The wind upon the mountain was no mere wind, but an ancient thing that remembered other worlds and older skies. It circled the solitary figure like a patient carrion-bird, flinging needles of ice against his blackened raiment until cloak and snow became indistinguishable, a constellation of pale stars upon a voided firmament. Each breath he drew emerged as a pale, trembling ghost, as though something unseen sought to flee his lungs.

Yet the man did not stir.

He stood upon that blasphemous height as if time itself had forgotten him. Below stretched the plains—vast, flat, and wrong in their stillness—like the dead skin of a world long flayed of purpose. His eyes, twin shards of fouled and ancient ice, reflected no wonder, no longing—only recognition. The mountain’s cold was young beside what lay behind that gaze.

Snow gathered upon his lashes. He blinked, and what slid down his face were not tears, but imitations of them—reflexes remembered rather than felt. His fingers tightened around the leather-bound hilt of his sword. The grip creaked. Flecks of long-dried blood cracked loose and vanished into the gale.

How long he remained there he could not have said. Moments dissolved into epochs, and epochs into instants so brief they bordered on nonexistence. He might have stood there for a thousand eternities, or less than the blink of an unobserved god.

One certainty alone endured.

He would return.

And when he did, there would be blood.

Able awoke.

The opening of his eyes was a slow, deliberate act, as though consciousness itself resisted his return. His gaze drifted to the clock nailed to the concrete wall with a butcher’s knife—a petty, human attempt at order. He had slept only hours.

Sleep was not required of him. Not truly. It was a habit retained from an earlier, weaker age. Dreams, however—those he missed. Centuries had passed since the last one had dared to intrude upon him.

He rose from the narrow cot. His joints whispered no complaint; his muscles bore no memory of stillness. He crossed to the door—a slab of steel grotesquely thick, a relic of fear made physical—and tore it aside. The metal shrieked as its wheels protested, the sound echoing down corridors built to contain the uncontainable.

Locks were unnecessary. He had long ago ripped the hydraulics free. The door’s mass alone sufficed; no human hand could contest it.

Outside, guards stood waiting, their riot visors dark and reflective. They did not move. If they felt fear, it remained hidden, though Able suspected it was there—thick and choking behind the glass.

He passed them without a glance.

Footsteps followed.

A woman—young, breathless, insignificant—ran after him, the sharp clicking of her heels echoing too loudly in the sterile corridors.

“Seventy-Six!” she called, voice strained. “Please—wait!”

He stopped.

She nearly collided with him, folding forward to catch her breath. Able turned slowly, studying her as one might a curious insect.

She was slight. Too slight for the world she inhabited. Square spectacles framed eyes too large for her face, and her hair—curly, brown, shoulder-length—seemed perpetually on the verge of disarray. She clutched a battered clipboard like a talisman.

“Yes?” he drawled, stretching the word until it lost all courtesy.

“I need to speak with you.”

“About?” The single word carried a spectrum of disdain.

“A psychological evaluation.”

He turned away.

She hurried after him, panic rising. “The High Command wants another evaluation. Because of what happened to Professor Liham.”

Able laughed—a sound like stone dragged across bone. “How is Liham?”

When he smiled, she recoiled despite herself. His teeth were wrong—too many, too sharp, crowded together and filed into obscene points, as if his mouth were a cage barely holding something eager to escape.

“He’s… alive,” she managed. “The doctors are surprised there’s still brain activity.”

Able muttered something in a language that scraped against the edges of reality.

“I’m Doctor Angela Langley,” she said quickly. “I’ll be observing you today. May I ask—”

He stopped again.

What followed was not speech as humanity understood it. Sounds poured from him that twisted the air, syllables older than grammar, older than lungs. His hands moved in blasphemous geometries, tracing shapes that should not exist in three dimensions.

Minutes passed. Perhaps more.

At last, he ceased.

“And that,” he said calmly, returning to English, “was my entire history. I omitted the trivialities.”

She stared, shaken. “I… I didn’t understand any of it.”

“No,” he replied, already walking away. “You wouldn’t.”

The training arena awaited him. Pandora’s Box stood assembled, rigid with apprehension. Able had given them a time, but he obeyed no such rule himself. Those who failed to match his whims learned quickly why punctuality mattered.

They trained. They strained. They broke.

Able watched.

When he dismissed them, boredom crept back like a familiar illness.

There was nothing left to do.

Nothing ever was.

Until—

“Seventy-Six!”

He turned, irritation coiling tight within him.

Langley approached again, fear barely leashed.

“High Command requires that you—”

The sentence ended in a strangled gasp.

Able’s hand closed around her throat, lifting her from the ground as though gravity had rescinded its claim.

“Listen carefully,” he whispered, his face inches from hers. “I endure this confinement only because I once believed you might lead me to something… interesting. If this farce continues, I will unmake every soul tied to this institution. Individually.”

Her feet kicked uselessly.

“Am I clear, Angela?”

“Yes,” she rasped.

He dropped her.

As he walked away, memory surged.

Hands grasping weapons with numb fingers. Lungs filling with blood. Bodies rising again.

And again.

The scratching.

The raven.

The dirt.

He rose.

Always he rose.

Rage followed.

Steel screamed as his fingers tore it from the walls. Blood splashed. Flesh parted. He stopped only when he felt eyes upon him.

“What?” he growled.

Angela fled.

Able stared at his ruined hands, unimpressed. Boredom returned.

He removed the collar.

The explosion was glorious.

Within minutes, the facility descended into unreality.

Creatures spilled forth—crabs of flesh and bone, corridors that became mouths, hands that reached from nowhere. Madness bloomed.

And at the center—

Able.

Laughing.

Screaming.

When it ended, only silence remained.

Then came the gunshot.

The world went dark.

Story is rework of ”Of Able” by ”Kain Pathos Crow” and released under CC-BY-SA 3.0.