The silence in the chamber was a heavy, suffocating blanket.
It was broken only by the soft, wet drip of black ichor from Michael's fingertips.
DRIP. DRIP.
The remaining Tunnel Skitterers, dozens of them, were frozen in place.
They weren't attacking.
They weren't fleeing.
They were staring at him, their multiple red eyes wide with a primal, instinctual terror he could feel washing over him in waves.
He was no longer prey.
He was something far, far worse.
He looked down at his hands.
They were steady.
He felt no fear.
He felt no pain from his still-smoldering arm.
He felt… hungry.
A new notification glowed on his HUD, its purple text a stark, beautiful poison against the dim light of the cave.
[NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: SOUL DEVOUR (LV. 1)]
[DESCRIPTION: FORCIBLY EXTRACT THE SOUL-ECHO AND RESIDUAL MANA FROM A RECENTLY DECEASED ENTITY. PROVIDES A PURER, MORE VOLATILE FORM OF ENERGY. WARNING: REPEATED USE MAY LEAD TO SOUL CORRUPTION AND SYSTEM INSTABILITY.]
[NOTE: A FORBIDDEN SKILL OF THE VOID REAPER LINEAGE.]
Forbidden.
The word made him smile, a grim, humorless twist of his lips.
Everything about him felt forbidden now.
He glanced at the mangled, imploded corpse of the Skitterer Queen.
The Alchemist wanted cores.
He needed ten F-Rank cores.
But the Queen… the Queen was something special.
He could feel it. A D-Rank echo, buzzing with a dying, frantic energy.
He knelt beside the pulpy mess, ignoring the stench.
He raised his hand.
He focused on the new skill, on the gnawing hunger deep within his soul.
"Devour," he whispered, and the word felt right on his tongue.
The air itself seemed to shudder.
From the palm of his hand, a swirling vortex of purple-black energy erupted, no bigger than his fist. It wasn't the raw, explosive tendrils from before. This was controlled. Focused.
It latched onto the Queen's corpse.
The monster's body began to convulse violently.
A faint, ethereal light, the color of bruised twilight, was pulled from the remains. It screamed, a silent, psychic shriek that scraped against the inside of Michael's skull.
He saw flashes of the Queen's short, brutal existence.
Hatching in the dark.
Killing her siblings to claim dominance.
Laying her eggs.
The instinct to protect the nest.
The rage.
The fear.
He was not just taking its power. He was consuming its memory, its very essence.
The light spiraled into the vortex in his palm, and he felt a rush of energy that was both intoxicating and nauseating. It was cold and sharp, like swallowing powdered glass and ice.
A small, dark object condensed in his hand, cool and smooth.
It was a monster core, but unlike the dull gray F-Rank orbs, this one was a deep, swirling obsidian, with a single, faint purple light pulsing at its center.
[D-RANK VOID-TAINTED CORE ACQUIRED.]
[VOID ENERGY FULLY RESTORED.]
[HP FULLY RESTORED.]
The searing pain in his arm vanished, the burnt skin knitting back together, leaving behind a pale, silvery scar that seemed to shimmer with a faint, dark light.
He stood up, feeling a power he had never known.
He was whole again.
More than whole.
Just as he clenched his fist around the new core, his entire vision was consumed by a blinding flash of golden light.
PING!
[WARNING: BLOODLINE SEAL INTEGRITY HAS FALLEN BELOW A CRITICAL THRESHOLD.]
[WARNING: FRAGMENTED DATA PACKET 'ELARA'S SACRIFICE' HAS CAUSED A CASCADE FAILURE IN THE LEGACY ARCHIVE'S PRIMARY LOCK.]
[SUB-ROUTINE ACTIVATED: FORCED SYNCHRONIZATION WITH ARCHIVAL ECHO.]
The cave, the terrified Skitterers, the pulsing Gate - it all dissolved.
He was floating in a vast, empty blackness, surrounded by silent, drifting stars.
It was beautiful.
And it was lonely.
In front of him, a figure made of soft, golden light began to coalesce.
It was a woman.
She was tall, and she wore tactical gear that seemed to be woven from solidified shadows, just like his own Void Reaper class description.
He couldn't see her face clearly. It was a blur of light and memory.
But he knew her.
He knew her with every fiber of his being.
"Mom?" he whispered, and his voice cracked, the single word an aching wound he'd carried for fifteen years.
The light figure turned.
The voice that answered was not real. It was an echo, a recording imprinted on his very soul. It was warm, sad, and impossibly strong.
"Michael."
The sound of his name in her voice almost brought him to his knees.
"You were not meant to find this place. Not like this."
"What happened to you?" he asked, his voice trembling. "The vision… I saw you. You sealed the Gate. You sealed yourself."
The light figure drifted closer.
"The Ever-Gate was a mistake. A wound that could not be healed. It was bleeding a poison into our world… a corruption far worse than any monster."
"The Void?" he asked, thinking of the Warden's words.
A shimmer of what might have been a sad nod.
"It is an endless hunger. A sentient emptiness. The Arcana lineage, our family, we were not its masters. We were its wardens. We were meant to keep it balanced, to keep it chained."
She raised a hand of pure, golden light, and he could almost feel its warmth.
"But some saw it as a weapon. They tried to harness it. They broke the chains. When the Ever-Gate collapsed, I had a choice. Let the Void consume everything… or become the lock on its door."
Tears streamed down Michael's face, hot and real in this unreal space.
"Dad… does he know?"
"He knows I am gone," the echo of his mother said, her voice tinged with a deep, aching love. "He knows I made a sacrifice. He does not know what I became to do it. He does not know about the Void. I made him promise to protect you from it. To let you live a normal life."
She gestured to his chest, to the place where his soul resided.
"The Seal I placed on you was not a cage, my son. It was a shield. It was meant to hide you from the Void's hunger, and from those who would use you as they tried to use me."
A new, urgent notification flashed at the edge of his vision.
[GATE COLLAPSE IMMINENT: 00:01:15]
The starry space around them began to flicker, the image of his mother distorting like a bad signal.
"I'm going to find you," Michael said, his voice thick with a new, fierce determination. "I'm going to break the Seal and I'm going to get you back."
Her light-blurred face seemed to fill with a sudden, sharp alarm.
"No, Michael! You don't understand! The Seal is me! It is the last of my conscious will! To break it is to…"
The connection shattered.
CRACK!
He was back in the damp, stinking cave.
The Tunnel Skitterers were gone, having finally fled into the darkness.
The shimmering, oil-slick Gate was flickering violently, spasming like a dying heart.
He scrambled to his feet, his mind reeling from the revelation.
The Seal is me.
To break it… was to destroy her.
He shoved the thought down, his heart a block of ice in his chest. He couldn't process that now.
He had to get out.
He sprinted towards the wavering portal, his feet splashing in the foul water.
He burst through the Gate just as it imploded behind him with a silent, violent pop, the air rushing in to fill the vacuum. VWOOMP!
He was back in the cavernous, dark space of Warehouse 7.
He leaned against a concrete pillar, panting, his head a chaotic storm of grief and power and impossible choices.
He was covered in monster gore.
His hoodie was a tattered ruin.
His pockets were filled with illegally harvested, Void-Tainted monster cores.
And he was not alone.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
The sound of multiple safeties being disengaged echoed in the vast, empty warehouse.
Bright, blinding flashlights pinned him against the pillar.
He could see the silhouettes of at least a dozen figures in tactical DGC armor, their energy rifles all aimed directly at his chest.
"Freeze, Hunter!" a voice boomed, sharp and cold. "On your knees! Hands where I can see them!"
Michael just stared, his mind blank with shock.
A woman with a severe haircut and a DGC captain's insignia on her armor stepped forward, her sidearm drawn.
She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering on the silvery, shimmering scar on his arm.
Her expression was a mixture of suspicion and a cold, dawning recognition.
She raised her comms to her lips, but her eyes never left his.
"This is Captain Valerius," she said, her voice dangerously low. "We have an Unregistered Awakened at the scene of an E-Rank Gate collapse. Subject is a male, late teens."
She paused, taking another step closer, her gaze hardening.
"And run a priority search on the Hunter registry. The name is Marcus… I think we just found his kid."