Chapter 38: It Begins
Rage. Pure, undiluted, soul-deep fury. No insult could've cut deeper.
He stared at the screen, claws curling into his palms until blood welled around the bone.
[System // Evolution Path Unlocked]
[True Name // ######]
[##### Infernal // ######]
[Common Name // Imp]
[Classification // Mawspawn Variant]
[Status // Unknown Evolution Lineage Detected]
["And thus was the name corrupted. Thus was the shape denied.
Forgotten by demons. Forgotten by gods. But never by the Maw."
—Illegible Fragment, Corrupted Bloodline Data]
[Species Summary]
[Error // System records incomplete or corrupted. Unable to retrieve full evolutionary lineage data. Evolution path now unlocked due to unknown external resource integration (Blood Bead // Source Unidentified). Detected traits suggest significant alteration to baseline Imp bloodline. Manifestations include skeletal mutations and unstable affinity for soul-based abilities. Full mutation potential unknown.]
[Projected Traits]
[Unknown Mutation // Bone-related growths detected. Purpose and classification unknown.]
[Unknown Affinity // Soul energy manipulation identified. Scope and strength unknown.]
[Unstable Core // User physiology and soul structure unstable. Future mutations unpredictable.]
[Collective Resonance // Potential ability to link with other entities via unknown method. Details unknown.]
[!!Warning!!]
[Extreme caution advised. Evolution path is uncharted. No known records available.
System stability may degrade upon selection. Soul integrity likely to fluctuate.
This evolutionary path is flagged as anomalous.]
["The #### weakens. The buried stir. ## ###### away the ####, but it ##### once more."
—Fragmented text recovered from blood altar inscriptions, Author Unknown]
[Confirm Selection?]
[Y/N]
"This is my third choice? This?! It's not even an option—look at this! Bones? 'Potential unknown'? Strength unknown? Unknown, unknown, unknown!"
His voice cracked, jaw clenched hard enough to creak. The memory hit before he could shove it back, his body breaking, soul unraveling. Charon's voice dragging him from the edge. Without that, he'd have been gone. Reduced to ash and system fragments. And for what?
For this? For a corrupted bloodline and a list of question marks?
His whole body shook. Blood dripped from his fists, tail lashing behind him like a blade on instinct.
[Recommendation: Complaining does not alter reality. Suggest User calm down, stabilize emotional state to access higher reasoning.]
"You calm down!"
He kicked a skull fragment across the mausoleum. It shattered on impact. His chest rose and fell in hard, staggered pulls. He wasn't breathing, he was venting pressure. Seconds passed.
He knew the system was right.
Didn't make him any less furious.
'Unknown, unknown… Unknown, but, if I—'
"No, that's stupid…"
He grabbed his tail and started pacing, chewing the end like a feral dog. Muttering.
"Unknown… Bladereaver… Hex—but unknown…"
One hand shot up, gripping a horn. He yanked, hard, like pain might shake answers loose.
"Itchy, itchy, itchy—why is it unknown?! Why?!"
[User behavior erratic. If Option 3 is insufficient, select Option 1 or 2. Suggest ignoring and moving on.]
"Ignore?!"
Spit flew as he shouted, foam threading the corners of his mouth. Muscles locked tight, trembling.
"Then I'll never know! What if, huh?! You gonna tell me?! I want to know I made the right choice! How am I supposed to like this?!"
Something cracked.
Not in his bones.
In the air. In the moment.
The imp stopped pacing. Shoulders heaved. His body twitched like something underneath the skin was trying to crawl out. He threw his head back...and his aura ruptured.
"IT'S NOT FAAAAIR!!!"
No divine storm answered. The skies didn't break. None of the world's powerhouses noticed. The world moved on.
Just a scream. From a demon that should not exist.
Blood clung to him but didn't fall. It rose...thick, bubbling, weightless, reaching like claws of something buried and forgotten. Crimson and black. Veins throbbed under his flesh like worms desperate to surface.
He stared at the panel like it had murdered him in another life.
"Wicked."
He sneered. He loathed.
"Evil."
His teeth snapped, tail lashed the stone.
"System...If you cheat me...if this is a trick...I'll tear your voice from the void! I swear it on my soul!"
He slammed his claw down.
[System // Notification]
[Option 3 // Imp / Mawspawn Variant / Accepted]
[Initializing evolution protocols...]
[!! WARNING !! // Unverified Genetic Source // Results Unknown]
[Initializing in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...]
Just before the lightning ripped through him, the system spoke, it's voice barely registering.
[...It begins.]
Everything ruptured.
His body tore open from the inside, every joint, every inch of flesh splitting in jagged spirals. The sound was wet. Violent. The inside of the mausoleum vanished beneath a wave of black blood, spraying across every stone, every shattered bone, drenching the walls like it had been pressurized.
His eyes stayed open. Wide. Staring. The pain didn't climb, it dropped like a hammer. It didn't surge, it shattered.
"Kill y—"
He didn't finish.
The blood coating the walls twitched. Every drop, every smear, reversed course in a flash—ripped free from the stone, the bones, the cracks in the floor. It didn't flow. It snapped back, as if the air itself had reversed.
It hit him from every angle, a thousand syringes all converging on the same nerve. It didn't merge, it passed through, shredding muscle and grinding bone as it shot inward, faster than thought.
The imp disappeared.
What remained was pulp. Viscera. The wet remains of something obliterated by its own evolution.
Then it moved.
The slurry convulsed, caught in a spiral, whirling toward a single point at the room's center. An invisible center of gravity pulled everything inward. Blood, meat, broken bone, ripped skin, all drawn like stars collapsing into a singularity.
Then...stillness.
A single drop hung in the air. Suspended. Perfect. Every ounce of his ruined body reduced to that point.
A beat.
A pulse.
Like a god's heartbeat cracked the world.
The drop detonated outward, not in flame but in flesh, a violent burst of writhing meat, nerves lashing, muscle folding in on itself, knitting around air. It didn't grow. It birthed itself, layer by layer, skinless and screaming.
It kept pulsing. Expanding.
A cocoon of gore, slick and heaving...alive.
A shell made of sinew and blood, of malformed bone and twitching nerve, beating in time with something buried deep below. A womb carved from pain.
And it wasn't done. From inside, something groaned.
A low, wet moan, thick with rot. Sloshing meat shifted beneath thinning layers of membrane. One bulge stretched the cocoon, then another. A tremor passed through it. Gums formed where no mouths belonged, ringed with misshapen teeth that ground themselves into pus and vanished back into the fold.
Everything writhed. Twitched. Lurched in place.
The sight alone would've cracked lesser minds, flesh that chewed itself, bone that coiled and pulsed like muscle, but it wasn't the horror that would anchor attention.
It was the aura.
A pressure radiated out from the cocoon...pure corruption. Not metaphor. Not symbolism. This was vile made manifest. It dragged at the world itself, bending air, warping stone. Cracks ran through the mausoleum floor, veins of black heat pulsing as emotion itself was peeled from the bones of the dead.
Lust. Greed. Envy. Wrath. Pride. Sloth. Gluttony.
Sin clung to the shell like flies to a wound, drawn by instinct to something older than life.
Then, another moan.
The cocoon twisted violently, just once. Flesh spun, muscle whipped. Blood sprayed toward the walls and instantly snapped back, like gravity had reversed for a breath.
A scream followed.
Shrill at first, then deep. Guttural. Continuous. It didn't stop. Sulfur began to poison the air. Then decay, sharp and cloying, followed by a sour-sweet stench that clung to the tongue.
This was birth. This was death. And inside, the imp, what was left of him, felt his mind split. Not from pain. Not fear. He couldn't scream. He couldn't move. Something larger than either crushed him from the inside. Submission.
His thoughts dissolved.
Images poured through him.
A mountain of demon corpses stacked so high it pierced the clouds.
A planet, dead and lightless.
A sky full of multi-colored titans– things with no beginning or end, shapes that rejected logic.
War. Endless. Billions of entities locked in slaughter. Bodies and weapons too strange to describe.
Then: black fire.
Then: nothing.
No thought. No feeling. Only endless.
Until—
CRACK!
A sound like a sword shattering across eternity. It didn't echo. It ignited.
Outside, the cocoon froze. Every vein. Every twitch. Every dangling tendon. Still. Held in place like a painting.
Then came the pulse.
A flicker of light from within. Faint at first, then stronger. Something took shape behind the gore-drenched veil. Curled. Breathing. Fetal. Broad-shouldered and lean. The shape of something new.
And in that single frozen moment...when all things were still and the world forgot to breathe...the word struck.
It didn't speak. It was spoken.
Inside the imp's mind, carved into soul and marrow:
'Azakh-Tur.'
His True Name.
And then the light inside detonated.