The Weeping Tear continued its relentless pull, urging Nathan closer, dragging him towards its unknown destination. The sensation was overwhelming—almost suffocating—and yet Nathan couldn't help but feel drawn to it. It had an undeniable gravitational force, like a magnetic pull from a deep, unseen force. His body, though no longer truly his own, still responded to the command of his mind. He could feel every shift, every ache, every pull of the tear towards him, as though it was trying to consume him whole.
As his gaze focused beyond the tear, the blurred edges of the tear itself seemed to sharpen, and there, behind its undulating surface, Nathan could make out the dim outline of something more—a place. A room. The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. The portal had indeed worked, but not in the way he had expected. It connected his world to others, yes—but it was no longer functioning properly. The voice that had called out to him as he stepped through the portal had done something to sever the link, leaving him adrift in this space between worlds, stuck on the precipice of existence itself.
Nathan tried to piece together his understanding of what was happening. He knew the basic premise of the technology—well, magic, as the nobles in this world would refer to it—he'd read about it in classified reports, glossed over it in the course of his intelligence work. Magic had always been a theoretical concept, something so distant from his practical, military mindset. A mistake. A simple translation error in the field that had never warranted deeper investigation. Now, however, as he stood suspended in the void, unable to even grasp his own surroundings, the words "magic" and "technology" no longer seemed so different.
The experience of his own death, his soul being ripped from his former body, and the cold, isolating void between realms had altered everything. The connection he had once dismissed was now undeniable. And the tear? It wasn't simply a phenomenon; it was a tether between worlds, a rift that had begun to close.
Nathan's heart raced as he stared into the tear, which seemed to beckon him like a doorway into the unknown. He couldn't move forward, not yet. Every inch closer made his senses tingle with both awe and dread. The pull was almost unbearable now, like gravity shifting under his feet, yet his mind held him back. He hesitated. Was it worth it? What lay beyond that tear, and more importantly, what was it trying to keep out?
The room behind the tear became clearer. Nathan's pulse quickened.
White tiles. Sterile, sterile tiles as far as the eye could see. It looked like a storage room—cold, clinical, devoid of life and warmth, a space designed for nothing more than the purpose of holding. There was a single door in the far wall, stark against the room's eerie, impersonal setting. His instincts screamed that something was wrong, that there was a deeper layer to the scene unfolding before him. But he couldn't turn away.
Then, the true horror revealed itself in agonizing detail.
There were bodies. Piles of them.
At first, Nathan thought his mind was playing tricks on him, the pull of the tear clouding his judgment. But no. This was real. The bodies were stacked in a way that suggested they'd been placed there with deliberate precision, not carelessly tossed aside. The bodies, however, weren't just any bodies—they were women. Pregnant women.
His throat went dry, but the horror didn't stop there. As Nathan's trained eye scanned the pile, his heart sank. The women's bodies, cold and still, were dressed in hospital-like gowns, the kind worn by patients in maternity wards. But it wasn't just the women's bodies that caused his stomach to turn. It was what he saw next. Their stomachs were split open, grotesquely, as though they had been surgically dissected.
The infants. Or rather, the lack of them.
The women, once pregnant, had been harvested. Their children—infants who never stood a chance—had been removed from their bodies with clinical precision. There were no cries, no signs of life. Only the empty, lifeless corpses that lay in twisted heaps.
Nathan's mind raced, struggling to process the enormity of what he was seeing. He was no stranger to horror. His work in covert operations had exposed him to some of the darkest elements of humanity, but this? This was something beyond his comprehension. He tried to rationalize it, to dissect the situation as he would a mission gone wrong, but the truth was too much. It was impossible to ignore, even for him.
These women... the thought crept into his mind. They weren't just casualties. They were experiments. The methodical nature of their deaths, the sterile environment of the room—it pointed to a purpose. A sickening one. This was no random act of violence. It had been planned, executed with terrifying precision.
The voice. The portal. Was this the place it had been trying to keep him from? A secret kept hidden away, tucked behind the veil of the tear?
Nathan's breath came in shallow gasps, his heart pounding in his chest. He had to make a choice. Step forward, cross that threshold, and confront whatever lay behind it, or turn away and leave this all to remain in the dark. But he knew, deep down, that he couldn't turn away. Not now. He had seen too much.
There was something more here, something he needed to understand. Something that tied all of this together. And no matter the cost, Nathan had always been a man who followed the mission. This was just the beginning. Whatever had led him here, whatever force had guided him to this horrible revelation, was now his to confront.
But what could he do? Would his body reform once he entered the tear? Was this how normal portal transportation worked? Would he become a ghost, just a floating collection of senses, or would he somehow inhabit one of the dead people nearby? The thought of possessing one of the bodies terrified him—not because it was a woman, but because of what he saw. These bodies had been brutally cut open, their once-living forms now empty, and the infants they had carried were no longer alive. The bodies themselves were no longer viable; they couldn't support life. If he were to inhabit one of them, would his mind simply die again, crushed by the damaged body he was forced into?
The pull of the tear, however, didn't care about his fears. It didn't care about his dilemma or the bodies nearby. It simply wanted him through, wanted him to enter.
Nathan had no choice but to let go.
One moment, he was standing on the threshold, overwhelmed by the sight of the bodies and the dread of what might happen. The next, he was inside.
There was no disorientation, no moment of confusion. The transition was seamless. His senses were suddenly flooded with information—sight, sound, feeling—everything coming at him all at once. The room around him flickered into existence like a quick snapshot, sharp and vivid. He saw it all: the sterile white tiles, the abandoned bodies, the disarray. It was so real, so immediate, that it felt like he had never left.
But there was no time to linger on the setting. His attention immediately shifted to the body closest to him. The infant—its small, fragile form lying amidst the chaos of death. He didn't hesitate. It was as though his soul, his very being, was drawn to the baby. The body, though lifeless, seemed the most compatible with his essence. His instincts screamed that this was where he needed to be.
His thoughts barely had time to catch up as he felt his essence shift. He wasn't just observing anymore—he was taking over, merging with the tiny, cold form before him. His mind, still sharp and intact, flowed into the body. The transition was smooth, almost effortless.
As soon as he settled into the infant's body, the first breath of life surged through him. The new form, though small and fragile, accepted him. The terror he felt earlier, the fear of inhabiting a broken body, vanished. This was the body that could hold him, for now.
Nathan opened his eyes, feeling the world through the infant's senses. It was a strange, overwhelming flood of input—a body far weaker than his last, but a body nonetheless. He could feel the heartbeat, the warmth of the blood coursing through the small veins. Everything was alive, even if it wasn't his own.