The old hunter's words lingered.
A partner. Not a weapon. Something to negotiate with.
Blaine walked the black stone corridors with the pipe loose in his grip and the warmth pulsing steady behind his ribs. He didn't push it down. Didn't feed it. Just let it sit there, a second pulse beneath the first, waiting to see if he meant what he'd told himself.
The corridor narrowed. The walls closed in until his shoulders nearly brushed both sides. A kill box. Bad terrain for a fight. Good terrain for an ambush.
He stopped.
The scan flickered. A single signature ahead. Stationary. Waiting.
[Strength: 21]
Higher than me. Positioned in the narrowest section. It knows the terrain. It chose this place.
He stepped forward anyway. Not because he was confident. Because the bloodline had stirred at the number, a faint pressure against his heartbeat, and he wanted to see if he could let it respond without letting it rule.
The creature was waiting exactly where the scan had placed it. Tall. Thin. Its limbs were elongated into something that suggested speed over power. Its skin had a faint shimmer, a distortion at the edges like heat haze over stone. Camouflage. Not invisibility, but close.
Distortion type. Hard to track visually. Rely on sound. Rely on instinct.
The creature didn't charge. It watched. Its head tilted with the same assessing patience Blaine had used on a dozen enemies before. Recognition flickered in its dark eyes. Not intelligence. Pattern matching. It had killed things that moved like him before.
Blaine exhaled. Slow. Deliberate. He didn't raise the pipe. Didn't shift into a combat stance. Instead he found the warmth in his chest and did something he hadn't tried before.
He asked.
Not with words. With intent. Show me what you see.
The bloodline pulsed. Warmer. Not hot—curious. His vision didn't change. His hearing didn't sharpen. But something underneath both shifted. The creature's shimmer became less confusing. The distortion had a center. A core. A place where the light bent inward instead of scattering.
There. That's the real body. The rest is misdirection.
The creature lunged.
Blaine moved. Not on his own instinct—or not entirely. The bloodline had already read the angle, already calculated the timing. His body followed half a thought behind. The claws passed through the space where his throat had been. He sidestepped into the creature's blind spot and swung the pipe.
Crack.
The blow caught the core—the center of the distortion. The shimmer flickered. The creature hissed. It scrambled back, reassessing, its camouflage wavering like a disrupted signal.
It didn't expect that. It's used to fighting blind opponents.
We're not blind anymore.
The warmth pulsed again. Not triumphant. Acknowledging. A partner who had been heard.
The creature attacked a second time. Faster. More desperate. Blaine let the bloodline guide the dodge—a quarter-turn, a half-step—and then chose the counter himself. The pipe drove upward into the same point. The distortion collapsed. The creature crumpled.
Silence.
[Target Eliminated]
[Strength +2]
[Strength: 19]
No instability warning. No surge of uncontrolled heat. The bloodline settled back into its resting pulse, quiet and warm behind his ribs. Waiting. Patient. A partner who had proven its worth and expected nothing in return but acknowledgment.
Blaine looked down at the creature's body. The shimmer was gone now. It was just flesh and bone. Another corpse in a zone full of them.
That was different. Not domination. Cooperation.
He flexed his hand. Steady. No tremors. No loss of control. The bloodline had answered his intent without overriding it. It had shown him what it saw, and he had chosen what to do with the information.
The old hunter was right. It's not a weapon. It's a mind. A very old mind. Whether it thinks the way I do — I don't know yet."
He retrieved his pipe and wiped it clean. The corridor ahead opened into a wider chamber. He could see the inner wall from here, a dark spine rising through the stone. Somewhere beyond it, gates waited. Somewhere beyond those, a rival who had mastered what he was only beginning to understand.
But that was later. For now, he had proven something to himself.
The bloodline was not his enemy. It was not his curse. It was a part of him that had been waiting to be included in the fight.
He walked forward. The warmth pulsed once. Companionable.
Good. Then let's see how far we can climb together.