The thugs stumbled backward, their laughter gone. Silence swallowed the alley, broken only by the screams of the one bound in chains. He thrashed desperately, but the black links only tightened, digging into his flesh as if alive. His strength drained with every passing second, his cries turning weaker, more desperate.
Laine's chest rose and fell, but his feet hadn't moved. He hadn't lifted a finger.
It wasn't him.
It was the mask—or perhaps something far deeper.
The crimson eye fused to his arm pulsed faster, steady as a drumbeat, sending waves of heat coursing through his veins. His starving stomach no longer twisted in pain. His trembling legs, which once could barely carry him, now felt as firm and unyielding as stone.
His lips parted, and a single word slipped out, almost afraid of itself.
"…Power."
With a sharp snap, the chains retracted. The half-dead thug collapsed, dragged across the dirt like a discarded rag. The others froze, horror painted across their faces. Then instinct took over—they bolted, tripping over each other, scrambling into the shadows like rats fleeing a fire.
The alley grew silent again.
But the silence was not empty.
It carried whispers.
"Kill… devour… rise…"
Laine clutched his arm, sweat streaming down his pale face. His instincts screamed at him to tear the mask away. But he knew, with a sinking certainty, it was no longer separate. The mask had become him.
His knees hit the ground, breath shaking. The night pressed heavy on his shoulders. He closed his eyes, and the Ancestor's words carved themselves into his thoughts once more:
Live like a worm… or rise as a monster.
Tears blurred his vision. His life until now flashed before him—days of begging, nights of hunger, the kicks, the jeers, the way people had looked through him as if he didn't exist. He had endured it all, powerless, less than nothing.
And now, in a single moment, the world had shifted.
No one looked at him with pity anymore. No one dared to mock him. They looked at him with fear.
A broken laugh escaped his lips, trembling, almost disbelieving.
"…Is this… what it truly means to live?"
The crimson eye blinked once, glowing faintly in the dark.
Laine's laugh died, replaced by something sharper. Inside him, a new voice rose—no, not a voice, but a conviction.
No more scraps. No more begging. No more fear.
He pushed himself to his feet, every nerve alive, every muscle thrumming with new strength. The chains had melted back into the steel, but their power still pulsed inside him, a heartbeat of vengeance and raw hunger.
The night seemed different now. The shadows bent. The streets looked smaller, weaker, as if the city itself bowed before the change.
Laine clenched his fists, heat from the mask flowing into his veins. His hunger, his pain, his weakness—everything he had endured—was no longer a curse. It was fuel.
And for the first time in his life, he smiled.
Not the smile of a beggar. Not the smile of despair.
But the smile of reckoning.
The city would remember this night. The thugs would remember his name.
"I am no longer the boy they ignored," Laine whispered, voice steady as steel. "I am the storm they will never forget."
Far away, destiny stirred. The path of a monster had begun.