"I hope your blood tastes good," the man added, with the lightness of someone commenting on the weather, "because that's Mor'khad's favorite part."
And he pointed toward the wyrm.
"This is your moment! Show us that your insignificant existence has some value!"
What followed was an imminent tremor.
The wyrm didn't lunge forward — it sank. Its coils pierced the stone floor as if the rock were water, dissolving downward with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible for something that size, until the last segment of its tail vanished beneath the surface and the room fell completely silent.
Draven spun around.
Nothing.
Only stone. Only blood. Only the bodies of his friends.
The silence lasted exactly two seconds.
The floor exploded to his left.
The wyrm's head erupted upward with its full mass, shattering the stone across a three-meter radius and filling the air with dust and shrapnel. Draven leapt to the right on pure instinct — the blow still caught him, the pressure wave lifted him off the ground and slammed him into the wall.
He fell.
He was on his feet before the dust settled.
"Don't think I'm going to make this easy for you!" His voice came out raw, loaded, carrying the full weight of everything he had been holding since he'd entered this rift. "Both of you are going to pay for what you did to my friends!"
The man, from across the room, said nothing. He just smiled.
The wyrm sank again.
Draven didn't wait. He drew the training dagger from his belt — his only weapon, short, without a real edge, designed for controlled practice and not for this — and gripped it with both hands as he turned, searching for the point of emergence.
'The core.'
Every monster in the Underworld has a core. Its only true weak point. Without magic, without rank, it was the only thing he could hold onto. His father's guards had drilled that into him as a child, back when everyone still assumed the power would come. It hadn't. But the knowledge had stayed.
The floor trembled beneath him.
This time it came from above — straight down through the ceiling, tearing the rock from top to bottom — and Draven rolled aside as debris rained down on him. He rose to his knees, spat blood, scanned the dark scales for something different.
He found it.
Along the side of the neck. Between two scale plates. Something that pulsed with a faint, reddish glow. Rhythmic. Like a second heartbeat.
"There you are!"
He ran.
The wyrm swung its body to cut him off but Draven changed direction at the last second, ducked under a lateral tendon that swept the air centimeters from his head, and leapt toward the neck with the dagger raised.
The blade struck the scale.
And snapped in two.
The metal fragment went ricocheting across the room with a sound that rang off the stone. Draven was left holding the handle, staring at it for a half-second without understanding — and in that half-second the wyrm took him.
A tendon coiled around his waist and squeezed with a force that knocked the air out of him all at once. It lifted him off the ground. Spun him. And launched him into the opposite wall with enough violence to shatter something in his right shoulder.
"You disgusting worm!" he screamed as he fell.
He hit the floor. Tried to get up. His arms responded halfway.
"Seriously!" The man's laughter filled the room. "Your dagger just broke! What are you going to do now, Ashmore? Bite it?"
Draven got up anyway.
With a shattered shoulder. With his hands raw. With the taste of blood permanently settled in his mouth.
He got up.
The wyrm watched him from the center of the room with the obscene calm of something that knows it has already won and is simply waiting for its prey to accept it.
"Getting up isn't going to change anything!" the man said. "You're an Unranked with no magic and no weapon inside a rift! Accept your fate already!"
Draven looked at him.
"Do you have any idea when to shut that damn mouth?"
"Excuse me?"
"I said shut your mouth." He spat blood on the floor. "Pathetic. That's what you are. A hired hunting dog sent to eliminate students who can't defend themselves. Is that as far as you ever got in life?"
The man stopped smiling.
"Watch what you say."
"Why? What are you going to do? Kill me? You were going to do that anyway." Draven didn't look away from him. "At least I know why I'm here. I came because I have a purpose, just like every one of my friends — who you and this disgusting worm murdered for a little money."
"And what purpose is that? I'd love to hear it. Enlighten me."
"Go to hell! I don't owe you anything, you damn bounty hunter!"
The man's jaw tightened.
"I've had enough of your disrespect! Finish him off once and for all, Mor'khad! Make him part of your stomach and let him satisfy your ravenous appetite for all eternity!"
He shuddered with pleasure as he screamed it.
And the wyrm sank.
Draven ran toward where he'd last seen the core, calculating, betting everything on a single move —
Mistake.
It came up directly beneath him. It hit him from below, launching him toward the ceiling with such force that for a moment Draven didn't know where he was or which way he was falling. He struck the stone ceiling with his back, bounced off, and began to fall.
He fell slowly.
Or so it seemed to him.
In that second suspended in the air, with the floor rising toward him and the wyrm opening wide below like a trap, something inside Draven came loose. Not fear. Not rage. Something different. Deeper. Older.
"DAMN ALL OF YOU!" The scream tore out from a place that had been sealed for years and filled the entire room and bounced off the stone and he didn't care about any of it. "Magnus! The director! And you, Father! You first! You threw me away like garbage in front of everyone! Without even giving me a chance! Without even looking me in the face!"
The wyrm waited below with its mouth wide open.
"All of them had noble goals! They were better people than any of you! And you sent them to die because they had no rank! Because they were disposable! Because it was easier to eliminate them than to admit that the system you built is worthless! You will regret what you did!"
He fell.
The wyrm's jaws closed around him.
And the world disappeared.
***
The first thing he noticed was that he was still thinking.
Total darkness. No floor. No ceiling. Only silence.
And a window floating before him.
Red. With white letters.
[Critical System Alert]
[Host Vital Status: Critical]
[Bodily Functions: Collapsing...]
[Threat Detected]
[Entity Identified: Mor'khad]
[Classification: Extraplanar Invader]
[Entity Demands Immediate Integration...]
'What...?'
The window disappeared.
And in its place came a voice.
Deep. Ancient. Like something that has gone centuries without speaking and has finally found someone to address.
"Your whole life, you've been called garbage. No rank. No magic. No one willing to bet on you."
Draven didn't respond. He couldn't.
"But I saw you. And what I saw... was not garbage."
A pause.
"Accept my pact and I'll give you what no one else could. Real strength — not inherited, not borrowed. Yours. A path upward when everyone pushed you down. And the life you are about to lose."
Another window appeared.
[Mor'khad Offers You a Blood Contract]
[Condition: When I hunger, you feed me]
[Benefit: Full restoration from lethal wounds]
[Ability: Access to the Blood Predator's System]
"In exchange," the voice continued, "only one thing. When I am hungry, you feed me. When I call, you answer." A long pause. "You are not my slave. You are my host. And I... will be what no one else was willing to be for you."
[Do you accept?]
▸ [YES] / [NO]
Draven processed it in silence.
Part of him wanted to say no. The part that had spent twenty years learning that nothing like this ever ends well.
But then one final window appeared.
[Final Warning]
[Time Remaining: 5 seconds]
▸ If you choose [NO] or do not respond: the digestion process will continue.
▸ Estimated time of death: Slow and extremely painful.
▸ Duration: 3 hours, 47 minutes.
Three hours.
He thought of Magnus. His father. His friends.
'Not like this.'
'There's too much left unfinished.'
He extended his hand. It was shaking.
He touched [YES].
Everything exploded into white.
[Pact Completed]
[Initiating restoration protocol...]
▸ Repairing structural damage... complete.
▸ Stabilizing vital functions... complete.
▸ Binding core to host... complete.
[Congratulations, Draven Ashmore]
[You Have Just Become a Blood Predator]
The man's voice came through, euphoric, from somewhere without direction.
"Perfect! Excellent! I knew I'd chosen well! Bon appétit, Mor'khad!"
And Draven Ashmore lost consciousness.