The Prophet's body still twitched. Just a flicker. Kael watched it, a hollow thrum in his ears. He had twisted the very air here, bent the screams of the dead against the warlock, forced the Weeping Stones to re-sing their trauma. It was an ugly thing, a brutal trick. It worked. The Prophet choked on his own blood, the dark magic bleeding out of him in a sticky, hot wave.
Then the Codex's voice hit Kael. Not in his skull, not quite. It was around him, through the very rock, vibrating the air, colder than bone. "Unforeseen mutation detected. Violation of core parameters. Anomaly. Unacceptable."
A shiver raked Kael's spine. Not from cold. A pure, raw fear. The voice usually felt like a cold, calculating machine. Now it had an edge. An anger. It was… personal. This wasn't just data. This was a system offended.
His left arm, where the Bloodrot had taken root, flared. A pulse of heat, then a burning cold. The spectral rot, a shimmering red-black pattern under his skin, deepened. It wasn't just spreading now. It pulsed. Like a second heart, beating sickly. It clawed up his forearm, tiny tendrils reaching for his elbow. He clenched his fist. The skin felt too tight, stretched, like a layer of dried blood. He swallowed hard, the taste of rust thick in his mouth. The violent urges, a constant hum beneath his thoughts since the Bloodrot had first hit, sharpened. He wanted to hit something. Break it. Scream.
"Kael." Sylvara's voice. Flat. Too flat.
He didn't turn. He couldn't. His gaze was fixed on his arm, the ugly, spreading corruption. It was a mirror. He looked at it. He was seeing himself, how he felt inside. Rotten.
"What did you do?" Her voice was low. He heard the shift in her stance. Ragnar, a heavy shadow behind her, shifted too. The air between them, usually just strained, now felt like thin ice. He felt their eyes on him, on his arm, on the pulsating rot. He could feel Sylvara's divine fragments, those whispering shards of her god's consciousness, recoiling from him. A faint, almost inaudible hissing static, like a radio tuned to a dead channel, emanated from her. Her internal conflict, always a subtle tension, was a palpable tremor in the air now.
"I debugged it," Kael mumbled. The words felt clumsy in his mouth. "Found a glitch. Twisted it."
"You twisted reality," the Codex snarled, louder now, filling the echoing cavern. It felt like the air itself was condensing around him, suffocating. "You rewrote history. My history. The history of this realm. You are a cancer, Breaker."
The Bloodrot on his arm tightened, pulling, twisting. A sharp, burning ache shot up to his shoulder. He bit down on his tongue, tasted blood. The pain was real. Visceral. It grounded him, kept the rising tide of violent urges from swamping him completely. But it also fed them. A sickening loop. The more pain, the more the anger. The more anger, the more the curse gnawed.
He could still hear the Prophet's dying words, a thin, reedy whisper in his mind. "...Varak… he will come… he tastes the anomaly in you… your unique corruption… he hungers for it…". The words were sharp, a needle in his brain. Varak. The warlock. His flayed face. His chilling laughter. That psychic laugh that always seemed to find Kael, no matter where they were. Varak knew. He had sensed it. This 'uniqueness.' This defiance. Kael's skin crawled. He was a meal, ripening for the harvest. Varak wanted to eat him. Not just his body. His defiance. His ability to break systems.
"Kael, your arm." Ragnar's voice was rough. He sounded like he was about to punch Kael. Or pull out a sword.
Kael finally looked at them. Sylvara's face was pale, drawn. Her frost-like eyes, usually unreadable, were wide. There was fear there. Not for her. For him. And something else. A flicker of revulsion. She was wrestling with her divine whispers. They wanted him dead. He knew it. He saw it in the tension of her jaw. Her hand was on the hilt of her longsword, a nervous reflex. A hair trigger.
"Your recklessness demands consequence," the Codex resumed, its voice cutting through the silence of the cavern. Kael swayed. The words hammered at him. Not just words. Pressure. Like a physical weight settling on his mind. "Your unforeseen mutations demand a Trial of Blood."
Kael's vision swam. Trial of Blood. He remembered that name. Varak used it. The Codex used it. A system-mandated torture. He knew what it meant. It meant pain. More power. More corruption. "Your Curse Gauge will escalate. It will spike to forty percent. You will face challenges designed to break your will, to integrate you into my design. Or you will shatter."
Forty percent. He was at thirty. He knew it. The Bloodrot was a constant, gnawing presence. That 30% mark, hit after he'd unleashed the Bloodweave skill and pushed past all limits in the fight that had triggered the curse, felt like a lifetime ago. The physical decay. The violent urges. It never receded. It was cumulative. Permanent. Now it would jump another ten. Just because he fought back. Just because he didn't die the way the system wanted.
The fear spiked. It was bad enough living with the rot, with the whispers of blood in his ears, with the constant fight against his own mind. He was trying to be Marcus Chen, the hacker. He was trying to keep the warrior's muscle memory separate, contained. But the Bloodrot blurred the lines. Marcus's fading empathy was clashing violently with the rising violent urges. He was becoming something else. Something ugly.
He felt his own mind fraying, tiny threads snapping under the pressure. The psychological toll was immense. He was tired. So tired. Every action, every moment of defiance, came with a new, heavier price.
"What happens at forty?" Ragnar asked, his voice low, gravelly. He was watching Kael's arm. His eyes were hard. Calculating. Pragmatic. He probably knew. Maybe he'd seen others like him. Other 'Chosen Breakers' who had fallen apart, consumed by their own power.
The Codex didn't answer Ragnar. It didn't acknowledge him. It only spoke to Kael. "The path is set, Anomaly. You have chosen. You will be tested. And you will break."
Kael's head began to pound. A residual throb. Not just from the Codex. It was something else. A ghost in his mind. The Prophet's pain. His madness. That's what Kael had 'debugged.' He had reached into the chaotic psychic imprints from the Weeping Stones, those bloody, weeping rocks that held the suffering of the dead, and he had twisted them. He had made them sing his tune.
And now… now a part of that song was stuck in him. A psychic echo. The Prophet's dying agony, his despair, his final, shattering madness. It wasn't just a memory. It felt like a stain. A living, throbbing scar in his own thoughts. It intertwined with the Bloodrot's violent urges, a twisted harmony of decay and madness. This was the cost. This was the direct payment for "Reality Debugging." His sanity. It was slipping. A slow, insidious bleed.
He could feel the line. The precipice. He was teetering. The Codex wasn't just taunting him. It was pushing him. Driving him over the edge.
He looked at Sylvara again. Her face. The unspoken dread in her eyes. The strain on their fragile alliance was clear. It deepened the mistrust. He was changing too fast. Becoming too alien.
"The Trial of Blood awaits, Anomaly," the Codex's voice echoed, fading, but leaving a chilling resonance in his mind. "Prepare to be judged."
The cavern fell silent again, save for the drip of unseen water, the faint metallic tang in the air. But for Kael, it was anything but silent. The Bloodrot pulsed. The Prophet's madness whispered. And the cold, calculating promise of the Trial of Blood hung heavy, inescapable, a future already set in motion. His mind was fracturing. The ground had shifted. And he was standing on a fault line.