Sam was ten again.
He was buried under rubble, lungs burning with dust, ears ringing with a silence so thick it felt like it could crush him. He could not move his legs. He could barely move his arms. He could smell blood and alcohol and smoke.
And beneath all of it, he could hear his mother's last breath, thin and broken.
His father had been shouting.
He always shouted.
He shouted when he was drunk, which was most nights. He shouted when he came home smelling like perfume that was not his mother's. He shouted when dinner was cold, when dinner was hot, when dinner existed at all. He shouted because shouting meant he was in control.
Sam used to think it was normal.
He used to think all fathers were storms.
His mother had shielded him as much as she could. She had smiled when she was tired. She had lied and said everything would get better. She had never left.
Sam never understood why she stayed until the night she tried to stop his father and something inside her moved.
It was not fire or water or wind or earth. Those were the common elements. Those were the ones everyone talked about.
What his mother used was something else.
The shadows in the room had thickened. The lamp light had dimmed. His father's raised arm had frozen mid-swing like he had hit an invisible wall.
His mother's eyes had widened, not with triumph, but with horror.
She had not known she could do that.
His father had stared at her, mouth open, fear replacing rage for the first time Sam could remember.
Then the fear curdled into something uglier.
From that day on, his father never looked at her the same.
And eventually, he looked at Sam the same way too.
Not as a son.
As proof.
Proof that the woman in his house was a monster. Proof that something unnatural had touched his bloodline. Proof that he was powerless in the one place he had always demanded to be king.
When the final beating happened, it was not sudden. It was not a single act. It was a long slide that had been building for years.
Sam remembered his mother's voice, calm even then, telling him to go hide. Sam remembered crawling under the table, fingers digging into the carpet, trying not to make a sound. Sam remembered the sound of glass breaking. The sound of a body hitting a wall.
He remembered his own heart hammering like it wanted to burst out of his ribs.
He remembered his father's breathing.
Then, later, the ceiling collapsing.
The building had already been weakened by years of neglect and by a world that had stopped maintaining anything. When the fight spilled into the stairwell and the supporting beam cracked, the whole structure gave way like it had been waiting for an excuse.
Sam should have died there.
He was sure of it.
In the darkness under the rubble, he had begged for it.
If his mother was gone, what was the point of living?
That was when the world changed.
The pain dulled. The dust smell faded. The weight on his chest disappeared. Sam opened his eyes and saw a place that was not the ruins.
It was not heaven.
It was not hell.
It was a grey void filled with drifting ash and distant stars that did not belong to any sky he knew. The ground beneath him was smooth like stone but gave no echo when he stepped.
A figure stood ahead, wrapped in shadows that moved like smoke.
Sam could not see her face. He could barely tell where her body ended and the darkness began.
But he felt her looking at him, and that gaze was not human.
It was old.
It was heavy.
It was patient.
"You should not be here," the figure said.
Her voice came from everywhere at once, not loud, but absolute. It made the air feel thin.
Sam swallowed. He had expected fear. Instead, he felt numb.
"I want to be dead," he said.
The figure tilted her head slightly, as if considering a puzzle.
"You want to stop hurting," she replied. "That is different."
Sam clenched his fists. "My mother is dead."
A pause.
"I know," the figure said.
Sam's throat tightened. "Then let me go."
The shadows around her shifted, and for a moment he thought he saw eyes, like dim moons deep in a cave.
"No," she said.
The word was simple.
Sam's anger flared, sudden and hot. "Why not?"
Another pause, longer this time.
"Because I owe you," she said.
Sam stared. "Who are you?"
The shadows rippled, and her voice softened just enough to sound almost like regret.
"You may call me Nyx," she said. "Goddess of darkness and shadow."
The title should have sounded ridiculous.
It did not.
Not in that place. Not with the weight behind it.
Sam's hands trembled. "Gods are real?"
"Celestials are real," Nyx replied. "Words change. The truth does not."
Sam swallowed again. "Why are you here?"
Nyx's presence leaned closer, and Sam felt the void around him tighten like a fist.
"Your blood carries mine," she said. "From your mother's line."
Sam's stomach twisted. "My mother was not a monster."
"No," Nyx said, and there was something sharp in the word. "She was not."
Sam's anger shifted, becoming confusion. "Then why did my father hate us?"
The shadows around Nyx stirred like something breathing.
"Because he saw what he could not control," she said. "And because I did not hide my gift well enough within her."
Sam frowned. "You did this to her."
Nyx did not deny it.
"It was never meant to surface," she said. "Your mother was not trained. She was not prepared. But fear and desperation can crack seals that have held for generations."
Sam's mind spun. "So the shadows. That was you."
"That was her," Nyx corrected. "It was always in her. It was always in you."
Sam remembered his father's face that night. The fear. The hatred that followed.
Nyx continued, and for the first time her voice carried something like guilt.
"I did not intervene when the beatings worsened," she said. "Celestials are forbidden from interfering in mortal affairs. That law exists for a reason. Our power breaks worlds when we use it carelessly."
Sam laughed once, bitter and small. "And yet you are here."
Nyx's shadows tightened. "Because the Awakening is not a fluke."
Sam's breath caught. "You know what it is."
"I suspect," Nyx said. "Enough to be afraid."
Sam felt cold spread through him. "Afraid of nature?"
Nyx's gaze seemed to sharpen.
"Afraid of what guides it," she said.
The words hung in the void like a hook.
Sam wanted to ask more, but something in Nyx's posture stopped him. This was not a conversation she could have for long. Even here, in this in-between place, laws pressed on her like chains.
Nyx lifted a hand, and darkness gathered around her palm.
"You are not the only one being watched," she said. "Other celestial families have noticed you. They have interest. They do not yet act. They wait."
Sam's voice was barely a whisper. "Why me?"
Nyx's answer came without hesitation.
"Because you can listen," she said. "And because you can endure."
Sam's chest tightened. "I do not want this."
"I know," Nyx said.
The darkness in her palm condensed until it formed a shape, a simple square of lightless black, like a window cut out of reality.
"You loved games," she said, and for the first time her voice sounded almost human. "You loved systems. Rules. Growth. Fairness, even when the world gave you none."
Sam stared. "How do you know that?"
"Shadows remember," Nyx replied. "So do I."
Sam's eyes stung. He hated that a goddess could say something gentle and make it hurt more.
Nyx held out the black square.
"This is a system," she said. "A frame. A structure. A gift and a chain."
Sam did not move. "What does it do?"
"It will measure you," Nyx said. "It will reward you when you overcome what should kill you. It will punish you when you grow arrogant. It will offer paths mortals cannot reach alone."
Sam's voice shook. "Why would you give me that?"
Nyx's shadows trembled, and Sam felt something like strain.
"Because the law forbids me from acting directly," she said. "But it does not forbid me from leaving you a tool. And because I will not let your mother's life be wasted."
Sam stared at the black square. "What do you want from me?"
Nyx's answer was quiet.
"Live," she said. "Grow. Find the hand behind the Awakening and break it."
Sam's mouth went dry. "And you will help me?"
Nyx's laughter was soft and joyless.
"I cannot walk the world as I am," she said. "But I can bind what remains of me to the system. I can become a guide. A whisper. A shield, sometimes."
Sam's eyes widened. "You will die."
Nyx did not look away.
"I am not fully free," she said. "I am already fading. This is my choice."
Sam wanted to refuse. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tell a goddess she was not allowed to sacrifice herself for him.
But he was ten, broken, buried under a world that wanted him dead.
And for the first time, someone was offering him a reason to stand up again.
Nyx stepped closer. The black square hovered between them.
"Accept," she said.
Sam's hand moved before his mind could stop it.
The moment his fingers touched the darkness, it poured into him like cold water flooding his veins.
Pain flared. Not in his body, but behind his eyes, behind his thoughts, like a door being forced open.
A chime rang through the void.
Words appeared in the air.
[ SYSTEM INITIALIZATION ][ User detected ][ Name: Sam ][ Status: Critical ][ Compatibility: Confirmed ][ Primary Bloodline: Abyssal Shadow ][ Additional Bloodline Signatures: Detected ][ Bloodline Status: Access Restricted ][ Protocol: Nyx Integration ][ Ability unlocked: Shadow Communication ]
Sam gasped, stumbling back.
Nyx's outline flickered, her shadows thinning.
"You will start weak," she said, voice strained now. "That is the rule. All growth requires a base."
Sam's throat tightened. "I do not want to be alone."
Nyx's presence softened, just for a heartbeat.
"You are not," she said. "Not anymore."
Then the void cracked like glass, and Sam fell.
He woke screaming in the rubble, lungs full of dust, pain back in his limbs like fire. But he was alive. Somehow. Against every rule he knew.
And for the first time since his mother's death, he heard the shadows answer him when he spoke.
Now, six years later, Sam knelt in a dead basin under a living canopy and stared at a small pale mushroom.
He steadied his breathing and forced his mind back to the present.
His body was taller now, but not strong. He was lean and underfed, built from survival rather than comfort. The Pure Reclaimers fed their fighters first. Everyone else ate what was left. Sam had learned to hide hunger the same way he hid everything else.
He opened his status in his mind.
[ STATUS ][ Name: Sam ][ Level: 1 ][ Class: Unassigned ][ Soul Element: Unawakened ][ Strength: 1 ][ Agility: 1 ][ Endurance: 1 ][ Perception: 1 ][ Will: 1 ][ Abilities: Shadow Communication (Novice) ]
The numbers looked like an insult every time he saw them.
He could feel the potential behind them, though. The system was not lying. He had seen what it could do, in small increments. A few points gained after surviving a patrol. A quest reward after escaping a beast pack. Tiny growth, paid for in sweat and fear.
The problem was time.
He did not have much of it.
The Pure Reclaimers were preparing something. He had heard whispers about a raid on a nearby settlement, one that sheltered families and traded medicine. The Reclaimers wanted to burn it out, not for resources, but for ideology. They called it cleansing.
Sam could not let that happen.
But he also could not fight them yet. Not openly. Not with his body this weak and his soul element still asleep.
So he came here.
To the one place that felt like a crack in the wild's logic.
He leaned in closer to the mushroom and let his shadow settle over it fully.
"I am here again," he whispered.
The air stayed still.
Then, from the darkness under the log, the voice returned.
It was not human. It was not female or male. It was layered, as if multiple tones spoke at once, harmonised by something beneath hearing.
"We were not expecting one with this power to enter our domain."
Sam's skin prickled. He snapped his head up, searching the trees, scanning the rocks, looking for anything that might have spoken aloud.
Nothing.
No movement. No figure. No beast silhouette.
The voice had come from nowhere.
And everywhere.
Sam swallowed slowly, forcing his fear down into a shape he could carry.
"Who are you?" he asked, voice low.
Silence.
Then, softer, almost curious.
"You speak to shadows," the voice said. "But you do not know what listens back."
Sam's heart hammered. He felt the shadows around him shift as if reacting, like a thousand unseen heads turning.
He clenched his fists and kept his voice steady.
"I am Sam."
A pause.
Then the voice again, closer this time.
"Sam," it repeated, like it was tasting the sound. "A name from the old world."
Sam forced himself to breathe.
He had come here for answers.
He had not expected to find a question staring back.
"Why is this place dead?" he asked.
The shadows under the log deepened.
The mushroom did not move, but Sam felt something beneath it stir, not physically, but conceptually, like the ground itself was thinking.
"Because this is not a place meant for life," the voice said. "It is a place meant for passage."
Sam's stomach tightened.
"Passage to where?" he asked.
The voice did not answer immediately.
Instead, it whispered words that made Sam's blood run cold.
"The wild is learning to walk beyond Earth."
Sam froze.
The trees, the dirt, the air, all felt suddenly too close.
He could not see the speaker. He could not even be sure it was one being. It could be a network. A chorus. A trap.
But the meaning hit him like a fist.
Beyond Earth.
Sam's mind flashed to Mars domes, to Saturn moons, to distant colonies that believed they were safe.
His voice came out rough.
"How do you know that?"
A faint, almost amused impression threaded through the shadows.
"We listen," the voice said. "And unlike you, we are not alone."
Sam's shadow shivered across the ground, and for the first time since he crawled under the fence, Sam felt truly watched.
Not by the Pure Reclaimers.
Not by patrol beasts.
By something older.
Something that had been waiting.
And it had just noticed him.
The voice spoke one last time, calm and unreadable.
"If you want to live, Interpreter, you will learn who speaks through the Awakening."
Sam's breath caught at the word.
Interpreter.
No one in the settlement knew his gift. No one had ever called him that.
He stared into the darkness beneath the log, trying to see a face that did not exist.
And somewhere deep inside his mind, the system chimed softly, as if it had been listening too.
[ NEW CONTACT ESTABLISHED ]
[ Condition: Unknown ]
[ Threat Level: Unclear ]
Sam did not move.
He did not run.
He only listened to the basin's silence, and to the weight of the world beyond the trees.
Because for the first time, the wilderness had spoken to him first.
And it had not sounded surprised to find him.
It had sounded like it had been waiting.