As Ren staggered toward a flat stone at the water's edge, his battered body begging for respite, a sudden, razor-sharp agony ignited in his eyes. The pain was so violent it felt as though molten iron had been poured into his skull. Blood welled up unbidden, running hot down his cheeks in crimson trails. His knees buckled, and he collapsed with a strangled cry, clutching his face.
"What the hell is this again?!" he roared, the sound cracking between fury and desperation.
Then it came—like a drumbeat in the hollow of his skull.
Water!
The word wasn't a whisper; it was a command. A pulse. An alarm.
Stumbling forward with blind determination, Ren hurled himself into the rushing current. The shock of the cold water hit him like a spear, but instead of resisting, his battered frame surrendered. The current swallowed him whole, carrying his body beneath its icy embrace.
For a moment, he forgot everything—the blood, the pain, the hunger. The water seeped into his pores, washing away the caked gore on his skin and the phantom stench of the beast he had consumed. It seeped into wounds, stinging, cleansing, numbing.
His breathing slowed. His pounding heart eased its frantic rhythm. The fire in his eyes dimmed to embers, soothed by the chilling flow.
He floated there, half-dead, half-alive, letting the water cradle him like an ancient womb.
Time bled into nothingness. Maybe thirty minutes passed. Maybe longer. When at last he dared to open his eyes, he was met not with the glittering surface of the waterfall's basin but with absolute blackness.
"Huh?" His voice cracked, thin and broken. "I'm… blind? Again?"
Panic surged through him, hot and suffocating. His hands clawed at his face, his eyes, searching for something—anything. The darkness didn't waver.
"No… no, no, no, no!" His voice rose into a scream, torn raw with anguish. "What the fuck!!!!"
His thrashing body betrayed him. In his desperation, he inhaled sharply, and the water rushed into his mouth, burning down his throat. His scream turned into a violent sputter. He convulsed, choking as icy liquid flooded his lungs.
Cough! Cough! Cough!
He broke the surface, gasping like a drowning animal. Each cough sent blood-tinged water spraying from his mouth, his chest heaving violently as he clawed at the air for breath.
But when the spasms subsided and his ragged breaths filled the cavern, the blackness remained.
Unforgiving. All-consuming.
He was confused as to what to do. Whether he should just lie in the freezing water and accept death, or thrash about in some last act of foolish resistance, he didn't know. That was when it appeared again—the system screen. Its dark gold characters burned across the black void before his eyes.
[Requirements Met!]
[Path of the BEAST Initialized!]
[Soul Assimilation Beginning Shortly… Countdown Initiated.]
Ren's breath hitched, his chest tightening.
"Huh? Soul assimilation? What the… no—fuck! It was real!" His voice broke, panic bleeding into every syllable. "Will I die? Answer me!"
The screen pulsed once before responding.
[Replying…]
[Death should have been your fate. Yet, by the grace of Him, you shall persist. Not as you are, but as something new. Your body shall serve as the foundation—rebuilt, reforged into the perfect vessel for His will. Rejoice, mortal, for your existence has been spared.]
Ren froze. That voice—calm, absolute—chilled him deeper than the water ever could.
"…He said something like that before." His throat was dry, his words trembling. "So… what will I become?"
A pause. Then the most crushing answer imaginable:
[I do not know.]
It was a hammer blow to his chest. The entity—whatever it was—didn't even care enough to grant him clarity. He was reminded, yet again, how insignificant he was in the vast order of things. A pawn. A placeholder. A worthless shell.
How would anyone feel if the one thing they truly owned—their body, their flesh, their very self—was stripped away to house another? Pride broke inside him like glass. Sorrow didn't even come; only disappointment, dull and suffocating.
And yet… some spark inside refused to die. That figure he had seen—that overwhelming, incomprehensible being—it had promised him something, hadn't it?
"We will survive together."
His lips quivered into the faintest, bitterest smile. "If you keep your word… then maybe this won't be so bad."
The timer hit zero.
[Soul Assimilation Commencing in… 3… 2… 1…]
The words blazed across the darkness, and his world collapsed into a storm of light and pain.