Liam felt like fainting, and his mind went dark, but only for a fraction of a second. Light, color, and awareness immediately returned, leading to deep confusion.
The rocky chamber had disappeared, as well as the pool and Crazy Uncle. Liam found himself in a cramped wooden box that barely fit him, but the discomfort that environment caused failed to get to the top of his priorities.
That was because Liam recognized that wooden box. It wasn't a box at all. He knew each dent and stain in the brown tiles that encircled him. After all, he had spent the worst day of his life hidden inside it.
Somehow, Liam had teleported inside his family's secret closet. Still, oddities immediately stood out. For once, he could see clearly despite the lack of illumination in that secluded environment. Moreover, there were no supplies hidden with him.
Liam didn't linger in his inspection. Ten years ago, he had hidden for hours in that secret closet, but that had become his greatest regret. So, he promptly pushed on the trapdoor above, lifting it to climb out of that wooden hole.
Another familiar environment unfolded in Liam's vision once he jumped out of the closet. He found himself in his old home, the small shed where he had once lived with his family. Yet, everything was strangely clean, except for three vast red spots on the wooden floor.
Liam's mood soured as soon as he noticed those large stains. A hatred he had never been able to quell flared, too. The scene featured no corpses, but Liam knew those spots marked the places where his father, mother, and sister had bled and died.
That detail was simply unforgettable. After all, Liam had seen it when Cyrus had pulled him out of the closet and when he had returned to the shed to bury his family.
'What kind of bad joke is this?' Liam cursed in his mind, unable to hide how deeply he loathed the experience. His face had become cold and expressionless, his black eyes seemingly ready to kill.
Liam instinctively reached for his left shoulder, only to notice that his trusty bow wasn't there. He was wearing a simple black robe, but no knife rested in its belt. He had no weapons, but that didn't halt his steps.
In Liam's mind, it didn't matter whether the experience was real or fake. Someone had decided to bring him back to the worst day of his life, even playing with it, and he could only respond with all the courage and strength he had lacked back then.
Nevertheless, once Liam barged out of the shed in a hurry, searching for anything that could become a target for his foul feelings, he found himself in a white world that featured no ground or sky.
The shed seemed to be the only object to exist in that white world that expanded as far as the eye could see, as if hovering among that emptiness.
Yet, Liam had already stepped outside, and his foot had landed on something solid. He couldn't see any surface among that whiteness, but it seemed to exist nonetheless.
Liam's eyes darted left and right, trying to find answers to that confusing experience, only to give up on it quickly. He remembered why he was there and who had sent him. That stuff belonged to the realm of cultivators, making it beyond his understanding.
But that lack of understanding didn't stop Liam. He carefully took another step forward, leaving the shed completely once he confirmed that an invisible surface did exist among that whiteness.
Still, as soon as Liam completely exited the shed, the latter disappeared, leaving him alone in that endless whiteness. Nothing seemed to exist anywhere in every direction, but that quickly changed, too.
Countless faint silhouettes suddenly materialized all around Liam, the smallest of them in his immediate surroundings, the bigger ones further in the distance.
The silhouettes weren't exactly clear. They were hardly humanoid, either, and Liam had to get close to one of them to uncover its real nature. He picked randomly, approaching the shadow to his right, until his eyes could make out the shape of a small dog.
'What is this?' Liam wondered, frowning.
The small dog was made of relatively detailed grey smoke now. It seemed the vicinity had made it solid enough for Liam to interact with it, but a widespread rustling reached his ears as soon as he tried to stretch his hand toward it.
"Who's there?!" Liam shouted, immediately stepping back, scouring his surroundings. Echoes of that widespread rustling still rang, but he couldn't see anything that might have caused it.
However, when Liam looked back at the small dog, he discovered that it had disappeared. That previously clear silhouette had vanished, only leaving white emptiness behind.
'Is it telling me that it was wrong?' Liam thought, not knowing what the "it" was. He wasn't even sure about what he was actually doing, but that hunch had instinctively formed in his mind anyway.
Following that hunch, Liam disregarded the nearby silhouettes, randomly picking a direction to head for the more distant, bigger shadows.
Liam paid close attention not to get too close to any other silhouettes, but details appeared on those shapes nonetheless. He saw more dogs, which grew bigger until they became proper wolves, eventually getting distant enough for those shapes to become humanoid.
One of those humanoid shapes was almost three meters tall, attracting Liam's attention, bringing him closer to it. The shadow soon revealed itself as a giant ape with four arms and two heads, allowing Liam to connect some dots.
'Is this the Ancestral Ape?' Liam considered, knowing that normal apes lacked those additional limbs and heads. 'Are these bloodlines from the Ancestral Beasts?'
Liam could only reach for the shadow again to test that theory, but the rustling noise returned before he could touch it, far louder than before, somehow bringing tremors to that completely white and empty world.
A gasp escaped Liam's mouth as he instinctively crouched down, assuming a stabler stance to withstand the tremors. Meanwhile, he searched with eyes and ears for the source of that rustling, only to obtain unexpected results.
The rustling seemed to have no source, or rather, it simply came from everywhere, as if it occupied that whole environment. It also grew deeper and louder as the seconds passed, as if getting closer.
At the same time, the countless silhouettes began to disappear, initially slowly, then hundreds simultaneously.
Then, something appeared in the distance, so faint that Liam squinted his eyes to see better. The effort was fruitless, but he persisted until he blinked, and the world transformed.
The white world in Liam's immediate surroundings still existed, but giant dark scales had occupied everything else, continuously moving around him, encircling him in that endless coiling trend.
Liam straightened himself but didn't know what to do. He saw nothing but slithering scales everywhere, blocking his every possible escape route, and things somehow worsened.
A hiss as deep as the foundation of the very world resounded through the area, making the white environment shake again, but giving a proper source to Liam now.
Liam steadied himself and looked up, only for his black eyes to go wide. The gargantuan head of a massive snake hovered among those coiling scales, standing above him, its forked tongue flicking in his direction.
Liam wanted to freeze at that sight. The fear he felt wasn't something he could escape from, and his instincts told him as much.
However, the screams and voices from ten years ago suddenly surged in Liam's brain, louder than ever, which intensified until he fell to his knees, covering his ears in an attempt to silence them.
But the effort was fruitless. That terrible memory grew even louder, threatening to make Liam go crazy, stirring his resentment awake and forcing it to flood the entirety of his being.
"Make it stop!" Liam begged, his request having no actual target. Yet, the gargantuan snake replied with a deep, almost ancient, hiss that carried human words.
"There is only one way," The snake said.
"Tell me!" Liam cried, too in pain, dizzy, and full of that foul emotion to think about that strange development.
"Kill them all," The snake hissed. "Eat their children, curse their bloodlines, burn their lairs, and desecrate their temples."
Those words made no sense to Liam, but they soon gained one. As the memory grew even louder, Liam started to see unclear silhouettes of the four men whose voices he had forced himself to remember.
That was nothing short of a hallucination, but a very vivid one that Liam couldn't forsake. He would do anything to learn more about those butchers, even agreeing with that gargantuan snake.
"I'll do it!" Liam shouted, forcing himself to look up, his hands still pressed on his ears. "I'll avenge my family."
And, surprisingly, Liam felt able to spot a smirk in that giant reptilian head before its hiss resounded once more. "You shall inherit my hatred, my son."
Then, the giant snake opened its maw, which descended to fill the entirety of Liam's vision before eating him whole.