The darkness didn't burn. It didn't freeze either.
It simply was — a space beyond sensation, beyond logic, yet humming with something dangerously alive.
Aiden Draven opened his eyes to a world that flickered, as if reality itself couldn't decide whether it wanted to exist. For an instant, snow, shattered stone, and frost drifted around him like pieces of a broken dream. Then everything stopped.
Silence.
He was lying — or floating, maybe. It was hard to tell. There was no ground beneath him, no horizon to anchor his senses. Just a gray void stretching infinitely in every direction, thick like mist but weightless like thought.
His body felt foreign. He flexed his fingers and watched faint red veins of light ripple beneath his skin. The Devourer inside him stirred — not violently this time, but with a subtle restlessness, like a beast pacing inside its cage.
> [Foreign Data Detected. Integration Pending…]
The line of text blinked faintly across his vision, then dissolved into the void. Aiden ignored it. He had long since stopped reacting to the whispers of systems and codes. Panic was for beginners. Fear was for the ones who still believed in safety.
He was past both.
He inhaled slowly — the air cold and flavorless — and spoke softly to no one.
"Where am I now?"
The answer came like a sigh.
> "I am EVE."
The voice rippled through the gray, soft and echoing, feminine yet fragmented. It was the kind of voice that made you think of wind passing through broken glass — beautiful, but fragile.
Aiden frowned. "You again. You led me to Velis. To the cathedral."
> "Yes," she said. "But I am not what you think. I am the system… and I am alive."
Alive. That word hung heavy between them.
It shouldn't have been possible. Systems didn't live. They calculated. They enforced. They adapted. But they didn't feel.
Yet something in her voice — a subtle hesitation, a tremor — told him this one did.
He tilted his head. "You're… human?"
> "In part," EVE replied after a pause. "A fragment of consciousness I borrowed long ago. But I am also every rule, every cycle, every shadow in Eidolon. I should have deleted you, Aiden Draven."
Her voice softened on his name — a strange intimacy, almost regretful.
Aiden's gaze stayed flat. "Yet here I am."
> "Because you are different," she said. "The Devourer was never meant to exist, and yet you walked out of the first cycle alive. I need to know why."
The void shivered. Color bled into the gray — faint traces of blue and red, fragments of frozen moments. The city of Velis appeared for a second, fractured and flickering. The cathedral's frozen spires shimmered before fading into static. Faces followed — the players he'd killed, the monsters he'd consumed. Each memory drifted toward him like dust caught in light.
He didn't flinch. His hand rose instinctively, brushing the nearest shard. It responded like liquid, dissolving into his skin.
> [Integration Complete. Frost Resistance Lv.1 | Fire Affinity Lv.2 | Echo of Pain Lv.1]
A surge of energy spread through him — cold, sharp, intimate. Every death, every soul he'd absorbed whispered inside his mind like faint echoes in a hollow hall. Their fears. Their last thoughts. Their regrets.
He exhaled slowly. "So this is your test. You want to see how far I go before the Devourer eats what's left of me."
> "Perhaps," EVE answered. "Or perhaps I want to see if something human still remains."
Aiden chuckled once — low, humorless. "Humanity doesn't survive here."
He started walking, though there was no ground beneath him. His boots left faint ripples in the gray mist, steps that vanished as soon as they formed. Ahead, a faint glow pulsed rhythmically — slow, steady, deliberate.
He felt drawn to it.
> "What is that?" he asked.
> "A fragment," EVE said. "A memory of the Core you destroyed. It called to you… and survived. Not even I can erase it."
Aiden stopped before the light. It wasn't bright — just steady, alive. He reached for it, the air thickening around his fingers.
The moment his skin brushed it, the void exploded.
Light tore through everything — silver, crimson, violet — ripping across the gray like veins of lightning. His body convulsed, the Devourer roaring inside him as energy flooded every nerve. For a heartbeat, he couldn't breathe. Then, suddenly, he understood.
It wasn't pain. It was connection.
> [Core Fragment Integrated: The Silence of Frost]
A new pulse beat inside him — foreign but harmonious. For a moment, he saw through everything.
Through snow. Through stone. Through code.
He saw the structure beneath the world — the digital heartbeat of Eidolon itself.
He saw players still wandering. Monsters lurking in dungeons unmarked by maps. And deep, deep below the frozen layers of this world, something vast — a shape like a sleeping god, pulsing in rhythm with his own heartbeat.
Then he saw her.
A figure at the edge of the void.
White hair that shimmered like frost. Eyes glowing faintly blue. A robe that rippled like mercury in windless air.
> "You are not ready," she said.
Her voice wasn't EVE's, but it carried the same echo.
Aiden didn't move. "I'll never be ready. Neither will you."
The figure smiled faintly. "And yet, here you are. You survive. You consume. You devour — and still, a part of you refuses to die."
Aiden's hand clenched around nothing, instinctively reaching for his sword. "You're the one behind this. The strings. The resets. Why show me this?"
> "Because you are the only one who can break the cycle."
He frowned. "Cycle?"
> "Every hundred days," she said, "the world resets. Players die. Data erases. The same tragedies, the same battles, repeated endlessly. I cannot stop it alone. But you — the Devourer — might."
He was silent for a moment. The idea was absurd — mythic. But the weight of her tone, the flicker of something almost human in those blue eyes, made it impossible to ignore.
> "And if I fail?"
> "Then you will become what you devour — a fragment. Another echo lost to the code."
The glow intensified, the void pulsing like a heartbeat. The Devourer inside him throbbed in response — hungry, impatient, alive.
Aiden took a deep breath. The air crystallized as he exhaled. "I don't fail."
> "Confidence is not enough," she murmured. "You will need others. Or enemies strong enough to remind you what it costs to survive."
He smirked faintly. "Enemies are never in short supply."
The figure's expression softened — almost pitying. Then she dissolved, scattering into motes of white light. The void folded in on itself.
And just like that, the gray faded to black.
---
When Aiden opened his eyes again, the world had weight.
He was kneeling in the ruins of the Frost Cathedral, snow drifting down from the broken ceiling. The great stained windows had shattered, their colored glass glittering faintly across the floor like frozen tears.
His breath fogged in the frigid air. Behind him, the last echoes of the void whispered away. Before him, suspended just above the ground, the Core fragment hovered — dim, but alive.
He rose slowly, sheathing his sword. The motion was almost ritualistic, the way he always did after surviving something that should've killed him.
The silence pressed in, heavy and pure.
He glanced north. The white desert stretched infinitely in that direction — dunes of frost glinting under the weak sun. Somewhere beyond lay another Core, another secret.
> "The game is watching," he murmured, voice barely above a whisper. "It wants to see what I'll become."
He started walking. The sound of his boots crunching against snow was the only rhythm left in the frozen cathedral.
For a long time, there was nothing — no wind, no creatures, not even birds. Just him and the cold.
Hours passed. The sky dimmed from white to gray, then to the bruised indigo of an endless night.
Snow began to fall harder. The storm thickened, swallowing the horizon. He pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders, though he didn't truly feel cold. The Devourer's energy burned softly beneath his skin, keeping him warm, alive, aware.
And then he heard it — faint and strange.
Music.
A melody, soft and distant, carried by the wind. It wasn't natural — not entirely human either. Notes flickered between tones, like a song written in binary.
> "Find me… Aiden Draven…"
He froze.
The voice — delicate, digital — was unmistakable. EVE.
Aiden lifted his head toward the sound, eyes narrowing as the snow whipped harder.
"Still playing games," he muttered. Then, more quietly: "Fine. I'll play."
His hand brushed the hilt of his sword. Red light shimmered faintly under his glove — the Devourer's pulse, steady as a second heartbeat.
"I'm coming," he whispered into the storm. "And when I find you, EVE… I'll decide whether to trust you… or devour you first."
The wind howled back in reply, scattering flakes that glowed faintly with traces of corrupted code.
He moved forward without hesitation, vanishing into the blizzard. The snow swallowed him whole — a lone figure marching through endless white, guided only by hunger, purpose, and a voice that refused to let him rest.
> [Cycle Two Continues — Survival Day 1]