Anomaly

Rupert’s words echoed almost like an irreversible sentence. Even though a reluctant minority hesitated at the thought of jumping into a bottomless canyon, most of them seemed to accept the situation with resigned silence. In the end, we all shared the same understanding: there was no other choice.
Honestly, even sensing Tenebrya down below, the idea of leaping into the canyon was still terrifying. The wind rising from the depths carried an unnatural chill, like a belated warning. And, ironically, I was an anomaly.
I could still feel my arm tingling. It didn’t hurt, even though the skin was constantly splitting and peeling away. The sensation was unsettling, as if something were slowly moving beneath the surface, sliding under my skin. Technically, there was no pain at all.
Still, it was bizarre to watch my own skin tearing open, giving way layer by layer. The shiver came more from the sight than from the sensation itself. Even so, it was nothing I couldn’t ignore, I just had to push the thought aside and pretend that arm didn’t exist.
Sensing the heavy tension in the air, Victor approached me with slow, cautious steps. He stopped beside me and stayed silent for a few moments, watching the man on the other side of the wall of shadows. Over there, the figure continued to demonstrate his “Art” lips moving in an inaudible murmur.
After a few seconds, Victor finally spoke, his voice low and thick with unease: “Are you sure there’s no way to deal with him once and for all?”
I turned to Victor and met his gaze for a few silent seconds. I shrugged, as if weighing an absurd idea, and replied with an air of indifference: “I could try blowing him up... but unless you want to watch me get reduced to dozens, or hundreds, of microscopic pieces, rebuilding myself one by one, I wouldn’t recommend that approach”
Victor raised an eyebrow and shot me a look. His lips parted slightly, as if he were about to say something, but instead his eyebrow rose even higher, clearly processing what he’d just heard.
A moment later, he pressed his lips together and looked forward again. I have a strong feeling he tried to picture the scene in his head, and judging by the subtle stiffening of his expression, I can safely assume he didn’t find it pleasant to imagine, at least not visually.
With a resigned sigh, Victor slowly let the air escape his lungs. His expression hardened into a bitter scowl: “So... there’s no other option but jumping into that damn canyon” he muttered, as if saying it out loud made the absurdity slightly easier to accept.
I thought about responding, but before I could, I felt my body suddenly pitch forward, as if the ground had lost all solidity. I blinked a few times, confused, and only then realized I was starting to fall. Victor, who was right beside me, managed to grab me in time, though his eyes reflected the same bewilderment I felt.
A chill ran down my spine. I looked back, more specifically, at my leg, and that was when the shock fully hit me: my tendon was grotesquely mangled.
In the same spot, dozens of cuts spread chaotically, some shallow, almost timid, others deep enough to expose what lay beneath. The sight was disturbing, like a horror set being assembled in real time, using my own leg as the main ingredient.
At the same time, I looked ahead. The man was down as well. His hands were trembling, moving sluggishly as he cut into himself with the knife, as if he no longer had full control over his own body.
With every passing second, his face grew more and more purple, his eyes glassy, his breathing uneven. And yet, the most disturbing thing of all was the certainty that struck me in that moment: those wounds, without any doubt, should have already killed him.
Victor, at my side, seemed to be thinking the same thing. His eyes were locked on the enemy, jaw clenched, betraying the disbelief he was trying to suppress: “How the hell is that crazy bastard still alive?” he muttered: “Wounds like that should be fatal to any human. Our weapons worked on him before, nothing suggested his endurance was any different from a normal man’s”
And yet, there he was, still breathing, defying all logic and turning that certainty into a suffocating silence thick with tension.
Victor’s words made sense. And judging by the way that deranged psychopath was acting, it was clear he was on the verge of passing out.
His twisted expression and trembling body revealed the searing pain that must have been tearing through every nerve, pain that should have been more than enough to bring down any ordinary person.
Still, he didn’t fall. He didn’t lose consciousness. He just kept cutting himself, as if the agony itself were irrelevant, or worse, necessary. In the end, I could only arrive at a single reason why that was possible: (I think... I think his resilience is somehow linked to mine)
Victor blinked, surprised, then slowly turned toward me. His eyes studied me in silence for a few moments, as if weighing every possibility, before his voice finally broke the quiet, low and cautious: “What do you mean?”
I stayed silent for a few seconds, simply watching the man in front of me, assessing every uneven breath and every sign of pain etched across his body. Only then did I explain to Victor, mentally, the true meaning of my earlier words: (These injuries would be fatal to an ordinary human, but to me they’re nothing more than the uncomfortable sensation of something slowly dragging beneath my skin)
Victor let out a low whistle, almost involuntarily, before commenting in my own words: “Impressive”
I ignored the obvious sarcasm and went on: (What I’m trying to say...) I paused for a moment, fixing my gaze on the man again: (He has the same physical endurance I do, there’s no doubt about that. But he doesn’t share my immunity to pain, nor any of my other abilities. Even if he tears himself apart, bones exposed and flesh shredded, he’ll probably stay alive... functional, even. Still, I can’t guarantee much about what will be left of his appearance)
Victor nodded, as if he understood my point. Then he helped me to my feet, holding me steady with a firm grip. Together, we turned our attention back to the man, and the instant I saw him fully, my eyes widened.
He had the knife pressed against his own throat. By reflex, I brought a hand to my neck, but before I could even touch it, he made a sharp, decisive movement, slicing into his own skin without hesitation.
The sensation hit me at the exact same moment, like something beneath my skin twisting and writhing inside my neck. The pressure intensified for a brief second, until a sudden, brutal, deep cut appeared at the base of my throat.
I grabbed my neck instinctively as my mind slowly settled. As always, I felt no pain, but the abrupt, violent motion was enough to trigger an automatic reaction.
That’s when I noticed Victor’s gaze on me, or rather, the absence of it. His eyes were fixed on the grassy ground below, heavy with confusion. I followed his line of sight, trying to understand what had captured his attention.
The grass beneath me was slightly damp, cold to the touch. Something wet, golden, and luminous was seeping over it, staining the green blades as it shimmered under the light with a strange, almost unreal hue. There was also a sweet smell in the air.
It wasn’t a specific scent, not quite strawberry, apple, or perfume, but it vaguely resembled all of them at once. It was simply sweet, in an undefined, enveloping way, as if the air itself had been sweetened.
It was still dripping, more precisely, from the spot where my hand was pressed. I could feel the moisture spreading across my skin, as though something wet were endlessly flowing from that place, cold and persistent.
My hand was already completely soaked, and every drop that fell made the sensation even stranger. Victor and I watched it in silence for a moment, until, almost simultaneously, we exchanged a glance and said the exact same thing: the first thought that came to mind.
(Blood?) I thought, the confusion clearly echoing in my inner voice.
“Blood?” Victor murmured, the word slipping from his lips in a thin whisper as his brow furrowed in genuine confusion.
I looked straight at the human in front of me. His face was ash-pale, his eyes nearly shut, now twisted by a clear expression of suffocation.
He was clutching his own throat with desperate strength, trying to contain the impossible, while torrents of blood spilled between his fingers, cascading thick and warm onto the ground.
I turned my gaze back to the ground, to the... blood, or whatever it was, slowly flowing from my own throat, dripping and spreading in uneven stains beneath my feet. Beside me, Victor remained frozen, his brow deeply furrowed, just as perplexed as I was.
His lips moved, parting as if searching for some explanation, some name for it, but no word or sound came out. He looked so stunned that even silence didn’t seem like a conscious choice; he simply didn’t know what to say.
Besides... since when did I bleed? And why was it golden, shimmering, almost alive? It didn’t make sense, not even chronologically.
How many times had I been cut, severed, crushed, shattered, and so many other things whose names I no longer bothered to remember, without a single drop ever spilling? No sign. No stain. Nothing. So why now? Logically speaking, it made no sense at all. And yet there it was, the golden liquid, slowly flowing, far too warm to ignore.
“Uh...” Victor murmured, glancing away for a moment, as if weighing whether he truly wanted to hear the answer. He took a deep breath before continuing: “I think I should ask, even though I really don’t want to know, but... is this a bad sign? Or something like that?”
I looked at Victor for a moment, lingering on his confused, expectant expression. I wanted to answer, to say something that made sense... but honestly, how could I know? This was something that had simply never happened before.
I mean, bleeding, even if I wasn’t entirely sure this was actually blood, was usually a bad sign, right? An instinctive, almost universal response. Still, I didn’t know if it would affect me the same way it would a human. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe it was different. And seriously... why was it gold?
Still dazed, I struggled to organize my thoughts. In the end, I could only give shape to the single question that kept echoing relentlessly in my mind: (What the hell is happening?) The thought surfaced almost like a desperate whisper, as doubt seeped into me, corroding me from within, slow and relentless.