The ashlands were never truly quiet, but there were rhythms Zeke had learned to trust. The hiss of insects beneath the crust, the skitter of rodents daring the surface, the distant crackle of fissures exhaling fire. Together they formed a song of survival, each note a warning, a reassurance, a pattern.
Today, that pattern broke again.
The wind shifted.
It came first as a dry whisper, sliding over the surface of the ash like a knife across brittle bone. Then it swelled, carrying more than heat. Zeke's filaments quivered, their vibrations lost in a sudden rush of grit and soot. The horizon blurred, swallowed by a wall of gray that advanced with the inevitability of tide.
An ashstorm.
The silence he had worked so hard to preserve shattered instantly. Threads screamed as particles lashed against them, clogging, smothering, obscuring every trace of prey. He could sense nothing beyond a handspan.
The hunger stirred.
"Prey hidden. Vision gone. I am blind."
The storm struck in full, ash lashing his body with a thousand stinging cuts. His amorphous form resisted blunt trauma, but the sheer volume of grit pressed heavy, weighing him down. He dimmed instinctively, sinking low against stone. But even there, the storm dug deep, filling cracks, burying.
If he stayed still, he would be swallowed.
Split Against the Storm
He tore himself apart. Split surged outward, fragments scattering in a wide circle. Eight, then nine, until each was small enough to be carried by the wind instead of crushed beneath it. The pressure lessened—but the strain multiplied. Threads shrieked, stretched across a storm that shredded connection with every gust.
One fragment slipped, tumbling away into the haze. He caught it by instinct, threads reeling it back before it dissolved into nothing. Mana bled violently, his core trembling with effort.
"This is not prey. This is world."
The thought hit sharp. He had faced predators, reflections of himself. But this was different. The ashstorm was not a hunter. It did not think. It simply consumed all equally, blind and unfeeling. He could not outwit it. He could only endure.
Instability
Fragments spun around him, carried in chaotic eddies. Some slammed against stone, tearing filaments. Others tangled, knotting threads until he nearly snapped them to pull free. Every motion wasted mana. Every breathless moment frayed him thinner.
The hunger flared again, sharper now, whispering promises. Consume. Take more mass. Grow heavy. The storm cannot bury what outweighs it.
He denied it. "No. Heavier is slower. Slower is death."
But the whisper remained, gnawing.
For a terrifying instant, he considered yielding—swelling with prey until he anchored against the storm. But then he remembered the Ash Stalker's claws, how weight had nearly doomed him. He forced the thought down, threads straining to hold fragments in their dance.
Resonance in the Haze
Blind, he reached inward for balance. If his threads frayed, he would vanish. He needed more than Split.
Light pulsed in one fragment, faint but steady. Darkness pooled in another, swallowing the storm's grit without trace. When their edges brushed, resonance flickered. The storm bent around them, a pocket of stillness carved in chaos.
Zeke quivered. "Resonance shields."
He held them together, barely, long enough to stabilize three other fragments. The pressure eased for a heartbeat. The hunger screamed at the drain, but he ignored it.
Then the resonance buckled. Light flared uncontrolled, Darkness collapsed inward, and the shield tore apart in an explosion of soot. Fragments reeled, threads near snapping.
He dimmed violently. "Not yet. Not steady enough."
Anchor in the Depths
The storm raged on. Ash piled high, burying fragments in choking layers. He needed shelter.
One filament, stretched thin, brushed against a hollow in stone. A fissure crack—narrow, but deep. Without hesitation, he lashed threads toward it, dragging fragments one by one into the crevice. The descent scraped his body raw, but the storm's roar dulled as stone walls closed around him.
Darkness swallowed him, broken only by faint red glow from deep below. The fissure pulsed with heat, alive with the breath of magma far beneath.
Safe from the storm—yet not safe.
Heat pressed heavy here, more oppressive than the ash above. His body quivered as Fire affinity resonated unbidden, flames sparking at his edges. The hunger swelled, fed by the energy saturating the air.
"If I lose control here, I burn."
Hunger's Trial
He did not flee.
Instead, he split again, this time not against storm, but against hunger. Nine fragments lined the fissure wall, each trembling with heat. Threads stretched tight, forcing equal share of fire into each. They pulsed together like organs of a single body, scattering the burden across many.
The hunger fought, urging one fragment to swell, to gorge, to devour the heat in a rush. Zeke strangled it, pushing balance instead.
Assimilate, but not consume.
The heat entered slowly, braided into his essence thread by thread. It burned, but the burn was steady, controlled.
"Yes." His pulse vibrated faintly through the stone. "I will feed, but not gorge. I will burn, but not collapse."
One fragment nearly burst, fire leaking uncontrolled. He tightened the thread, forcing stability. Sweat of mana bled away, but the fragment held.
For hours, he remained there—storm howling above, fire pressing below, his fragments bound between.
The Choice of Weight
When the storm finally began to die, the fissure no longer felt like prison. It felt like trial.
He gathered himself slowly, fragments rejoining with deliberate precision. Each step forced discipline. The heaviness returned, mass pressing down, hunger urging him to scatter again.
But this time, the weight did not feel only dangerous. It felt instructive.
"Weight breaks threads. But weight also tempers them. If I can draw it inward, not scatter, then I do not bleed. I do not waste."
Compress. The phantom skill pulsed just beyond reach, whispering at the edges of his awareness. Not yet his—but nearer.
He climbed from the fissure, the storm fading into gentle dust. The horizon shimmered with new calm. Prey trembled back into the open, faint heartbeats against ash.
He did not lunge. Not yet.
Instead, he dimmed low against the stone, listening to the silence within. The hunger still prowled, but its fangs felt duller now.
He had endured storm and fire. He had not scattered into nothing.
He pulsed faintly, resolve firm. "I will not be undone."
System Update
Status
Name: Ezekiel Ashbourne
Race: Prime Slime (Unevolved)
Level: 12
Affinity: Fire (Basic), Light (Basic), Darkness (Basic)
Stats
STR: 7
AGI: 7
VIT: 10
WIL: 10
RES: 11
MNA: 38
CTL: 13
Skills
Active Skills:
Split (Lv.4): Divide body into fragments. Fragments sustain longer, coordinate better, and bleed less mana. Overflow dispersal more efficient.
Assimilate (Lv.6): Absorb matter or energy to recover essence; smoother, more efficient absorption. Can now pull minor elemental traces.
Pseudopod (Lv.6): Tentacle-like appendages with whip precision and crushing power. Limited to two, but refined.
Passive Skills:
Amorphous Body (Lv.6): Immune to blunt trauma, flexible morphology. Reshapes seamlessly under combat pressure.