Atlas felt empty for a moment. Facing the corpse at his feet, he searched for guilt, the malaise that was supposed to crush him. He couldn't find it. Nothing surfaced. Out of pure reflex, he dropped his short sword, which hit the stone with a dull clank. It wasn't out of regret for having killed. Looking up at the stands from which ecstatic howls rained down, he felt nothing but profound disgust. He had just discovered a pure, unprecedented hatred toward these thousands of anonymous, flesh-hungry faces.
He dragged his exhausted, mentally drained body to the archway, which finally swallowed him amidst the cheers.
In the gloom of the corridor, the few surviving gladiators and those waiting their turn stepped aside as he passed. They watched him with a troubling mix of reverence and dread. It wasn't the fearful respect they held for Herclesn, facing this scrawny, blood-soaked stranger, it was an insidious fear slowly rising within them. They didn't understand why, but standing near him at that moment gave them the dizzying sensation of suffocating. They sensed that something abnormal had just shifted.
Atlas didn't give them the slightest glance.
He quickened his pace, plunging as deep into the darkness as possible. Something was terribly wrong. Once out of sight, in the shadows of a heavy stone pillar, he collapsed.
Isaac's stimulant, with frightening precision, had just worn off. Atlas had tapped into his last reserves of willpower to keep from faltering in front of the audience, but now, an unspeakable physical pain devoured his muscles and bones. Curled up on the ground, arms clutched tightly against himself, he coughed violently and spat a tide of dark blood that splattered across the flagstone.
Yet, the worst wasn't physical. The same sensation from his fight against the mutant suddenly resurfaced.
His mind stretched, rebelled, entirely slipping from his control. A terrifying lucidity descended upon him, revealing the cogs of human cognition far too complex for him to process. He understood nothing of this overwhelming flood of information. His mind was nothing but a deafening uproar, a psyche boiling over, threatening to fracture under the weight of its own will.
Eyes wide open, drained of all fear or anger but filled with a silent agony, Atlas couldn't see it. But all around him, reality itself was beginning to twist.
The darkness grew agitated. The shadows cast on the ground seemed to come alive. They swirled, stretched, twisting as if suffering alongside him, oppressed by the heaviness of his nascent Distortion. They resonated to the chaotic rhythm of his own pain.
Fighting not to go under, Atlas raised a trembling hand and gripped the pillar. Beneath his sticky fingers, the rock was carved with ancient cave paintings depicting two gladiators in the midst of combat.
If anyone had been there, they would have witnessed an impossible spectacle. Under the sheer pressure of Atlas's hand, the stone came alive. For a fraction of a second, the two fighters frozen in the crude art moved. Their weapons clashed in silence, the scene becoming atrociously vivid and real, the physical matter bending under the weight of the young man's inner turmoil.
Then, the overload became too much.
Atlas's eyes rolled back, and he sank into unconsciousness, sprawling heavily on the cold stone. Instantly, the pressure dropped. The shadows ceased their macabre dance, and the stone warriors froze once more, struck down by the silent and relentless return of reality.
...
Atlas opened his eyes in the heart of a forest. A forest far too familiar for his liking, whose imprint haunted his mind.
Yet, this time, he wasn't running. He was a prisoner. Thick, almost living roots coiled mercilessly around his wrists and ankles, keeping him crucified against rough bark. His mind strangely more lucid than during his last visit, he stopped struggling to truly look around him. The shock hit him full force then, sweeping away the slightest ounce of rationality.
"Is this... is this even possible?" he murmured, breathless, astounded.
The word "big" was the most pitiful of understatements. These trees weren't big, they were biblical. Their cyclopean trunks resembled walls of natural wood, easily boasting diameters exceeding fifty meters. A completely unprecedented sight for Atlas, his own continent was full of ancient forests, yet no vegetation seemed to obey such proportions. Tilting his head back, vertigo seized him, it was impossible for him to see the canopy. The trunks rose into infinity, piercing invisible skies, bristling with countless main branches as wide as avenues.
But what completely shattered his certainties was their color.
The bark was neither brown nor gray. It was an unfathomable blue. An abyssal depth of color, almost black, that seemed to absorb the surrounding light like a midnight sky. And to contrast with this inky wood, the thousands of leaves adorning the lower branches boasted an immaculate white, pure and almost luminescent, reminiscent of porcelain shards or frost suspended in the void.
It was dizzying. Atlas was undoubtedly gazing upon the most majestic and magnificent thing he had ever seen in his entire existence.
And yet, this vision terrified him.
This unreal beauty hid an overwhelming aura. The immensity of this blue forest oppressed him, exuding a silent, ancient, and titanic presence that reduced his own life to a mere speck of dust. The reality of this place was so heavy it seemed to physically weigh on his shoulders.
Suddenly, his vision blurred. A warm tear rolled down his cheek, dying on his neck. Then another. Atlas blinked, perplexed, observing the moisture on his cheeks without understanding it. He was crying bitterly, his body reacting all on its own, even though his cold mind didn't feel the slightest trace of sadness.
He couldn't explain these tears, any more than he understood why this forest had crucified him in such a way. After all, he wasn't a great threat.
"Not yet."
A voice, soft and crystalline, suddenly resonated. It was the very same one he had heard last time. It came from no specific direction, it glided between the titanic trunks, emanating from everywhere and nowhere at once, as if the entire forest were speaking to him.
Atlas struggled violently, trying to see where it was coming from, twisting his wrists, tensing his exhausted muscles. But no matter how hard he fought with all his might, the roots didn't twitch a millimeter.
"It's useless, little bird," the voice resumed without an ounce of emotion, with a suffocating neutrality. "As I told you before, nothing escapes its cage."
"What do you mean, 'not yet'?" Atlas spat, searching for its source. "Not yet what?"
He refused to give in to panic. His analytical mind clung desperately to logic to fend off the absurd. I am dreaming, he reassured himself internally. I passed out in the corridor after the fight. Dreams are just a construct of the mind. None of this is real, nothing can happen to me.
But this certainty threatened to collapse by the second. This world felt far too tangible to be a mere projection of his subconscious. The icy air rushed into his lungs, the earthy scent of the blue bark filled his nose, and above all... he could feel the brute strength of the roots. The relentless pressure of the wood pulled painfully on the bones of his wrists and ankles, threatening to dislocate his joints.
The voice resumed, gliding through the immaculate leaves with the heaviness of an icy breeze. It explained nothing. It merely observed, as if examining an anomaly.
"A distortion..." the entity murmured, as if tasting the word through the roots. "So small, so miserable. And yet... you are already trying to scratch at Existence."
Atlas furrowed his brows, his breathing ragged, his mind drowning in total confusion. He winced as he pulled vainly at his bonds. The last time he had found himself projected into this absurd forest, hadn't this thing hunted him relentlessly? And now, it was pinning him to a tree to study him?
A distortion? Existence? he thought, a hint of exasperation piercing through the throbbing pain in his wrists. He refused to be intimidated by concepts he could neither measure nor calculate. What is this lunatic talking about?
"I..." Atlas opened his mouth, ready to demand rational answers.
But the entity was already done with him.
"Rebel against Existence," the voice murmured with sudden disinterest, as if the entity's curiosity had abruptly flickered out.
Before Atlas could utter another syllable, the entire forest seemed to shudder. The titanic roots crushing his wrists and ankles retracted in a single, sharp snap, with the violence of a whip.
Deprived of support, Atlas fell backward.
But his skull did not hit the blue bark. The colossal tree behind him had just lost all its consistency. The solid matter morphed into an absolute void, icy and viscous. Atlas passed right through the trunk as if falling backward into an ocean of black ink.
Vertigo seized him. A free fall, infinite and terrifying, ripped the heart from his chest. The white light of the leaves vanished instantly, swallowed by the darkness. He wanted to scream, but the air itself had disappeared.
Then, the impact.
Atlas's eyes snapped open violently in a massive spasm, sucking in air hard enough to tear his lungs.
The sickening smell of dried blood, sweat, and reddened dust hit his nostrils with the force of a punch. The majestic silence of the forest had been replaced by the sound of his cell's chains and the drip-drip of humidity on the stone.
He was no longer bound to a blue tree. He was lying on his back, shivering with cold and pain on the filthy flagstones of his cell. His entire body screamed in agony.