The night shift was quiet. It always was.
Erwin's boots splashed through shallow puddles as he moved along the underlevels of Kyros Spire. The lowest tier of the Zyphora Dominion's capital was a place most citizens never saw a maze of service corridors, rusted pipes, and forgotten maintenance tunnels.
Up above, the city glittered with neon and glass. Down here, the light came from buzzing strips bolted to the walls, their glow warped by grime. The air smelled of damp concrete and old oil.
He preferred it this way. No crowds. No questions. Just him, the hum of ancient machinery, and the weight of the delivery crate strapped to his back.
Halfway to his drop point, the ground trembled. Not the quick jolt of a passing mag-train ...this was deeper, heavier, as if the city itself had taken a breath.
The lights flickered. Somewhere above, glass shattered.
A low groan rolled through the street, and the pavement split open. It didn't break like stone should. It curled upward, peeling back in jagged slabs, revealing a darkness that swallowed the glow around it.
Erwin froze. The void pulsed, and for a heartbeat he thought he heard something breathing.
A delivery drone spiraled down into the hole, vanishing without a sound. The edges crumbled faster, swallowing cables, pipes, and chunks of the street.
Then he saw it — a shadow moving inside the black. Too big to be human. Too wrong to be anything else.
The ground beneath him gave way.
He fell.
The city vanished above in a blink. The air turned cold and heavy, pressing against his skin. Shapes shifted in the dark, their outlines jagged and alien.
Something brushed against his mind. A voice, low and hungry, whispered:
Feed… and live.
He hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. For a moment, he lay there, gasping, staring up at a sky that wasn't a sky at all — a swirling dome of black mist, shot through with faint, shifting lights like distant stars.
The ground beneath him was uneven, a patchwork of cracked stone and something softer, almost like flesh. It pulsed faintly under his palms.
Erwin pushed himself up, wincing. His crate was gone. So was the street. So was everything he knew.
The air was thick, damp, and carried a faint metallic tang. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped in a slow, steady rhythm.
Then he heard it — a wet, dragging sound.
He turned.
Something was moving toward him.
It crawled on too many limbs, its body a twisted mass of bone and sinew, its head nothing more than a gaping ring of teeth. Its skin shimmered faintly, as if it were half-submerged in water that wasn't there.
Erwin stumbled back. His heart pounded so hard it hurt.
The creature lunged.
Instinct took over. He grabbed a chunk of broken stone and swung. The impact jarred his arm, but the thing barely flinched. It slammed into him, knocking him to the ground.
The teeth closed in.
Something inside him snapped. Not fear — something deeper. A pull. A hunger.
His vision narrowed. The creature's movements slowed, every detail sharp and clear. He saw the faint glow deep inside its chest, pulsing in time with his own heartbeat.
Without thinking, he reached for it.
His hand plunged into the creature's body as if the flesh were smoke. His fingers closed around the light — and tore it free.
The creature convulsed, then collapsed into nothing. The light in his hand sank into his skin, flooding him with heat.
A voice whispered again, closer this time:
Essence acquired.
Information bloomed in his mind, not in words but in understanding. Beast Essence — minor physical enhancement. Corruption risk: minimal.
Erwin staggered back, clutching his chest. His breathing was faster, his muscles tighter, his senses sharper.
The hunger inside him purred.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know what that thing had been. But he knew one thing:
If he wanted to survive, he'd have to feed it again.