The stench hit first—rotting garbage mixed with something acrid that burned the nostrils. Then came the cold. Rain, relentless and foreign, drummed against unfamiliar surfaces with a rhythm that set teeth on edge. Finally, the cacophony: a symphony of mechanical roars, electronic bleeps, and distant human voices speaking in tongues that should have been gibberish but somehow weren't.
Dren Valisar's eyes snapped open.
*This is not Vyrn.*
The thought struck like a blade to the gut as he found himself sprawled against grimy brick, surrounded by towering structures that stretched impossibly high into a star-choked sky. Bright signs blazed overhead in symbols that hurt to look at—too bright, too alien, too *wrong*. The air itself felt different, thick with invisible poisons and the electric tang of sorcery he didn't recognize.
But it was the body that truly horrified him.
Dren raised his hand—pale, thin, pathetically small—and watched it tremble in the sickly neon glow. These weren't the battle-scarred fingers that had gripped Soulrend for twenty-three years. These weren't the powerful arms that had cleaved through demon hordes during Vyrn's final siege. This was the frame of a *child*. A sickly, weak, contemptible child.
He struggled to his feet, legs wobbling like a newborn colt's. Five feet, eight inches at most. His reflection in a dirty puddle showed the truth: sunken cheeks, dull brown eyes where brilliant emerald should have been, limp black hair instead of his proud raven mane. The proud scar across his cheek—earned in battle against the Crimson Duke— gone, replaced by unmarked, pallid skin.
*What have they done to me?*
The memories crashed over him in waves. Vyrn's capital burning. The demon portal tearing reality apart. His sworn brother Cassian's face twisted in betrayal, blade dripping with Dren's blood. The last thing he remembered was darkness, and Cassian's sneering words: "The age of heroes is over, brother."
Now he was... here. Wherever here was.
A soft chime drew his attention. Something rectangular and black sat in his pocket—smooth as polished obsidian but glowing with inner light. He pulled it free, squinting at the impossible surface that showed moving pictures and glowing symbols.
*Sorcery.*
He gripped the device with both hands and squeezed, trying to crush whatever demon-magic powered it. His fingers, weak as they were, made no impression on the cursed thing.
"Pathetic," he snarled, his voice cracking like an adolescent's. Even his vocal cords had been stolen from him.
The sound of his own weakness was still echoing when he heard it—a low, wet growl that raised every instinct honed by decades of warfare.
The figure that stumbled into the alley looked human at first glance. Rumpled suit, loosened tie, the slouched gait of someone deep in their cups. But Dren had faced enough demons to recognize the signs: the too-wide grin splitting a face in impossible ways, the fingers that bent at angles no human joint should allow, the wet *snick-snick* of something sharp extending from beneath fingernails.
"Finally," the thing wheezed, its voice a harmony of human speech and insectile clicking. "Been looking for you, little saint. Master said you'd come crawling back eventually."
The transformation began before the last word left its lips.
Bones cracked like snapping timber as the creature's spine extended, vertebrae multiplying and bursting through skin. Its jaw unhinged with a sound like tearing canvas, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth that gleamed with toxic saliva. Crimson tendrils erupted from its chest, writhing like living whips, while its limbs stretched into grotesque, multi-jointed appendages that scraped sparks from the alley walls.
Dren's hand moved instinctively to his hip, where Soulrend should have hung.
Nothing.
The Lesser Fiend lunged, tendrils lashing out like striking serpents. Dren threw himself sideways, landing hard on his shoulder—another reminder of this body's fragility. The creature's claws carved furrows in the brick where his head had been.
*I need a weapon. I need—*
**"FELL BEAST DETECTED."**
The voice erupted in his mind with the force of a war-horn, speaking in the ancient tongue of Vyrn's knights. Not heard, but *felt*, resonating in his bones and soul.
**"BY THY BLOOD, FORGE THY BLADE, SAINT."**
Power flooded through him—not his own, but something deeper, older, divine. Light blazed in his palm, coalescing into something solid and perfect and *right*. When the radiance faded, he held a katana of pure ethereal energy, its blade humming with barely contained force.
The contrast was absurd—this pathetic, scrawny arm wielding a weapon that seemed forged from starlight itself. But it was *his*. He could feel it in his soul, as much a part of him as his own heartbeat.
The fiend hissed and struck again. This time, Dren was ready.
Kenji's body was slow, clumsy, lacking the fluid grace that had made Dren legendary. But muscle memory transcended flesh. The blade came up in a perfect parry, ethereal steel meeting chitinous claw with a sound like breaking glass. The creature's momentum carried it past him, and Dren's riposte opened its flank from hip to shoulder.
Ichor sprayed the alley walls in arcing gouts of black and crimson. The fiend shrieked—a sound that shattered windows three stories up—and whirled to face him, its wound already beginning to close.
"Still got some fight in you," Dren muttered, lips quirking in his first genuine smile since awakening. "Good. I was worried this would be boring."
The creature rushed him with desperate fury. Dren sidestepped, the motion awkward in this unfamiliar body, but his blade found its mark. The ethereal katana punched through the fiend's chest with a wet *squelch*, emerging from its back in a shower of gore.
For a moment, they stood frozen—predator and saint, united by steel and spite.
Then Dren twisted the blade.
The Lesser Fiend exploded like a burst pustule, showering the alley with chunks of corrupted flesh and steaming viscera. What remained collapsed into a bubbling, pulsing puddle that gradually dissolved into nothingness.
"Same shit," Dren said, flicking imaginary blood from his ethereal blade. "New hell."
**"FELL BEAST PURGED. VALOR GAINED: 10. ADVANCEMENT PROGRESS: SAINT RANK 2 - 10/100."**
The voice in his mind carried a note of approval, and with it came sensation—the faintest stirring of true strength in his borrowed limbs. Not much, barely noticeable, but *something*. A promise of what could be reclaimed.
Something clinked against the pavement. Where the fiend had dissolved, a small object remained: an obsidian coin etched with the sigil of a horned skull. It radiated malevolent heat, hissing softly like water on a hot stone.
The moment his fingers closed around it, knowledge flooded his mind.
**"PURGE DEED IDENTIFIED: SEEK THE SHADOW IN THE GLASS TOWER. CLUE ACQUIRED."**
Dren's enhanced sight—*Lore Sight*, the voice supplied—revealed matching graffiti carved into the alley wall. The same horned skull, repeated dozens of times in a pattern that hurt to look at directly.
"So," he murmured, pocketing the coin. "You bastards followed me here too."
The second fiend came shambling around the corner before the first's remains had finished dissolving—another human shell, this one wearing the gray suit and dead-eyed expression of a salaryman. But the wrongness was stronger now, more obvious. Its briefcase leaked viscous fluid that steamed where it hit the ground, and its face kept shifting, features rearranging themselves like clay in an unseen sculptor's hands.
Dren didn't wait for the transformation this time.
His ethereal blade sang through the air, cleaving the creature from collarbone to hip in a spray of corrupted blood. It dropped twitching to the pavement, briefcase spilling its contents—more coins, more sigils, and something that might once have been documents but now writhed with a life of their own.
But using the blade came with a cost.
Fire exploded through his chest, centered around his heart but spreading like molten metal through every vein. The world blurred at the edges, and for a terrifying moment he was *elsewhere*—standing in Vyrn's burning throne room, watching Cassian's blade punch through his chest while demons poured through the shattered walls.
*"Did you really think your righteousness could save them?"* Cassian's voice, dripping with contempt. *"Look around, brother. Look at your precious kingdom burn."*
**"SOUL FLAME CONSUMED: 5%. WARNING: EXCESSIVE DEPLETION MAY RESULT IN MEMORY LOSS."**
Dren gasped, staggering against the alley wall as the vision faded. His arms trembled with exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical exertion. The ethereal blade flickered, nearly winking out entirely before stabilizing.
*Memory loss.* The two words hit him like a physical blow. His memories of Vyrn, of his true self, of what Cassian had done—they were all he had left of who he truly was. If he lost those...
But the weakness, the pathetic frailty of this stolen body, ignited something else. Something stronger than fear.
*Rage.*
He would not accept this. He would not remain trapped in this weakling's flesh, burning away his soul for scraps of power. He would train. He would push this body past its limits, forge it into something worthy of the Blade Saint of Vyrn. Six feet, two inches of corded muscle and battle-hardened bone. Sharp emerald eyes that could pierce a man's soul. Raven hair and the proud scar of a warrior who had faced hell itself and emerged victorious.
He would reclaim what was his. All of it.
The sound of metal scraping stone made him look up. Overhead, impossible shapes moved against the neon-stained sky—drones, but not like any he'd ever heard described. These writhed with organic components, bone and sinew fused with steel and circuitry in configurations that violated every law of nature.
Fell Constructs. And they were circling.
"Move, fool!"
The voice was like silver bells and drawn steel—melodious but carrying an edge that could cut. Light blazed at the alley's mouth, and through it stepped a figure that made Dren's breath catch.
She was beautiful in the way fire was beautiful—dangerous, mesmerizing, impossible to ignore. Fiery red hair fell past her shoulders like liquid copper, framing a face of porcelain perfection. Jade eyes blazed with inner light, and her lithe form moved with a dancer's grace despite the obvious urgency of the situation.
More importantly, she carried a weapon—some kind of crystalline staff that hummed with contained power.
"The Constructs have your scent," she called, those green eyes fixed on him with an intensity that was both unsettling and oddly thrilling. "Move, or die. Your choice."
Above them, the twisted drones began to descend, their bone-grafted rotors beating the air with a sound like breaking wings.
Dren's ethereal blade flared brighter, and despite everything—the weakness, the confusion, the bone-deep exhaustion—he felt his lips curve in a wolf's grin.
"Then let's give them something to remember."
He sprinted towards the fire escape, the blade singing in his grip, and found himself genuinely curious about the mysterious redhead who had appeared in the heart of this alien city.
Perhaps this new hell wouldn't be quite as boring as he'd feared.