Unraveling Reality

Chapter 1

I groaned as I woke, finding myself on the floor. Sitting up, I rubbed my head to alleviate the faded headache. Getting up, I stretched for a bit.

"What happened?" I muttered to myself.

I walked into the bathroom, went to the sink, and washed my face. Drying my face, I looked into the mirror and saw my eyes. They were, for a lack of a better term, not right. Instead of my normal gray eyes, they were now pitch black with a silver octagram with a vertical slit pupil in the center with four dots at each corner of the eye.

Staring at his reflection in shock, my heart pounded in my chest as I tried to comprehend the sight before me. I blinked repeatedly, hoping that the strange anomaly would disappear, but the eerie eyes stared back at me, unyielding in their unnatural appearance.

"What... what is happening to me?" I muttered, reaching up to touch my face to confirm that what I saw was real.

But before I could dwell any further, my mother called out for me.

"Ethan, breakfast is ready."

I looked away from the mirror and shouted, "I-I'm coming!"

Looking back at the mirror to check my eyes again, but when I turned back, my eyes had returned back to normal.

"Wha-what happened?"

I stared at the mirror for a few more minutes before I simply chalked it up to sleep. I continued to freshen up then went downstairs to eat breakfast. As I descended the stairs, I couldn't shake off the unsettling feeling from the strange occurrence in the bathroom. I tried to push the memory to the back of my mind, attributing it to grogginess or perhaps an overactive imagination.

Sitting down around the dining table, I started a conversation which I zoned out on. Slowly eating breakfast, my mind wandered back to yesterday and five minutes ago.

What was that? Those can't just be coincidences, can they?

I was in the middle of my thoughts, asking questions that I didn't know the answers to, not hearing my mother calling me.

"An.. Eth... Ethan!"

Snapping out of my thoughts from the shout, I looked up at my parents who were giving me concerned looks.

"Viktor, are you okay, honey?" Mother asked.

"Y-yeah, I'm just a little lightheaded is all."

"You sure? You can stay home today if you want."

"No no, I'm fine, really."

"...if you say so."

I smiled while waving off her concern and finished breakfast. I got up and went back up to my room, changed into my school uniform, then left for school. On my way to school, I started to feel a lot more refreshed. A few minutes late, I made it to school. Throughout the school day, I had unusual bursts of strength and speed which I found odd, but I just chalked it up to adrenaline and continued my day assuming that nothing was wrong. How wrong I was.

Thankfully, the day went on like normal and no more unusual occurrences occurred at school. On my way home, I made a stop at the park to just relax, which was something I did quite often. I took a seat on one of the benches and leaned back.

"Sigh, those weird occurrences, what caused them, and they only started after that dream. What was that dream? Sigh, no use thinking about it now, I'm going to just study."

Going into my bag, I pulled out some of my books, preparing to study. Lost in my thoughts, I began to study, hoping to distract myself from the strange events of yesterday and the morning. It was hard at first, but after a while, I started to find my pace and eventually lost myself to studying.

Four hours later, the sun had gone down, bringing darkness down on the park. I finally lifted my head after finishing up my study session and I noticed that the sun had gone down. Checking my phone for the time, it said 7:30 pm.

"Crap, I didn't realize that it got this late."

I got up hastily and started to pack my books back into my bag. Putting the bag on my back and then turned around to walk out of the park, but that's when I noticed something peculiar standing a good distance away from me: a figure standing there wearing a black cloak that covered their face.

"Um, can I help you?"

The person started to mutter things that I couldn't quite hear.

"What was that? I couldn't quite hear you?"

The cloaked person's muttering started getting faster and louder.

"Ma… na….ana."

"What was that?"

"Mana, Mana, Mana!"

A strong breeze kicked up around the cloaked person, blowing off the hood of their cloak and revealing what was underneath. It was a male with shaggy black hair, his sun-kissed skin, his face angular, with a strong jawline that gave him a chiseled appearance. But after that, that's where all the sense of normality ends. His eyes were pitch black and a black substance was leaking from his eyes and mouth.

"What the heck is this guy?"

I stepped back trying to gain distance from what I assumed to be a deranged psychopath. But that wasn't the end of the craziness. Then suddenly a red aura started to leak from the man's body.

"What the hell is happening?"

The ground cracked below the man as he rushed at me. Out of fear, I dived out of the way of the man's charge. The man crashed into the bench I was standing in front of. Looking back at the man with a look of fear and confusion, the man turned back and looked at me, and then the red aura started to take the shape of four luminescent magic circles.

"Wha- what the hell i-is that magic?" I asked in shock and disbelief, though by the looks of it, the man wasn't going to answer me.

Chapter 1: End