Chapter 2: Mini Teleporter (Rewritten)
The rain had not stopped since the funeral. Cold. Endless. The kind that seeps into bones and refuses to let go.
The village, usually alive with chatter and mystic laughter, had turned into a silent shadow of itself. Everyone mourned in silence. The pink dust—the remains of Grandma Adams—rested in a sealed crystal urn in the village shrine. A boy was missing. A boy too young to grieve like this. Too dangerous to be left alone.
Adam had vanished.
The only trace left behind was a trail of muddy footprints in and out of the small home he once shared with his grandmother. The prints led to the edge of the village, into the darkness where even elders feared to tread.
"We form a search party," the village elder, Kumatar, declared. Her eyes were sharp, and her youth deceptive. She, like Grandma Adams, had a mystic form that slowed time's cruelty. She rarely left the inner sanctum of the village, but for this, she did.
Ten elite hunters joined her—each cloaked in the old ways of the forest. The path was carved in silence. Occasionally, they'd stop—listening to the whispers in the trees or the twitching shadows moving unnaturally.
Not long after leaving the forest's edge, they discovered it. A massacre.
Bodies. Not just of animals, but humanoid creatures—beasts, shadowkin, and witches. Slaughtered with no mercy. Their bodies twisted, burned, and rotting unnaturally fast.
"This… is not the work of a child," whispered one of the hunters.
Elder Kumatar knelt beside the corpses and dipped her fingers into the congealed blood. She chanted in an old tongue, slow and melodic. From the center of the carnage, a four-legged beast rose—a half-dead creature, snarling with glowing, decayed eyes. She whispered to it.
"Guide us. You'll have your freedom. Power beyond the veil."
It bowed. The trail continued.
Suddenly, a blur.
A small figure, dancing between dimensions like a flame caught in wind. One moment ahead, next behind. Every flicker left behind a rainbow-like shimmer that bent reality.
"Impossible," Kumatar muttered. "This is teleportation magic. True, ancient, and forbidden."
The hunters tried to intercept it with magical snares and spectral nets. One struck. The figure faltered, and they reeled it in.
Adam.
He wore a black hooded cloak—torn, soaked in blood not his own. His deer-like horns had grown longer. His eyes, once wide with childish awe, were glazed and distant. Unreachable.
The elder stepped forward. "Adam—"
His voice was not his.
"Let me go, or I'll kill every last one of you." It wasn't a threat. It was prophecy.
And then—he vanished.
His body bent into space, reality cracking like shattered glass. His final words were nothing short of haunting:
"I'll return… in a few years. Or when I forget who I am. Whichever comes first."
Kumatar closed her eyes. "Then we prepare. If the boy is still Adam… we may be able to bring him back."
---
Skyscrapers pierced the heavens. Neon billboards lit the night like false stars. And amidst it all, soaked, barefoot, and bleeding—stood Adam.
He was in the city. Alone. The last teleport had drained him. His cloak fluttered like the wings of a dead crow. Passersby ignored him. To them, just another lost kid. Nothing more.
He tried to walk, but stumbled.
A voice sneered from behind.
"Well, well… look what we have here. A stray mutt."
A group of high schoolers—tall, uniformed, laughing. The leader kicked a can at Adam's head. It missed.
Adam didn't speak.
"Oi! I'm talking to you, brat."
Still silence.
The leader grabbed him by the cloak. "Hey—!"
Flash.
They were no longer in the street. The bullies screamed as the world shifted around them. They were now suspended hundreds of meters above ground—outside the highest floor of a skyscraper.
The logo: BLACK SKULL TO WHITE—a pharmaceutical giant.
One by one, the bullies began to fall.
Adam stood firm on the thin metal railing, the wind howling like wolves in mourning. His wooden knife was in his hand, blackened from use, glowing with ancient glyphs.
The boss of the company stood behind glass, watching in disbelief.
Then—Adam blinked into the office, his feet slamming into the glass floor with a crack.
"You… You killed my grandmother."
The man looked up from his luxurious chair. "What is this…?"
Adam surged forward, but the CEO dodged, catching him mid-air.
"I killed a lot of people, boy. Be specific."
Adam trembled. The air shimmered around him. Magic surged beneath his skin.
"I'll kill you too."
The man laughed. "How noble. How pathetic."
He threw Adam—out the window.
Wind screamed. Glass shards danced around him.
Then—caught.
Seraphina, the company's secretary, dove from the window and grabbed him midair. Her own wings—spectral and butterfly-like—spread out as she slowed their fall.
She landed. Hard.
The building trembled.
"Do you know what kind of headlines we'll get if a kid dies on our property?!" she screamed.
Adam coughed. "Let me go."
She hesitated. "You've got rage in your heart. But that won't save you."
Adam stumbled away. But he wasn't alone.
The lead bully had watched it all. Trembling.
"Y-You're not human."
Adam turned to him. "Neither are you. You just hide it better."
The CEO stepped into the light. "Tell me, boy—are you an orphan?"
…Yes.
"I like that. Clean slate. No attachments. From today, you are mine. In exchange for power, you help me bend this world into something beautiful."
Adam narrowed his eyes.
He smiled.
…Alright.
But I'll burn your kingdom from the inside.
He didn't say it aloud.
The rain began again.
From the rooftops above, a cloaked watcher whispered to the wind, "He chose vengeance. Not redemption. So be it."
Far from the towering city, deep in the valley, a blue spirit wandered.
"He still wears the horns," it whispered. "But he's forgetting who he is."
That night, under artificial lights, Adam collapsed in the alleyway beside the tower.
Unconscious. Drained.
And by morning, he would wake up in a place where forgotten children are kept like broken tools—
—an orphanage disguised as a hospital.
The true beginning was just about to unfold.