At 2:36 AM, the sky cracked.
Not thunder.
Not lightning.
A sound like meat tearing and steel groaning split the heavens, and then the world began to rot.
Caspian was already awake. He hadn't slept in three days. Sleep was for people who still felt safe in their skin. People who hadn't watched a city choke on silence while the ground whispered hunger.
He crouched behind the cracked window of a third-floor apartment, holding a rusted kitchen knife. His eyes were dead calm. Not cold from cruelty—cold from calculation.
Outside, the streets were shifting.
The world hadn't ended in fire or ice. It ended in blood—and data.
[System Error: HOST DETECTED. OVERRIDE PERMISSION GRANTED.]
A screen flickered to life before him, hovering midair. It wasn't visible to anyone else—not that anyone else was left here.
[Welcome, Caspian Vale]
[Bloodline Detected: Unknown Origin. Mutation Level: Unstable.]
[Initiate Path Selection: Bloodwarped — Bound to Consumption]
[Warning: Symbiotic Entity Attached]
[Do you accept the Contract? Y/N]
Caspian didn't blink.
"Yes."
A mark burned across his chest, a spiral of dark veins threading up his neck. The smell of ash and iron filled the air.
Behind him, a figure emerged—naked, eyes glowing crimson, a smirk stretched across her lips. Horns like obsidian daggers curled back from her head, and a thin tail flicked lazily behind her.
"Finally," she whispered, dragging a claw down his jaw. "You called. Took your time."
"I didn't call you," he said flatly.
She grinned. "But you bled. That's all I need."
[Symbiosis Achieved: Class Modifier - Succubus Bound | Leech Threshold Initiated]
[Your life is no longer entirely your own.]
He looked at her, not with fear, but with calculation.
"I don't trust you."
"Good," she purred. "Trust is how people die."
Outside, the sky peeled back again. Not clouds—flesh.
The world was being rewritten. Systems were collapsing. Universes bleeding into one another.
Caspian gripped the knife tighter. His partner licked her lips.
The apocalypse wasn't chaos.
It was code.
And Caspian had just stepped into the first layer of it.