The night smelled of smoke.
Not the faint kind, but the deep, choking kind that sticks in your lungs and makes every breath a blade. I lay among the ruins of my village, staring at beams blackened and twisted into shapes that looked like screaming hands.
The stars were dim, shrouded by smoke, as if the sky itself had turned its back on us.
Ash drifted down like snow. I didn't brush it off. Why bother? My village was gone. Everyone I'd ever known—gone. And the silence that replaced their voices pressed down on me harder than any weight I'd ever carried.
I was the only one left.
The screams replayed themselves behind my eyes: neighbors clawing at doors, mothers clutching children, fathers fighting shadows. I remembered my mother's hand, reaching for me before fire swallowed her. I ran. I survived.
But survivor's guilt is heavier than any demon.
A low growl broke the silence. Wet, guttural, animalistic. My head snapped toward the treeline.
A shadow moved. Shimmered. Bent the darkness around it.
A demon.
Its shape was wrong—once human, now something else. Limbs too long, skin bubbling and peeling, jaw split with jagged teeth. Its eyes burned like molten coals.
It sniffed the air.
And then it lunged.
Time fractured.
Before its claws closed, my vision filled with faint silver glyphs pulsing across my sight. Words I didn't understand, yet knew.
[System Awakening Detected.]
A voice whispered inside my skull. Cold. Precise.
"Do you wish to live?"
I froze. Then shouted, "Yes!"
The glyphs flared. Pain tore through me. My bones, my blood, my mind—it all burned.
And then… I moved.
One moment the demon's claws grazed me—the next, I was behind it. My knees buckled as if the shadows themselves had carried me.
[Skill Unlocked: Shadow Step I]
The creature snarled, spinning toward me. I grabbed a broken beam of wood. My hands were slick with sweat and ash.
The demon lunged again. Pain shot through my shoulder. My fingers slipped, the wood clattering to the ground.
The System whispered again, calm as frost:
"Strike. Or die."
Adrenaline surged. Shadows coiled from my body, black tendrils wrapping around the demon's limbs. It thrashed, screeching, but I forced the beam into its side.
Black ichor sizzled where it touched the ground. The creature's head twisted unnaturally, then went still.
I stumbled back, chest heaving. The shadows recoiled into me, leaving trails across my arms, veins pulsing faintly black.
I had survived. I had killed.
But the whispers lingered:
"This power will keep you alive. But every gift has a cost."
From the treeline, a new growl cut through the smoke—deeper, hungrier, closer.
I froze. My hands shook. The System's glyphs dimmed, leaving only the weight of those words.
The whispers lingered, cold as frost: "This power will keep you alive. But every gift has a cost."
From the treeline, a new growl cut through the smoke—deeper, hungrier, closer. I froze. My hands shook. The System's glyphs dimmed, leaving only the weight of those words and the thundering of my heart.
The first creature had been a twisted husk, but this one was bigger. It lumbered out of the woods, a beast made of stitched-together limbs and raw muscle. Its jaw was wide enough to swallow my head whole, and its eyes weren't just burning coals—they held a faint, malicious intelligence.
I was exhausted. My shoulder burned where the first demon's claws had grazed me, and my muscles screamed from the sheer shock of activating the System's power. There was no time to think, only to react.
The System's voice returned, a calm, terrifying directive: "Threat level: High. Recommend Evasion."
Evasion? My village was gone. Where was there to go?
I turned and ran, my feet stumbling over charred rubble and the cold shapes of what used to be homes. The beast followed, its heavy footfalls shaking the ground. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw it closing the distance, a dark blur of teeth and claws. It was faster than I was, stronger.
Desperation clawed at my throat. I looked for a weapon, anything, but there was only ash and broken wood. The System's voice crackled again, but this time it felt different, less a command and more a frantic, cold calculation.
"Warning: Threat gaining. Proximity alarm at critical. New skill acquisition available. Cost... High."
A new set of glyphs appeared before my eyes. They weren't just descriptions; they were a choice. One icon showed a fist cloaked in shadow, another a burst of speed. Both had warnings below them, a list of potential costs I couldn't fully comprehend in my panic.
I didn't care. I chose the one that felt most direct, most immediate. The fist.
A searing pain tore through my knuckles, and a wave of darkness surged from my hand, a solid, tangible blackness that flowed into the broken ground around me. It was like a piece of my soul was being ripped out and forged into something else.
The beast was on me. Its stench—of rot and death—filled my nostrils. I didn't think; I just acted. I threw a punch, a desperate, wild swing.
But the punch wasn't mine. The darkness I'd felt coursing through my arm now coalesced into a dense, hardened fist of shadow. It slammed into the beast's chest with a sickening crunch. The creature roared in pain and was thrown back, skidding across the ground, a hole in its ribcage where the shadow-fist had struck.
I stumbled, my hand now throbbing, the veins in my arm glowing with a faint, angry black. The beast was hurt, but not dead. It was already pulling itself up, its eyes fixed on me with pure hatred.
I had survived, but I was out of tricks, and my body was screaming in protest. The System was silent, leaving me alone with the consequences of my choice. I was no longer the boy who had just run; I was a hunter, a killer, and I had just made myself a bigger target.
The beast lunged again, its roars now a promise of slow, painful death. I braced myself, my newly acquired power fading, my energy spent. My gaze darted around, searching for a miracle.
And then, I saw it.
From the dark, smoking wreckage of a house, something shimmered. A piece of metal, pulsating with a faint, sickly green light. It called to me, a silent, desperate whisper in the chaos. A relic.
But I wasn't the only one who saw it. The beast's head snapped toward the light, its predatory focus shifting from me to the new source of power.
The beast is drawn to the glowing relic, giving Elias a momentary reprieve. He is faced with a new, immediate choice: fight for the mysterious object that could be his salvation or his doom, or run while he still can, leaving an unknown power in the hands of a monster.