The contract sealed, Nicolo's body burned as if filled with molten silver. His veins pulsed with lines of starlight, his thin frame trembling under a power he didn't understand.
The Dweller's voice—Will—whispered through him:
"Every path has a price. You have already paid yours."
But Nicolo didn't hear it. He only saw the nightmare in front of him—12 choking on her own blood, children screaming, soldiers dying under the claws of the wilderness creatures.
Instinct pushed him forward.
The glow across his arms sharpened into threads of light, like strands of a constellation tugged from the heavens. They shot outward, weaving into shapes—glimmering arrows, chains of shifting lines, paths that bent space itself.
Nicolo didn't know what he was doing. He only knew that if he moved where the threads pulled him, the monsters faltered. Their claws struck air, their fangs snapped at illusions, their bodies stumbled over phantom steps.
Luck had become weaponized. His curse was no longer random—it was guided.
But for every creature that fell to his threads, another child's scream went silent in the distance. Nicolo didn't notice—couldn't notice—that the contract had already claimed them. Hundreds of children, devoured or slaughtered, now became the fuel of his first fight.
Unknowing, he fought like a star burning itself awake.