The room was silent except for Kael's ragged breathing.
He staggered into an abandoned building near the city's fault line, its broken glass walls reflecting fragments of a man who no longer knew his shape. Blood still clung to his knuckles. His heart thundered like a war drum, half from exertion, half from something he couldn't name.
He paused by a half-shattered mirror.
His reflection stared back.
At first, it was normal—mud-streaked skin, hollow cheeks, bloodshot eyes. But then… something moved.
The left side of his face warped.
Just for a second.
A ripple beneath the skin. Veins pulsed black-red. One eye glowed faintly, not with light, but with hunger. His jaw sharpened unnaturally. His teeth—longer. Wrong.
Then, like water settling, it faded.
Kael stumbled back, hand over his face.
"What… what was that?"
His reflection was still. But it had changed. Not the mirror—him.
Inside his skull, the Blood System pulsed, calm and cold.
[Morphological Adjustment: 3% Complete]
Vyr Blood Core Progression: 13%
Note: Visual anomalies are a result of early-stage stabilization.
Voice: "Progression is not without transformation. Fear is irrelevant."
"Fear is irrelevant?" Kael whispered. "I just watched my own face turn into a monster."
The System didn't answer. But something deeper did. A pulse in his spine. A whisper under the skin.
Consume. Evolve. Ascend.
"No," he said aloud, backing away from the mirror. "I'm not becoming that. I'm still me. I have to be."
But the silence of the room pressed in tighter. The mirror offered no comfort—only a truth he couldn't deny.
The System wasn't just giving him power.
It was rewriting him.
He sat on the cold floor, legs shaking, trying to steady his breath. Duran's warning came back like smoke in his lungs: "The Vyr didn't die out—they changed. Those who lived became something else. Something that couldn't be trusted."
Kael closed his eyes.
He saw flashes again.
A woman in white armor, screaming as crimson chains bound her. A red sky. A burning tower. A figure with no face—but Kael knew that figure was him.
Or would be.
The System stirred again.
[New Trait Detected: Identity Recoil]
Definition: Psychological rejection of core evolution.
Status: Mild.
System Suggestion: Embrace the shift.
Voice: "You are not losing yourself. You are shedding the skin that chained you."
"No," Kael growled. "I'm not some weapon. I'm not some… thing."
But the System didn't argue.
It never argued.
It waited.
Because it knew.
Sooner or later, Kael would need the power again.
And each time he did…
He would slip further into whatever the Vyr truly were.
A sharp noise outside—metal scraping against stone. Kael jolted upright.
Through a broken panel in the wall, he saw movement. Another Bloodhunter, scanning the area.
He reached for the dagger at his belt.
His hand trembled—not from fear of the fight.
From fear of what he might become during it.
Inside, the Red Ledger pulsed again, hungry.
And in the mirror, Kael's reflection smiled without him.
***********
The child couldn't have been older than ten.
Thin. Dirty. Chained at the ankle. She stared up at Kael with hollow eyes from inside the rusted cage, her tiny fingers clutching iron bars worn smooth by desperation.
Kael had only meant to pass through the alley. Another corpse-strewn backroad of the Outskirts.
But then he heard the crying.
And saw him—a slaver in patchwork armor, dragging two more children like meat sacks toward a waiting cart. The man's laugh scraped like rusted blades.
Kael's body moved before his mind caught up.
The air split.
His fist collided with the slaver's jaw, sending teeth flying like shards of bone. The man hit the ground hard, snarling in surprise. Then he reached for the serrated blade at his hip.
But Kael didn't wait.
He let go.
[Combat Trigger: Initiating Red Pulse Sequence]
Stat Boost: +35% Speed, +20% Power
Ability: Blood Pulse Dash — Active
Target: Marked for Termination
Kael's body blurred.
He reappeared behind the slaver, arm plunged straight through the man's back.
Warmth flooded his palm.
The blood rush hit like lightning.
Everything slowed. His heartbeat thundered. He could see the man's veins unraveling. He could feel the strength, the fear, the memory of pain.
And then—something primal—deep inside his core opened.
The System whispered.
"Take it."
Kael's scream cut through the alley.
The slaver collapsed, skin turning grey, lifeless. Kael stood over him, shoulders heaving, hands soaked crimson.
The child stared.
"Don't… look," he whispered, trembling. "I'm not—I'm not—"
But he couldn't finish.
Because he wasn't sure what he was anymore.
Behind him, the Red Ledger updated.
[Slaver-Class Blood Absorbed]
New Combat Memory: Shackling Technique: Vertebrae Bind
Status: Synced.
Progression: +4%
Voice: "You are becoming what they fear."
The rush wasn't over.
Kael turned. A scavenger, drawn by the commotion, stumbled into the alley, blade drawn. Just a looter. Nothing more.
But Kael saw prey.
He lunged.
Then—stopped.
His blade hovered at the man's throat, hands trembling.
His mind screamed to finish it.
The Blood System howled for more.
But Kael—
Kael chose not to kill.
Not this time.
He stepped back, gasping. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"You are not a god yet," the System whispered, almost disappointed.
"But you will be."
He turned to the child.
She hadn't run.
Kael knelt, broke the lock with the dagger, and opened the cage.
"Go," he said. "Run far from here."
She looked up at him—monster, savior, something between—and nodded.
As her footsteps faded, Kael leaned back against the wall.
The System pulsed quietly inside him.
Waiting.
Watching.
********
Rain clawed at the observatory roof like it wanted inside.
Kael sat by Duran's scroll-table, the soft glow of crimson glyphs casting long shadows. He wasn't supposed to be here—not touching that drawer—but Duran was out gathering reagents, and the itch to know more had grown unbearable.
He pulled the drawer open.
Dust rose like breath from a sleeping corpse.
Inside were brittle scrolls wrapped in leather straps marked with red seals. One looked newer than the others—sealed with the Vyr insignia burned into wax.
Kael's fingers hovered. Then touched.
The seal cracked with a hiss like a dying whisper.
The scroll unfurled.
It wasn't writing. It was a map.
Drawn in what looked like dried blood.
The ink shimmered faintly, like veins beneath skin. Ancient landmarks pulsed dimly across the parchment: The Spine of Arinor, Hollow Wastes, City of Glass…
But Kael's eyes locked onto one name burned darker than the rest:
Red Hollow.
Beside it, a sigil he hadn't seen before—a crown made of bones, encircled by a serpent eating its own tail.
The blood in Kael's body reacted.
A quiet thrum started in his chest. Slow. Measured. Like footsteps approaching.
Duran burst through the observatory door moments later, soaked to the bone.
Kael stood, scroll in hand.
"You knew," Kael said.
Duran's eyes darkened. "Where did you find that?"
"You hid it."
"For a reason."
"Red Hollow," Kael said. "What is it?"
Duran took the scroll slowly, his fingers trembling.
"That place is where the last Vyr queen fell," he said.
Kael blinked. "Queen?"
"They never tell the truth in the archives," Duran muttered. "They say the Vyr were wiped out because they were unstable. Violent. Mad."
He looked Kael dead in the eye.
"But the truth is… the Vyr were too powerful. They didn't bend to the Blood Thrones. They remembered what the world was before the Dominion rose."
"And the queen?"
"She was the last of the Purebloods. She held a relic called the Crimson Heart. With it, she could alter bloodlines—rewrite the very nature of power."
Kael's throat felt dry.
"What happened to her?"
"She was betrayed. Trapped in Red Hollow during the Night of Ash. They say her blood still stains the stones there. It never dried."
Kael felt the pull deep in his bones.
He looked at the map again.
"Then that's where I'm going."
Duran paled. "No. You're not ready."
Kael met his eyes. "I wasn't ready for the slums. I wasn't ready for the System. But I survived."
"Red Hollow isn't a place. It's a warning," Duran snapped. "Every bloodline fears it. Even the warlords won't go near it. The last time someone went searching for it, they came back… not themselves."
Kael was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, "Maybe I've never been myself to begin with."
The Blood System stirred in his mind.
"The blood remembers the path."
"Go where the silence screams loudest."
He looked up at the rain.
And whispered, "Red Hollow."