The chanting had stopped, but it hadn't left his ears.
Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.
It echoed in the back of Ethan's skull as if the word itself had carved grooves into his mind. The survivors had long since dispersed at Selene's order, melting into the ruins to scavenge or guard the perimeter. Yet Ethan still felt them — thin red threads tugging at his chest, binding him to people he had never wanted, never asked for.
He sat slumped against the fractured wall of a collapsed tower, his hands trembling. His nails were blackened, not with dirt but with dried blood. His own? The claimant's? He couldn't tell anymore.
He raised his hands into the pale moonlight that seeped through the broken concrete ceiling. They didn't look like his hands anymore. They looked like claws waiting to tear.
And then the whisper came.
Low, intimate, and wrong.
You are stronger now.
Ethan's breath caught. He turned, as if someone had leaned over his shoulder — but Selene was gone, scouting the perimeter. He was alone.
Yet the voice lingered.
They kneel because they see it. You feel it too, don't you? The hunger. The dominion.
He squeezed his eyes shut. "Shut up."
But the Core didn't stop. Its tone was neither mechanical nor human — it was something in-between. Seductive, merciless. It pulsed with the same rhythm as his heartbeat, as though his blood itself had learned to speak.
Prey no longer. Predator. Alpha.
The word twisted in his gut. He thought of the girl from earlier — the soot-stained survivor who had looked up at him with trembling lips and whispered, You own us now.
He wanted to vomit. He wanted to claw the Core out of his chest, tear it free before it swallowed everything that made him him.
His memories flickered — his sister's laughter, the weight of his father's calloused hand, the sterile lights of the evacuation shelter before everything went red.
Would he even remember them tomorrow? Or would the Core strip them away, one piece at a time?
His hands shook harder. "I'm not yours," he whispered. "You don't own me."
The Core's reply was velvet and cruel.
Not yet. But you are learning. Survival is obedience. Power is hunger. Soon you will see.
A sharp sting lanced across his chest — he looked down, horrified, to see faint crimson lines etching themselves just beneath his skin, branching like roots across his ribs. They glowed faintly, then sank back into his flesh as if mocking him.
He shuddered. "No… no, no, no…"
His skull felt split in two. One half was Ethan Carter — human, survivor, a boy who had once dreamed of studying engineering, who still remembered the sound of his mother humming over morning coffee. The other half was something new, something monstrous, whispering that weakness was sin and blood was currency.
He pressed both palms against his temples, forcing a ragged breath. "I won't let you win."
The Core laughed inside him. You already let me in.
"Ethan."
Selene's voice cut through the storm. He looked up to see her stepping through the rubble, moonlight catching the sheen of her blade strapped to her thigh. Her eyes flicked to his trembling hands, then to his face.
"You're hearing it, aren't you?" she asked softly.
His chest constricted. "You knew."
"I told you," she said, crouching in front of him, her gaze unwavering. "The Core doesn't just give. It takes. It talks. It tempts. And it never shuts up."
Her tone wasn't mocking — it was bitter, almost resigned.
"How—" Ethan swallowed, voice breaking. "How do you live like this?"
A shadow flickered in her expression, gone too quickly for him to catch. She reached forward, brushing blood from his cheek with the back of her knuckle. "You don't. You endure. Until the day it decides to eat what's left of you."
Her touch lingered for a moment, but there was no tenderness in it — only a quiet understanding. Then she stood, adjusting the strap of her weapon.
"Get used to the whispers, Ethan. They'll only grow louder."
He stared after her as she vanished back into the night, her figure swallowed by shadows.
The ruins fell silent again.
Except for the Core.
Always the Core.
Soon, it whispered. You won't fear me. You'll beg me.
And for the first time, Ethan wasn't sure if it was wrong.
Ethan dragged himself upright, every muscle aching as though the fight with the faction leader had torn something permanent in him. His ears rang faintly — not with silence, but with whispers.
The Core was patient now. Too patient. Like a predator circling prey.
You are theirs. They are yours. Test it. Claim them. Feed.
He stumbled out into the ruins where the ragged survivors huddled around a makeshift fire. Most of them avoided his eyes, though one boy — no older than sixteen — tried to stand taller, as if shielding the others. Ethan's chest tightened. He hated the boy's courage because it reminded him of his brother.
His fists clenched. His blood felt hot.
The whispers sharpened.
Weak. Frail. One drop of blood, and the Core will bloom again. Try it.
For a moment, Ethan saw it. Not reality — but a hallucination painted in crimson. His hand snapping the boy's throat like a twig. Blood spraying against his lips. The survivors dropping to their knees, not in fear, but in worship.
The fire crackled. His breath hitched. His hand twitched forward.
"Ethan."
Selene's voice sliced the vision clean in half.
He blinked hard, finding himself looming over the boy, his hand outstretched inches from the kid's throat. The boy stared at him wide-eyed, frozen in terror.
Ethan staggered back, horrified. "I— I wasn't—" His voice cracked, ragged, broken. "I didn't mean—"
Selene was already there, gripping his wrist tight. Her fingers were deceptively delicate, but her strength locked him in place.
Her eyes were cold steel, but her words were low enough only he could hear. "This is what it does. It wants you to break. Don't give it what it wants."
Ethan pulled free, stumbling against the wall. His chest heaved, his vision swimming between reality and crimson haze. The boy was whisked away by one of the older survivors, glancing back with terror that stung more than any blade ever could.
Ethan's hands shook violently. "I almost killed him…"
"You will," Selene said, voice flat. "Sooner or later, if you don't learn control."
Her words weren't comfort — they were prophecy.
The whispers purred inside him, satisfied.
See? Even she knows. You belong to me.
Ethan's throat went dry. For the first time since the world ended, he wasn't afraid of the monsters outside.
He was afraid of himself.