Lucas woke to the sound of dripping water and the taste of dust.
For a long moment, he didn't move. His brain floated somewhere between dream and memory, trapped in a gray fog of pain. When he finally managed to inhale, his lungs burned like he'd swallowed smoke.
Something heavy was pressing down on his chest.
He shifted slightly, grimacing as grit scraped across his skin. The glow of the veins overhead was faint — the once-steady blue light now stuttering in slow, uneven pulses. The cavern smelled of iron and ozone and old stone.
"Ryn?" His voice cracked. "Jeff?"
Silence.
He tried again, louder this time. "Anyone?"
Only his echo answered — hollow and far away.
Lucas swallowed, his throat dry. He forced himself to sit up, pushing aside a slab of broken rock. Pain lanced through his shoulder. His Reaper's Hook lay a few feet away, half-buried under rubble, its curved blade glinting faintly with residual light.
He crawled toward it on trembling arms. The cavern floor was slick with mud and bits of crystal, each motion sending sparks of pain through his ribs. He grabbed the weapon and used it to pull himself to his feet.
The silence pressed down heavier than the debris ever had.
"Okay," he muttered, his voice hoarse. "Step one: don't freak out. Step two: absolutely freak out, but quietly."
The humor fell flat in the emptiness.
He looked around. The tunnel he'd fallen into stretched endlessly in both directions, its walls lined with shattered vein crystals. The light they gave off was sickly — more gray than blue.
His HUD blinked weakly in the corner of his vision, half-corrupted:
[—nnecti— Lo—]
[Vital Sig— Err—r]
"Yeah, that's about right," he whispered.
He started walking. Each step echoed. Dust and mist swirled around his ankles. Every now and then he'd stop and listen, hoping for footsteps or a voice — anything. Nothing came.
That was when he heard it.
A sound — faint, strained, human.
Lucas spun around, heart jumping. "Hello?!"
It came again, weaker. A groan.
He followed the noise, limping toward a pile of collapsed stone near the edge of the tunnel. A man lay there, half-buried, one leg pinned beneath a fallen beam. He wore miner's gear scorched black by crystal burns, his face pale under a layer of soot.
Lucas dropped beside him, adrenaline pushing away the exhaustion. "Hey! Stay with me, okay? I'll get you out."
The man's eyes fluttered open. "Help…" he rasped.
"I've got you."
Lucas wedged his Reaper's Hook under the beam and pushed. The metal groaned but didn't move. He gritted his teeth and heaved again. A crack split through the rock, and the beam shifted just enough to free the man's leg.
Blood pooled fast. The injury was bad — deep, jagged, wrong.
Lucas's stomach twisted. "Okay, okay. Hold on. I can fix this."
He pressed his hands against the wound and summoned the one thing he knew — Sacrificial Aid.
The veins in the walls flared violently. Blue light burst outward, flooding the chamber. The energy raced through him like molten fire. His body seized; every muscle screamed.
The system's tone chimed faintly through the static in his mind:
[Sacrificial Aid — Activated]
[Warning: Environmental Amplification Detected]
The pain doubled. His vision warped. The veins reacted like they recognized him — their glow syncing with his pulse. He screamed, but no sound came out.
When the light faded, he collapsed to his knees. His head spun. The man lay still beside him.
The glow had vanished from the wound. So had the light from his eyes.
Lucas stared at the body for a long time, the realization hitting in slow, jagged waves. The cave was silent again — suffocatingly so.
He whispered, "I couldn't help him. My only real ability is healing… and I couldn't even do that."
The words echoed off the stone like a confession.
Then something inside him cracked.
His hands began to shake — first from adrenaline, then from something worse. He clenched them into fists, pressing them into the dirt until his nails bit skin.
"You absolute idiot," he muttered. "You thought throwing rocks at rabbits and waving a glowing pick around made you some kind of hero?" He barked out a bitter laugh. "You can't even keep one person alive."
He looked down at the miner again — the still chest, the dull eyes, the faint trickle of blood creeping toward his boots. His throat burned.
"Back home," he whispered, "I couldn't even keep a job. I slept through alarms. Missed deadlines. Now I'm supposed to save people?"
His voice broke. "Whoever or whatever dragged me here — they made a mistake. I'm not that guy."
He grabbed a fistful of his hair, tugging hard enough to sting. "I'm not brave. I'm not chosen. I'm just some guy who fell asleep in ducky pajamas and woke up in someone else's nightmare."
The air around him thickened, damp and heavy. The faint hum of the veins filled the silence, as if the world itself were listening to him unravel.
"I don't want this," he whispered. "I just want to go home. I want my bed. My crappy apartment. My quiet, boring life where nobody dies because I pressed the wrong button."
His voice trembled. "I wasn't meant for this. I wasn't built for this."
He pressed a hand against his chest — half expecting to feel something broken, half hoping he wouldn't.
The veins pulsed faintly in the dark, their light brushing over his face like a slow breath. He stared at them, hollow and angry all at once.
"You hear that?" he whispered hoarsely. "You messed up. You picked the wrong guy."
No answer. Just the same low hum — patient, steady, unbothered.
Lucas wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand, smearing dirt across his cheek. The fight in him had bled into exhaustion. He sat there beside the dead man, the silence pressing down on his shoulders like gravity.
For the first time since waking up in Spheria, he didn't feel lost — he felt small. Smaller than the veins, smaller than the world, smaller than the mistake he thought he was.
He laughed once — hollow and tired. "You wanted a hero," he said to the empty cavern. "All you got was me."
He sat there for a long time after that, staring at the still body beside him. Then he noticed something strange — no burns on his own skin. No charred veins, no marks, nothing. The light that had nearly killed him was gone, but his body looked untouched.
"What the hell…"
Then, faint and delayed, the system flickered to life:
[Skill Acquired: Vein Channeling — Lv. 1]
Allows limited manipulation of ambient vein energy. Vein energy amplifies any active ability, skill, or physical attribute it flows through, at the cost of increased strain on the user. Risk: severe physical backlash with prolonged contact.
[Trait Acquired: Vein Resilience — Lv. 1]
User demonstrates resistance to permanent vein corruption. Cellular recovery complete after rest.
Lucas stared at the messages, still half-dizzy. "So… it hurts me, but doesn't kill me." He let out a dry laugh. "Yeah, that checks out."
He looked at the miner's body again. The man's arm had faint blue streaks running through it — glowing lines like the ones Ryn had explained earlier. Marks of those who had channeled too much.
Lucas held up his own forearm, expecting the same. Nothing. Not a single thread of light.
A chill ran through him. "How am I not hurt?" he whispered.
The veins above him pulsed softly in answer.
He turned toward them, his hand trembling. "You did this, didn't you?"
The hum deepened, a rhythm beneath his heartbeat. The air vibrated faintly, and for a moment, he swore he heard something layered within the sound — a voice not made of words.
"You are not of stone. Yet you listen."
Lucas froze. "What—what does that mean?"
No response. Only the steady pulse of blue light fading back to normal.
He sat there for a long time, staring at his reflection in a puddle of glowing water. His hair was matted with dust, his eyes hollow. Somewhere behind the exhaustion, though, was a flicker of something new — not strength, not courage, but stubborn survival.
He dragged himself to his feet, every movement aching.
"Alright," he muttered. "If I'm stuck in this rock coffin, I'm not dying in it."
He knelt beside the miner's body, pulling a piece of broken crystal from the ground. It was sharp enough to carve stone. He used it to dig, slow and clumsy, until he'd made a shallow grave in the dirt. When he was done, he covered the man's body and traced a circle with a line through it above the mound — a mark of respect, or maybe guilt.
"I don't know your name," he said softly. "But I'll make this count. I'll figure this out."
The veins pulsed once, faintly.
He took that as an answer.
He gathered what little he could — a cracked lantern, a ration pouch, a small communication stone that blinked weakly but didn't activate. He stuffed them into the pocket of his jacket.
Before leaving, he looked at his hands one more time. Smooth. Clean. Whole.
No marks. No scars.
The veins seemed to shimmer faintly as he lifted his Reaper's Hook and slung it over his shoulder.
He stared into the darkness of the tunnel ahead — where the light glowed a little brighter, beckoning him forward.
"Alright," he murmured. "Lesson learned. Sacrificial Aid isn't the answer to everything."
A pause.
"But maybe… it's how I start figuring out what I am."
The whisper came again, barely audible over the hum of the veins.
"Deeper, little spark. Deeper still."
Lucas swallowed, glancing toward the faint blue horizon of the cave.
"Yeah," he muttered, tightening his grip on the hook. "I was afraid you'd say that."
He took his first step into the darkness. The veins brightened in response, guiding him deeper into Spheria's heart.