The Beyonders; I am the Devils incarnate

The reflection of what was on the adjacent side of the house, could now be seen through the ellipse-shaped path of the spoon.

It appeared that the Harness had been deceiving him this whole time. For what he saw through the spoon was not his street, not his home, and clearly not even a standard city

Right on the spoon was what looked like the reflection of ruins. A city that was thrown into chaos, yet eerily uninhabited. It looked like a twisted realm, skyscrapers bent like melted wax, crimson lightning rumbling in the sky.

The reflection on the spoon had shattered the illusion of what it was reflecting.

The Harness had cloaked his surroundings in nostalgia, a comforting mirage, to disarm and deceive his instincts.

Houses, both big and small, colossal and quaint, were in flames. Smoke lingered out from them. Many lumps of bricks and walls from already-strewn buildings lay here and there.

Dax's mouth hung agape. There must be a reason behind this, or was this still part of the test? His heart skipped. How was he going to carry out a test when he wasn't even seeing the real thing?

Maybe this was the Nexer's doing, making his test harder. Hadn't he punished him enough? At least being weak-willed ought to earn him leniency and should come with the benefit of facing less gruelling tests.

There must be a way he could see through the temperament of the Harness he was in. But first, he needed to find the position of whatever had hit him.

He kept on bending the spoon in different ways to see if it could glance at something new.

He would turn it upwards, in case maybe it had scrambled on top of one of the tall, wrecked, or blighted houses. Then he would also tilt it right and left. He continued, his stretched arm now aching. His body screamed for rest, but his mind, aflame with survival instinct, refused to yield.

He made to take a relaxed position, but his leg gave out a searing pain as the surge ran to his brain at once.

Maybe whatever had hit him had probably gone, or maybe had given up searching for him. Maybe it thought he was dead after he had hit him and had left to somewhere else.

Retracting his hand, almost from the way he had positioned it, he glimpsed something at that fleeting moment. And as if compelled, he paused immediately.

He repositioned himself, and then steadied the angle of the spoon, then slowly and calmly looked at the spoon again, his lungs escalating rapidly as sweat started forming on him.

His stomach rippled. It was as if his heart now wanted to break free from his rib cage, and his eyes stayed glued to the reflection on the spoon.

At that instant, thoughts, worried thoughts, started rampaging through his brain.He really hoped it wasn't something that would end his existence here. He thought of his family. He had never missed them in such a way before.

And now, looking at the curved reflection that was embedded into the silver spoon, his heart started pounding harder against his ribs. He should really hope that thing doesn't hear his very loud heartbeat now.

Rigid hind limbs, thick-furred and crouching on its long front limbs, it walked up towards where Dax hid, perceiving every scent in the air, slowly and deliberately. Apart from the spoon, he had no other weapon to fight whatever he is seeing.

The creature stood maybe five feet away from where he hid. He couldn't quite tell how far it was from the spoon he was using to see it, but the creature, the way he saw it, It had fur. He guessed it might be thick and very much impenetrable by a silver spoon.

Its face, though far, vague, and undecipherable in the curved surface of the spoon, has two horns affixed to it. He couldn't mark out all the features because at that instant, he was fidgeting badly.

His leg felt numb, and a quick shiver ran through him. His skin filled with goose bumps. The creature wasn't far away, and the way it stood, with its long, oversized front limbs on the floor like a gorilla, and the way it was sniffing the air like a hound, Dax knew that it would soon find him.

He just hoped it wasn't the blind monster he had seen breaking into his house. Because if it was, that meant its sense of hearing and perception would be very high, since it had no eyes.

and killing it, especially now that no help might come his way, will be something he wouldn't like to think about.

Dax, though, knew one thing, and right now, he was doing his best to use it as a means to comport and pull himself together:

There's always a solution to every test. If he was picked to join the Trinity, or whatever they called it, anomaly or not, it meant there was something special in him, though he might not be seeing it right now.

From the earlier information gathered mysteriously by his brain, only the strong-willed and a few of the average-willed were able to join the Trinity.

Making him the very first person ever to be going through this while having a weak Will. He recalled the whispers of the system: the Trinity forged warriors from willpower.

Now, the Will is the power to make decisions, choices, and set goals out of your free self. But then, the main thing about it that categorizes one as strong-willed, weak, or intermediate is how eager, faithful, and mean he is are towards it, how much you believe in yourself, and how strong you are.

And then, based on that, one is said to be strong-, averaged-, or weak-willed.

The looks of one decisions, choices, and actions, the place and how one uses his heart, was part of what determines the path of the Trinity one will join.

Whether he would become a Beyonder, that is, one who inherited his Will from the devil himself, Lucivar, or a Transcended, the Will from his brother, Elivar. Or finally, maybe a Veilbound, the Will given by both brothers. the contrasting line between light and dark.

All those things, strong and keen, were what Daxon was not. It required strength, conviction and belief in oneself. But for all he knew, for now, he was smart. Also, he had gone through some Taekwondo classes with his dad when he had complained about being bullied.

Though he hadn't learned how to kick ass, he clearly knew some survival techniques and had the instinct. All he had to do now, or what he felt he should do, was to look into himself and not freak out.

He shut his eyes, feeling the breeze around him. It was smooth and chilly, unnaturally cold for summer, and the way it caressed his body was odd.

Definitely, something was off about the weather. It should be a summer weather, but it felt like autumn, or even better…

No way. He has to crack it to find what was wrong.

He kept on feeling the surroundings, trying his best to lock out the fear that the creature would sense him anytime now.

He segued through himself, seeping like water. He had never meditated before, but now, desperate times called for desperate measures.

Like a calm ocean, he tapped in. His breath now felt muffled, it was as though he was immersed inside water, with his eyes open and his body pressing hard on itself.

Just then, it felt warm, atrocious. His body now seemed squelched. The weather, rather pessimistic, like the atmosphere itself was trying to tell him something..

Jerking wildly awake, he heard it, a furious guttural growl, the moment shattered. He looked immediately. But he was no longer at the back of a house. In fact... he never had been.

It had worked, he could now see the true harness without the spoon. But...

He couldn't believe it. He felt he was safe all this while, but what had kept him so far was his quietness. Because all this while, he thought he had his back resting on a house that served as a hiding place.

Rather, he was resting on a very slim and rusted streetlight pole that anyone could clearly see him on.

He could now see the real Harness he was in and it was hellish, nothing like a calm city. It was a ruined one, ripped apart.

Crows were fluttering around everywhere like scavengers in a death ballet, some perched on dead bodies that carpeted the blood-doused ground. Skyscrapers, most were already upside down. Those able to stand did so barely, and were already shattered badly, either in flames or oozing smoke.

He needed to sneak away quietly and quickly, without making any sound, Since he knows now that the creature was the one that had attacked him. It was a parallax server and it was blind. That was why it hadn't seen him all this while. His guard was down.

Parallax servers were of different kind and ranks, ranging from Beasts, Demons, Devils, Monsters, Shadefields, Dreadlords and the Velmares/nightshades. the one that Dax is seeing in the harness is a beast, and it is the lowest rank in the parallax servers.

And Dax knew now that the beast when slain, would earn him something like, he had earned a silver spoon before from the first one he had luckily killed, but something was different about this one, it's aura was more disturbing.

And that is because it wasn't in the same level with the beast he had slain, it is an evolved beast with more sense of perception, hearing, and vibration, probably more strength and agility.

Well he needed to act and also to shift away from the beast that was now drawing closer, very quietly.

He made to stand, but his lips had failed him. Not just his lips, his everything.

Beside him was a lifeless body, drenched in its own almost-dried blood. Its torso was ripped apart, and its intestines lay outside, pungent and disgusting. And on seeing it, he screamed.

"Gods be good… let it not be that the monster heard my loud scream."

He immediately clasped his mouth with his hand but it was too late. A loud stomping sound was already galloping toward him. thundering at his wreckage.

GRRRRRRR!