Sid POV
Name: Siddharth Krishnan
Race: Human (Tier 0)
Traits [0/1]: None
Strength: 3
Agility: 3
Endurance: 3
Vitality: 2
Perception: 4
Intelligence: 4
Willpower: 2
Charisma: 2
Affinities: None
Skills [1/3]:
Origin's Echo – Lv X
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Sid woke with a sharp gasp, hands clutching his throat as though trying to catch air that wasn’t there. The sound of his own breath echoed off the stone walls. He blinked hard, expecting his bedroom ceiling or any sign of safety, but found rough rock and dim flickering light. Moist soil pressed into his palms, cold and gritty.
If that had been a dream, it was far too real. And if it wasn’t… then where the hell was he?
The surrounding cave smelled of damp earth and wet ash. A low fire burned near the entrance, its smoke crawling lazily through the stale air. The glow from it painted the walls in uneven golds and blacks, revealing broken stone and trickles of water along the edges. His chest grew heavy; it was not quite fear, more like confusion turning into dread.
He forced himself to think. The last thing he remembered was steel flashing, the bite of cold air, voices shouting. His defensive barrier had shattered like glass. They’d moved faster than he could track, stronger than anything he’d ever faced. They could have taken him alive, but they hadn’t. Why almost take his head off if capture was the goal?
He glanced down at himself. No restraints, no visible wounds. But his enchanted uniform, his rings, and his charms were gone. He sat up slowly, nausea churning. The air felt thick, almost viscous, dragging at every movement. When he turned toward the fire, a silhouette shifted beside it. Someone was walking toward him; steady, unhurried.
No mask this time. But even then, the figure’s features refused to resolve. The cave seemed to pulse around him, sound muffled, vision blurred. His movements were slow and blurry, like he was wading through a thick, invisible substance, detached from reality. They must have drugged him.
“What skill did you get?” the man asked, squatting down with practiced ease, sitting back on his heels. His posture was relaxed, face open, tone casual, too casual. Sid blinked at him, trying to focus.
The man looked familiar, in a way he couldn’t place. He had a sharp jawline and cropped hair. Something about the eyes reminded him of Varun.
“Reva mae ae? (Where am I?)” asked Sid. They had taken all his artifacts, including his Parley Signet. The mandatory language classes on Kalish were coming in handy, he thought.
The man sighed. “What? English, please. You know I don’t speak Malayalam.”
Sid’s eyes grew wide with shock as he gazed at the man kneeling before him; the way he held himself, his familiar restlessness, and the unmistakably Earth-style clothes triggered a sense of familiarity.
“Where am I?” he asked again, this time switching to English, the question dry on his tongue.
“You blacked out after getting that skill,” the man said. His voice was gentler now, but still carried a dry, clipped edge. “Rohan did the same thing, though he screamed like hell. You thankfully skipped that part. You were out longer, though. We didn’t want to risk dragging you through unknown terrain, so we stayed put and made camp here.”
Sid inhaled to respond, but the man cut in smoothly before he could speak.
“And before you ask, Aditi and Rohan already did a full sweep. The cave is safe; there are no traps or enemies.”
A voice echoed faintly from the entrance, and Sid turned just in time to see a woman walking in. Her presence was calm but grounded, and she wore a simple Indian kurta with leggings, dust on her sleeves and hair tied back.
“Varun, is he awake?” She asked as she approached.
“Yeah, but he’s still a little spaced out,” Varun said, standing up with a stretch. “Let him rest if he wants. He’s on first watch with Rohan.”
Sid remained where he was, unmoving but not unthinking. His heart was racing, thoughts flashing from recognition to confusion to rising fear. He recognized the names—Varun, Aditi, Rohan—but the context made no sense. The clothes, the ease with which they moved through this place, the casual tone in their voices.
What is this place? What the hell is happening?
His inner voice cut through the static. The same one that had seen him through ambushes, sims, and countless emergencies.
When in doubt, check your status. Don’t guess. Don’t panic. Just check.
He closed his eyes and steadied his breath.
Name: Siddharth Krishnan
Race: Human (Tier 0)
Traits [1/1]:
????
Strength: 3
Agility: 3
Endurance: 3
Vitality: 2
Perception: 4
Intelligence: 4
Willpower: 2
Charisma: 2
Affinities: None
Skills [0/3]:
The moment his eyes met the status screen, a silent scream tore through his mind. What! Where did everything go? Every skill he had bled for, every point he had raised with endless hours of repetition—all gone, erased as if someone had rewritten his entire identity.
His gaze caught on the name field, and for an instant, his heartbeat stopped altogether. Who the hell is Siddharth?Krishnan? The name pulsed at the top of his status sheet, unfamiliar yet familiar at the same time. I’m Siddharth?Chandran.
“Don’t Panic”, he repeated the mantra from his favourite guide in his head. Reason steadied him, but only just. This couldn’t be a hidden realm; hidden realms elevated you, granting you power in proportion to your impact on the realm. They didn’t strip you of identity and reduce you to a stranger inside your own skin.
Maybe the Empire had taken him, stripped him of his strength, and placed him in some psychological experiment. The idea made his stomach twist because it fit too neatly with what he knew. Kaligans cared little for the lives of integrated citizens, let alone an immigrant like him.
His head bowed. For a moment, despair hovered close, tempting him to surrender to it, but he refused. Life had never handed him easy cards, and yet he was still here, still breathing. Every loss before this one had forged a piece of armor he now wore across his will. This wouldn’t be any different.
He recalled the people from earlier—Varun, Aditi—their faces too vivid to dismiss as coincidence. Varun had asked him about a skill; that much he remembered clearly. Then what happened to it? He opened his status again, scanning every detail until the truth became unavoidable.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The cursed skill was gone, purged completely, but something new glimmered faintly in its place; a trait, unnamed and unexplained, waiting like a riddle carved into his very being.
‘Origin’s Echo’ The name itself was both comfort and curse, a relic from the day he’d first awakened. It was his first skill, the one that had unlocked his access to the status interface. But from the very beginning, it had carried an undertone of danger. Each time he’d attempted to channel it, a primal instinct had screamed in warning, flooding him with the certainty that using it would mean death. For years he had kept his distance from it, unwilling to tempt whatever rule governed it.
Yet memory, foggy but insistent, whispered that he had used it. In the final, desperate second before the ambush blade sliced for his neck, instinct had overridden fear. He had triggered it.
If so, was this where the skill had brought him?
He pulled his phone free and flicked on the front camera; the screen glowed cold against the cave’s shadowed stone. The face that stared back made his breath falter. The figure was unmistakably him, only several years younger; his skin smoother, his eyes less hardened, his expression almost na?ve. Did it send me back in time? He wondered. That would explain the body, but not the name that now headlined his status window. Who is Siddharth?Krishnan, and why does that feel just as real as Siddharth?Chandran?
His thoughts knotted tighter, looping through impossible scenarios. Maybe he’d shifted into a parallel self, or maybe the skill had fractured his identity between two timelines. None of it mattered yet. He needed facts, not theories.
He pushed himself up and walked toward the cave entrance, where light from the campfire painted the stone walls in shifting amber.
“Finally back to your senses?” Varun crouched by the flames, nudging a log with the spear’s butt. Firelight sharpened his features and showed the fatigue in his eyes.
“How long was I out?” Sid kept his tone even, though curiosity burned. His voice sounded softer, younger, as if this body had never carried years of command.
“About three hours.” Rohan checked the watch on his wrist. “What skill did you get?” His tone stayed light and polite, with curiosity underneath.
Sid didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on the fire, on the people who felt real but might not be, and on the faint tremor running through his hands.
Asking someone about their skill was impolite in most social circles, particularly among the veterans of The Crossing. Sid could only remember one time when people had been open with such details, and that was during the initial scramble of The Crossing, when survival instincts overrode privacy and everyone was grasping for information.
Sid hesitated, weighing his options. “It’s called Sixth Sense,” he said, the lie delivered with practiced ease. Never share your skills with anyone. It was one of the hardest lessons he learnt during his time at the Institute. Trusting the wrong person had almost killed him once. Revealing your skill, even to friends, was something you did only when the cost of hiding it was higher than the risk of exposure.
“Is it also an uncommon skill?” Rohan kept his tone calm, a shade too deliberate, as if confirming something he already suspected.
“Yeah.” Sid offered no extra detail. He reminded himself that brevity was one of the best tools a liar had. The less you said, the more others filled in with their own imagination, and that made the lie stronger. People trusted what they deduced more than what they were told.
“Are you also Tier 1?” Varun’s voice carried a subtle edge of envy before he could school it.
“Yeah. Could be why I passed out when I got the skill.” Sid kept his tone casual, adding a bit of common knowledge from the future to soften his otherwise terse answers. Absorbing higher-tier skills took a toll on one’s body, with chances of death being there sometimes.
“Makes sense,” Varun replied. Then, with no warning, he picked up a chunk of wood from the pile and lobbed it at Sid.
“What the hell was that for?” Sid asked, the panic slipping into his voice before he could stop it. In the space of seconds, he calculated where each person stood, how long it would take him to sprint away, and whether Aditi or Rohan could intercept him. Had he slipped up? Did they suspect something?
“You should’ve seen that coming with your skill.” Varun grinned and scanned the ground for a second projectile.
“It’s called Sixth Sense, Varun, not super reflexes.” Sid let the irritation show.
“The moth moved as if it could anticipate my every move. From the name, I assumed it was passive, but maybe it’s active,” Varun said, crouching as he picked up a small pebble from the cave floor, his movements restless even in the low light. “Sid, activate the skill. We’ll throw things at you, and you try to dodge,” he continued, gesturing toward Rohan and Aditi with an eager flick of his hand.
“I do not think it works like that.” Sid raised both hands, defensive. He glanced at Rohan and mouthed, please help, but the light was thin.
“Varun, that is enough.” Aditi stepped forward until her shadow crossed Sid. “Test the skill tomorrow, in daylight. Let us not make a ruckus at night.”
“Yeah, wait till morning.” Rohan’s tone stayed even as his eyes scanned the dark beyond the fire, checking corners the others ignored.
“Fine, fine, do not gang up on me.” Varun dropped the pebble and leaned against the cave wall.
Sid dropped beside Aditi and shifted the logs. She angled a stick to help, and the fire breathed higher. Across the other side, Rohan sorted gear with neat, economical motions. Varun paced the edge of the light, peering into the dark, questions already forming. The way they behaved was exactly as he remembered. Perhaps he had gone back in time, or perhaps this world had been recreated from his memories.
“Did you find anything in the cave?” Sid asked Rohan, trying to sound casual.
“No, there was nothing inside. No weapons or loot,” Rohan said. He placed weight on the last word, casting a glance toward Varun that carried more than a hint of judgment.
From what he recalled, they hadn’t camped here during their expedition; he had never blacked out back then. A sharp pang rose in his chest as his thoughts wandered to the goblin ambush that awaited them on the return journey, the one where both Rohan and Aditi died. He and Varun had barely escaped with their lives, and only because Rohan gave up his own.
It was the first time Sid had watched people he cared about die brutally before his eyes. He had never set foot in this cave again, not even after it became a fortified outpost years later. The ghosts of that night made sure of it.
“I’ll go check again, just to be sure,” Sid said, casually raising his pinky, the universal gesture for taking a leak, one that Rohan and Varun would recognize. He didn’t want company. If he said that he wanted to check out the cave, Varun would assume it was his skill and insist on tagging along.
If this entire setting had been built from his memories, then it would be empty by design. Perhaps there might even be an exit hidden somewhere, a flaw in the construct. If this was indeed the past, if that skill had sent him back in time; then there might be something here, a detail that slipped past them before.
That moth-like creature was an anomaly. He had never heard of another monster granting a black skill crystal or a Level X skill. It had to mean something.
“Sure, just clean up after yourself,” Varun said, grinning as he lobbed the water bottle toward him.
Sid caught it and turned away without responding, evading Aditi’s gaze as he stepped into the cave. The shift from firelight to darkness felt immediate. He flicked on the flashlight, the cold white beam slicing through the darkness with clinical precision.
The cave entrance looked like a mouth and could accommodate a small group. From there, the tunnel sloped downward gently but unevenly, creating a quick descent that demanded careful footing. Each step required measured balance, the kind learned from years of navigating unstable terrain. Eventually, the tunnel flattened into a spacious chamber, a belly carved into stone, silent and still.
Sid remembered that such hollow underground chambers were often linked to abandoned cult hideouts, but this one lacked the usual signs: no defensive barricades, no alcoves, no trap triggers. Just space, and it was empty.
He walked slowly, sweeping the beam across the walls. As expected, nothing was there. No gear, no clues, no hidden compartments. Rohan had been right. And yet, Sid’s instincts wouldn’t let it go. A tension had crept in, quiet but persistent, like a thought hovering just out of reach. When his eyes landed on a certain patch of the wall, the sensation surged. His mind latched onto it with unreasonable certainty.
He saw nothing at all, but the feeling was there, wrong and forgotten.
Sid bent down and picked up a loose stone, its edges rough and cold to the touch. He hurled it toward the section of wall, following its arc with careful eyes. The stone halted mid?flight and veered away, as though it had struck an invisible surface hanging in the air. He paused, scanning the spot, then tossed another stone a little higher. This one hit the wall properly and bounced back, clattering onto the cave floor.
Something near the base of that wall was wrong. The space itself seemed to ripple faintly. He slid his phone behind his belt so that the flashlight beam projected forward in a steady line, illuminating the uneven stone ahead. Bending down, he gathered a handful of soil and let it fall slowly over the suspicious patch. The grains landed on an unseen object about the size of a football, tracing its curve as it drifted away from him, the motion subtle but undeniable.
He lunged forward, spearing at it, but the weapon met no resistance. The dust that had outlined the object slid off, scattering as the thing’s surface faded once more into invisibility. He repeated the motion several times, each attempt the same: an outline forming, followed by failure. The creature remained untouchable, present and absent all at once.
Annoyance replaced caution. Sid raised the spear high, both hands gripping the shaft, and brought it down with all the strength he could muster. The impact produced a small burst of white light, a sharp cracking sound, and a sensation like breaking through thin ice. For a heartbeat, the air shimmered, and the creature appeared.
It was insectoid, low to the ground, with a bulbous abdomen and six legs joined sharply like blades. Its body gleamed under the light, slick and black, the faint glimmer of chitin giving it a hard, wet sheen. Burn marks scored its chitin, clear signs it had already fought before he arrived.
Next to its twitching form lay a small black crystal, pulsing faintly with energy. Sid bent down and lifted it carefully, the cold surface grounding him even as a flicker of unease crawled up his spine.
[Skill Crystal Detected—Compatible Skill: Veil of the Mind’s Eye (Common)]
[Would you like to absorb? Y/N]
He could no longer deny it. The black skill crystal was undoubtedly the source of the force that had pulled him across time or memory. For nearly two decades, he had chased whispers and records, desperate to find another trace of the phenomenon that had upended his life. And now, in the same cave where it had all begun, he had found another. That alone changed everything.
He couldn’t afford rash moves or careless guesses. If he wanted to grasp the truth about the crystal and what it had done, he’d need to keep a sharp eye, document everything, and unwind its mystery thread by thread.
