Another kick, this one to the temple. The world tilted on its axis. Darkness swarmed the edges of his vision, buzzing like angry hornets.
"Look at that skin," someone laughed, the sound receding as if down a long tunnel. "Soft as a maiden's. Let the frost take him. If the rats don't get to him first."
The weight lifted off him. Footsteps splashed away, heavy and squelching, accompanied by the jingle of the silver buckles on his stolen boots.
Eren lay there.
The silence that followed was heavier than the beating. It was the silence of indifference. The Grey Wastes did not care that Eren Vale, former heir to a legacy of swordsmen, was lying half-naked in a gutter. The Wastes only cared about decomposition.
For a long time, he didn't move. The pain in his shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat—a rhythmic reminder that he was, unfortunately, still alive.
*Get up,* he commanded himself.
His body refused. The cold was already seeping into his marrow, a parasitic chill that made his limbs feel like lead.
*If you stay here, you die. If you die, Kaelen wins. Father wins.*
His right hand, trembling uncontrollably, clawed into the mud. His fingers brushed against something hard in his pocket—the one pocket the scavengers hadn't turned out. The small wooden doll. Crude, unvarnished, carved by his mother before the clan had sacrificed her to the Ancestral Spirit for a breakthrough that never happened.
The texture of the wood against his numb fingertips sent a jolt of clarity through the haze of pain.
*I am not trash.*
With a groan that tore at his bruised throat, Eren pushed himself up. His arms shook violently. He managed to get to his knees, retching up bile and bloody saliva. He wiped his mouth with a muddy forearm, his eyes burning with a humiliation so profound it felt like physical heat.
"You're leaking intent, boy."
The voice was dry, like old paper rubbing together.
Eren flinched, trying to scramble backward, but his legs failed him. He collapsed back onto his hip, eyes darting to the shadows of the alley.
Sitting atop a pile of discarded spirit-stone husks was a figure wrapped in layers of grey rags that matched the fog perfectly. The man was old, his face a map of deep fissures and grime, framed by stringy white hair that hung limp around his ears. He was chewing on something that looked suspiciously like a shoe sole.
"Who..." Eren coughed, spitting out a clot of mud. "Who are you?"
The old man stopped chewing. He swallowed the bolus with a visible effort, then slid down from his perch. He landed unevenly, his left leg bowing outward at a grotesque angle.
"Name's Silas," the beggar said. He didn't move closer, just watched Eren with eyes that were clouded by cataracts, milk-white with only a pinprick of black pupil. "Limp Silas, mostly. Dead Silas, soon enough. Just like you."
"I'm not dead," Eren snarled. He tried to stand, but his bare feet slipped on the slime. He went down again, hard.
"Might as well be," Silas observed without sympathy. "Scavs took your boots. The ground here... it ain't just dirt. It's the runoff. High-grade spiritual toxicity mixed with ten thousand years of shit. Mortal skin touches it too long, it rots right off the bone. Gangrene of the soul, they call it."
Eren looked at his feet. They were already pale, the veins turning a sickly spider-web purple. Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through his anger.
"How do I stop it?"
"You don't stop the Wastes," Silas chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "You digest them. Or they digest you."
The old beggar turned and began to hobble away, his gait rhythmic and strange. Drag, step, pause. Drag, step, pause. It wasn't just an injury; it was a cadence.
"Coming?" Silas threw the word over his shoulder.
"Why would I follow you?" Eren challenged, though he was already forcing himself upright.
Silas stopped and pointed a gnarled finger upward. Above the smog layer, vaguely visible through the toxic clouds, glittered the floating lights of the Upper City—the domain of the Vale Clan and the other Great Families.
"Up there, they eat the meat of the beast," Silas said softly. "Down here? We lick the grease off the plate. It's suppertime, boy. And if you don't learn how to eat what they throw away, you'll starve before the cold takes those pretty feet of yours."
Eren looked at the distant lights. He imagined Kaelen sitting at a banquet table, drinking wine infused with spirit herbs, laughing about the brother he'd disposed of. The hunger in Eren's belly flared, twisting into a knot of hate.
He gritted his teeth and took a step.
The mud oozed between his toes, freezing cold. He stumbled after the old man.
"Don't stomp," Silas scolded without turning around. "You stomp, you break the crust. Break the crust, you release the gas pockets. Then you pass out and drown in three inches of water. Slide. Slide like you're skating on thin ice."
Eren adjusted his gait. He dragged his feet, mimicking the beggar's motion. It hurt. Every muscle in his battered body screamed in protest, but he forced himself to focus on the movement. *Slide. Drag. Pause.*
They moved through a labyrinth of decay. The architecture of the Grey Wastes was a chaotic jumble of refuse—huts built from the shattered hulls of skyships, hovels dug into mounds of hardened industrial slag. The air grew thicker, heavier, tasting of sulfur and ozone.
Eren's head swam. "Where... where are we going?"
"The Gut," Silas muttered.
They emerged into a wider clearing dominated by a massive, rusted pipe the size of a city gate. It protruded from the cliff face that separated the Wastes from the city above. The metal was corroded, weeping rivulets of neon-green slime that pooled in a basin carved from the rock below.
Around the basin, shadows huddled.
Dozens of them. Beggars, cripples, the unwanted and the broken. They sat in silence, their eyes fixed on the mouth of the pipe with religious intensity. They were gaunt, their skin grey and flaky, but their eyes burned with a feverish light.
Silas limped toward a spot near the edge of the basin, shoving a smaller, younger beggar out of the way with surprising strength.
"Sit," Silas commanded, patting the wet rock beside him.
Eren collapsed onto the stone. The smell here was overpowering—sweet, cloying, like rotting flowers mixed with bleach. "What is this?"
"Laundry day up top," Silas whispered, his eyes glued to the pipe. "The Alchemy Guild washes their cauldrons on the fourth day of the week. They dump the dregs. Failed pills. Burnt herbs. Spirit water tainted with demonic blood. Whatever isn't pure enough for the immortals."
Eren watched the pipe. "It's poison."
"It's energy," Silas corrected sharply. "Chaotic. Dirty. Violent. But it's energy. And for trash like us, with no roots to pull Qi from the air, it's the only way to keep the fire lit."
A low rumble vibrated through the ground.
The huddled masses tensed. A collective intake of breath hissed through the clearing.
"Get ready," Silas warned. "Cup your hands. Don't let it touch your skin for too long before you swallow, or it'll burn through your palms."
"I... I can't eat that," Eren whispered, watching a thick, luminous sludge begin to dribble from the lip of the pipe.
"Then die," Silas said simply.
The rumble grew to a roar. A sudden torrent of effluent burst from the pipe. It wasn't water. It was a thick, viscous slurry that glowed with a sick, pulsating violet light. It crashed into the basin, sending up clouds of acrid steam.
The beggars surged forward.
It wasn't a riot; it was a feeding frenzy. They didn't fight; they scrambled, scooping up handfuls of the glowing filth and shoving it into their mouths with desperate urgency.
Eren watched in horror. This was what he had been reduced to? Eating the vomit of the alchemists who used to bow to his father?
His stomach cramped, a violent spasm of hunger that nearly doubled him over. His body was shutting down. The cold was winning. The beating had taken too much out of him.
*Survival,* the wooden doll seemed to whisper against his thigh. *To kill a god, you must first survive the gutter.*
Eren crawled forward.
The heat radiating from the pool was intense, blistering his face. He found a space between Silas and a woman with no nose. He stared at the violet sludge swirling inches from his knees. It bubbled, popping with tiny bursts of chaotic Qi.
He reached out.
His hands shook as he dipped them into the slurry.
Pain seared his palms. It felt like grabbing a hot coal. He gasped, bringing the glowing liquid to his lips before his nerve failed him. The smell made his eyes water—ammonia and burnt sugar.
He closed his eyes, thought of Kaelen's face, and swallowed.
The texture was like warm oil mixed with sand. It slid down his throat, heavy and suffocating.
Eren gagged, clamping a hand over his mouth to keep it down.
And then, it hit his stomach.
It didn't digest. It exploded.
A wave of nausea rolled through him, so potent the world turned grey. But beneath the nausea, beneath the revulsion, a spark ignited.
It wasn't the gentle, flowing river of Qi described in the cultivation scrolls. It was a jagged, tearing heat. It rampaged through his gut, clawing at his insides.
Silas was watching him, wiping violet streaks from his beard. " burns, don't it? Like swallowing a razor blade. Just hold it. Let it settle."
But Eren couldn't hear him.
The heat wasn't settling. It was expanding.
Deep within the core of his being, in the void where his Mortal Root sat withered and useless, something stirred. The 'Heaven-Devouring Dao Body'—the curse that had made him a cripple in the eyes of the world—woke up.
It sensed the foreign, chaotic energy entering his system. It didn't recoil like a normal body would.
It latched on.
The nausea vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a sensation that was terrifyingly euphoric. The burning in his stomach transformed into a suction force. Eren felt the chaotic energy being stripped apart, the impurities vented through his pores as a foul grey sweat, while the raw power was dragged violently into his core.
His vision sharpened. The pain in his shoulder dulled to a distant throb. The cold that had been eating his feet was pushed back by a surge of internal fire.
He looked down at his hands. The blisters from the hot sludge were already fading, the skin knitting together at a visible rate.
"Good lad," Silas grunted, mistaking Eren's shock for mere survival. "Keep it down. Let it warm the blood."
Eren stared at the pool of filth.
To Silas, to the beggars, to the entire world, this was garbage. It was poison that barely sustained life.
But to Eren?
He dipped his hands back into the violet slime, his movements frantic, predatory.
It wasn't garbage. It was a feast.
"More," Eren whispered, his voice trembling not with fear, but with a sudden, insatiable gluttony. He scooped up another double handful, the violet light reflecting in eyes that had lost their nobility and found something far more dangerous.
He drank. And for the first time in his life, the emptiness inside him began to shrink.
"Easy, boy!" Silas hissed, reaching out to grab Eren's shoulder. "You drink too much of that, you'll burst your—"
Eren whipped his head around, his eyes locking onto Silas.
The old beggar froze. His hand hovered in the air, trembling. For a second, just a split second, Silas didn't see a beaten boy in the mud. He saw something ancient and hungry peering out from behind a human mask.
"I said," Eren rasped, the slurry dripping from his chin, "more."