The darkness was heavy.
That was the first thing Nnael realized about this new hell. In the white void of the Celestial Author's domain, silence was clean. Here? Silence was a dead blow, pressing down on the damp thatch roof of the cottage, leaking through the cracks in the stone walls like water.
He lay on the straw mattress, staring up at the ceiling he couldn't see. His body, this pathetic, shivering, malnourished cage of meat, ached. It was a bone-deep ache, the kind that comes from muscles that have atrophied from fever and a stomach that hasn't seen a real meal in weeks.
Tier 0. Level 0.
He tried to flex his hand. The movement was sluggish, weak. A baby's grip.
"Pathetic," he whispered, the word scraping his dry throat.
He closed his eyes, ignoring the cold draft that tickled his feet. He needed to work. The Reaper had given him a joke, a punchline disguised as a gift. Pore-Breathing. Z-Rank. A skill for bottom-feeders and worms.
But worms survived while lions starved.
Focus.
He didn't have a System interface anymore. No blue screens. No soothing chimes. No Kirana. Just the biological reality of his own skin. He visualized the pores on his arms, on his chest, on his neck. He imagined them not as skin, but as millions of tiny, starving mouths.
Open, he commanded.
Nothing happened.
Open, you damn useless sacks.
He pushed his mind outward, trying to force the skill to activate. For an hour, there was nothing but the sound of the wind outside and the rhythmic, soft snoring of Mina from the other room. He felt foolish. He felt like a fallen god playing pretend in the mud.
And then, the pain hit.
It wasn't a sharp pain. It was a crawling, burning itch that started at his fingertips. It felt like someone was dragging a needle across his nerve endings, slowly, deliberately.
[Skill Activation: Pore-Breathing (Partial)]
He gasped, his back arching off the straw. The air in the room… it wasn't just air. It was thick. It was wet.
Nnael gritted his teeth, sweat breaking out on his forehead. The atmosphere in the Duchy of Valerius was saturated with it, the Blight. The Sea of Mists wasn't just a border, it was an infection that had seeped into the water cycle. The humidity in the room tasted metallic. It tasted like old blood and rust.
Abyssal Moisture.
Most mages filtered this out. They used high-tier lungs and refined meditation techniques to sip only the purest Mana. Nnael? He was drinking the sludge from the gutter.
Every breath his skin took felt like inhaling broken glass. The Abyssal traces burned his unrefined circuits, searing the pathways that had been dormant for a lifetime. It was agony. It was torture.
It was working.
He lay there for hours, shaking, sweat soaking the thin linen of his tunic. He felt a microscopic trickle of energy entering his bloodstream. Not golden, solar mana. This was grey, cold and dirty. It entered his capillaries, fighting his white blood cells, forcing his body to adapt or die.
More, he thought, his mind a haze of pain and determination. Feed me.
By the time the grey light of dawn began to bleed through the window shutters, Nnael collapsed back onto the straw, panting. His skin was red and raw, as if he'd been scrubbed with sandpaper.
But deep in his chest, in the hollow space where a Mana Heart should be, there was a single, faint pulse. A spark in the wet ash.
Mana: 1/50.
He laughed, a dry, wheezing sound. One point. He had enough energy to light a candle, maybe. Or kill a fly if he concentrated really hard.
"Nnael?"
The door creaked. The scent hit him before she did, warm dough, sleep, and that overwhelming, sweet smell of milk.
Mina stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the pale, amber light of the morning sun. The Eye of the Void. It hung low in the sky, a cheerless watcher.
"You're awake," she breathed, rushing to his side.
She was wearing her night shift, a thin, worn piece of fabric that did nothing to hide the heavy, soft collapse of her body. She sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress groaning under her. She reached out, her hand cool against his fever-hot forehead.
"You're burning up again," she whispered, worry etching lines into her face. She leaned closer, and Nnael was suddenly suffocated by her presence. Her breasts, heavy and loose beneath the fabric, brushed against his shoulder as she checked his temperature.
He felt a biological jolt, not love, but the raw, instinctive reaction of a male body that hadn't touched a woman in years. It was a sharp, hungry pang in his gut.
"I'm fine, Mother," he lied, his voice raspy. "Just… the fever breaking."
"You're soaked in sweat," she murmured, her thumb brushing his cheek. She looked at him, her eyes dark and wet with a mix of relief and something else. Something desperate. She was a widow in a world that ate widows. He was her only anchor. Her need for him was a palpable thing, a humidity that rivaled the Abyssal air.
"We need to get you clean," she said, pulling back slightly, though her hand lingered on his chest, right over his heart. "If the… if the neighbors see you like this, they'll talk. They'll say you're Blighted."
"Let them talk," Nnael said, closing his eyes.
"No," a sharp voice cut through the soft air.
Rhea stood at the door. She was already dressed for work, leather breeches that hugged her thick, powerful thighs, and a sleeveless tunic that left her arms bare. Her muscles were defined, corded under skin that was tanned from labor. She held a wooden bucket of steaming water, her expression hard, but her eyes… her eyes betrayed her. They flickered over his prone form, lingering on the sweat that made his shirt cling to his ribs.
"We don't have the coin for rumors, Mother," Rhea said, walking into the room. She set the bucket down with a heavy thud. "Get the towels. I'll handle him."
Mina hesitated, looking between them, then nodded and scurried out.
Nnael pushed himself up on his elbows, watching Rhea. She didn't look at him directly. she was busy rolling up a rough cloth, dipping it into the hot water. steam curled around her face, dampening the loose strands of hair that escaped her braid.
"I can wash myself," Nnael said.
"Shut up," Rhea grunted. She didn't say it with malice. She said it with the exhaustion of someone who had been carrying the weight of the world for too long. "You can barely lift your head, Nnael. You want to fall and crack your skull? Then who chops the wood? Me. Who hunts? Me. Just… let me do this."
She moved the stool closer to the bed. The air in the small room suddenly felt very tight.
"Sit up," she commanded.
Nnael obeyed, dragging his legs over the side of the bed. He stripped off his soaked tunic. The air hit his skin, cold and biting, but then, heat.
Rhea wrung out the cloth, the hot water running down her strong forearms. She stepped in between his legs, ignoring the intimacy of the position. She slapped the hot cloth onto his chest.
Nnael hissed at the heat.
"Too hot?" she asked, her voice dropping an octave. She didn't pull away.
"It's fine," he muttered.
She began to scrub.
Rhea wasn't gentle. She didn't have Mina's soft, suffocating touch. Her hands were rough, calloused from the axe and the plow. She scoured his skin, rubbing red circles into his chest, cleaning away the toxic sweat of his night's labor.
But as she worked, the rhythm changed.
Nnael watched her. He watched the way her breath hitched slightly as she leaned in to scrub his neck. She was close, dangerously close. He could smell her, pine needles, woodsmoke, and the sharp, musky scent of a woman who worked hard.
She was scrubbing his shoulders now, her face inches from his. He looked down. Her tunic was loose at the collar. He could see the beginning of the swell of her breasts, bound tightly with strips of leather to keep them out of the way, but fighting against the restraint. The skin there was flushed, a blotchy red creeping up her neck.
She was affecting him. And he knew, with a predator's certainty, that he was affecting her.
His body, weak as it was, responded. He felt the blood shifting, pooling. He saw Rhea's eyes dart down, catching the movement, the slight tenting of his trousers.
She froze. Her hand stopped on his collarbone.
For a second, neither of them breathed. The silence stretched, filled only by the crackle of the fire in the other room and the wet sound of the cloth dripping onto the floor.
Rhea swallowed. He saw the muscles in her throat work. She should have pulled away. She should have slapped him or made a joke about him being a pervert.
She didn't.
Instead, her hand pressed harder against his chest. Her breathing grew shallow, quick. He saw the fabric of her tunic shift, a small, distinct point hardening against the linen as her nipples reacted to the sudden, electric tension. She bit her lower lip, her eyes glazing over slightly, lost in a sudden haze of confusion and instinct.
She was twenty-two. She had no husband. No lover. Just work. Just survival. And here was this boy, this stranger who looked like her brother but felt like a wolf, sitting naked from the waist up between her legs.
"You..." she started, her voice sounding thick, like she had a fever of her own. "You're getting... stronger."
"Trying to," Nnael whispered. He didn't look away. He held her gaze, letting a fraction of his old self, the Emperor of the Great Mandala of Wilwatikta, the Lover, bleed through. He looked at her not as a sister, but as a woman.
Rhea shivered. It was a visible ripple that went through her powerful shoulders. Her thighs clamped slightly, an involuntary motion, as if she was trying to scratch an itch she couldn't reach. A flush darkened her cheeks.
She abruptly pulled her hand back, dipping the cloth into the bucket with a splash that was too loud.
"Don't get used to it," she snapped, but her voice lacked bite. It was breathless. "Once you can stand, you're washing your own filth."
She moved to his back. Nnael turned, presenting his spine to her.
He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. The lust in the room was thick enough to chew on. It was a distraction, a dangerous one, but it was also a sign of life.
As she scrubbed his back, rougher now, faster, as if trying to erase the moment that just happened, Nnael's eyes narrowed.
He saw it.
On the inside of her right wrist, revealed as she reached around to scrub his ribs.
A black, jagged tattoo. It looked like a shackle made of ink.
[THE LABORER'S BRAND]
[Tier: 0]
[Effect: Strength +2, Intelligence -5]
[Restriction: Bound to the Duchy of Valerius. Cannot leave without a Master's permission.]
Nnael stared at the mark. The ink seemed to pulse with a low, faint magic. It wasn't just a tattoo, it was a circuit. A limiter. The Empire didn't just enslave them legally, they enslaved them biologically. The brand actively suppressed her cognitive functions to keep her docile, boosting her strength so she could work harder until she died.
Rage.
It wasn't the hot, fiery rage of a hero. It was the cold, absolute zero of a void.
She was his. In this life, in this lie, she was his sister. And they had branded her like cattle.
Rhea finished washing him, her movements jerky. She stood up, wiping her hands on her breeches, refusing to meet his eyes again. She was flustered, her chest heaving slightly against the bindings, the air around her practically vibrating with unspent sexual frustration and confusion. She grabbed the bucket.
"I have to go," she muttered, heading for the door. "Wood needs chopping."
"Rhea," Nnael said.
She stopped, hand on the latch. Her back was to him. The line of her spine was stiff.
"Thank you."
She hesitated. Her shoulders slumped, just an inch. "Just get better, Nnael. We... we can't do this alone."
She fled the room, the door slamming shut behind her.
Nnael sat on the edge of the bed, the damp air cooling his skin. He looked down at his own wrist. Blank. Unbranded.
He was a ghost. A fallen Predator.
He closed his eyes and focused inward again. The pain from the night before was still there, a dull throb in his veins. But the channel was open. The Z-Rank skill was hungry, and he was still the Predator.
He looked at the window. The Eye of the Void was rising, casting long, grey shadows across the floor.
He had 1 Mana. He had a family of women who were starving for protection and touch. He had a world that wanted to keep them in the mud.
Nnael smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
He raised his hand, looking at his pale, trembling fingers. He focused that single point of Mana, pushing it not into a spell, but into his eyes.
Shift.
For a microsecond, the world flickered. The grain of the wood on the floorboards sharpened. The dust motes dancing in the light slowed down.
He saw the flow.
Faint, grey lines of energy drifted through the air like smoke, trailing after Rhea's heat signature where she had just stood.
He wasn't just going to survive this winter.
He clenched his fist, extinguishing the sight, saving the precious energy.
He was going to eat it alive.
[MANA: 1/50]