The world has been at war with itself since the beginning of time. Human nature coexists side by side with the need to kill. As time passed, the need to kill to survive diminished. Now someone can sit on their couch all day ordering food in while working on their laptop. For others, though, the need to kill is a constant nagging at the front of their brain. Grey was once one of these people. Alive only in the split seconds of kill or be killed. He craved the fight, to feel the thrill of trading devastating blows. Until he no longer did. When he lost her, he lost his will to do anything. To crave anything. To fight for anything. It’s how he found himself isolated and alone from everyone he had ever known in this sleepy town on the coast of only God knows where. He wanted to hide away in the furthest corner of the world under the blanket of sorrow he concealed himself under. Now, though, he could feel that there had once again been a change in him when the shadow had walked into him. Something that he had once had, which he had thought lost forever, had returned to him.

  The anger.

  He could feel it building up within him. A boiling mountain of rage stretches his skin against his bones. He wanted to hurt. He wanted to kill. The faces of everyone who had ever hurt him flashed through his mind, and he began to howl with smothering rage.

  “What have you done to me?” he asked the being within him with gritted teeth.

  “I have unlocked the potential within you which you have been running away from, this anger that you are feeling, we will use it. We will use its full force to destroy all who wish to stand in our path. To put a forceful end to the evil ones. Every drop of blood which we will spill together will lead us closer to the end.”

  The shadow's morbid speech of destruction did not allow Grey to immediately answer. He was still reeling from all that had happened to him in the past few hours, and he could not truly come to terms with what was happening to him.

  None of this was making any sense. He was convinced he had finally truly lost his mind. All the terrible things he had seen and done in his life had finally caught up with him.

  “The end? The end of what, me, you or the world? What you are saying is not making any sense.”

  “Shut up, boy and stop whining. I have shown you the truth. You know what comes next from here. You know who we fight. All you must do is look again, it is all in you now.”

  But he didn’t want to. His body still shook from the phantom pain of dying thousands of deaths. His mind was in turmoil and his body in pain, yet he could feel the shadow urging him to look inside again.

  With slow breathing, he closed his eyes and tried to remember clearly what he had seen in mere moments, and which had been boxed into small blocks in the back of his mind. Passing into his own consciousness, he could still feel the heavy presence of the shadow moving alongside him into his most intimate parts. He cautiously approached those new parts of him and reached out.

  He was looking into the dark eyes of a man standing above him. He wore a white robe with a gold staff in his left hand. There was a shimmering light illuminated by both his staff and hands.

  “At the end, Umbra, you could not stop what is to follow”, he said in a deep voice that grated his bones.

  I laughed in his face, “You are so blinded by your own vile desires, you do not even realise that you are curating your own demise. You may continue to feed on your dream of enlightenment for all, but we all know that is the path to the greatest calamity; you have been brainwashed by your own selfishness. Above all, the greatest fact is the knowledge we both share that the Umbra does not die.”

  He looked at me with a face contorted with anger and raised his hands, glowing ever brighter with a light shining a deep red and roared.

  His whole body shook with pain as he fell to the floor.

  Awakening once again, he reached for the presence he now knew as Umbra. It was Umbra, and he was Umbra together; they were one and the same.

  “Who was that man?”

  “He was once one of the evil ones we set out to fight. But at the end he overcame the shadow walker, who I was conjoined, they are a cult of evil parasites that wish to righten the way of the world through absolute obedience to their lord of light”

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  “A lord of light? But then how can they be evil?”

  “Is being alive not the freedom to curate your own destiny, make your own choices, influence your own life through the actions you take. They wish to take it all away. Create a world where the only decisions that can be made alone come through them.”

  “They wish to destroy freewill?”

  “They wish to take away your individuality, human. But now, as Umbra, together we will fight back and prevent the progress of the vile regime fighting for this blasphemy. But there is one thing you must know.”

  “What is it?” Grey asked, perplexed, as this was the first time he heard something resembling concern in the shadowy voice.

  “You are no longer in your own world”

  He did not understand if the walking shadow now attached to him was making a poor attempt at humour or if everything he had ever known was truly about to change.

  “What do you mean?” he asked with a hint of worry in his voice.

  “When you grabbed the medallion of Umbra human, you were transported to another world. You see the world where you found this medallion has not yet been touched by the new generation of light users since the last wars. This meant when you touched the medallion, you were taken to a world were the war needs you the most. This war is not one that is confined to a single world alone but spans the galaxies and universes. I expect we will find ourselves in a completely new world where the rules of power are very different to your own. The only reason I know that we have definitely been transported through worlds is that the shadows feel different, something you will soon learn to recognise on your own.”

  It was almost all too much to take in. My whole world has already been shifted in mere moments, and in a casual shift in conversation, the shadow had just told him that everything he had once known had changed in an instant. The panic which started to flare up in the wake of this news was instantly smothered by what felt like a blanket of darkness. Recognising this wasn’t something natural, but the shadows doing Grey asked him what that was. Turns out being an Umbra came with unique skills and powers designed to empower him against the magical power of the light users. The shadow described this skill as one which allowed him absolute focus in moments of extreme stress, such as combat scenarios. It allowed him to block out all emotions and, in most cases, many forms of pain.

  With a clear head, he knew that he needed to develop a plan because he had just found himself thrown into a war that spanned galaxies and timelines beyond his capacity to even understand.

  “First things first, shadow, what is your name?”

  “My name, human, is from a land long since forgotten in a world you will never see. It is Ki-Tunzi- Moya, but together our name is Umbra. The destroyer of light”

  “Alright, I’ll just call you Ki. Ki, any idea on what world we are on?”

  “Without feeling more of the shadows of the planet, I can not say human, but with a little more time, I might just be able to guess. These shadows feel familiar.”

  Well, without properly knowing where they were, he couldn’t really form an actionable plan, he thought. His first course of action would have to be getting out of this room and understanding exactly where he had ended up and what he could expect on this new world he found himself on.

  Finally looking up, he noticed that the rope he tied to the ceiling was still there as the tunnel which only brought up more questions, but he decided to focus on just getting out of this cursed room. As he was about to reach for the rope, the now familiar voice of Ki said, “There is no need for that anymore, just jump up.”

  No longer questioning the voice in his head, he jumped, reaching for the edge of the tunnel, which was at least three metres above him. He was surprised to find that he could reach the ledge of the tunnel with ease as his muscles contracted and exploded with power that felt almost tangible and intoxicating. Pulling himself up, he asked Ki what that was.

  “Human, like I said when we became one, you were granted special abilities which you will need to combat the light users. While you were experiencing the connection of the Umbra, your body was shedding its old physical constraints. You will see, given time and training, you will be able to surpass the abilities of even the gods in your old world. But that is only if you survive long enough to get stronger before the light users learn of your existence in this world. Once they learn you are here, they will stop at nothing to hunt us down and distinguish our darkness before we become powerful enough to destroy everything they have built on this world.”

  “I don’t understand Ki why I wouldn’t just have the full power of the Umbra immediately.”

  “It will force you to progress human. Only the strongest survive, and if given the full power of the Umbra immediately, you could seclude yourself from everything and feel no need to improve, which would eventually allow the light users to overtake the given power of the Umbra and kill you.”

  “Can you tell me what skills and powers I have been granted, Ki?”

  “No human, I can only explain to you as you learn, as you know I have been lying dormant for a millennium, and I will need your experiences to unlock those memories which have been lying asleep for so long”

  As they were having this conversation, he found himself finally reaching the end of the tunnel which he had entered what felt like a lifetime ago when running from those strange men in the jungle, which seemed so inconsequential with his current circumstances.

  The entrance was once again curiously completely covered by thick vegetation, which he needed to break through. He made short work of it with his bare hands, with his newfound strength and took a breath.

  It was time to step out into this new world and see what challenges it offered him and his new role in shaping its future.

  “Well, fuck it, Ki, here we go.”