As the light dimmed further, David tried to move. Slowly, tentatively, he moved his glowing limbs around and felt that he could slide his perspective through the space. He wasn't sure what he could do and what he couldn't, so as he reached for the glowing sigil, he spoke carefully—not asking for help, but for information.

  "How do I claim this sigil and the power it represents for myself?"

  The male voice became slightly panicked. "Be careful! Focus on it too much and it will consume everything if you let it. It needs to be changed before you can consume it to empower yourself. Just ask me to change it."

  David took a deep breath, noting how the glow of the space was fading. Fewer things remained, but those that did were becoming more tangible. Only three things truly existed now: himself, the sigil, and the entity he could finally see more clearly.

  The vague manlike outline was wrong somehow. It extended in directions he couldn't perceive, and what he was seeing felt incomplete—like looking at a three-dimensional shadow of something that existed in more dimensions than his mind could process.

  Still, it was time to take a risk. Like one would in video games to get that crucial starting advantage that snowballed if you played your cards right.

  "I want you to change the system represented by this sigil so that I control it and can use it."

  As he spoke, he focused all of his intent and words on his goal, even as he reached out and touched the sigil.

  The vague manlike outline seen through the glowing mist suddenly seemed a great deal more real. David got the sense that while it might look manlike, it wasn't anything like that at all. As it became clearer, he had the strange sense that the figure he was seeing was merely a mask worn by something else, something that extended outside this space entirely.

  It was too late. The figure acted.

  First, it seemed to twist and grow rapidly brighter and more solid. David had the disturbing sense that it was somehow slithering into the space from a direction he couldn't see, folding itself into the shape it now wore, though doing so imperfectly. The proportions were off—taller, leaner, more angular than a man should be.

  Then, before he could really process it, the radiant figure that now dominated the glowing space gripped the sigil. Some of its light bled into the symbol, and then the creature turned and slammed the glowing sigil into David's chest.

  The pain was shocking.

  The sigil burst into his glowing form, driving him to the ground. The man-thing began to clench its fist, causing the sigil to change and become barbed. Each line and curve dug into David's luminescent body, causing light to spill out and drain first into the sigil, then stream out of the sigil to the creature standing over him.

  "Fool, your magic will be mine now, then I will claim your remains." The entity's voice had lost all pretense of friendliness. "I even told you what I was, though you were too stupid to hear, I consumed on the long journey here to survive and grow!"

  David felt an odd ringing in his ears as the pain stabbed into his half-formed body in this space. He felt the light leaving him with an odd draining sensation. Almost peaceful, he thought, as he lay there with the spiny sigil glowing in his chest as it slowly merged with him.

  Wait. It was still merging with him. Still following the command he had given.

  He struggled to stand, to speak, to fight, but the sigil pulsed each time he tried, robbing him of strength. The figure standing over him grew ever more real, more solid, its features becoming disturbingly human—but wrong, as if something long and flexible was imperfectly mimicking a man.

  Think. The sigil is still following my command. I can use that.

  David's mind raced even as his strength faded. This was his space, the Herald had said as much, and the entity had confirmed it. "This space is yours," it had said. The light was his mana, his essence. The entity was an intruder here, only able to act because David had given it permission.

  But he'd been specific. He'd asked it to change the system so he could control it. Not so the entity could control it. The creature was draining him through the sigil, but the sigil was still executing David's original command—merging with him, becoming his.

  With that realization, David mustered every ounce of willpower and gasped: "Stop!"

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  He felt exhaustion wash over him as his word spread into the now barely glowing space, causing a slight ripple in the dim wisps of misty light. The ripple struck the figure standing over him, which was looking more solid and real by the moment, details filling themselves in. Details that were subtly wrong.

  The stranger smiled, crushing David's hope. "Sorry, nice idea but not enough free mana, 'mate.'" The malice infused into the previously friendly voice was horrible. The thread of light linking the sigil to the man grew brighter, causing another wave of weakness to envelop David. "Just lie still and it will all be over in a moment."

  The cruel anticipation in the voice was disturbing. More disturbing was that the voice was sounding less British and more like David's own.

  Desperately, David did the only thing he could: think.

  The sigil is still merging with me, just like I asked. But I didn't ask him to merge with it and me too—unless I did? What if draining me is somehow helping fulfill my command in some twisted way? And now I can't stop it because I can't reach him directly.

  Then it hit him. The entity had made a crucial mistake. It had told him exactly what this space was. "The light around you is literally you." And the entity had grown overconfident, drunk on the power it was stealing. "Not enough free mana had been the taunt when he tried to stop it. Implying there was enough mana just not free. Now it was starting to look like him. What if that wasn’t a taunt but involuntary…"

  This was David's space. His body. His mana. And in his space, his will should be supreme. IF he could find the right way to express it, could find the mana to carry his command.

  The entity was using the sigil as a conduit, but the sigil was becoming part of David's system. Which meant the entity had created a permanent connection between them. A connection that could flow both ways.

  David gathered everything he had left and gambled that he understood the rules of this strange space. There was only one thing not truly his in here and he needed to change that. This time, when he moved his arm, it was simply to flop onto the barbed mass of the sigil buried in his fading chest.

  He thought of every ghost story he'd ever heard, every video game where spirits served the living, bound by rules older than memory. The entity wasn't a man—it was a parasite that had never had a body of its own. And in David's space, David’s Mana obeyed. Just like that epiphany hit him – he was claiming mana in the space. That was what this was all about the sigil, the parasitic invader, even his own body. It was all about controlling mana. The damned Herald had even said that what David believed, at least here, could become reality.

  The one word he spoke with absolute certainty was: "Mine."

  The instant he said it, he found himself in a tug of war. The light fought him, trying to flow toward the 'man,' while David tried to pull it back into himself and the sigil that still retained a steady glow—a glow that came not just from him but from the entity as well.

  The creature smiled as it made a pulling motion, and light once more began to pour toward it. "Too little, too late, my dear host. I'm too real, too strong, too much a man. I’m the man that now fits this body. I hold all the mana."

  "No," David replied, infusing all of his intent into the image crystallizing in his mind. This was his space. His rules. And in his space, this thing wasn't a man at all. "You're just a ghost bound to serve me by my system, loaned MY mana to help me. Release it. You are done!"

  With the last of his strength, David stopped pulling and instead pushed. He pushed the light, the mana—his mana—from his system at the core of his being into the glowing figure, bearing all of his intent. In his mind, he held the image crystal clear: this entity was not a possessor but a servant, not a man but a ghost, not the master but a tool of his system.

  This time, the result was devastating.

  As the mana thread pulsed and the charged mana spread over the figure, solidity washed out of it. The entity screamed, a wordless exhalation of pure terror, as even its strange elongated form changed. The man ceased to be a man. Its clothes became wispy, tattered ghostly rags. Glowing mana escaped from it in a cloud like dye released into water.

  "No! This isn't possible! I am real! I consumed others to become…" The entity's protests died as David's will, backed by his mana in his space, overwrote its reality.

  Wisps of grey, dim mana that David instinctively knew were not his followed the glowing vibrant light out of the creature's form. All of it flowed into David and the sigil in his chest. The creature had stolen power from others on its journey, and now that stolen strength became David's as well.

  Within moments, the scream became faint. The outline of the man changed to become that of a ragged phantom, looking exactly like what David had declared it to be: a ghost, powerless and bound.

  The mana fell over David like rain onto a parched desert. He began to soak it up, and with feelings like pins and needles, sensation flowed back into him. Mana streamed through him toward his core, where the sigil turned in upon itself, its barbs tangling and collapsing as it sank into his glowing chest to form a ball behind his solar plexus.

  With the core greedily drinking in mana, he looked up as the space slowly grew dark. The only thing illuminating it was the dimly glowing specter standing powerless above him.

  The ghost that had tried to possess him looked down, its form now completely under his control. For a moment, they stared at each other, David triumphant but exhausted, the entity defeated and bound. Then, following the rules David had imposed, it flowed along the almost invisible thread joining them and vanished into his body, becoming part of his system.

  The space went dark save for David himself, and he was alone in the formerly glowing void.

  For a moment, he simply lay there, processing what had just happened. He'd been attacked, nearly possessed, and had turned the tables through desperate logic and force of will. The entity that had tried to consume him was now part of his system, not as a master but as a bound servant. He could feel it there, sullen but obedient, a ghost in truth now.

  He'd won. But at what cost? And what exactly had he bound to himself?

  What happened next should perhaps not have been a surprise. Words appeared in front of his eyes, clearly visible and just there, no box, no blue screen:

  [SYSTEM INITIATING]