He found a hut deeper in the woods, crude and half-collapsed. Inside: scraps of food, tattered clothes… and a bloodstained diary.
The diary of the bandit.
Zayn flipped through it. It was not treasure maps or war strategies—just a man's guilt. A brother killed in the raid, a mother dead in debt. The cruelty of nobles. The madness of hunger.
Zayn closed it.
He did not even take the time to forgive him—but for some reason, it made the silence surrounding him thicker.
System Update:
Blood Memory has leveled up to Empathic Residue – Lv. 1
- Sense mental states of slain enemies with strong emotional residue. Chance to resist fear and mental attacks +2%.
A line of the system, a piece of him that was not normal.
Zayn sat on the rim of the shack, breathing in the night. A sound at his back stopped him; but it was only a deer.
He was fatigued. Not his body. Simply… tired in the areas that did not sleep.
That night, he did not dream.