The first life I steal isn't a Purifier's.
It's Master Torin's.
The thought is a shard of ice in my heart, but there's no time to feel it. His calloused hand—the same one that guided mine through meditation forms and bandaged my scorched palms—locks onto my shoulder. A final, futile attempt at protection.
Then the meditation hall doors detonate.
Splinters of sacred oak become shrapnel. The world narrows to the leader's blade, a sliver of consecrated moonlight aimed at my throat.
"Die, abomination!"
Torin moves. A blur of saffron robes. The impact of his body against mine is a bone-jarring crush. I hear the wet, ugly sound of the blade meant for my demon heart punching through his spine instead.
Crimson blooms across his robes, a sacrificial flower unfolding in a single, horrifying second.
"Run, Aria!" Blood sprays from his lips, each drop a condemnation.
But I'm already burning.
// SYSTEM INITIATED //
CHAOTIC SURGE (LV.1) DETECTED.
POWER OUTPUT: 847%... 922%... ERROR.
WARNING: HOST VESSEL CRACKING. STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: 23%.
The alert is a brand in my mind. Power detonates in my spine—molten iron flooding veins, setting every nerve ending ablaze. The world bleeds white. Energy screams from my pores, and the air itself catches fire.
I don't see what happens next. I feel it.
I feel the three-century-old foundations split.
I feel the stained-glass saints vaporize.
I hear the Purifiers' bones snap like kindling.
And when the light dies, I am left in the silence of a tomb I created.
I collapse onto blood-slick stone. Dust rains down, a funeral shroud of gray ash. Through the haze, I see him.
Torin leans against a pillar sheared in half. His chest is a ruined crater. Each breath is a wet, gurgling rasp.
"What…" he whispers, blood bubbling on his lips like a boiling spring. "Are you?"
The question is a knife twist. I crawl toward him, my sliced palms leaving smears of black-tinged blood on the stone. "Master, I didn't—I never meant—"
[FLASHBACK: INTEGRATED]
My palms, age seven, scorching a training dummy. Smoke rising from charred straw. Torin's hands swallowing mine, his flesh sizzling as his healing light fought my fire.
"Your mother's blood is wildfire, child. Control it… or it burns the world."
His trembling hand now rips a pendant from beneath his robes. Twisted silver, wrought in shapes that make my vision blur. It's identical to the cursed markings slithering up my own wrists.
The metal freezes my palm as he forces it into my grip. Ice crystals form on my skin. It's a parasite, drinking his life, warming as he cools.
"Your mother's sin… lives in you," he rasps, his voice fraying to a thread. "Find the Huntsman. Before they—"
His eyes fix on something behind me. A flicker of terror, then… impossible peace.
His lips shape three silent words: Not. Your. Fault.
And he is gone. The light in his eyes vanishes, and I feel the exact moment his soul departs—a vacuum in the world.
// SYSTEM UPDATE //
23 PURIFIERS ELIMINATED.
REWARD: ▮▮▮ ANSWERS ▮▮▮ ... CORRUPTION DETECTED ...
REWARD: SURVIVAL... REWARD: DEATH...
BLOOD PURITY: 18% DEMONIC. SOURCE: [REDACTED].
MATERNAL LINEAGE: ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮.
The glitching text is a taunt. Boots thunder in the corridor—dozens more. The real hunt is here.
// NEW QUEST: IMMEDIATE //
ESCAPE MONASTERY (0/1).
REWARD: ▮nsw▮rs. TRUTH.
FAILURE: DEATH. CAPTURE. WORSE.
I stagger upright. The pendant is a brand of cold fire against my chest. I won't drop it. It's the last piece of him. The only clue to the monster I am.
Rubble shifts. The lead Purifier rises, his mask shattered to reveal a face of Arctic frost and a silver sigil carved into his brow—a match for my mother's portrait.
"Hellspawn," he growls, raising gauntleted hands. "Your bloodline dies tonight."
The runes on his metal don't just glow—they screech. A literal, physical sound designed to pulp my mind.
And that's when the monastery's guardians decide we are all heretics.
Stone saints and martyrs step from their alcoves, eyes igniting with holy fire. They move with divine wrath, and they attack everything that bleeds. A marble sword cleaves a Purifier in two. A flail pulverizes granite where my head just was.
I am not supposed to exist. My blood is an affront.
Sanctified steel nicks my forearm. Black blood wells.
Then—impossible. The wound knits itself. Not cleanly. Shadowy tendrils stitch the skin, my veins darkening to obsidian. A roadmap to damnation.
// PASSIVE ABILITY ACTIVATED //
DEMONIC REGENERATION (LV.1).
WARNING: EACH USE ACCELERATES BLOODLINE ASSIMILATION.
I sprint through the ruins—past the herb garden, past the kitchen—each healed wound costing a piece of my humanity. The pendant hammers against my chest, cold and heavy and alive.
I burst into the courtyard. Freedom lies beyond the failing wards. But the pendant detonates with a new, deeper cold.
Arctic fire erupts in my palm. It feeds on the blood—mine, Torin's, the fallen—and a holographic map unfurls in the smoke:
Thornwood Forest – marked in writhing blood-ink.
Villages branded with skulls.
All paths converging on a tower that devours light.
At the center, a name is etched in bleeding script:
THE HUNTSMAN.
A woman's voice, trapped in silver for eighteen years, whispers in my mind—my mother's voice, laced with sorrow and steel: "The pendant whispered a name—not mine. The real one they hunt."
The map vanishes. The pendant lies corpse-cold in my hand.
I stand on the edge of my world, a burning ruin at my back. The wind carries the scent of blood and burning faith.
Wolves howl in the distance.
No.
The sound is too sharp. Too coordinated.
Hunters.