As I came to be, I gasped for breath and found that I was soaked with cold sweat and I was sticky with some foreign substance. My mattress was damp and sticky with grime and perspiration, my breathing was rough, and my eyesight blurry.

What the fuck was that? I couldn't finish my thoughts as I was enveloped in darkness again, and every inch of my body bloomed in a searing agony that was unlike anything of the worst pain I had ever felt.

Bryan was woken up by the sound of quiet, agonising wails. It was the middle of the night, so he was confused and delirious. Scanning his surroundings, he saw a trembling Callum sitting on his bed in an awkward position, covering his head with both hands as he pinned it into the mattress and let out a quiet yet fierce groans like that of a dying demon.

Quickly getting up and turning up the lights, he rushed to Callum's side but didn't know what to do. He kept on calling out to Callum but to no avail – no response. He was conflicted on what to do; he usually had Callum to tell him what to do. But when the one in trouble was Callum, everything he did made no impact.

He turned his head to the wall that faced Arielle's room, he didn't want to wake her up, but he had no other options. Callum was in a state with which he had no experience, and nothing he did made any impact. At least Arielle would know a little more than him, he thought.

As he made up his mind, he was going to wake up Arielle when Callum's groans had quieted down to a miniature silence. Turning his head to face Callum, he saw him shuffling around and breathing heavily.

-

As I came out of my stupor, the pain was more bearable, and I was gasping heavily for air as sweat and tears poured down onto my mattress. I tried to open my eyes and instantly regretted it, everything was out of focus, and the slightest bit of light passing into my eyes was like bombs exploding in my retinas.

My ears were ringing, and I could feel what felt like a great turmoil in my body. There were faint outlines of someone calling out to me, I thought it was Bryan as I could feel his hands on my shoulders, but I couldn't make out what he was saying to me.

Gradually, after what felt like several minutes had passed, things became clearer. I was able to open my eyes and hear properly, and the intense waves of pain searing through my body were mostly gone.

I got up and looked at Bryan, who was sitting with his back on the wall opposite me with a pained grim expression on his face. "What was that? Are you alright?" he asked.

Mustering a nod, "Yeah," I replied. I didn't know what to say, "I'm not sure what happened just now," I continued. Still delirious, I tried to get up but stumbled and was caught by Bryan, who helped me get up.

While helping me up, Bryan asked, "What should I do?" his expression was like that of someone walking a tightrope.

"Nothing, I'm alright now, forget this happened and never speak about it again and especially not around Ari-" before I could finish, Bryan cut me off, "What do you mean forget this happened? You need to go to a hospital!"

"Bryan," I said with a firm voice, "I already told you I'm fine now; in fact, I have never felt better. Going to a hospital isn't going to help with anything."

Bryan stopped pestering me, but I knew that he was still concerned. That was just the kind of person he was.

As I walked to the bathroom, I checked my phone and found that it was 3:38 am in the morning. I had probably first blacked out sometime around 11. What had happened in the past 4 hours?

I took off all my clothes and looked at myself in the mirror. There was a reflection of a pale-skinned tall and fit young man. He had tight masculine facial features with black hair and pale blue eyes that glared fiercely back at me.

I didn't think that I looked any different, the same as I always did, no wounds or any signs of anything that would cause the pain I had felt just moments ago.

But I felt different, I couldn't describe it adequately, but I felt like I had boundless energy overflowing inside of me, even the sensations on my body felt different, when I walked to the bathroom, I had noticed that walking felt so foreign, and the contact my feet were making with the ground felt extremely unusual.

It was like my body had gone under a tremendous transformation. Like I had changed to a different species. Although I looked the same, I could definitely feel the difference.

I entered the shower to clean myself up since I was covered in perspiration and another transparent mucus-like substance I'd never seen before and to regather my thoughts, the sensation of the running cold water ricocheting off my body was extremely refreshing considering everything that had just happened.

But even with that I still couldn't organise my thoughts, I made up my mind to go out for a run to clear my head when leaving the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of the orchid in the plant pot on the window still, it was completely wilted, although I could swear that it was still alive when I first came in.

—

I lived in one of the less reputable wards in Carthage, ward 108, a coastal ward in the northeastern side of the nation, with a population of just over 3,000,000 and a landmass of about 38,000 km² it was on the smaller side, but had a relatively high population.

At this time, the gangsters, junkies, and prostitutes were all over the otherwise relatively desolate streets, strolling around the apartment complexes and homes and conducting their shitfuckery. This was the usual.

My apartment block was one of the cleaner areas on the mid-south side near the bay. For the most part, there was not much criminal activity on our block, but to get to the running track, I was walking to the southeast side and entering the dirtier part of the ward.

This part of the ward was disputed property of the gangs and where they conducted their criminal activities. You could visibly tell by the run-down neighbourhoods and the gangsters and crack whores loitering around the streets and outside of homes.

It was also where the most significant Hispanic and Asian gangs would often clash. Cases of theft, murder, homicides, sexual assault, and drug-related crimes were common. I often thought that criminal activity here had to be higher than anywhere else in the entire country.

This was largely due to the divided ethnic groups fighting each other, Blacks fighting Whites, Asians fighting Hispanics, and it goes on and on. The number of gangs in town numbered in the dozens, and almost all of them were racial gangs, and some even had ties to large crime syndicates that had massive influences in the world.

Past the block with my apartment to the west were the abandoned factories and industrial plants. When ward 108 was still new in development, there was a lot of foreign investment in the industrial sector to build these factories and create job opportunities.

However, that was in the past. For whatever reason, these large factory businesses had all gone bankrupt, drying up what little jobs they had brought with them and forcing more people to resort to criminal activities to make money.

It was a chain reaction. As conditions worsened due to the worsened conditions, more people resorted to illegal activity, hence worsening the conditions. Since gentrification had failed here, the authorities had more or less given up on our ward. There was no reform. Things could only get worse.

Moving from one block to the next, you could see the change in the area. The quality of my surroundings had declined steeply. There were many run-down apartments and warehouses for the destitute to find shelter. And the streets were lined with junkies, gang members and whores. I steered clear of all of them to make my way further east.

Near the east side of town, past all the run-down neighbourhoods and crack homes, I'd arrived at the closest track to where I lived. Since it was still early, I was the only one there. Walking on the track, I began to stretch out what I thought was my tense body but realised that I had no muscle fatigue at all.

On my trek to the track, I had definitely felt the change that happened to me as I walked by, but I was more sidetracked with my surroundings and avoiding trouble to feel it out in detail.

I began to stretch out. As I did more stretches, I moved onto kickboxing and then I tried more complex leg movements, high roundhouse kicks, head kicks, growing more dumbfounded as I continued onto nearly impossible moves.

Continuously repeated dwi chagi, flip kicks, and other moves I had picked up but struggled to do before, I could easily perform now.

Albeit not perfectly, it will still a clumsy performance, but I had a new kind of control over the ability in my body. When I moved around, there was no muscle tension or flinching. Rather, I felt incredibly light and had boundless energy to do whatever I wanted.

After I was done, I was dumbstruck. Why was I able to do all these complex movements that I had never been able to do before? Why did I have this boundless energy welling up inside of me? Why did I not feel any fatigue?

I started running again, slowly speeding up and then ran as fast as I could. I felt the wind resistance pushing back at me as I quickly reached an incredible speed. For a moment, I felt a new kind of freedom, like flying through the open sky before I tripped over myself and flipped in the air before crashing back down.

An intense pain coursed from my left leg upwards. I had twisted my leg and bruised my entire body when I fell. If I were a normal person, that impact alone would have broken my leg. I let out a groan as I thought damn it, I was getting ahead of myself, but my thoughts were cut off as I felt the pain subside. Any kind of painful feeling or muscle fatigue I had gotten disappeared with my thoughts.

What the hell? Now, this was getting seriously freaky. Cold sweat dripped down my back as I came to face reality. I had just definitely gotten injured from something that would have shattered the bones of a normal human being and then healed instantly.

While playing out what had happened in the past few hours in my head, I got up and walked over to a nearby tree. Picking up a sharp stick from the ground, I grit my teeth and then slashed my left palm with it.

Starting with a burning sensation, the area reddened, and blood began to ooze out, or at least that was what should have happened, but even before the blood came out, the wound closed, and my hand had healed, all in a matter of what seemed like 2 seconds from cutting myself.

After that, I sat down to contemplate. My head was starting to hurt from the ridiculous events that had just transpired. While rubbing my forehead, I got up and began to walk back home. It was early morning now, and people were starting to get on the track.

It was definitely due to the incident that happened in the middle of the night. Whatever that was, it had caused a tremendous change to my body. From what I had uncovered so far, it seemed to be a positive change that I should welcome. For whatever reason, I now had an enhanced body and what seemed like instant regeneration.

Although I figured I had only touched the surface of the change, there could be some negative changes that I was missing. No, there was no way magically becoming superhuman wouldn't come with negatives. I still hadn't figured them out.

I still couldn't understand what that awakening was or why it happened, no matter how much I thought, it was something far beyond my realm of understanding, so alien, so I figured that It would be a long time until I would uncover everything, or maybe I never would.

For the time being, there was no point thinking about how or why the awakening happened or what it was, so all that I could do was figure out what I now called the awakening had done to me.

The extent of the changes to my body was and the regeneration aspect. From what I could tell so far, my body strength had risen steeply, and I had perfect limb control. I could manoeuvre in ways I never could before. Any kind of restrictions were gone. As long as I knew the movement, I could do it.

I was able to heal something on the scale of at least a fractured bone or cut almost instantly with seemingly no consequences or lasting damage. I didn't seem to get tired, no muscle fatigue or anything like that, but perhaps there was a limit for that. I thought I was going about three times as fast as I had ever before, before crashing.

I would continue testing the changes of my what I now referred to as the 'awakening' to find out all the new changes and the specifics and limits of the changes that happened to be as a result of awakening.

I couldn't help but feel that I was downplaying this. How would a normal human being react? Why was I so calm in the face of something so life-changing? I thought that maybe it was due to how I'd long fantasised about something like this happening.