The air thickened without warning.
Black fumes slithered into existence, curling around me like a nest of serpents. My half-burned arms, my torn legs—the same broken flesh I thought was gone, scattered in pieces across the vault—stitched themselves back together. Bone, muscle, skin… clawing, writhing, forcing themselves back into place with a grotesque kind of rebirth.
The sound was worse than the sight. Wet tearing. Bones grinding against themselves like stones. My own sinews pulling taut, snapping into alignment with sharp, electric jolts of pain.
Who the hell would've expected this? Not me. Not in reality. Things like this only happen in nightmares. But this—this was real.
The fumes coiled tighter, spiraling upward, lifting me into the air as if invisible hands had claimed me for their own. My body dangled like a marionette on strings I couldn't see.
I didn't know where they came from.
I didn't know why they clung to me.
But they did. And they weren't letting go.
What really unsettled me was not the pain, not the sensation of being rebuilt piece by piece—it was the look on Bheeshma's face.
A flicker. Disbelief. A soldier who had seen monsters and wars, who had carved down armies, looking at me like I was the aberration.
"What's happening…?" His voice cracked.
Behind me, Vault B10 groaned. The restricted zone—steel walls reinforced with layered alloys, encrypted locks, and C.O.S.M.O.S.'s paranoia—throbbed like a living thing. Each metallic pulse vibrated through the air, setting my teeth on edge.
Then—pressure.
It came like a fist squeezing the entire chamber. The oxygen turned heavy, crushing. Bheeshma dropped to a knee, his skin slick with sweat, teeth grinding as the force doubled… tripled.
And then—
BOOM.
The vault split like rotten wood, spilling black light into the world.
From inside, something emerged. Not with violence. Not with noise. It simply drifted out, still and deliberate.
A lotus. Blacker than shadow. Its petals swallowed light itself, each movement so unnervingly smooth it was like watching oil ripple on water.
Bheeshma's voice broke, desperation leaking into every word.
"What is that flower…? That intensity? Chairman—what secrets have you hidden?"
The lotus reached me. And unfurled.
Its twenty-four petals slid apart like surgical blades, and then—without hesitation—they pressed themselves into my eyes.
One.
By.
One.
The pain was instant. No warm-up. No slow burn. It was molten agony. Like someone was pouring fire straight into my skull, carving out my vision, and replacing it with something else. My veins lit up like wires overloaded with current. My bones creaked as if they wanted to split apart from the inside.
I screamed. A sound not human anymore. A sound I didn't recognize as mine.
Through the haze of suffering, I caught Bheeshma's face. Frozen. Unreadable. His fists clenched, not from rage, but from something closer to… powerlessness.
And then it ended.
The silence after the pain was deafening.
I wasn't a nineteen-year-old boy anymore.
I stood taller. Heavier. My very shadow warped, stretching like it didn't belong to me. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a shattered fragment of steel. Not a man. Not human. A silhouette carved from nightmare.
I clenched my fists. Power surged through me, intoxicating. Yet wrong. My movements blurred, twitched, acted on their own accord. My limbs responded to intentions I hadn't even thought of yet.
And strangely—I didn't care.
Why should I care?
When every twitch, every involuntary motion, spilled blood and tore flesh. Why resist when I could feel the hot, slick proof of my dominance coating my hands?
Bheeshma's face twisted. Not fear. Something worse—humiliation.
For an A-rank soldier, failing to kill me instantly wasn't just defeat. It was sacrilege.
"Don't you dare think you'll walk out of here alive!" he roared.
His aura flared. His attack was sharp, desperate.
"Judgement Arc!"
Pathetic. Typical. Every so-called legend clings to a name, to a ritual, screaming their moves like priests calling gods that never answer. His arm exploded in plasma, each swing fast enough to shred steel to ribbons.
Not a single strike touched me.
Before he could breathe, my fist buried itself in his gut. Dead center. Right where his Volt Chakra pulsed.
The impact folded him. His body ripped through floor after floor—ten levels down.
I landed lightly, my body an executioner's blade cutting through the battlefield.
Around me, chaos. Soldiers sprawled. Moaning. Silent. Unconscious. Maybe dead. I didn't care.
Then I saw it.
The Necradron. A grotesque serpent, its body writhing, scales slick and alive, dozens of eyes sliding and blinking across its flesh.
And fighting it—Bheema. C.O.S.M.O.S.'s right hand. Elder brother of the broken man I'd just gutted. Stone Chakra hardened his fists, each strike pounding against the beast with desperate grit.
Then his gaze cut toward me. He saw his brother. And then he saw me.
"What the fuck happened here, Bheeshma!?" His glare burned through me. "Who… no. What are you?"
The beast roared at him, saving me the trouble of an answer.
Bheema snarled. "Begone, ugly!" He slammed a Terra Fist into the monster's side, then sealed it within a stone dome. His grin was manic. "Match isn't over, worm."
The Necradron shrieked, its Psychic Roar vibrating the air. Bheema staggered, blood running from his ears.
But the beast wasn't looking at him anymore. It was looking at me. And it knew.
Something worse than itself was standing right here.
My body didn't wait. It obeyed the command in my blood.
I tore through the Terra Shield like it was wet paper and smashed my hand across the Necradron's skull.
Its scream wasn't rage this time. It was fear.
Black fumes poured from its wounds, funneling into me. Into their rightful master.
And in that moment, I understood.
The fumes were mine. They had always been mine. The soldiers hadn't been torn apart by monsters. They had fallen to me. To my hunger.
The Necradron went limp.
Power flooded my body, sharper than thought, heavier than blood.
I didn't hesitate. I ripped the beast's corpse apart, hurling chunks of its flesh into the already-crippled C.O.S.M.O.S. headquarters. The meteor strike had left it hanging by threads. My hand delivered the final cut.
The building folded in on itself, a roar of rubble and screams. Those inside—dead, alive, begging—it didn't matter.
Through the haze, I saw them. Eyes. Hundreds. Watching me.
And I leapt. Again. Again. Higher. My lungs burned. My body soared, weightless.
Until I saw it.
A building gleaming like some holy monument. Beautiful. Sacred. Radiant.
If you weren't me.
Then dizziness swallowed me whole. The air thinned. Gravity returned with vengeance.
I fell. Fast. Hard. A meteor stripped of flame.
The impact split asphalt, carving a crater into the road.
Flat on my back, staring into the sky, a thought slipped through my teeth like a curse. Freedom never lasts, does it?
Darkness smothered me.
When I woke, sunlight brushed against my face. My eyes opened to the same cramped, suffocating box I called home.
But the terror wasn't the walls.
It was the mark seared into my vision.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Black Lotus acknowledges your existence.
Welcome, slave of the petals.