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Chapter 3
The box… it needed more.
Countless souls had already been devoured, yet no one knew how many it would take.
The box only consumed—it never returned anything.
And it wasn't forged from the materials of this world.
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The machine had done its job.
Warning lights flickered, alarms blared… but who was left to hear them?
The glass chamber opened, and the boy collapsed onto the floor.
He drew in sharp breaths, tasting the faint metallic scent of blood.
He tried to stand, only to fall again.
Every movement was clumsy—like learning to walk for the first time.
He didn't know who he was.
He couldn't even speak.
He was nothing more than a war machine, built to fight, forced to kill…
…until his own brother ended his life.
Leaning against the cold wall, he stumbled toward the shattered doors.
Rows of broken soul containers lined the corridor, glowing in fractured colors.
He picked one up.
It froze instantly in his palm.
Startled, he tossed it away.
Yes… these were the souls of the rich.
Criminals, exploiters… but wealth had bought them immortality.
Anyone with enough coin could be reborn.
A cold mist followed him as he stepped outside, freezing every container he passed.
A field of grass stretched before him—a secluded island, hidden from the world, meant only for revival and protection.
He crouched down, plucked a blade of grass.
It froze in his fingers.
He placed it on his tongue.
Bitter… unfamiliar.
Rabbits hopped nearby—once kept as pets, now nothing more than meat.
One tried to flee to its burrow.
Frozen mid-air, helpless.
Crunch.
Crunch…
He tore through its flesh, the taste metallic and wild… yet intoxicating.
Blood dripped from his lips as the scent of slaughter thickened in the air.
The other rabbits panicked, scrambling, but what could they do against this creature?
One by one, he devoured them—not out of hunger, not instinct…
…but from a darker thirst, a desperate attempt to awaken shattered memories.
In the silence that followed, he sat alone in the frozen field,
blood pooling beneath him,
his hollow eyes fixed on the gray sky.
No memories.
No name.
Only the quiet hunger of a soul reborn as a monster.
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