I should've known the silence meant they'd made their choice.
Alarms still howled. The monster was loose. Screams echoed from the upper floors—flesh tearing, metal crumpling, reality bending. But in the control room, behind reinforced glass, they just stared at me.
No one moved to open the door.
"No," I muttered. "No, don't do this."
Their faces stayed frozen. Ashwin. Zara. Lieutenant Miko. Even Yui, her hand still on the override key.
I pounded the glass. "You can't trap me in here!"
"Containment breach. Level Seven entity," the system droned overhead. "Please evacuate with haste."
But they didn't move.
Ashwin pressed the intercom, his voice quiet. "You're the only one it won't kill immediately. It... studies before it feeds."
"You sons of—"
Yui flinched. "I'm sorry, Caius."
Then she turned the key. The outer doors locked. I felt the thud in my bones.
"You said we were a team!" I screamed. "You said if one of us dies, we all die!"
"Yeah," Ashwin said, eyes flat. "We lied."
I stared. For a second, I couldn't hear the alarms. Couldn't hear the thing snarling down the corridor.
All I could hear was them.
I saw the fear in Zara's eyes. The guilt on Yui's face. Miko not even pretending to care. And Ashwin—the one who used to call me brother—smirking like he'd just signed my death warrant.
Then the glass went dark.
And the monster came through the door behind me.
I didn't run. I didn't scream.
I turned to face it.
It was a beast made of claws, wires and something far older than the modern world could comprehend. No eyes. No mouth. Yet I felt as if it were laughing at me.
The last thing I could remember was it pouncing on me. Everything went void—no thoughts, no heartbeat, none of my senses worked anymore.
Until...
I woke choking.
Not air—blood. Someone else's. My throat was raw. My lungs panicked. Cold stone pressed against my back. I was tied—arms, legs, neck.
My vision flickered.
People were chanting.
"Offer the cursed one. Offer the cursed one"
A bonfire roared ahead. And me? I was upside down, roped to a wooden pole like meat about to be roasted.
What the hell—
Then it came back. All of it.
The lab. The monster. The betrayal.
Ashwin's voice. "We lied."
I twisted, coughed, spat out a scream. "I'M STILL ALIVE, YOU BASTARDS!"
The crowd gasped.
Someone dropped a torch. A woman screamed. A child began crying.
"He speaks," someone whispered. "It's awake."
A man in robes stepped forward, his eyes sunken deep into his skull. "The cursed one awakens in the vessel. Ten years... and still, the mark remains."
He lifted his hands.
The crowd parted.
A priestess in crimson walked forward, holding a dagger of obsidian.
"This child," she said solemnly, "bears the taint of the forgotten gods. He must be given, or the blood tide returns."
I wasn't listening.
Not anymore.
A screen flickered behind my eyelids. Not visible to them, but clear as glass to me.
[SYSTEM BOOTING…]
Host Signature Detected: Caius Maren
Age: 10
Affinity: Logic [basic], Telekinesis [Suppressed]
Status: Soul Bond Complete
Memory Integration: 93%
My hands were still bound, but my mind was already spinning.
Ashwin betrayed me. The monster devoured me.
So why the hell were they not the ones tied to a pole?
Unless—
I strained to look up.
In the crowd, someone moved. A face. Familiar.
Zara.
Ten years older. Cloaked. Pretending not to see me.
They were here.
All of them.
Reincarnated.
Watching.
Because they got the message too.
"One year. Only one of you may live. The rest will fade."
This wasn't salvation.
This was punishment.
I stopped struggling.
Instead, I smiled.
The priestess raised the dagger high, calling on flames to swallow me.
But I wasn't afraid anymore.
Because now I remembered everything.
And I wasn't dying again without taking them all with me.
The priestess began her chant. The crowd echoed her, louder now. Zealots drunk on fear.
But I kept smiling.
"One year," I whispered to myself. "And only one of us lives."
I let the words wrap around my mind like silk. One year to survive. One year to hunt. One year... to make them suffer.
My fingers twitched. Just once.
The obsidian dagger glinted in the firelight, descending.
But the flames bent the wrong way.
Wind howled through the square. The sky flickered static blue for a heartbeat—like a system glitch.
The dagger stopped. Mid-air.
The priestess froze. Her mouth still moved, but no sound came.
I looked her in the eye, upside down and smiling.
"Prepare for despair," I whispered.
Then the world broke in half.