The sky didn't open. It cracked, like a porcelain bowl dropped on a stone floor.
Silas was waist-deep in the freezing waters of the Snake River, hauling a rusted scrap-metal trap, when the first shard of the sun fell. It didn't hit the earth with a boom; it hit with a chime—a sound so pure it made his nose bleed.
"Silas! Look up!"
His younger brother, Leo, was pointing toward the Sawtooth Mountains. The peaks were melting. Not into lava, but into liquid gold that flowed upward, defying gravity, weaving into a massive, shimmering staircase that pierced the clouds.
Then came the Mandate.
It wasn't a voice. It was an instinct, hard-wired into his brain like the urge to breathe.
> [THE SEVENTH HARVEST HAS BEGUN]
> [OFFER YOUR FLESH. RECEIVE THE DIVINE.]
>
Floating before Silas's eyes was a screen that pulsed with a sickening, holy radiance. It was beautiful, and it felt like a hook in his gut.
[CANDIDATE: SILAS VANE]
[BLOOD PURITY: 0.04% (TRASH)]
[COMPATIBILITY DETECTED...]
[THE WOLF GOD 'FENRIS' IS BIDDING FOR YOUR LEFT ARM]
[REWARD: CLASS - SILVER FANG BERSERKER]
"Silas, I feel... I feel strong!" Leo shouted. His brother was glowing. A translucent blue spear had appeared in his hands, and his eyes were turning a milky, ethereal white. "The 'Tide Caller' chose me! He says I'm going to be a Hero!"
Silas looked at his own screen. The "Wolf God" was scratching at the edges of his vision, a hungry, spectral shadow waiting for permission to tear into his soul.
"Don't take it, Leo!" Silas yelled, dropping the rusted trap. The water around his boots was beginning to boil. "It's not a gift! They're buying you!"
[WARNING: CANDIDATE REJECTS THE BID]
[THE WOLF GOD 'FENRIS' IS OFFENDED]
[PENALTY: DIVINE DISCARD]
The golden light shifted. The "beauty" of the interface curdled. The shimmering screen turned the color of a bruised lung.
"IF YOU WILL NOT BE A VESSEL," a voice boomed from the stairs in the sky, cold enough to freeze the blood in Silas's veins, "THEN YOU ARE MERELY BYCATCH."
A bolt of crimson lightning shot from the clouds, aimed directly at Silas's chest. It was "Divine Judgement"—the System's way of clearing out the "Trash" bloodlines that refused to serve.
Leo screamed, but Silas didn't move. He couldn't.
But as the lightning struck, something inside Silas's marrow—something deep, ancient, and filthy—woke up.
It didn't feel like magic. It felt like Hunger.
The red lightning didn't vaporize him. Instead, as it touched his skin, Silas's pores opened like a thousand tiny mouths. He felt a searing, agonizing heat, but he didn't move away from it. He leaned into it.
He didn't just survive the strike. He inhaled it.
> [ERROR: DIVINE JUDGEMENT CONSUMED]
> [SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED]
> [UNAUTHORIZED ENERGY DETECTED in SOUL CORE]
> [SOURCE: PRIMORDIAL ICHOR (AWAKENED)]
>
Silas fell to his knees, his skin smoking, his veins glowing with a dark, obsidian light. He looked at his hands. They weren't glowing with the "Holy" gold of the other humans. They were stained with something that looked like liquid shadow.
He looked up at the sky, at the "Gods" standing on their golden stairs. For the first time in his life, Silas didn't feel small. He felt like a man standing in front of a buffet.
[NEW CLASS GENERATED: ???]
[CLASS NAME: THE APOSTATE PREDATOR]
[LEVEL: 1]
[CURRENT STOMACH CAPACITY: 1% (DIVINE LIGHT)]
"Silas?" Leo stepped back, his blue spear flickering. "Your eyes... they're... they're gone."
Silas stood up. He didn't have pupils anymore. He had two voids where the light of the world went to die.
The Wolf God, Fenris, appeared on the riverbank—a projection of fur and starlight, thirty feet tall. It bared its teeth, confused that its "Discard" was still breathing. It lunged, its spectral jaws wide enough to swallow the river.
Silas didn't run. He didn't use a skill. He just reached out and grabbed the God's translucent lower jaw with his bare, smoking hand.
"You wanted my arm?" Silas's voice sounded like two tectonic plates grinding together.
He pulled.
The God screamed—a sound that shattered the windows of every house for ten miles. Silas didn't just hurt the projection; he tore a chunk of the "Starlight" right out of its throat. He shoved the glowing essence into his own mouth and swallowed.
> [ESSENCE CONSUMED: 500 UNITS OF 'DIVINE WILL']
> [STRENGTH +50]
> [AGILITY +50]
> [LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP!]
>
The gold stairs in the sky flickered. The "Harvest" paused. For the first time in an eternity, the Gods were looking down at Earth not with greed, but with a cold, creeping realization.
The Seventh Harvest had begun, but they had accidentally let a Wolf into the grain silo.
Silas wiped the golden "blood" of a god from his chin and looked at the mountain-sized cathedral in the clouds.
"I'm still hungry," he whispered.