Marcus Chen died with a keyboard under his fingernails and a bullet lodged in his spine. He remembered the crack of the shot, the weightless fall into dark, the sour plastic of the desk still under his palms(then nothing).
Now he woke choking on dust that tasted like blood and rust. The ground beneath him wasn't linoleum, it was jagged stone, cutting into his cheek. The air pressed heavy, hot, metallic, like breathing through broken pipes.
Not a hospital. Not an afterlife.
His hands dug into coarse red sand. Not his hands (calloused, scarred, built for killing). Marcus Chen, the programmer, had bled out in an alley full of power cables and flickering neon. That man was gone.
This body wasn't.
He pushed himself up. Muscles moved with brutal precision, strength he hadn't earned. The last thing he remembered was corporate server racks, the smell of ozone, and the crack of a high-caliber round tearing through him. Then nothing. Now… this.
A burn flared behind his eyes. Not pain (something sharper.) A HUD, translucent and impossible, etched into his vision like it had always been there.
[AETHER CODEX ACTIVATED.]
[DOOMBRAND PROTOCOL: SURVIVE OR BE ERASED]
[ ASSESSMENT COUNTDOWN: ACTIVATED BUT UNDISCLOSED]
His breath caught. He knew code, but this wasn't his kind. No source. No interface. Just a cold, metallic voice vibrating straight through his bones:
> "Anomaly detected. Host vessel acquired. Prove your worth in the next four minutes or be culled. Survive, or be erased. The Codex requires data."
The words were flat. Devoid of emotion. He tried to speak. A guttural cough escaped his throat.
What the hell is this? His thoughts felt like static.
A growl cut through the stillness (low, close.)
Kael rolled onto his back. The sky overhead was a bruised purple smeared with crimson streaks. The ground stretched in jagged obsidian spires and rusted sand littered with splintered bones.
The Crimson Wastes. The name came from somewhere deep in his head ( a memory not his own.)
Movement.
A hulking mass lunged from behind a grotesque, calcified ribcage. Not a dog. A Bone Hound. Something primal. Monstrous. Its head was a gaping maw of bone and razor-sharp teeth, its eyes twin points of feral red light. Its body was gaunt, stretched hide over a skeletal frame, claws tearing at the blood-red sand. Its breath stank of decay.
Kael didn't think. The body moved. A blur of instinct. His right hand snapped up, finding a worn, heavy longsword at his side. He hadn't felt it before. It felt natural now. Heavy. Balanced. He swung.
The Bone Hound was fast. Faster than anything natural. It sidestepped the blade, a sickening, crunching sound as it clawed at his left arm. Four deep gouges. Blood welled up. Warm. Sticky. Pain, sharp and immediate, lanced through him. He gritted his teeth. No time to process. The beast was already on him, jaws snapping, aiming for his throat.
His left arm, already torn, shot out. Not a block. A bait. The Bone Hound committed, jaws wide. His right foot planted, a pivot he hadn't known he possessed. The longsword became an extension of him, not a tool. He drove it forward, a brutal, upward thrust.
The blade found soft tissue. A wet, tearing sound. The Bone Hound shrieked. A raw, piercing cry that grated against his skull. The sound vibrated in his teeth. He felt the blade sink deeper, the hilt grinding against bone. He pulled it back, a sickening, squelching noise.
The Bone Hound stumbled, clawing at the air, trying to find purchase. Its shriek gurgled. It fell. A heavy thud against the blood-red sand. It thrashed. Not dead. Not yet.
Kael didn't hesitate. He brought the longsword down. A vicious, overhead chop. The blade sheared through the Bone Hound's spine, a sickening crack that echoed in the barren landscape. The head flopped sideways, eyes still glaring, but life drained out of them like sand from an hourglass. A final, shuddering spasm. Then stillness.
He stood over it. Breathing hard. The air still tasted like rust. Blood dripped from his left arm. Hot. Wet. His hand trembled around the sword hilt. This wasn't him. Marcus Chen didn't kill. Marcus Chen coded. Marcus Chen hid behind screens. This was different. This felt… primitive. Unsettling. And yet, for a moment, he felt a steady grip on the longsword, a strange sense of control amidst the chaos.
Kael brought the sword down, full force. Steel cracked spine. The thing twitched, then went still.
He stood over the corpse, chest heaving, arm dripping. Marcus Chen never killed anything. Kael Vorne had.
The HUD flickered:
[ESSENCE: +15]
[CURSE GAUGE: 10%]
[DOOMBRAND THRESHOLD: 100%]
Something moved under the skin of his torn arm (black tendrils, thin as veins, spreading from the claw marks. Wrong. Cold).
> "Bloodrot Curse active," the Codex said. "Decay will manifest. Violent urges will intensify."
Great. Woke up in hell, got a system that wants me dead, and now I'm rotting from the inside.
The horns came next ( long, low, and hunting. From the north. Then again from the east.)
> "Blood Coven hunters," the Codex whispered.
The sky darkened, but not with clouds (a slick, swirling blackness eating the light. The air prickled with static).
[ABYSSAL HUNT INITIATED]
A flash of movement. A blur against the darkening sky. She was fast. Faster than him. Faster than the Bone Hound.
She landed lightly, just beyond the Bone Hound's corpse. Cloaked in black, the fabric seemed to absorb the meager light, making her almost invisible against the grim backdrop. Her hood was up, shadowing most of her face, but her eyes were sharp. Frost-like. Gleaming with an unnerving, almost predatory intelligence. She held a longsword. Gleaming. Unlike his, it looked pristine. Unmarred.
Another roar. Closer this time. From the east. A heavier thudding. Another beast. Larger.
The woman didn't move. Her head tilted, as if listening. The beast burst into view. Bigger than the first. More bone. More malice. It charged. Not at Kael. At her.
She moved. Too fast to track. A dance. Blade blurring. The monster roared. Its claws ripped at the air where she had been. Her blade flashed. A single, precise cut. The beast fell. Silently. A clean kill. No thrashing.
She stood over it. Motionless. Like a statue carved from shadow. Then, her head snapped to him. Her frost-like eyes fixed on his. He felt an invisible weight descend. A gaze that dissected him. Measured him. He instinctively tightened his grip on his own longsword.
"I'm Sylvara." Her voice was terse. Raw. Like gravel. No inflection. No warmth. She paused, her gaze unwavering, before adding, "The hunt begins. Run."
She didn't wait for a reply. She turned. A flicker of black cloak. Then she was gone. Vanished into the swirling gloom, leaving him alone with two dead monsters and the spectral rot spreading on his arm.
The horns blared again. Louder. Closer. The Abyssal Storm descended, blotting out the last sliver of dying light. Darkness consumed the Crimson Wastes.
He was trapped. Between hunters and a sentient, cursed storm. And that woman. Sylvara. Ally or executioner? He didn't know.
Kael's hand steadied on the longsword, claiming control in chaos. The darkness felt heavy. Suffocating. He felt his heart pound. Hard. Unsettling. The spectral rot pulsed, an unwelcome guest, deep under his skin on the claw-grazed arm.