Chapter 2: Where Shadows Breathe
Jason hadn't slept since the dream. Or the vision. He didn't know what to call it.
Three nights passed, each one thicker than the last. Not with nightmares, but with silence. Heavy silence. It clung to him like a second skin. Every creak of the floorboards, every flickering light, felt like a whisper waiting to speak.
And sometimes, when the house was still and the night was blacker than black, he heard… breathing.
But not his own.
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On the fourth day, it happened.
School dragged like a blade over stone. Another fight in the hallway. Jason never threw the first punch—but they always came, anyway. This time it was Robby Quinn and his crew. Lanky kids with daddy issues and gym memberships.
Jason took a hit to the face. Then another. The lockers echoed with dull thuds and jeers. Blood trickled from his nose, warm against cold tile. He didn't cry. Not even when they laughed and called him "Meat Slab."
But something inside him did.
It blinked.
---
Later, in the school bathroom, Jason stared at himself in the mirror. Bruised. Swollen. Alone.
> "You're supposed to break," the voice echoed from his memory.
"Why haven't you broken yet?"
The lights flickered.
His reflection blinked—and didn't match him.
For a second, the boy in the mirror stood taller. Darker. A faint symbol glowed on his chest again—just once—before vanishing like a skipped heartbeat.
Then came the crack.
Not in the mirror. Not in the wall.
In reality.
It appeared behind him. A hairline fracture in the air, shimmering like heat waves. It pulsed once, then twice—like something breathing behind it. Calling. Waiting.
Jason turned. The air smelled like ashes and wet stone.
And then… it split open.
---
He was no longer in the school bathroom.
He stood in a place that made no sense. A hallway made of bone and whispers, stretching into darkness. Walls moved like flesh. The floor pulsed with veins of dim purple light. There was no ceiling—only an endless void swirling with fragments of shattered memories.
He heard laughter. Then screaming. Then his mother's voice, calling his name from a place that didn't exist anymore.
> "This is the Abyss," a voice whispered.
"Where fate forgets you."
"Where strength begins."
Something stepped forward from the end of the hallway. It was him—but twisted. Taller, leaner, eyes like burning moons. The same face, the same pain, but without fear.
> "I am the Echo of what you could be," it said.
"Fight me. Or die as you are."
Jason didn't have time to think. The Echo moved like lightning—shadow-quick, brutal. Jason dodged. Barely. Fists collided, his own heavy, sluggish arms swinging with rage and desperation.
He was getting destroyed.
Every blow felt like getting hit by his guilt, his anger, his shame.
Until something inside him snapped—not in surrender, but in refusal.
> "I'm not broken yet," he gasped.
"And I won't die like this."
Suddenly, he moved faster. The weight he hated became power. His body shifted—not transformed, but reacted. Echo energy pulsed through him like liquid thunder. And with a roar, he tackled the Echo into the wall of flesh.
The world shattered.
---
Jason woke up gasping in a stall, on the floor of the school bathroom. The crack in the air was gone.
But on his chest, hidden beneath his shirt, a faint mark glowed.
Different now.
Awake.
> New Trait Unlocked: "Resilience of Flesh"
"Your body, once mocked, now endures beyond limits. Physical damage is reduced as your resolve hardens."
Jason stood. Taller. Not in size—but in presence.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Same bruises. Same face.
But the eyes… were different now.
They weren't afraid anymore.
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