Ash tasted like blood when it hit Kaelen's tongue.
It was the first thing he noticed—before the cold, before the silence, before even the System's voice. The sky above the ruined gate still pulsed faintly with dying energy, a sickly purple shimmer crackling through the scorched air like a heartbeat on life support. The earth was cracked open like a wound, revealing a yawning abyss where the gate had once stood.
Kaelen crouched at the edge of the crater, shadows stretching unnaturally long behind him. His hands were cut raw from the climb down. His breath steamed despite the stifling heat rising from the fractured earth. The heat didn't feel natural—it prickled along his skin like something alive was watching.
The gate had already collapsed by the time he arrived.
No cleanup crew. No scavengers. No survivors.
Only silence—and the faint stench of charred mana and burned flesh.
He should have turned back. He told himself that even as he slid down the jagged incline.
But he needed this.
Anya's fever had returned. Again. And the scavenger's cut from the last gate barely bought enough off-brand meds to get her through a night. There were no second chances in Lower Thorne. You ran, you clawed, or you died. This gate—unstable, cracked, forgotten—was the only shot he had left.
Even if it killed him.
The descent was worse than he expected. Reality itself seemed… wrong. The shadows pulsed with an intelligence that made his skin crawl. The deeper he went, the less sound followed him. Not even the scrape of his boots or the nervous clink of his scavenged blade echoed. Only the thrum—deep, low, constant—as if something massive was breathing beneath the earth.
The cavern below yawned like the mouth of a dying god. Walls of obsidian bled thick tar that crawled upward instead of down. It moved like it was resisting gravity… or rewriting it.
And then the System spoke.
> [UNIDENTIFIED ENTITY DETECTED]
[CLASSIFICATION: NULL | SHADOW-BOUND PROTOCOL INITIATED]
…ERROR: CLASS UNDEFINED. ADAPTIVE PATH REQUIRED.]
Kaelen staggered back. The System's voice—it wasn't like the stories. It wasn't clean or melodic. It sounded like something scraping across rusted metal.
His interface flickered to life—gray, static-ridden, nothing like the neat golden script of traditional awakenings. No Class. No archetype. Just a single, broken message burned into his vision:
> WELCOME, GRAVEBORN.
His legs went numb.
This wasn't how awakenings were supposed to go.
No one awakened inside broken gates. It was suicide. Worse—illegal. Scavengers like him didn't awaken at all. They picked corpses after the real Awakened passed through. That was the rule. But rules didn't matter when your sister was too weak to stand and the city had turned its back on her.
He needed power. Any power.
But this?
This felt like a curse.
> Skill Acquired: [Devour] – Rank ???
Effect: ???
Kaelen's pulse thudded in his ears. He gripped the blade tighter.
Kaelen stared at the new skill window, bile rising in his throat.
Then… something behind him moved.
A breath.
No—a whisper.
He turned. The wall directly behind him bled open.
Darkness didn't pounce—it spilled. It flowed out of the stone like liquid night, swallowing what little light remained as it surged toward him.
Kaelen dove instinctively, rolled hard across the uneven ground. Pain tore through his shoulder as it dislocated with a sickening pop. He bit down on a scream.
The thing was already towering over him.
It had a shape—but not a form. Roughly humanoid, impossibly tall, with limbs that bent wrong and a face like a mask of absolute void. Its edges writhed, refusing to settle.
The Wraithborn.
Kaelen had heard the horror stories. Broken gate anomalies. Monsters not bound by System law. Echoes of failed dungeons given sentience. They weren't supposed to exist. And yet, here one was—real and wrong.
The Wraithborn tilted its head slowly, studying him. Like a predator unsure if its prey was worth the kill.
Kaelen's grip tightened on his blade. The steel hissed from its sheath, already cracking under the pressure in the air.
> New Quest: Survive.
Duration: Unknown.
> [Devour] Available.
Devour? He didn't even know how to—
The Wraithborn moved.
Time fractured.
Kaelen's body moved on instinct, ducking under the first blow. His blade flashed upward, steel singing—but the shadow bent around the edge, absorbing it.
It grabbed his face.
Agony. Not pain—obliteration.
Memories not his tore through him—burning stars, cities crushed beneath waves of darkness, a sky with too many eyes.
His own scream was swallowed by the System's roar.
> Initiating Devourer Path…
Consuming fragment. Synchronizing soul…
ERROR. ERROR. COMPATIBILITY ANOMALY DETECTED.
OVERWRITE FORCED.
Something entered him. Not just power—presence. Cold and vast and watching.
His vision blacked out.
He didn't dream. He remembered.
A dark throne. A voice like a funeral bell. Chains wrapped around a god's corpse.
Kaelen opened his eyes.
The Wraithborn convulsed violently. Its form split into strands of black ichor, unraveling like rotten silk—and wrapped around him. Not to consume.
To enter.
He screamed again, hands clawing at his chest as the blackness sank through his skin, branding his soul.
> Wraithbound Core Acquired.
Passive Skill: [Echo of the Void] — Active.
Kaelen collapsed.
The shadows around him… stayed.
Not hostile. Not gone. They lingered—curling around his form like wolves nuzzling a wounded alpha. He didn't understand it. But he could feel them. They were his now.
His fingers twitched. Shadows answered.
He stood slowly, blinking sweat and blood from his eyes. Every breath burned. His shoulder hung limp. But he was alive.
No—he was changed.
---
It took nearly an hour to find his way back to the upper tunnels. His body was broken. His mind was worse.
When he reached the crater's edge, the sun was gone.
No stars. No moon.
Just a sky of ash.
The first body was face-down, fingers twisted in the dirt.
Then another. And another.
A scavenger team—eight strong. Experienced.
Dead without wounds. Mouths frozen in screams. Gear untouched.
Drained.
Kaelen's stomach twisted. He crouched beside one of them—a boy, maybe seventeen, with pale freckles and a rusted pendant of the Sanctum of Light.
He'd once laughed at those holy zealots. But now...
Now he understood what it meant to fear something so deeply you prayed for it to notice someone else.
> [Shadow Sovereign Protocol] Phase 1: Complete.
Title Earned: The One Without Light.
Status: Unknown Entity. Faction: None.
> Warning: Proximity Alert. Lifeforms Detected.
Kaelen's head jerked up.
Movement. Dozens of meters away, at the rim of the crater—armor glinting gold, weapons crackling with light.
A strike team.
Awakened.
He counted five. Formation tight. Veterans.
The lead—a woman in white-gold plate—stepped forward, gauntlet raised.
Her voice rang out, magically amplified.
"You there! Unknown Awakened! You are in a Level 4 quarantine zone. Drop your weapon. Lie face-down. You will not be harmed if you comply."
Kaelen didn't move.
He couldn't.
To them, he was soaked in ichor. Standing among the dead. Shadows curling around his boots like smoke.
He looked like a massacre.
"Final warning," she barked.
His fingers twitched. The shadows answered.
He remembered Anya—too weak to stand. He remembered hunger, filth, endless days digging through bones.
He wasn't going back.
Kaelen raised his head.
"I didn't kill them," he said quietly. "But I will… if you make me."
The shadows roared.
Chains erupted from the ground—barbed, black, alive. The strike team scattered, shields igniting. A blinding flash lit the night.
Kaelen ran.
Pain screamed through his limbs. A holy bolt grazed his side, tearing a trench through the rock. Another slammed behind him. He didn't look back.
A new voice called from above—a girl's. Sharp. Young.
"He's unregistered! System says Class Unknown!"
"Mark him!" the commander yelled. "Track him later!"
A symbol of radiant gold seared into his back.
> [MARK OF INQUISITION] Applied.
Status: Hunted.
---
Time blurred.
Kaelen didn't remember the streets. Only the smell of garbage. The sickly lights of the slums. The numb buzz in his teeth.
He collapsed into the alley behind his building. Crawled through the rusted window.
Anya was asleep. Still breathing. Her skin too pale. But alive.
Kaelen leaned against the peeling wall. The shadows curled around him like arms.
He exhaled, long and ragged. Then looked to the corner where the shadows were thickest.
The System chimed.
> New Directive: Feed the Shadows.
Next Evolution at: 3 Consumed Souls.
He didn't know what that meant.
But he understood one thing.
Power had a price.
And hunger had woken.