The Brooklyn Navy Yard was a graveyard of forgotten industry.
Rusting cranes clawed at the night sky like skeletal fingers, silent and still.
The air smelled of salt, decay, and a faint, electric tang of ozone that tickled the back of his throat.
Michael moved through the deep shadows of abandoned warehouses, his hoodie pulled low, just another ghost in a city full of them.
The Reaper's Fang felt cold and solid in his pocket, a secret promise of violence.
He found Warehouse 7 easily.
The building itself seemed to warp around a single point, the corrugated metal walls bending inward as if under an immense, invisible pressure.
In the center of the vast, empty space hung the Gate.
It was smaller than the one in Times Square, barely the size of a car.
It looked less like a violent wound and more like a shimmering, oil-slick puddle floating lazily in mid-air.
An E-Rank Gate.
Barely worth the DGC's time, especially on a busy night.
It was perfect.
He pulled up his Status screen, checking his energy.
[VE: 75/75]
He was ready.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the shimmering portal.
VWOOOM.
The world dissolved into a brief, nauseating swirl of color and static.
He landed on damp, mossy stone.
He was in a tunnel.
The air was thick and heavy, smelling of wet earth and something else… something sickly sweet, like rotting meat.
Faint, bioluminescent fungi clung to the walls, casting a pale, greenish glow on his surroundings.
It was a sewer system.
Or a nest.
He heard a faint, chittering sound from the darkness up ahead. CHITTER-CLICK-CLICK.
Michael flattened himself against the wall, his heart hammering in his chest like a drum. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
This wasn't a simulation.
There were no resets here.
He drew the Reaper's Fang, its matte black surface absorbing the dim light, making it almost invisible.
From the tunnel, they came.
They were small, about the size of a large rat, with slick, hairless skin and far too many legs. SKITTER-SKITTER.
Their bodies were segmented, like insects, but they moved with the fluid grace of lizards.
At the front of their heads were a pair of rapidly clicking mandibles.
[TUNNEL SKITTERER (LV. 3) IDENTIFIED]
The System's text was a cold, reassuring presence in the terrifying darkness.
A pack of five skittered towards him, their multiple red eyes glowing with predatory hunger.
Michael didn't wait for them to attack.
ZIP!
He used Shadow Step, appearing in the middle of the pack.
Before they could react, he unleashed a Void Slash.
It wasn't a single strike.
He spun, the void-infused dagger carving a dark purple arc through the air.
SLASH!
The blade passed through their soft bodies like they were made of mist.
They all froze for a split second, then collapsed into twitching heaps, black ichor leaking onto the stone floor. SQUELCH.
[TUNNEL SKITTERER KILLED. 3 EXP GAINED.]
[TUNNEL SKITTERER KILLED. 3 EXP GAINED.]
…
A series of notifications flashed in his vision.
He knelt beside one of the corpses, the Reaper's Fang held ready.
He focused his intent.
He wanted its core.
A faint, gray light shimmered from the creature's chest.
He plunged the dagger in, and the void energy seemed to draw something out, like a magnet pulling iron filings.
A small, marble-sized orb of dull, gray energy materialized in his hand.
[F-RANK MONSTER CORE ACQUIRED.]
One down.
Nine to go.
He moved deeper into the tunnel, a ghost hunting in the dark.
He became a brutally efficient machine.
Shadow Step into a pack. ZIP!
Void Slash to cripple them. SHIING!
Finish the survivors with precise, economical stabs. STAB. STAB.
Harvest the cores.
His inventory slowly filled with the dim, gray orbs.
Four.
Seven.
Nine.
He found the nest in a large, circular chamber at the end of the tunnel system.
The sickly-sweet smell was overpowering here, a gag-inducing stench of birth and death.
Dozens of Skitterers scurried around a pulsating, fleshy mass in the center of the room.
And standing over it, protective and hostile, was something much larger.
It was a Skitterer, but grown to the size of a large dog.
Its skin was a darker, bruised purple, and its mandibles were thick and serrated, dripping with a viscous, green fluid.
[TUNNEL SKITTERER QUEEN (LV. 7) IDENTIFIED]
The boss.
The Queen let out a high-pitched SHREEEEE!, and every Skitterer in the chamber turned its glowing red eyes on him.
Michael's blood ran cold.
There were too many.
He could take the Queen, but not while fighting off fifty of her children.
The swarm charged. HISSSSSSS!
He Shadow Stepped back, creating distance, his mind racing for a strategy. ZIP!
He needed to take out the Queen first. The head of the snake.
He dodged a lunging Skitterer and threw his dagger, imbuing it with a Void Slash. FWIP!
The blade flew true, embedding itself in the Queen's shoulder with a wet SQUELCH!
She shrieked in pain and fury.
It worked.
But now he was unarmed.
A Skitterer leaped, its mandibles snapping inches from his face. CLICK-CLACK!
He kicked it away, scrambling backward.
Another one latched onto his leg, its sharp claws digging into his calf. SCRAPE!
He grunted in pain, shaking it off, but another took its place.
He was being overwhelmed.
He saw the Queen, ignoring her wound, rear back, her throat swelling.
A stream of corrosive acid shot from her mouth. HSSSSSS-BOOM!
He tried to Shadow Step, but his concentration was broken by the pain in his leg.
The acid caught his left arm.
Searing, white-hot pain erupted from his shoulder to his fingertips.
He screamed, a raw, ragged sound, as he clutched his arm.
The fabric of his hoodie dissolved into smoking tatters.
His skin blistered and blackened beneath.
[CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED.]
[BLOODLINE SEAL ACTIVATING DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS.]
A wave of furious, divine energy flared from his soul, trying to contain the damage, to fight off the foreign agony.
But his soul was already unstable.
The Seal was already cracked.
The sudden, violent surge of power caused a cascade failure. CRACK!
The world vanished.
The pain, the shrieking monsters, the damp cave - it all dissolved into white static.
And then, he was somewhere else.
He was seeing through someone else's eyes.
He saw hands, pale and slender, crackling with a familiar purple-black Void Energy.
He was in a place of swirling, chaotic colors.
The heart of a collapsing Gate.
A woman's voice, his own and yet not, echoed in his mind, filled with a desperate, fierce love.
"Marcus, take him!"
A storm of monstrous, shadowy tentacles lashed out. SWOOSH!
The woman moved with impossible grace, a Void Reaper in her prime.
She danced between the attacks, her own Shadow Steps more fluid, more perfect than his could ever be.
"I have to seal it!" she yelled, not at him, but at someone just out of view. "I have to seal… us."
She held up her hand, and a complex, golden lattice of light began to form.
It was the Seal.
Her Seal.
"It's the only way to hide his signature," she said, tears streaming down a face he couldn't see but knew as well as his own. "He'll live. He'll be normal."
"I love you," she whispered.
And then the memory shattered with the sound of breaking glass. CRASH!
Michael was back in the cave, the pain in his arm a distant, throbbing drum.
The Queen was looming over him, ready for the final, killing strike.
But Michael wasn't looking at the monster.
He was staring into the past.
My mother.
Elara.
She was a Void Reaper.
She wasn't a victim.
She wasn't lost.
She made a choice.
She sealed herself away to save him.
And his father… his father hadn't caged him.
He had honored her dying wish.
A white-hot rage, pure and absolute, erupted from the deepest core of his being.
It was not the cold power of the void.
It was the hot, human fury of a son who had just had his entire world ripped apart and stitched back together all wrong.
"You," he snarled, his voice a low growl that didn't sound human.
He pushed himself up, his burned arm forgotten.
He glared at the Skitterer Queen, but he wasn't seeing a monster.
He was seeing everything that had taken his mother from him.
"GIVE ME MY CORE," he roared.
His Void Energy surged, no longer a cool pool, but a raging, black inferno.
He didn't need his dagger.
He held out his good hand, and the void itself answered his call.
CRACK! SNAP!
A dozen tendrils of pure, black energy erupted from the ground around the Queen, wrapping around her, crushing her.
She let out a single, choked shriek before her body imploded with a wet SQUISH!, showering the chamber in ichor.
[TUNNEL SKITTERER QUEEN KILLED. 35 EXP GAINED.]
[MAIN QUEST UPDATE: THE EVER-GATE'S ECHO]
[FRAGMENTED DATA PACKET 'ELARA'S SACRIFICE' INTEGRATED.]
[BLOODLINE SEAL (DIVINE-TIER): 99.5% INTEGRITY (CRITICALLY DAMAGED)]
[REWARD FOR DATA INTEGRATION: NEW SKILL UNLOCKED.]
The remaining Skitterers, their queen dead, froze in confusion and terror.
Michael ignored them.
He stared at the final line of text on his HUD, glowing with a terrifying, dark purple light.
It was a skill he didn't recognize.
A skill that hadn't been on any of the grayed-out trees before.
A skill that chilled him to the very bone.
[SKILL UNLOCKED: SOUL DEVOUR (LV. 1)]