Deep underground, deeper than any human of today has ever been, there was once a civilization.

  A huge open space was there in the deep dark reaches of the abyss. Carved into the rock were magnificent buildings of staggering height, so tall no ending was in sight.

  Streets wide enough for villages to fit, and doors high enough for trees to grow. But no one lived here anymore. No one to walk these streets, no one to open the doors, no one to inhabit the buildings.

  Somewhere, surrounded by shimmering metal and crystals, glowing in all the colors of the rainbow and practically bursting with mana, was a tomb. This tomb was made from the same crystals lining these walls.

  Inside the crystal tomb laid a body, motionless, unmoving, but as pristine as if still alive, without a single blemish. An inscription was carved into the glass sarcophagus.

  Suddenly, inside this room, a soul was sinking from the ceiling, seemingly unhindered by the layers of protection. It sank until it reached the floor, and just as it was about to leave the room again and sink further, the crystals released their brilliant light and trapped the soul.

  The sarcophagus shone with the same brilliant light as the walls, sucking the soul into the body trapped inside.

  Inside this body, the soul settled down. And though the body was dead, the soul was alive.

  *** ***

  It was the day after my 13th birthday. The zoo was great, as expected, but the school still sucked.

  “Starting where we stopped yesterday, we are learning more about mana today, class.”

  The teacher faced the board and started scribbling some sketches.

  “While a Mana Core only grows when one awakens, our body uses Mana from the moment we are born. The amount is rather small, which is why it does not need a core and it is not enough to use magic. Nevertheless, our body needs mana to survive. Our soul is the driving force behind that phenomenon. It absorbs trace amounts of mana and distributes them in our bodies. To make our heartbeat and our brains think. So, in a sense, every living being is already a Schmerzan from the moment they are born.”

  I was already dozing off again, bored to death by the teachers’ squabbling.

  *** ***

  Normally, the soul would have long dissolved, its contents spread by the wind and it’s being destroyed. But the soul refused.

  It did not know why, but it knew it had to live. In this mana-rich environment, the soul could constantly absorb the ambient mana, keeping itself alive through sheer will.

  As it settled into the foreign body, it did the only thing it knew how to. It kept absorbing mana.

  The amount of mana was negligible, too small to be used. Because the soul was in a foreign body that had been dead for an unknown amount of time, it could not properly absorb the mana.

  But like a parched desert after a heavy rain, the soul was siphoning the mana into the body, growing bigger with each drop.

  With no functioning organs to exhaust mana, it slowly accumulated within the body, saturating it with magical energy. But the amount was still too small, so nothing happened. The soul kept robbing the air of its mana, devouring it.

  *** ***

  Jolting awake from my school nap, I find my teacher still talking about magic.

  “Some powerful Schmerzans have speculated of a way to awake without the huge amounts of pain. By using the trace amounts of mana, our soul absorbs, they try to gather enough mana to form a mana core on their own. Of Course this did not work. The soul only absorbs as much mana as the body needs. Despite that, if someone found a way to either get more mana from their soul or force their body to save some of that mana, it may be possible. Keep in mind, this is purely theoretical, so it may not even work.”

  Wholly uninterested in the topic, I close my eyes and go back to my nap.

  *** ***

  A tremor spread through the underground cavern, then another, and another. Like a heartbeat. A low hum followed, making the walls vibrate slightly.

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  Deep inside the cavern, behind an old-looking metal door, was a room full of crystals. These crystals did not shine with any light.

  They were dull and gray now, as if all the mana from them had been drained. In the middle of this room was a coffin. The crystal it was made from was now the same dull color as the walls.

  But inside, there was light. This light was coming from the corpse of a young man. His crimson red hair was still as bright and full as if he was just sleeping, his tall and muscular statue practically brimming with the energy to move, as if ready to open his eyes any second now.

  But no matter what it looked like, the man was dead. Still, he was the origin of the tremors.

  Inside the young man’s body was a soul, no longer small or weak.

  A torrent of white, pure mana surrounded it. Like a violent river, the mana swirled chaotically inside the body, a violently crashing against itself in rhythmic pulses, each reverberation echoing like a distant storm.

  Of course, no one could hear anything this deep underground.

  Slowly, the mana particles inside the young man’s body were settling down, pressing against each other and condensing into a single point.

  Like a moth drawn to flame, the particles of mana all wandered toward the soul, before crystallizing into a sphere of pure mana in his abdomen.

  Agonizingly slow, the mana was being pushed and compressed into that sphere, till there was no more mana in the room or the young man’s body.

  And then suddenly, the soul did the second thing it knew how to do. Now that it had absorbed all it could, it distributed the mana in the body.

  The amount of mana the soul had absorbed was massive, but that was to be expected. It did nothing but absorb mana for the last century.

  The muscles and bones, fed by the mana, grew stronger, hungry for more. As they devoured the mana, they kept condensing, growing tougher and sturdier than they ever were.

  And just when all the mana in the body was about to be emptied, the soul stopped feeding them. Unsatisfied, but without a choice, the muscles stopped eating.

  With the muscles satisfied, the only thing left to do was send trace amounts of mana to the organs to wake them. The soul, only left with one choice, did just that.

  The heart of the long-dead man started beating, pumping blood through his veins that had not moved for millennia. His lungs contracted and expanded to force air down his throat, rising and lowering his chest.

  From the depths of nothingness, an indomitable soul sought refuge in a body long abandoned by life. And against all reason, against all fate, the young man took his first breath once more, long after his last.

  *** ***

  I opened my eyes.

  “Ghaaaah” A sharp, deep gasp escaped my mouth, as I grasped for air, feeling as if I had not breathed for decades. I awoke inside a glass coffin in some kind of underground cave.

  As I pressed against the lid with all my might to leave my crystal prison, the lid shot against the ceiling and exploded into thousands of tiny shards, raining down on me. The amount of force my body could bring forth shocked me.

  I looked down at my body, before noticing that I could not recognize myself. Feeling my face with my hands, I knew it was not mine. I grabbed my long hair, only to see it had a crimson color.

  Confused and scared, I rubbed my eyes and pinched my skin to wake up from this nightmare. The skin I pinched started bleeding, but the wound closed before even a single drop of blood could leave my body.

  I left the coffin and sat down on the floor. While it felt cold, it gave me no discomfort. I tried to remember how I got here.

  “Zael told me where the bastard that killed my family was supposed to be, and I started running towards where he was. What happened then?” I paced back and forth, from one stone wall to the next, racking my brain for answers.

  “I think I killed him, but then I felt regret as if that was wrong…” my face got serious, a dangerous glint in my eyes.

  “Zael lied to me, that bastard. I killed an innocent family father. Zael killed my family.” I whispered to myself. A tear rolled down my cheek, surprising me. Before I knew why, I was on the ground, crying. Having taken the life of a father made me just as bad as Zael, if not worse.

  I slammed my fist down into the ground, and to my surprise, the ground cracked in a shock wavelike pattern, with my fist as the source. Pulling my arm out of the ground, I stood up and tried to figure out where I was. I saw a small inscription on the coffin. Leaning closer to read what it said, I said “Failed Project 00001: Ultimate Vessel”.

  Even more confused than before, I kept looking. Aside from the crystal coffin, the room was mostly empty. Only a few dull and gray crystals were in the room, lining these walls.

  When I tried to touch one, it crumbled to dust. As soon as the first one shattered, the rest of the crystals and the coffin also disintegrated. The only thing left in the room was a giant metal door, as big as 5 of me stacked on top of each other.

  Reading myself for what lay on the other side of the door, I laid my hands on the door and pushed. As the door opened with a rumble, so loud that the entire room vibrated and pieces of stone fell from the ceiling, I saw a truly magnificent sight, unlike anything even my wildest dreams could have imagined.

  Before my eyes lay a gorgeous metropolis, with buildings as high as mountains, and streets as wide as lakes. My jaw opened to say something, but no words came out.

  The door leading to the small cave I awoke in was far away from the city, on top of a small hill, but I still could barely make out the tips of said buildings. Astonished by the sheer scale of it all, I needed a few moments to take it all in.

  “Where the fuck am I?”

  My question, of course, left unanswered. Determined to find out where I was and what exactly happened to me after my death, I started my descent.

  Following the path down the hill, I saw more doors, not unlike the one I just opened. I wanted to first find a shelter of some sort to come to terms with what happened and let my thoughts settle down, before exploring anymore.

  At the foot of the mountain was a small door of my size with a shield next to it that said “Office of Doctor Phoenix”.

  I opened the door and was greeted by a cozy little office equipped with a desk and chair, a bed in the corner, and a fireplace with some kind of wood in the middle.

  The wood had a strange, rainbow-like glow to it. On the desk were hundreds of papers, completely unorganized but also in surprisingly good shape.

  I sat down at the desk and was amazed at how comfortable it was. Before I even knew what came over me, I felt my eyelids growing heavy, and I fell asleep.