It began with a haptic scream.

  The wormhole didn't swallow him. It processed him.

  Val felt it immediately, his body dissolved into a current of information being forced through a vacuum at a speed that had no human unit of measurement. Around him, the others were gone. Not dead. Just... buffering.

  He should have been terrified. He wasn't.

  Because this was what he had spent eleven years trying to prove existed. Not the horror of CERN. Not the terraforming. This: the interior geometry of a traversable wormhole, experienced from the inside, in real time, with his own nervous system as the instrument.

  The seam in his palm responded before he did. It behaved like a magnet and his hand reached out and closed around something in the stream. A fragment of golden anomaly. It folded into his palm like it had been waiting.

  [DATA OVERFLOW: PARTITION 0. PRIMEVAL] [COORDINATE CALIBRATION: 88.09... 44.12...] [ERROR: ANOMALOUS BIOMASS DETECTED]

  [ANOMALY ACQUIRED: +0.25% SINGULARITY]

  Then the current expelled him.

  He didn't know it until later, but he'd been smiling the entire way through. Not because of the acquisition. Just because of the experience itself.

  Val took a deep breath, tried to gather everything as reference for his future research.

  ‘Best day ever.’

  The humid air hit him first, sharp with crushed mint.

  Val didn't move right away, he was still catching up to the fact that he had a body again. Fingers. Weight. The specific pressure of gravity against his knees where they'd met the ground. He stayed there for a moment, just breathing.

  The disorientation was the specific vertigo of a man whose frame of reference had just been completely replaced. He dragged himself upright as Iron-Oaks rose around him like pillars, their trunks perfectly cylindrical.

  ‘Where am I?’ He wiped silver-flecked silt from his lab coat.

  [MANDATE: ENTER THE WORMHOLE (COMPLETED)]

  [REWARD: +30 RUBAL]

  [SYSTEM UNLOCK: RUBAL, CALIBRATION POINTS (CP)]

  Val began to trek deeper into the exotic jungle. Every sound was magnified threefold.

  When his boot snapped a twig, it didn’t crackle. It rang.

  Above him, a Great Heron-Stalker glided between the canopy, its slate-grey feathers reflecting light like mercury.

  Val ducked. Too close.

  ‘Maintain your heart rate, Val. Or the jungle will...’

  Breathe.

  ‘eat you alive.’

  Val stayed down for a beat longer than necessary, his cheek pressed against the cool stone. He waited until the shrill cry of the creature spiraled toward the cliffs.

  ‘The branding room… Marcus… the needles…’ The memories flickered back to him. He looked at the forest again, but this time, he looked through the lens of a physicist.

  He noticed the Sterling-Lace Moss at the base of the trees. It wasn't growing toward the light; every single fiber was pointed due North-East, vibrating in a synchronized rhythm.

  No footprints on geometric roots. The ground rejected disorder.

  “Laminar flow,” Val whispered, his voice cracking. He looked at a nearby stream. The water didn't splash over the rocks. It flowed in a smooth liquid curve without a single bubble of turbulence.

  “The entropy here... it’s being suppressed.”

  A rustle. Not the wind. One-two. One-two.

  A prickle of sweat ran down Val’s spine. It was the cold certainty of being caught in a crosshair.

  He stopped being a victim. He crouched, his fingers digging into the glassy moss.

  ‘Wait. Was that a footstep?’ He held his breath, heart thudding loud. ‘Someone is there. Or something.’

  “Is... is anyone there?” he called out. The sound felt thin in the heavy, sterile air.

  The jungle didn't answer, but Val kept looking.

  In the frequency-perfect stillness, the sound of human panic was a jagged tear. Val broke into a clearing to find Rafa and Elena arguing beneath giant emerald foliage.

  “Man, look at this! No sun? No shadows? This alien shi’ is officially trippin!”

  Val tracked the voice to a cluster of Iron-Oaks. It was the same high-pitch voice from the facility.

  ‘Oh, it’s just that idiot from before,’ Val breathed a sigh of relief, followed by a hint of annoyance. ‘Of all the Martyrs, why him?’

  “Mr. Scientist! Tell me why the ground is glowing, my boots are sinkin’ as we speak!”

  Rafa emerged from the shadows, his arms flailing as he tried to keep his balance. His face was a mask of high-strung bravado.

  “The light's wrong,” Elena gasped, gesturing to the shadowless ground. “There’s no sun, Val.”

  “The light is ambient, Rafa,” Val said, his voice flat. “And the ground isn't just glowing; it's reacting to the pressure. Walk slower, or the silt will lock your legs in place.”

  Rafa stopped mid-stride, one foot hovering over the glowing dust. “You trying to kill me with boredom, professor?”

  He shoved past Val, charging toward a vertical curtain of mist. "Now, follow me! Before those aliens come for your ass." Val followed anyway.

  Sometimes following an idiot beats being alone on an alien planet.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The forest vanished and the hum died as they stepped onto a flat expanse of ash-colored silt.

  “Keep it tight,” Rafa commanded, his hand clutching a silver treebark.

  Behind him, Elena and Val stumbled, their eyes squinting against the valley.

  The transition was violent, in a sudden shift of reality.

  One moment, they were navigating the beauty of the Iron-Oak forest; the next, they stepped through suffocating, grey mire. The ground forward wasn't earth. It was a flat ash-colored silt that looked as solid as a paved road, “That ground’s wrong. Go right. Now!”

  “Bullshit! One jump, and we’re good to…”

  Rafa took a confident stride forward toward a ridge of white stone. But as his boot struck the grey surface, the ground didn't hold. It didn't even crack. It simply liquefied.

  “Rafa!” Elena screamed.

  The big man dropped. He wasn't just sinking; he was being erased. This wasn't mud. It was a Quagmire, a fine, grey suspension so dense that it acted like a liquid.

  “I can't... get a footing!” Rafa roared, his muscles bulging as he tried to power his way out. But this planet's physics didn't care about muscle.

  Every panicked strike of his limbs against the silt, only caused the fluid to lock him for a microsecond before sucking him deeper.

  “Rafa, stop! Don’t fight it!” Val yelled. He saw the way the silt reacted to Rafa’s violence. Shear-thickening fluid, he realized.

  A Non-Newtonian trap. This land had finally shown its teeth.

  The pressure of the silt began to crush against Rafa’s chest.

  “Dammit man! These cops are trying to get me! Help me down here!” Rafa roared. He reached out, his fingers clawing at the air, but there was nothing to grab.

  “He’s going under!” Elena lunged forward, throwing herself flat onto a shelf of stable Iron-Oak roots near the pit's edge.

  “Elena, stop!” Val commanded, grabbing her shoulder. “If you rush, it locks. Slow. Slow.”

  Val knelt beside her, agonizingly deliberate.

  Their hands locked with Rafa’s. The silt was at his throat. Halo flickering red, casting a bloody glow.

  “Don’t fight it, Rafa,” Val whispered. “Drift toward us. Slower than you think possible.”

  With a paced pull, they hauled him backward.

  Suction resisted longer than Val calculated

  —

  then released.

  Rafa tumbled hard, gasping. Grey silt coated him.

  He looked back at the pit. “Don’t look at me like that, man.”

  Val stood, wiping grey dust from his palm. He was examining the Quagmire.

  “Sssh...”

  The Quagmire settled back into its flat, deceptive stillness.

  Val didn't look at the shivering Rafa. Instead, he knelt by the edge of the pit. He took a small stone and dropped it onto the grey surface. It didn't sink. It sat on top, perfectly supported.

  Then, Val punched the surface with a sudden, violent jab of his fist.

  Clang.

  His knuckles hit a surface that felt like solid granite. The liquid had instantly reorganized its molecular structure to resist the sudden force.

  “What in the heck, are you doing?”

  “It’s not just mud,” Val whispered, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying sort of hunger. “It’s a physical lock. A security measure.”

  “This planet is an engineered fortress.”

  Rafa spat, shaking the grey dust from his hair. “I don't care if it's a fortress.”

  “I want a weapon. A real one. Not this piece of sand.”

  [MANDATE: REACH THE DISSONANT CHAMBER]

  [REWARD: 22 RUBAL, WEAPON: IRON-OAK RUNGU]

  [FAILURE PENALTY: NONE]

  Rafa screamed like he’d won a jackpot, “See! See! Even the heavens can’t ignore the great Rafa!”

  Val couldn’t help but give him a cynical look, ‘Maybe this is how it feels having a low INT but high Luck.’

  “You got something to say?”

  Val sighed, “You may lead the way, great Rafa.”

  “Uh… right. So how are we going to find this… chamber?”

  “Let’s see,” Elena's fingers danced through empty air.

  Val still not used to it, but he instantly knew that she was navigating the Halo system.

  “Follow the light,” Elena said, her fingers dancing through a shimmering blue interface that only she could see. “The Halo... it’s projecting a vector.

  A thin, translucent line of gold appeared in the air, cutting through the ambient ground.

  Rafa didn't wait for an analysis. He backed himself up.

  Val followed, but his eyes stayed on the ground. He watched how their boots left no footprints on the hard, geometric roots.

  As Rafa marched ahead, fueled by bravado and the promise of a wooden club, Val fell into a rhythmic stride, his mind retreating into the cold, analytical space he had cultivated at CERN. He remembered the violet static that had bled into his vision just before the wormhole had claimed him.

  "So this 'Halo' thing…" Rafa squinted at the golden vector like it had personally offended him. "Is that like an alien smartphone or what?"

  "More like a neural interface fused directly into your skull," Val said, not looking up.

  "So… a smartphone." Rafa's voice was thick with a stubborn kind of simplicity.

  Val's jaw tightened. He didn't correct him anymore.

  "We have to consider the possibility, Val," Elena said, her voice cutting through Val's internal audit. She was watching her own interface. "The System isn't just a map. It's a ledger. It has its own currency stored in here, personalized for each of us."

  "Currency?" Val's voice was sharp, clinical.

  "You didn't notice?" Elena tilted her head, a brief flicker of concern crossing her face. "We all received a credit for the arrival. It's the baseline for the trial."

  Val didn't tell her he had been too busy calculating the gravitational constant of the singularity that had almost erased them. He just opened his Halo, watching the numbers pulse in the corner of his eye.

  Current CP : 0 Current Rubal : 30

  'Rubal,' he thought. 'A medium of exchange in a world without banks. This isn't just a trial. It's an economy.'

  His gaze drifted to the insignia tab. 'Abyssal Child.'

  Checking it now felt like a gamble, but in a world where everything was trying to kill him, he needed every leverage.

  The standard blue interface flickered, then yielded to a bruised violet. The notification sat in his inventory tab, vibrating with a malevolent energy.

  [INSIGNIA: ABYSSAL CHILD]

  A secondary window popped into existence, the text sharp and uncompromising.

  [WARNING: This Insignia is classified as a 'Forbidden'. Equipping this may permanently alter the user's resonance and visibility to the Divine Throne. Do you wish to equip?] [YES / NO]

  A system that hadn't categorized him yet was also a system that hadn't fully constrained him yet. He hesitated for a second, but that window wouldn't stay open forever.

  He pressed [YES].

  A jolt of absolute zero surged through his cervical spine. The gray Phaistos Halo above his head spun with a sudden, violent torque, its rotation accelerating until a single violet crack fractured the matte surface.

  [Insignia Equipped: Abyssal Child] [Condition Applied: ABYSSAL EVOLUTION +1.5%] [Active Ability Unlocked: Abyssal Repel]

  'Evolution,' Val thought. 'Not infected. Not corruption. Evolution. As if the system already has a destination in mind for me.'

  He didn't know if that was better or worse.

  "You good, nerds?" Rafa's mocking voice cuts through the internal noise.

  Val blinked, the violet static receding into the corners of his eyes. "Just adjusting my Halo frequency," he lied, his voice sounding distant to his own ears.

  [MANDATE: REACH THE DISSONANT CHAMBER (COMPLETED)]

  [REWARD: +22 RUBAL; IRON-OAK RUNGU (PENDING)]

  The golden pathfinding vectors dissolved into the floor as they reached the crest of the geometric ridge.

  Below they lay the Dissonant Chamber.

  The structure was a marriage of organic curves and brutalist architecture. It looked like a temple carved from a single gargantuan piece of petrified Iron-Oak. The roof arcing upward, claw-like eaves that seemed to rake the ambient light from the sky.

  As they stepped forward, his Halo insignia flickered from violet to deep black.

  A warning that he was not welcome here.