The blessing had changed everything.
Hao didn't say it out loud. Didn't write it anywhere. If anyone asked, he was "just sleeping better" and "eating cleaner."
But his body knew better.
His muscles felt lighter, faster, precise in a way that didn't match the hours he'd put in. Strength wasn't exploding out of nowhere, but coordination was. Tiny corrections happened automatically. Weight shifts landed exactly where they needed to be. His balance clung to him like it was afraid to fall.
Under his skin, something moved.
Tiny black-purple motes drifted in slow patterns through his veins and tendons, invisible to everyone else. If he focused, he could feel them like a faint fizz, a static prickling along his nerves.
They weren't just… there.
They were alive.
They mapped the space around him in a soft, eerie awareness. Within a few meters, he didn't just see the room. He felt it. The weight of the table. The edge of the counter. The tiny, uneven beat of one busted bulb in the hallway outside.
If someone walked up behind him, the motes stirred before his ears caught the footsteps.
They always responded.
A small tendril slid from his palm now, black-purple and thin as spilled ink pulled into a line. It wasn't strong. Not yet. But it moved with delicate precision, lifting a wooden spoon from the counter and stirring the pot on the stove with careful, steady motions.
Another tendril uncurled from his wrist, smooth as smoke, flicking the stove knob off and on as if impatient.
His real hands were busy.
One pinned a cutting board in place. The other chopped vegetables with mechanical efficiency, the rhythm almost hypnotic. Carrot. Pepper. Onion. The knife tapped a steady beat against the cheap plastic.
Steam rose from the gray pot, fogging the narrow kitchen window until the world outside became vague shapes. Beyond the glass, the city glowed in tired oranges and sickly whites, streetlights bleeding into the night.
His anchor hummed in his mind, like background noise. Not words. Not exactly a voice. Just presence.
Constant. Patient.
Always there when he brushed against it.
Status, he thought, mostly out of habit.
A faint, translucent interface flickered at the edge of his vision, like an afterimage burned onto his retinas.
Blessings: Voratrix
He blinked, and the text dissolved.
The tendril holding the spoon twisted neatly, scraping the sides of the pot.
If he commanded the motes, they could thicken around his arms, layering over skin like scaled shadow, absorbing impact. They could branch into extra limbs. Let him reach for things he couldn't reach. Climb in ways he shouldn't. They could blur around him, a thin veil that swallowed the small betrayals of a living body: breath, sweat, the warm trail of scent.
Trial clearance bonus, the Anchor had called it. Baseline adaptation.
"Baseline," Hao muttered under his breath. "Sure."
The knife clicked against the board one last time. He scraped the diced vegetables into a bowl and set the knife aside. One tendril withdrew back into his skin, vanishing without a scar. The other eased his phone from the counter and held it up at eye level, hovering as steady as any hand.
He opened his banking app.
Rent.
Groceries.
Gym fees.
Utilities that pretended to be reasonable and lied.
The thousand dollars he'd gotten from the first trial stared up at him in neat digital numbers. Less now. Sliced apart by bills, chipped away by "essential" expenses, nibbled on by small, stupid things like bus tickets and cleaning supplies and those days he was too exhausted to cook and grabbed something cheap and greasy on the way home.
He scrolled through the history.
Rent. Rent. Gym. Groceries. Internet. Electricity. Bus.
Repeat.
I survived for this, he thought. And I'm one broken pipe or one hospital bill away from being screwed again. I should ask my parents for some quick cash"
His thumb hovered over the screen, but the motes were the ones getting restless. He could feel them waking under his skin, drifting faster, brushing against bone and tendon like impatient fingers tapping from the inside.
The apartment felt too small.
Too quiet.
Too safe in that fragile, temporary way, like a cardboard shelter in a storm. Four thin walls. One thin boy. A blessing that didn't care about human things like rent or contracts or eviction notices.
"It's been a while since my last trial," Hao thought.
Not like a wish.
Like an observation.
The Anchor stirred at the edges of his mind, indifferent, a weight pressing against glass. The last trial had given him points, money, this blessing, this awkward truce with something that lived in rules instead of instincts.
Trials meant risk. Pain. Watching things die. Almost dying himself.
They also meant more power.
More functions unlocked.
More ways to not be helpless when something crawled out of the dark and decided he shouldn't exist anymore.
Steam hissed softly as the pot finally reached a full boil. The tendril turned the stove down with casual precision. His hands moved without thinking: vegetables into the pan, salt, cheap spices, a splash of oil. The air filled with the smell of garlic and onion trying their best to make everything else tolerable.
He stared at the bank balance again.
The number didn't move.
If I do another trial....
His heartbeat stayed steady in his chest, wrong in the way it had been since the basement. Too calm. Too regular. Like it was synced with something else's rhythm.
He closed the banking app.
The phone screen went dark.
For a moment, the kitchen felt hollow. Just him, his borrowed power, and the hum of old pipes in the walls. Somewhere above him, a neighbor laughed at something on a TV loud enough to share with the building.
"Normal life," he said quietly.
The words tasted unconvincing.
His motes drifted under his skin, restless and alert. The Anchor hummed, steady and neutral, like it was waiting for him to decide which direction he wanted to break himself in next.
His phone buzzed in the tendril's grip.
The sudden vibration startled him more than it should have. The tendril twitched, almost dropping the device. He reached up with his real hand and took it, thumb already swiping the screen awake.
A notification slid down from the top.
Classmate: yo, u alive?
Another bubble appeared beneath it, typing dots flickering for a second before solidifying into text.
Classmate: party this weekend. u better not ghost again
Hao stared at the screen.
The motes under his skin stirred like something had just thrown a stone into a still pond.