Pain had once been a teacher to Kai Ardent.
Now, it was a hymn.
He lay still on the cold dungeon floor, vision soaked in red and black. His left leg was shattered, bones like splintered glass beneath torn flesh. Blood pulsed from his side in slow, deliberate rhythm. Each beat of his dying heart whispered a single truth:
He were never meant to survive.
He could hear them still — Garrett's voice, casual and cruel:
"Leave him. Deadweight only slows us down."
The team hadn't looked back. Not once.
They'd sealed the rift gate behind them.And then—
[SHADOW PROTOCOL: BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED]
WARNING: Soul Synchronization Breached (83%)
Calibrating… Rewriting User Identity…
Something entered him. Not like possession, but like permission. Like a door had always existed in his soul, locked tight… until now.
He opened his eyes.
And saw the world for what it truly was
The dungeon's light, once dim and gray, now burned like molten tar. The air shimmered with unseen threads — veins of shadow interwoven through reality, twitching, pulsing.
Left him as bait. As distraction. As meat.
A new sound stirred in the chamber — not of the monsters lurking in the dark, but of something stranger. More ancient. A heartbeat that wasn't his. A pulse from beneath the earth. From inside him.
The air thickened. The shadows warped.And then—
[SHADOW PROTOCOL: BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED]
WARNING: Soul Synchronization Breached (83%)
Calibrating… Rewriting User Identity…
Something entered him not like possession, but like permission. Like a door had always existed in his soul, locked tight… until now.
He opened his eyes.
And saw the world for what it truly was.
The dungeon's light, once dim and gray, now burned like molten tar. The air shimmered with unseen threads veins of shadow interwoven through reality, twitching, pulsing.He saw creatures in the distance. The Wraith Tyrant, circling like a crow, scanning for movement. It had fed on dozens of hunters, its bones draped in their armor, a trophy of failure.
It hadn't noticed him.
He stood.
His broken leg bent backward — a sickening crack. Yet he rose without effort, without pain.
The so call system whispered.
"Pain is temporary .Rise as you were meant to be."
His body was mending — not with healing, but with evolution. The shadows gripped his bones like armor, fusing muscle with phantom ligaments. His eyes darkened. His pulse vanished.
He was no longer human.
He was a predator.
The Wraith Tyrant landed with the grace of a god, talons gouging the stone. Its eyes were hollow, yet filled with hunger.
Kai didn't move.
He became less than a shadow — slipping into the fractures between light.
[ABILITY ACQUIRED: SHADOW VEIL]
You are unseen by creatures that know fear.
The Tyrant turned, head twitching like a puppet severed from its strings.
Kai moved behind it without a sound.
His hand shifted, stretching, reshaping and from his palm bloomed a blade of pure darkness, jagged like obsidian, whispering with cursed echoes.
He struck upward, slow and precise, into the creature's under-jaw.
It screamed not in pain, but in soul form.That scream dragged Kai down with it. Into its past. Into the moments it tore hunters limb from limb. Their final cries. The pleasure it felt. The slow play of agony. The taste of their dying light.
Kai absorbed it all.
He fed on it.
"Feel it," he murmured. "The same way I felt it. Let death know your name."
He pulled the blade sideways, cracking bone, tearing through spectral sinew.
The Tyrant began to fall.
But Kai didn't wait.
He reached into its chest with a hand still dripping with shadow and ripped out its Core.
The moment it passed into his grip, it dissolved not into mana, but into code. Into symbols etched in a dead language. The Protocol consumed it with a hiss.
[CONSUMPTION COMPLETE]
Skill Gained: Phantasmal Cloak
Trait Acquired: Soulbite (Shadow attacks bypass defense)
→ Essence Integrated: 19% Predator Imprint
His body pulsed with its death.
He smiled.
For the first time, it felt right.
Six hours passed.
Kai stood atop a corpse mound in the deepest chamber of the dungeon. Six monsters lay dead none from mercy. One had begged in broken words. Another had tried to mimic a child's voice.
He'd carved through them all.
The shadows now clung to him willingly, shaping his armor, sharpening his eyes.A new squad had arrived from his old guild, likely to "clean up."
He didn't hide.
He waited.
They passed beneath the trees outside the rift gate, laughing.
Kai struck like a storm.
The first died in confusion. The second, in panic. The third managed to cry for help, only to see his killer split in two forms shadow and substance, as Kai tore his spine free from behind.
No witnesses.
He used Consume on a live soul for the first time.
It tasted like smoke and fire.
And power.[System Log: ANOMALY WARNING]
User: Kai Ardent
Threat Level: Escalating
Soul Drift Detected – 37% Divergence
Override Attempt: Blocked
Note: Subject is no longer compliant with base human parameters. Monitor closely.
He stood alone in the clearing, moonlight glinting off the wet gleam of his armor — or what was left of it.
He wasn't Kai Ardent anymore.
Not to the world.
Not to the guild.
But in the shadows?
In the quiet?
He whispered his name
And the Rift echoed it back.