"The pain is not a curse; it is the only currency the weak use to buy their place in the world of the strong."
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I fell among ash steaming with heat and shadow, my chest rising and falling like someone clinging to a single thread of life. Yet the flames and the darkness did not die… they coiled around me as if I were no longer merely human.
A voice inside murmured, as if the Void itself spoke: — "You chose the path, Kim… the road of no return. Thrones are not given; they are ripped from others' blood."
I lifted my eyes. The girl who had been screaming moments before stared at me with a stunned, fear-laced look. Her lips trembled; she wanted to say my name but could not. Perhaps she no longer saw the human who had tried to protect her… but something else.
I crawled to my knees, blood running from my shoulder where the shadow-speared me, yet the pain had become fuel. I clenched my right hand and the black flame flared again, as if awaiting my command. My left hand had become a shelter for shadow-serpents that hissed in voices only I could hear.
I smiled bitterly: — "Pain? Yes… I will turn it into my strength. If they call me weak, I will become the weakness itself… and I will make every strong one taste it until they choke."
The battlefield trembled anew; the last beast had been but a beginning. From afar another roar echoed—heavier, deeper—as if Hell itself were throwing its gates wide.
I stood slowly, panting, but there was a gleam in my eyes I had not known before. I no longer fled this world… the world would now have to flee from me.
I whispered as shadow coiled at my feet: — "Let ten come after him… a hundred… or a thousand. I am Kim… and I will carry this Void as a banner over their corpses."