The air burned.
Not from heat—but from Essence. It writhed across the broken alley like invisible threads, tightening with each breath he took.
He moved slowly.
One step. Then another. A pause. A cough. His lungs rebelled against the thick, cursed atmosphere, and yet he kept walking—past the blood, past the three dismembered bodies, past the still-twitching hand still clutching a dagger.
They had ambushed him. Poorly. Desperately.
He hadn't even needed to activate the seal.
"They were barely Grade 3."
The thought came uninvited, cold and detached. It didn't feel like his own. More like… something the system wanted him to believe.
He stared at the last body—a boy no older than him. A scar down the jaw. Leather armor stitched with talismans. Eyes wide open, as if death had surprised him.
Maybe it had.
He crouched and pried the talisman from the boy's chest. The symbol was crude. Imitation work. A self-taught curse user playing with borrowed rituals.
"He thought you were a mark. He saw a teenager walking alone, reeking of fresh Binding Essence."
He pocketed the talisman anyway. It might sell for food. Or bribe.
Then he turned toward the wall.
The symbol was there, glowing faintly in the cracks of brick and shadow: an open eye bleeding into a spiral.
A message.
He's watching.
Not a warning. Not a threat. A reminder.
He exhaled, drawing his coat tighter.
Three factions marked me this week alone. Word's spreading.
They know I survived the Valley. That I performed the Binding.
And they know I didn't die.
He needed to move. The cursed fog was thickening, and his Domain wasn't stable enough yet to repel it passively.
The streets beyond the alley were worse.
Crows circled the rooftops. Not real ones—black feathers of Essence that shimmered with malice and memory. One locked eyes with him and exploded into dust.
Good. One less Watcher.
A bell rang in the distance. Sharp. Hollow. It meant the inquisitors were on patrol again. He ducked into a side path and made for the underside of the bridge—his usual hiding spot.
But someone was already there.
A figure. Hooded. Lean. Not cursed.
Alive.
"Didn't think you'd make it."
The voice was amused. Familiar.
He froze, then approached carefully.
"You're late," the hooded figure said. "Again. You always think you have time. You don't."
The boy said nothing.
The figure pulled back their hood, revealing a woman—early twenties, with eyes like polished onyx and a tattoo of a broken hourglass under her jaw. A former Inquisitor. Or maybe still one. She never said.
"Three kills tonight?" she asked, glancing at the Essence clinging to his coat. "Sloppy."
"They came at me first."
"So kill faster. Waste less breath."
He hated how she talked. Like everything was a training module. Like she wasn't the reason he was still breathing.
"You owe me," she added, crouching and lighting a dried root wrapped in bone twine. "The contract said three talismans a week. That's two."
He pulled the third from his sleeve and tossed it onto the stones.
"Good boy."
She smiled without warmth.
"You're not ready for the Shrine Trials," she said. "But the others think you are. They want to see what kind of monster you'll become."
"I'm not—"
"Save it. You're not human, either."
He flinched.
Not because it was cruel. But because it might be true.
[System Notice: Binding Essence Threshold Exceeded – Stage I Unlocked]
→ Latent Technique Stirring: Input Keyword to Define Manifestation
→ Deadline: 72 Hours. Unnamed Techniques Collapse Without Purpose.
His breath hitched.
It was happening. The first evolution. His Innate Technique was forming.
"It's waking up," he muttered.
The woman turned sharply.
"Already?"
"System wants a keyword."
"Then give it one."
He hesitated.
What word could define a technique bound to loss, to emptiness, to burned names and vanishing faces?
Then, without fully meaning to, he whispered:
"Hollow."
The system pulsed inside his skull.
[Innate Technique Assigned: Hollow Trace]
— Manifestation Pending System Calibration
Warning: Technique synchronization unstable without a name.]
His fingers twitched. The stone beneath him cracked slightly. The air grew denser—just a little. Just enough to make the woman step back.
"You're changing," she said.
"I have to."
She nodded. Her face shifted—not approval. Not sympathy. Something between fear and anticipation.
"Then run," she said. "The Shrine Trials are in seven days. If you want a future, you'll need a domain that can kill the past."
He looked at her.
Then down at his hand, where the Essence had begun to pool, faintly violet, glowing like veins beneath the skin.
I don't need a future, he thought.
Just a reason to survive the next seven days.
🔚 Chapter 2 End