Claim What's Yours
1078 Words
“What a way to start a first meeting,” a voice drawled. It was a long, lazy sound that seemed to vibrate from the very floor beneath Jack's boots. “In exactly one second, that salamander girl is going to punch your soul clean out of your ribs.”
Jack froze. His pulse thundered in the vacuum of the white void. “Who’s there?!”
He spun one sharp sweep of the bleached horizon. Nothing. No presence. No source. Only the ringing silence of the void.
Then a flicker.
A screen of shimmering, translucent light ignited in the air in front of him. Jack’s breath hitched. It wasn't a window; it was a mirror into the immediate future.
He watched himself move. It was a ghost image of his own body, lunging forward with a reckless, desperate momentum. He saw his fist draw back, aimed straight for Daisy’s legs while she was mid fall. The impact was clean. In the vision, she lost her balance, her body tilting toward the marble like a felled tree.
Jack leaned closer, his heartbeat accelerating until it was the only sound in the universe. “That’s… me…”
On the screen his ghost-self didn't hesitate. He charged in for the kill, his stone-fused fist a blurring hammer aimed at her face. For a heartbeat it looked like victory. It looked like the end.
Then, the "Salamander" woke up.
Daisy’s eyes ignited with a white-hot, predatory flare. Even as she fell, her body twisted with an unnatural, feline grace, flames erupting from the soles of her feet. The fire didn't just burn; it obeyed. It acted as a thruster, snapping her balance back mid air, her form stabilizing in a jagged, vertical line.
Zone Activated: Serpent Form.
A coil of white fire wrapped around her forearm like a living, hungry weapon. Before the ghost-Jack could even register the shift
BOOM.
The blast hit him point-blank. On the screen, Jack’s body was launched across the arena like a discarded ragdoll. He watched himself slam into the obsidian walls with a bone crushing c***k that echoed like a thunderclap through the void.
The screen froze on the image of his broken body slumped against the stone.
Jack staggered back, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. The cold of the void finally reached his bones.
“…So that’s it?” His voice came out as a dry, hollow rasp. “I die… from that?”
Laughter rolled through the void slow, unhurried, entirely at his expense.
"You're not dead," the voice said, the amusement thick and lazy. A pause followed, heavy and predatory.
"Not yet."
Jack's eyes twitched.
The sulfur, the roaring heat, the screaming crowd all of it gone. There was only the White. An infinite bleached canvas humming with low-frequency static. And within that static something was watching.
"Not yet?" Jack snapped, his voice thin and brittle in the vastness. "What does that even mean? Show yourself!"
He went to clench his fist a reflexive motion to feel the comfort of the stone’s jagged edges.
His hand froze mid-air.
The weight was gone. The cracks, the cold gray surface, the fused pressure against his palm all of it had vanished. Jack looked down at his hand. It was bare. Human. Vulnerable.
His breath hitched, a sharp intake of air that felt too cold for his lungs. Before the panic could settle into his bones, the voice returned.
“Do you know… why they call it trash?”
The sound didn't travel through the air. It didn't hit his eardrums. It simply existed inside his thoughts something that had been speaking long before language existed.
Jack’s head snapped up, searching the void. Silence. He shook his head, a slow, cautious movement. “No.”
A pause followed. It wasn't empty; it was heavy with judgment, weighing the density of his soul.
“Expected,” the voice drawled. The word stretched unnaturally, as if it were being translated from a language that didn't use breath. “They never do.”
Jack’s jaw tightened, the muscle jumping in his cheek. “Who are you?”
No answer. Instead, the white space trembled not visually, but conceptually, like a fever dream shifting its logic.
“Many were chosen,” the voice continued. “Not by worth. But by… alignment.”
Jack frowned, his bare hand curling into a useless fist. “What does that”
“They all failed.” The words cut through him, absolute and chilling. “They waited. For it to act.”
A distortion flickered in the periphery of his vision. Faint broken shapes appeared shadows of the ones who had come before him. They were frozen mid-reach, arms extended toward something that had never come, fingers outstretched and empty. Still waiting even now.
“They asked it for strength,” the voice whispered. Another flicker an image of someone falling into an abyss. “They depended on it. And so… they stopped moving.”
The white space cracked. It wasn't a physical rupture, but a rejection of the memory, a psychic shudder. A chill crawled up Jack’s spine.
“They called it useless,” the voice said, the tone dropping into a hollow, resonant bass. “But they never asked… why it never moved for them.”
Jack’s breathing slowed. The frantic beat of his heart began to sync with the static of the void. The fight, the twenty-one days on the cliff, the silence of the stone the pieces snapped into place.
“They were waiting for power,” Jack said quietly.
A long, deliberate silence followed.
“They were waiting to be carried,” he added, his voice gaining a sudden, hard edge.
The space went still. For the first time, the voice didn't respond immediately. When it did, the texture had changed. It was no longer mocking; it was curious.
“Closer.”
Jack’s lips curved. It wasn't relief; it was a predator's recognition of the scent. “So that’s it,” he said, his eyes sharpening until they looked like flint. “You don’t give anything.”
Silence. Then, a shift subtle, undeniable, and intentional. The white space didn't just tremble; it bowed.
Jack felt the presence watching him shift its focus. He wasn't being questioned anymore. He was being considered. Measured. Weighted.
His grin widened, a jagged expression of pure grit.
“Good,” he said softly, his voice a cold promise. “Then I’ll take it.”
- Writer
