The boy's eyes were the color of stagnant water.
They were empty things, holding none of the fire or fear that characterized the people of the Obsidian Expanse. Not the blazing fury of a veteran scavenger, nor the hunted terror of a child born into the Aetherium Bloom. They were simply… vacant. A placid surface over an immeasurable, silent depth.
His name was Kaelen, though names meant little out here. He was fourteen years of age, yet his face was a canvas of premature age, etched by malnutrition and the ever-present grit of volcanic dust. He sat on a jagged rock, his small frame draped in patched leather, and watched his mother die.
She wasn't dying from a beast's attack or the wasting sickness that plagued the outlying camps. She was dying because Kaelen had introduced a meticulously measured dose of powdered Glassfang venom into her morning broth. It was a neurotoxin, subtle and patient. It didn't provoke a violent, screaming death. It simply unraveled a person from the inside out, silencing the nerves one by one until the heart forgot the rhythm of its own beating.
He had learned of the venom three months ago from an old hunter, a man whose face he could no longer recall but whose words he had archived with perfect clarity. He had spent those three months observing the Glassfang spiders, charting their nests, learning the precise moment to harvest the venom sacs without being bitten. He had spent another week testing dosages on rock-lizards, logging the results with the dispassionate curiosity of a scholar.
There was no malice in his actions. Malice was a loud, inefficient emotion. This was merely a… severance. A necessary step. His mother was the last anchor holding him to the charade of human connection. Her vacant, sorrowful gazes, her reflexive touches, her whispered stories of a world before the Bloom—they were all threads of a net he was compelled to escape. Love, he had concluded, was a form of bondage. He would be free.
"Kael…" Her voice was a dry rasp, her body slumped against the hide wall of their hovel. Her eyes, unlike his, were filled with a desperate, pleading confusion. She could no longer feel her limbs. Breathing was a conscious, laborious effort. "What's… happening?"
Kaelen's expression shifted. The emptiness receded, replaced by a mask of deep, wrenching concern he had spent a lifetime perfecting. He slid off the rock and knelt beside her, his movements fluid and rehearsed. He took her hand, a hand that could no longer feel his touch.
"I don't know, Mother," he lied. His voice was flawless, pitched with the exact frequency of budding panic and youthful terror. "Just hold on. I'll run to the camp. I'll get an Alchemist."
Her eyes watered, a testament to her faith in the son she could no longer see as anything but a loving boy. "Hurry…"
He nodded, a single, sharp motion. He held his gaze on her, maintaining the mask of desperation until the very last light faded from her pupils, until the forced rhythm of her chest ceased. He remained there for another full minute, listening to the profound silence.
Then, the mask fell away. The placid water returned to his eyes. He had no pulse to check; he knew the dosage was perfect.
It was in that moment of absolute, clinical stillness that the world changed.
The air on Redfang Peak, always thin and sharp, suddenly grew thick, heavy with an unseen pressure. The very dust at Kaelen's feet began to hum, vibrating with a silent, resonant energy. A wave of force, invisible and immense, washed over the mountain. It was the Aetherium Bloom, not in its usual slow, creeping way, but in a sudden, concentrated surge, as if the mountain itself had just taken a great, spiritual breath.
The raw energy, drawn to the epicenter of a freshly extinguished life—an act performed with a clarity of purpose as sharp as obsidian—poured into the hovel. It bypassed the rocks, the hides, the very air, and flooded into Kaelen.
It felt like being submerged in freezing fire. Every cell in his body screamed. But in his mind, where a normal person would feel terror, Kaelen felt only a cold, exhilarating clarity. The world, which had always seemed a flat, gray tapestry, was suddenly exploding into a new spectrum of perception.
And then, he saw it.
At the edge of his vision, shimmering like heat haze over black rock, minimalist text flickered into existence. It was as clear and intuitive as his own thoughts.
Target Analyzed.
Designation: Human.
Cultivation: Uncultivated.
Threat Assessment: Negligible.
Essence Yield: Cracked.
He blinked. The text remained. His gaze shifted from the spectral words to his mother's body. As he watched, a mote of dull, grey light, no larger than his thumbnail, oozed from her chest. It wasn't physical. It was a ghost of a thing, a fractured crystal of light that held a chilling echo of his mother's now-absent life force.
It was an Essence Shard.
He didn't know how he knew the name; the knowledge was simply… there. A part of the new perception. An instruction from the silent text.
An instinct he never knew he possessed guided him. He reached out, not with his physical hand, but with his will. He focused on the grey, cracked mote of light. He pulled.
The shard dissolved into a stream of spectral energy and shot into his body.
The jolt was minuscule, barely a flicker of warmth in the roaring furnace of the Aetherium surge. It was almost unnoticeable. But it wasn't the power that mattered. It was the process.
It was the most real thing he had ever felt.
The world was not a stage for pointless emotion. It was a hunting ground. And all the creatures in it—beasts, monsters, and people alike—were not companions. They were resources. They were entries waiting to be logged.
His gaze drifted inward, and new text bloomed in his mind.
Harvester: Kaelen
Cultivation: Uncultivated (Mortal)
Essence Shard Inventory: [Cracked] x1
Harvested Abilities: None
He looked down at his empty hands, then at the still body of his mother. The corner of his mouth twitched, a motion that was not quite a smile, but something far more unsettling. It was the quiet satisfaction of a craftsman looking upon a finished, perfect work.
His ledger had been opened. And it was hungry.