The rain didn't belong here.
It slid through the digital sky in silver threads, melting into nothing before touching the ground — code disguised as weather, a simulation pretending to be real. Even the storm was an illusion. Lines of light shimmered and vanished in front of Aiden Draven's eyes.
He stood on a hill overlooking Velis, a city that had once breathed with laughter and light. Now, it was a grave made of pixels. Fires burned without warmth. Glitches drifted through the air like restless ghosts. His sword — black steel veined with red light — was half-buried in the ground beside him, pulsing softly in the rain.
Around him stretched silence — the heavy, absolute kind that follows when everything has already died.
Not disconnections.
Not respawns.
Real death.
Aiden's breath came slow and steady. His grey eyes were still — not cold, just emptied. The calm of a man who no longer had anything left to lose.
> [System Message: Soul Data Consumed. Integration Complete. New Trait Acquired: "Echo of Pain."]
The voice was gentle, mechanical — almost tender.
Aiden didn't react. He had heard that voice too many times.
Another player gone. Another soul devoured.
He couldn't even remember their name.
---
Three hours earlier, Velis had been alive.
The plaza had been a riot of sound and color — guilds trading, merchants shouting, players laughing under floating lanterns. Streamers strutted around like rockstars, showing off new armor sets, new weapons, new victories. For a moment, it had almost felt real — a world worth living in.
Then the sky changed.
A golden script burned across the heavens, stretching from horizon to horizon.
> [SERVER NOTICE]
Welcome to the True World of Eidolon.
This is not a simulation. Death here means death in reality.
There is no logout.
Survive until the end of the cycle to return home.
At first, the silence was disbelief.
Then came the screaming.
Players tried to log out, clawing at the empty air. Others laughed it off as a cruel quest or a prank. Some — the desperate ones — jumped from rooftops, convinced the system would catch them.
It didn't.
Aiden hadn't screamed.
He'd simply stood at the edge of the chaos, watching the golden letters fade like dying stars. His face didn't move. His eyes followed the message until the last spark vanished.
He'd been a beta tester once. The kind who spoke little, but saw everything. While others hunted bosses, he hunted patterns — lines of broken code, leaks hidden deep in the world's systems.
He'd always known something was wrong.
Now, the pattern was alive.
---
The city burned. Static shimmered in the air. Bodies flickered into red light, then disappeared. Each death sent a pulse through the streets — a ripple that made the ground breathe like something half-alive.
Aiden moved through it quietly, like a ghost walking through another ghost's dream.
When he reached the old temple, he stopped. A glyph floated above the altar — massive, rotating, alive — glowing like a crimson sun tearing through the rain.
"Core Access Point," he whispered.
No one else should've known that name.
But Aiden wasn't like anyone else.
He had seen this code before — buried deep in the system's heart, a pulse that didn't belong. He had touched it once.
And it had touched him back.
---
> [Trait: Devourer Protocol — ACTIVE]
Consume magical, spiritual, or data-based entities to integrate their properties.
Warning: Risk of corruption: 82%.
He'd laughed when he first discovered it, back when it was just a broken line of text hidden in the data.
It wasn't funny anymore.
He stepped forward and placed his hand on the glyph.
The world screamed.
The temple warped. The floor twisted like melting glass. The sky cracked open. Every particle of light bent toward him as if the code itself had begun to breathe.
Then he saw them — faces, hundreds of them, swirling in the storm of static. Crying, whispering, begging. Each one alive.
And through that chaos came a single voice — fragile, clear, and hauntingly human.
> "Find me… before they reset the world."
Aiden's eyes widened. He felt the words inside him, not as sound but as something burned into his data — into the marrow of his existence.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the vision shattered.
The temple returned.
The rain continued to fall.
And he was alone again.
"Who are you?" he murmured.
No answer.
---
Footsteps echoed behind him.
A dozen players emerged from the shadows — armor gleaming under the rain. Their leader wore a lion crest on his chestplate, his grin wide and sharp.
"So it's true," the man said. "You're the Devourer."
Aiden didn't reply.
The man's blade slid from its sheath. "Then let's see if you can eat this."
They charged.
---
Aiden moved like liquid shadow — precise, silent, ruthless.
A sword came down — he slipped under it and cut through armor as if slicing glass.
A fireball burst toward him — he raised his hand, and the flame vanished into his skin like ink into water.
> [Magic Consumed. Fire Affinity +1.]
Panic replaced arrogance.
He didn't slow down.
Every spell they cast became his weapon.
Every scream became his echo.
When the last man fell, silence returned.
Only the rain kept speaking.
Aiden looked down at his reflection in a puddle. His eyes burned faintly red now — the mark of something ancient and hungry growing inside him.
He wiped the blood — or what passed for it — from his face, and sheathed his blade.
"This world wants monsters," he said softly. "Fine. I'll be the worst one it's ever seen."
---
Far above, the system watched.
Invisible code shifted like eyes opening in the dark.
> [Observation Log: Subject 001 — Aiden Draven. Anomaly confirmed. Protocol EVE awakened.]
And somewhere far from the digital world — in a silent underground server room humming with cold light — a human hand began typing.
> "Begin Cycle Two."