The guards stood like salt statues, their faces blurred by the mist of their own frozen breath. The supernatural cold of the Void's brief paralysis was a fleeting gift. I could feel the cold receding, the silent timer about to run out.
I didn't waste a second on them. My focus was on the lock, a simple, heavy iron tumbler. It should have been easy, but Zayn Vyrn's hands were shaking violently. I forced the panic down, channeling my energy into the precise, intricate movements of my fingers. I was picking the lock with the cracked, ragged nails of a prisoner—a disgusting, desperate irony.
Two clicks. Three. The metal protested, grating like a dying machine. The noise was muffled, but in the absolute silence, it felt deafening. Come on. Give me the code.
I missed the clean, predictable logic of the old world. I missed the smell of good coffee and the sight of a neon city running on electricity, not this twisted, fungal magic.
The last tumbler fell. I drew the bolt back with excruciating slowness, the door shrieking against the wet stone floor. The sound was a hammer blow to my ears. I squeezed through the narrow gap, silent as a grease shadow, and paused, letting the Shadow Cloak wrap around me.
I moved along the outer corridor, pressing against the wall. I needed to confirm the Veilbreak I'd felt earlier—the sensation of my mind scraping against reality.
The cold pressure returned, not from the Void, but internal. It felt like a thin, sharp needle pricking my brain's core.
[Fracture Detected. Veiled Energy Signature: Guard (Proximity: High).] The Codex didn't warn; it labeled, its text dry and non-emotional.
I looked back at the nearest frozen guard. There it was: a faint, silver-grey glow wrapped around his uniform, emanating from his life force. It was the Veiled energy—his power, his essence. Low-grade, visible only to my fractured sight.
That's the code. The exploit for this system.
I reached out, my fingers trembling, and focused on the glow. It felt like trying to grab smoke—impossible, until suddenly, the resistance snapped. I pressed my hand against the granite wall for balance and forced the breach.
My mind buzzed violently, a thousand tiny, searing needles carving through my skull. I was forcing a system to yield, and the system fought back with agonizing feedback.
A thread of grey light peeled away from the guard's uniform, snapping like a cold wire. It flowed into my hand—an intense, icy sensation—and settled behind my sternum. The feeling was terrifyingly complete. It felt like a small, dead piece of his soul had been absorbed.
The guard's body shuddered violently, his eyes remaining vacant, but a thin trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. The faint glow on his uniform vanished.
I just stole that man's power. Worse than a crashed moral compass, this is outright piracy.
[New Skill Acquired: Shadow Cloak (F). Status: Partially Unveiled.]
I felt the immediate shift. The heavy shadows of the corridor seemed to deepen around me, clinging to my clothes, my shoulders, my back. I wasn't invisible, but the dark made me less like a person and more like a disturbance in the air. A blur in the black. F-Tier. It was a start.
Using the rudimentary stealth, I moved faster, navigating the winding, damp corridors. My fear was still there, a knot of ice in my gut, but the cold certainty of the Codex and the new ability gave me the confidence of a man who'd just found a zero-day exploit.
I slipped past the outer gates, which were still guarded by paralyzed men, and reached the final barrier—a high, moss-covered wall topped with crude spikes. I scrambled up, ignoring the way the rough stone scraped my stolen tunic.
I vaulted over and dropped down onto the outside.
My boots hit wet, slick cobblestone. A dense, cold fog immediately enveloped me, tasting like river water and the industrial soot of the slums. I was out. My objective was complete.
[Whisper: You are free. Power wakes.] The Codex confirmed my success with the dry finality of a terminal command.
I leaned against the prison's outer wall, inhaling the foggy air. The stench of the slums—a mix of old coal smoke, fish oil, and human waste—was somehow a perverse relief after the sterile rot of the prison.
I looked up. Beyond the fog, I saw it. The thing they had whispered about.
It was a slow, pulsing green glow that seemed to emanate from the ground itself, hanging like a sickly alien aurora over the horizon. Ebonscar. The place of voids and stolen dreams.
I was free, but now I was standing on the edge of the true danger. My mind raced, calculating the risk-reward of approaching that strange, luminous source of chaos.
Suddenly, the sense of dread returned, sharp and profound. It wasn't the creeping, supernatural horror of the Void, but the meticulous, intelligent awareness of a hunter.
I looked back at the massive, black outline of the prison tower.
High up, in a window that had previously been dark, a single glimmer of red light appeared. It was steady, patient, and utterly focused on me. I couldn't make out the figure—perhaps a man, perhaps a simple lens—but the feeling was too acute. That was no bored guard. That was an Inquisitor. A professional.
I moved instantly, throwing myself away from the wall and plunging deeper into the swirling, sight-stealing fog.
As I vanished into the mist, the final, dreadful whisper echoed in my consciousness, a faint, chilling current that had me biting back a scream:
"...Kael."
The whisper faded. They knew. The Void had completed its trace. The hunter was on my trail. I was no longer running from a prison; I was running from the architects of this cursed world.
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Poll: Kael has escaped the prison walls and reached the edge of the dangerous slums, with the ominous green glow of Ebonscar nearby. He knows he is being hunted by an Inquisitor.
Should Zayn sneak deeper into the maze-like slums for cover and supplies, or scout the source of power and danger at Ebonscar?
A) Sneak Deeper (Focus on securing immediate safety, gaining information and resources in the slums.)
B) Scout Ebonscar (Risk immediate danger to learn more about the Void and the source of his new power.)