Rain dripped from the rotting beams and fell cold upon his shoulders.
Cain crouched inside the remains of a collapsed mill in the slums of Graythroat Town, clutching the icy Morningstar insignia in his hand.
The Church's hunting hounds had only just caught his scent, yet the chill within him still whispered and crawled like countless fine needles threading through his bones—urging him, hungering.
Through the phantom interface only he could see, faint violet halos drifted in the air around him—the residue of despair and numbness accumulated from the townsfolk's endless labor and oppression.
[Current Soul Essence: 0.8 strands]
The system's voice was as cold and clear as the rain. He was only 0.2 strands away from unlocking his next survival skill: [Basic Shadow Bind].
But the emotions surrounding him were too weak, too diluted—like mist that could never condense into nourishing rain.
He had once risked approaching the tavern alley, where a group of drunks were beating each other bloody over a trivial insult.The rage there had burned bright, but scattered—it was chaotic, unstable, and almost useless for harvesting.
Cain understood then that his power demanded something purer, sharper—the essence of emotion pushed to its limit.
Late that night, a scream cut through the endless rain—shrill, desperate, and real. It came from the old waterwheel house on the eastern edge of town.
Cain's heart seized. A primal instinct, older than thought, drove him toward the sound.
He melted into the shadows, gliding along walls slick with rain, until he reached the door. Through a crack in the rotted wood, he looked inside.
His pupils tightened.
A young girl, clothes torn to rags, was chained to the wall. Her fingers dug into the wet floorboards until her nails split and bled. Tears mixed with blood streaked her face, and the sounds she made were no longer cries—but the dying moans of a broken beast.
And then Cain saw it—above her head, a surge of sorrow so dense it was almost black, bursting forth like a storm.
[Extreme Negative Emotion Detected! Soul Essence +1.3 strands!]
The notification pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
He did not rush in like a hero from a story.
Instead, he stepped back—three paces into deeper darkness—and closed his eyes.
He released the restraint on the cold force within him, allowing the girl's despair to flood into him like an icy tide.
The sensation was agony—and bliss.It was as if his soul was steeped in the deepest ocean of sorrow, and from that ocean, he drank greedily.
[Soul Essence: 2.1 strands][Skill Unlock Available: Basic Shadow Bind]
Only when the girl's breath grew faint and the emotional torrent began to fade did Cain open his eyes.
He kicked open the door, and in the dim lamplight, his blade flashed once—severing the iron chain that bound her.
He spoke no word, spared her not a glance.Then, like a phantom swallowed by the rain, he was gone.
By morning, rumors spread across Graythroat Town.
Another girl had vanished.But this time was different—someone had found a strange, blackened sigil scorched onto the back wall of the church, a twisted mark that seemed carved by shadow itself.
No one noticed the man hiding at the bottom of a long-dry well beyond the town walls.
Cain sat there in the dark, practicing his newly awakened skill—[Basic Shadow Bind].
It was not a physical attack. The ability wove several strands of black thread at his command, invisible to normal sight. Once cast, these threads could constrict and immobilize their target for a brief moment.
More disturbingly, the threads seemed to retain a faint memory—when laid upon a spot, they could be reactivated repeatedly, like unseen snares left hanging in space.
He recalled the girl's screams from the night before, and a cold thought took root in his mind:
True harvesting did not mean waiting for despair to arrive.It meant creating it.
And the most potent catalyst was not death—but the slow, conscious anticipation of it.
He unfolded the rough map he had taken from Deacon Lothar's corpse. Three hidden routes connected the mayor's mansion and the outer mines.
A bold, poisonous plan began to take shape.
He would need a guide—someone who knew every shadowed corner of the town.
The half-blind beggar known as Old Bart became his choice.
That night, Cain traded half a loaf of stale black bread and a bottle of cheap wine for the information he wanted.
Bart's cracked lips curled, revealing two yellow teeth. His clouded eyes gleamed with something far too knowing.
"You want to get into the young master's dungeon, eh?" he rasped. "Go through the third fork in the sewer. There's a little iron grate there—leads straight into the 'playroom.'"
Cain nodded slightly and turned to leave, melting once more into the dark.
Behind him, Bart's hoarse voice drifted after him like smoke.
"Gravekeeper… did you see the shadow in her eyes too?"
Cain's steps faltered—barely—but he did not look back.
Returning to his hiding place, he began to prepare his hunting ground.
First, he staged a few "accidents" along the road leading to the mines—livestock torn apart by unseen claws—and carved that same eerie sigil into nearby trees. Rumors of restless spirits spread like infection among the townsfolk.
Next, under the cover of midnight, he slipped into the mayor's manor. In the bedroom of the man's infamous son, he silently laid three Shadow Bind traps—at the doorframe, beneath the bedpost, and under the windowsill.
Finally, he drew from his cloak a small oilcloth pouch containing the residue of an Old God incense stolen from the desecrated altar.
He cut a lock of his own hair, mixed it into the powder, and gently scattered it beneath the boy's lavish pillow.
That incense could awaken the deepest nightmares buried in the human heart.
When all was done, Cain perched atop the shadowed bell tower, watching the glowing windows of the mansion from afar.
Time flowed like rain.
Then—a stifled scream shattered the silence.
A cold smile curved across his lips.
"Now," he murmured, "let's see how sweet fear tastes when the darkness tightens its grip."
Moments later, chaos erupted within the manor—shouts, lights flaring, figures rushing past the windows.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, the noise ceased.A suffocating stillness followed, as if that scream had been no more than a dream in the rain.
Cain waited patiently.The seed of fear had been sown—it only needed time to take root, to blossom, to bear its sweetest fruit.
His eyes lingered on the mansion's deepest shadow.
He waited for the next cry.A grander one.A truer one.