After that, I'm assured all lesser men would give up.
Oh, who am I kidding? This might as well be giving up.
That's what he said, voice flat and empty, like he'd run out of anger weeks ago. He pulled out a raged-looking book from his pack, something that looked like it had survived fire, rain, and time. The cover was cracked, the edges curled and flaking. It was wrapped in cloth once, probably to protect it, but the cloth was long gone, shredded somewhere back on the trail.
A journal. One he made himself.
The title, scribbled in ink that had smudged and bled from sweat and weather, read: Ascension.
This might sound dumb, he thought, almost laughing at the way the word looked now. But give a person enough free time, they can do a lot of things. He laughed at that. Loudly. The sound didn't match the silence of the woods around him, but he didn't care.
He stood at the edge of a river, not big but wide enough to see your reflection if the water stayed still. He stared at his face.
Once handsome—now hollowed. Cheeks sunken in, the kind of thin that doesn't come from discipline but from something inside eating you alive. Long black hair pulled into a ponytail, greasy and tangled. Green eyes that used to spark when he moved, now dull. Faint shadows beneath them. The color of old bruises.
He stared a while longer. Not because he liked what he saw. Just because it was there. Just because this was what it all came down to.
"I have to tell you," he said loudly. "My next move might sound fucking mad."
He paused. Let the words hang there. His thumb ran across the spine of the journal, like he was trying to feel something—maybe reassurance, maybe a reason to stop.
"I want to grow past human constraints," he said. No stuttering. Just the truth now. "I want to ascend."
He didn't mean it in the way the monks used to say it. Not enlightenment. A fucking ritual.Was it not too ironic that a kid who hated his cult is now doing shit like this?
But I have studied about this a lot over the last months.
"I'm saying it," he added, "'cause it makes the next step sound a lot less... well. Stupid."
He opened the book. Pages of notes—some neat, some scrawled in a feverish rush. Diagrams of occult practices. Religious scripture...
And on one page, near the middle, written in thicker ink than the rest, a single phrase: Kill a bear.
He looked at the river again. The water was moving now. A breeze had picked up. He watched his reflection ripple and vanish.
I could do it with a gun, he thought, but doing it without it clears another part of my... ritual.
He clenched his hands slowly. The skin was rough, thickened from years of abuse and practice. But not invincible. Not yet.
"Because if I can't take down something bigger than me... stronger... then I really am mediocre. Or I'm just sick. And dying."
He exhaled, slow and controlled.
He closed the book. The leather creaked, stiff and worn. He slid it back into his pack carefully.
He stepped away from the river, into the trees. His shoulders were tense. His breathing even.
"One man. One monster. And one step closer to my goal."
He disappeared into the brush without looking back.
He wasn't going to fight the bear with his bare hands. He wasn't a lunatic. He wasn't trying to die.
But it couldn't be easy, either. No sniper rifle from a ridge. No sedatives. No traps in the brush. It had to be earned. Something brutal. Direct. Something that demanded risk. Otherwise, it wouldn't count. Not for this. Not for what came after.
The cave wasn't on any map. You had to know it was there. A crack in the hillside hidden behind thick brush, where the moss grew darker and the birds never perched. The entrance was low, almost crawling height. Most people would've passed it without a second thought.
He didn't.
He slid through it with a pack on his back and a torch in one hand. The air changed immediately—heavier, colder. Like stepping into a place time forgot. The tunnel stretched down at a slow, jagged angle, just wide enough for a man to move through without scraping his shoulders. He ducked under a fallen slab of stone and followed the path down. Earth gave way to walls of old rock, carved by water and time.
And other things.
Scribbles. That's what they looked like at first. Little marks along the wall. But the deeper he went, the more they took shape. Shapes that repeated. Symbols. Runes. Spirals. Eyes. A figure holding up a beast. A man surrounded by flames, bones at his feet.
He stopped and touched one of the carvings. It felt smooth and worn, like fingers had passed over it hundreds of times. He reached into his pack, pulled out a piece of charcoal, and added to the markings. Not copying them—adding his own.
A spiral with seven lines branching from it.
A bear, split open, its heart drawn large.
A stick figure kneeling before a fire, something burning in its hands.
He kept going. Drawing. Marking the walls as if claiming the cave as part of the ritual. His ritual.
When he finished, he stepped back, looked at the symbols he'd added to the hundreds already there. For a second, they seemed to move in the torchlight. Or maybe that was just his vision messing with him again.
He didn't care.
He pulled out the journal. The leather groaned under his grip.
The Ritual of Ascension
The steps stared back at him like scripture:
Achieve an amazing feat in your era.
He ran a line under it. The bear was that feat. Not a symbolic victory. A real one. Flesh and blood.
Take the corpse of a stronger race.
Humans killed bears all the time—but not like this. Not alone. Not up close. Not as an offering.
Destroy a personal item of emotional value.
The blade? His journal? He hadn't decided. Maybe he'd know when it was time.
Commit a great sin upon the world.
This one lingered like a splinter under skin. He didn't know what would be enough. Not yet. But he would. Eventually.
Gather the corpses of seven people who embodied the seven deadly sins at the moment of death.
That would come later. If he survived this.
He put the book down on a flat stone in the middle of the chamber. His hands moved automatically now, pulling chalk, bloodroot, bone dust from pouches in his pack. He mixed it on a slate and painted around the chamber—symbols for strength, for sacrifice, for rebirth.
When it was done, he sat. Cross-legged. Breathing steady. The torch beside him flickered against the damp stone, casting shadows that made the figures on the wall seem like they were watching.
Somewhere in the distance, deep in the cave, there was breathing. Slow. Rhythmic.
The bear was there.
caged trapped and malnourished
Waiting.
And so was he.
He rested his hand on the hilt of the weapon beside him. Not a sword, not exactly. Something heavier.
The cave was quiet except for that breathing. The kind of quiet that sinks into your chest.
One more step, and it began.
No more preparation. No more questions. Just man, monster, and a desire to overcome mortality