The blinding red light lasted only three seconds.
But for Song Yi, it felt like an eternity.
Information then entered his mind. It exploded. Images. Symbols. Truths engraved in bones that were not his. He saw civilizations fall. He saw blood being spilled into red oceans. He saw a ring pass from hand to hand, from corpse to corpse, across eras that no mortal should know.
And, at the center of it all, a name.
Bloodline Ring.
The red light receded. It returned to the ring on his finger like water being sucked down a drain.
Song Yi opened his eyes.
The world was different. No longer slow. No longer frozen. He simply understood what had happened.
It wasn't time that had stopped. It was blood.
His blood and the beast's blood had completely stalled. Every drop frozen inside the vessels. Every pulse suspended in the air. The power of the ring had immobilized them for those three seconds.
But now the blood was flowing again.
Song Yi felt it. The beast's heart began to beat again. Its muscles started to contract again. The open mouth inches from his face began to move once more.
He did not think. His body acted.
Song Yi threw his torso backward and rolled to the side. The beast's jaws snapped shut on empty space, biting only the air where his head had been an instant before.
He got up. Staggered. But he got up.
The beast roared. Its amber eyes burned with fury and something else. Fear? Confusion? It didn't matter.
Song Yi felt his own body. Something had changed. His blood flowed through his veins at an absurd speed. Every heartbeat was a hammer. Every pulse sent waves of heat into his muscles.
The cuts on his chest and shoulder, the deep gashes that should have been pouring blood, were closing. The flesh was knitting together. The pain was fading.
But along with the strength came something else. Hunger.
Not the hunger he knew. Not the emptiness in his stomach after days without eating. It was a deeper hunger. Older. A hunger that came from the ring on his finger.
Song Yi looked at his right hand.
The ring was no longer rusty copper. Now it was black. Black like charcoal. And red veins ran across its surface like blood vessels.
The hunger tightened. His stomach growled with a violence he had never felt. His mouth watered. His teeth ached.
Blood. The thought was not his. It was the ring's.
The beast. It's blood. The ring wanted that blood.
Song Yi tightened his grip on the rusted knife in his left hand.
The beast lunged. The fight was brutal.
Song Yi dodged the first strike by inches. The claws brushed his arm. He responded with a knife strike to the creature's flank. The rusted blade met the black hide and scraped. It did not pierce.
The skin was too tough.
The beast turned. Its bony tail swept his legs. Song Yi fell. Rolled. The beast's paw crushed the ground where his head had been.
He got up again. He always got up.
The knife was useless against the hide. He needed a weak point.
The eyes. The mouth. The throat.
The beast charged head-on. Song Yi waited. At the last moment, he stepped to the left and drove the knife into the creature's eye.
The blade went in. Dark blood gushed out.
The beast howled. A wet, sharp sound. It shook its head violently. The knife flew from Song Yi's hand, carried away by the motion.
He was unarmed.
The beast lunged with its mouth open. Song Yi ran backward, but the tree behind him blocked his path. He was cornered.
The jaws came down.
He grabbed the beast's upper teeth with both hands. The teeth cut into his palms. Blood ran down his wrists. The creature's strength was immense. Its jaws kept closing, centimeter by centimeter.
Song Yi screamed. Not from pain. From sheer determination.
With a violent motion, he forced the beast's jaws upward and thrust his head forward, into the open mouth.
He reached the roof of the creature's mouth.
And drove his fingers in, which felt as if they were being reinforced by blood.
The beast's jaws snapped shut on his left arm at the same instant. The pain was unbearable. Song Yi felt the teeth tearing through muscle, scraping bone.
But his fingers found soft flesh. The roof of the mouth. No thick hide. No spikes.
With all the strength he had left, he tore.
Blood ran down his hand. Down his arm. Through the beast's mouth.
The creature trembled. Its amber eyes widened. Its front legs lost strength.
It fell.
Fell on top of Song Yi. The weight crushed his chest. He couldn't breathe. His arm was still trapped in the beast's mouth, the teeth embedded in his flesh down to the bone.
He pushed the creature's body with his right arm. Managed to free the left.
The arm was destroyed. He could see the white bone through the torn flesh. Blood spurted in rapid pulses.
'It cut some arteries.'
Song Yi looked at the sky. The trees. The sunlight filtering through the branches.
'I killed the beast. But I'm going to die anyway.' The thought came calmly. Tired.
Then he remembered. The information. The ring.
'If what I learned is true…'
With his good arm, Song Yi dragged his body to the side. He freed himself from the beast's weight. He extended his right hand.
The hand with the black ring of red veins.
He touched the blood of the dead beast on the ground, and the ring lit up.