had his fingers brushed the faint glow than the card itself rushed into his palm.

  It was so sudden he didn’t even see it happen—one instant it hovered, the next it dissolved into a rush of glittering light that vanished into his skin.

  [Congratulations, you have gained an energy card: 3e]

  Rob stared at his empty hand, disappointment flashing across his face. He’d really wanted to hold this thing, to feel something wondrous in all this madness. But it hadn’t even waited for him to say hi before it rushed into his body.

  But soon, Rob smiled. As instinctive knowledge resurfaced in his mind, he willed the card to reappear in his hand—and it did.

  It was solid—not the kind that looked like it could turn into light at any moment. Rob felt a familiar sensation in his hand. He was certain he had never touched an energy card before, yet somehow it felt exactly as he had imagined it would: sharp at the edges, with a weight that didn’t match its thin shape.

  “Like it holds more than it should,” he murmured.

  He watched the three bronze dots shift and move on the otherwise plain surface of the card. He flicked it into the air, watching it twirl once before landing softly back in his hand. Then, with a thought, it dissolved into a soft wave of light. He turned it over once, then dismissed it in a swirl of vanishing glow.

  “Oh right!” Rob smacked his forehead.

  “I forgot all about those notifications.”

  He laughed weakly, shaking his head as he walked deeper into the island, his eyes scanning the dim air where faint lines of text shimmered before him.

  “Awesome,” he whispered. “So this is actually my superpower.”

  His final words faded slowly into the still air behind him as his silhouette gradually disappeared into the folds of the heavy, suffocating gloom of the island of corpses.