Pain woke him.
Not the kind of pain that bled quietly beneath the skin—but a rupture. A tearing. Like his body was no longer one piece, but a dozen, strung together by wires and nerves stretched too tight.
Khương Triều Dạ opened his eyes to darkness.
No floor. No ceiling. No walls.
Only blood.
Not in pools. Not in drops.
Blood hung in the air, suspended mid-fall, like pearls of red glass. It pulsed around him. Slow. Rhythmic. With a heartbeat not his own.
His clothes were gone. His skin glistened with crimson. His mouth was filled with a taste like rust and dirt.
And something wet crawled across his spine.
---
He was not alone.
Figures stood in the void. Tall, grotesque shapes stitched together from bone, sinew, and eyes. Some had dozens of limbs; others none. One dragged its entrails like a bridal veil. Another had a torso made entirely of mouths, each one screaming a different name.
They did not speak.
They watched.
Waiting.
And in the center of them, suspended above a dais of writhing flesh, was a throne. Not made of wood. Or metal. But of spines.
Curved, overlapping vertebrae—still wet. Still twitching.
Sitting upon it was a figure cloaked in skin. Layers upon layers of flayed epidermis sewn together like robes. No face. Just a black void where its head should be. From that absence, a voice emerged:
"You returned too early, Fragment. You must be punished. Fed. Shared."
Khương Triều Dạ tried to speak.
But his lips had been stitched.
He screamed through sealed flesh.
And they descended upon him.
---
They tore without anger.
The first claw punctured his shoulder, pulling skin away like peeling a fruit. Blood sprayed—not red—but black and silver, shimmering like oil in firelight. His nerves lit up. He tried to struggle, but arms were held by tendrils of tendon sprouting from the air itself.
A creature with three jaws bit into his abdomen.
Another one whispered to his intestines before devouring them.
A thin child-shaped thing with eyes for teeth climbed onto his chest and licked the blood from his neck with a tongue made of nails.
Still, he did not die.
He watched. He felt.
Through each cut, each tear, his consciousness expanded. His screams echoed in every direction—and something deep within laughed.
Not out of joy.
Out of recognition.
---
Then the banquet began.
The throne-being raised one limb—bare bone, covered in weeping holes—and the monsters obeyed. They stopped devouring. One by one, they lifted pieces of him—sliced skin, carved muscles, nerve threads like violin strings—and presented them before the throne.
Then they ate.
Not for sustenance. Not for ritual.
But as tribute.
Each time one consumed a piece of him, it whispered a memory back into his ears:
A face he had forgotten.
A scream from a childhood he never lived.
A prayer in a language not of earth.
The whispers piled. His mind cracked. He remembered being worshipped—as a god who never bled.
Now, he was bleeding.
And they were tasting his essence like wine.
---
Suddenly, silence.
Every monster knelt.
The throne-being stood.
It pointed a limb toward Khương Triều Dạ's face.
A symbol ignited in the air—a spiral with six notches.
The Sigil of Surrender.
It seared into his forehead. Flesh burned. Skull screamed. His eyes boiled and wept light.
And then—
The darkness vanished.
---
He awoke on the rooftop of a building. Naked. Blood-soaked. Mouth torn open where stitches had once been. Around him, the city lights flickered in rhythmic pulses.
A stray cat approached him.
Sniffed.
And ran away, yowling.
Khương Triều Dạ stared at his hands.
They were human.
But his reflection in the window beside him showed hands made of bone and fire.
On his chest, in faint raised scar tissue, a symbol had formed:
The Spiral with Six Notches.
His initiation was complete.
Layer One had consumed him.
But something deeper had awakened.