The wind was gone.The ruins seemed to hold their breath, as if the world itself was watching.Dust floated in the air like smoke, glimmering in the faint light.The scent of scorched earth and blood clung to everything.
Orien stood in the center of the broken chamber, his back pressed against the cold stone.Each breath scraped against his throat.His body trembled from exhaustion, but his eyes burned with a golden light that refused to fade.In front of him, the monstrous mole shifted and hissed.Its body was torn and bleeding, yet its movements remained powerful and deliberate.Sand slid down its dark carapace like liquid, and a deep vibration filled the ground with every breath it took.
The air smelled of iron and decay.His instincts screamed at him to flee, but something older and stronger held him still.It was not courage.It was hunger.The raw certainty that this was not the end, not yet.
The creature vanished beneath the ground, leaving behind a trembling crater.The earth split.Stone cracked under his feet.He fell to one knee, closing his eyes, focusing on the rhythm that pulsed through the sand.He could no longer see the monster, but he could feel it.A heartbeat.Slow.Enraged.Alive.
He steadied his breathing, letting the world narrow to that single sound.Left.Deeper.Closer.The beast was circling, waiting to strike from below.
Orien's lips curled into a faint, broken smile."You're just a sound now," he whispered.
The ground erupted.A geyser of sand and stone swallowed the light.The creature burst out of the earth, jaws gaping wide.Orien moved before thought could catch up.He rolled across the floor as the beast's mouth crashed down where he had stood.Heat brushed his face.The impact shattered the stone.
He landed hard, breath torn from his chest.His hand closed around a shard of rock, rough and heavy.The mole turned, its blind eyes glinting with rage.He threw the stone toward it, not at random but at the place where he could feel the violet energy pulsing beneath its skin.The rock struck.The creature screamed, its body twisting violently.
Orien threw another, then another, each one guided by that strange new awareness.Every throw hit a point of weakness.Every sound, every shift of energy, painted the map of its body in his mind.
The beast reeled, confused and furious.Orien did not give it time to recover.He ran forward, leapt, and caught hold of its armor.His fingers burned against the slick surface, but he climbed, his muscles trembling, his breath tearing out of him.
The creature roared and thrashed, shaking its massive head, but he clung tighter, pulling himself higher until he could see the faint golden glow of the Mark above its skull.Beneath it, he could feel the steady, violent drum of its heart.
He raised the stone high and brought it down with everything he had.Once.Twice.Again.Blood burst out in a dark spray that painted his face and arms.The beast screamed, a sound that split the air, and then its strength vanished.
It crashed to the ground with the weight of a collapsing mountain.Sand and dust rose in a cloud that swallowed the world.
When silence returned, Orien was on his knees, shaking, covered in blood and grit.He stared at the fallen creature, his heartbeat echoing in the hollow chamber.
Then he felt it.
Warmth.A slow pulse beneath his hand.He pressed his palm to the corpse.Something moved beneath his skin, climbing through his arm like a river of light.The warmth spread into his chest, then through every part of him.
His breath caught.The sensation was not pain but something intoxicating.His body trembled, his blood sang, and his vision flared.He felt stronger.Faster.Alive in a way he had never been before.
It was the beast's strength, pouring into him.Its instincts, its will to survive, its endless hunger.The Dragon's Legacy was awakening inside him.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears like a storm.He felt infinite for one perfect second.
Then he saw it.A faint light still glowing inside the carcass.He forced himself up, pushed aside the broken armor, and found a crystal.It was white, perfectly clear, pulsing softly like a sleeping heart.
He stared at it, mesmerized.Even in death, the creature's essence still lived.Something deep inside him told him that this crystal was his.
When he reached for it, a voice returned.Smooth.Calm.Amused.
"Congratulations, little initiate. You have found your first essence crystal. These hearts are what remains of life. Absorb them, and you will grow. Refuse them, and you will be hunted."
The words slid through his mind like silk over a blade.They felt almost kind, yet hungry.
He held the crystal to his chest.It pulsed once, as if answering him.Then it melted into light and sank through his skin.
Pain cut through him, sharp and sudden, but it vanished as quickly as it came.In its place grew warmth.Energy.Power.
A new rhythm filled the silence of the ruins.The sound of a heart reborn, echoing through the night.
It was not the heart of a boy anymore.It was the heart of a hunter.
***
The desert stretched endlessly under the cold weight of night, a vast mineral ocean bathed in the silver glow of a lonely moon. Each dune seemed to breathe, slow and patient, as if the world itself were holding its breath between heartbeats. The sky was a depthless black, strewn with frozen stars that did not shimmer but watched, distant and eternal. The silence was not merely the absence of sound. It was a living thing, thick and intrusive, wrapping Orien in its stillness like a shroud.
He had been walking for hours, unable to find rest. The new energy burning in his veins, born of battle, pain, and the violent awakening of his initiation, refused to fade. It kept him alive and awake, feverish and restless. His thoughts drifted like smoke, molten and wild. He was no longer the boy from the tannery, nor the survivor of a fallen bastion. He was something else now. Something half-shaped, half-broken.
"Great. I get killed in a nightmare, reborn with a dragon in my chest, and now I'm just… wandering the desert, wide awake at midnight. No wonder the Awakened all go insane."
The moon followed him, a cold sentinel perched above the dunes. His boots whispered across the hardened sand, leaving trails that vanished moments later, erased by the wind as if the world refused to remember him. Then, on the horizon, a shape appeared. Faint. Crooked. But undeniably human-made. A forgotten village, half-buried by centuries of dust and silence.
He slowed, narrowing his eyes.
"Alright. Either I just found salvation, or this is the prettiest death trap I've ever seen."
The quiet deepened as he stepped between the first broken walls. The houses stood still, their shadows long and heavy, frozen mid-breath. They looked almost alive, like old bones remembering laughter. He pushed open a door, and the sight stopped him cold.
A table was set.A steaming meal waited.A loaf of bread still warm.The smell of stew filled the air, thick and rich, impossibly inviting.
It was a moment stolen from another life, something gentle and human, left untouched by the ruin of the world.
"If this is a mirage," he muttered, "I'm marrying it."
He approached slowly, suspicion and hunger fighting for control.
"Come on. Just a bite. If I die, at least I'll die fed."
The bread was soft, slightly sweet.The stew was thick, the meat tender and fragrant with strange herbs.He took another spoonful. Then another.For the first time since his awakening, he felt alive.
"Okay," he breathed, swallowing. "Not dead yet. That's progress."
Then it happened.
A shiver crawled up his spine, cold and deliberate.The taste shifted.The bread turned bitter.The water in his throat became ash.
He froze. Slowly, he looked down.
What he held was no longer bread but a gray, spongy lump slick with dark liquid. The table was dissolving into shadow. The fire in the hearth burned in reverse, swallowing its own light. The walls pulsed like living flesh.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," he whispered. "Not again."
A figure took shape in the corner of the room. Tall. Boneless. Wrong. Two pale eyes floated in the dark.
"I knew it," Orien muttered through his teeth. "Too good to be true. Should've just eaten sand. At least sand doesn't stare back."
The creature lunged.He threw himself to the ground, rolled, grabbed a burning log, and swung.The blow passed through nothing.The thing unraveled into mist, laughing softly, a sound thin as glass.
Then it was gone.
The silence returned, colder than before.The room was empty again.The meal had turned to dust.The hearth was cold and black.
Orien stood there, shaking, his breath ragged in the still air.He stepped outside, the village looming behind him, twisted by the moonlight into a landscape of false shapes and waiting eyes.
"Perfect," he muttered. "Haunted food, phantom ghosts, and me. Just me. I swear this world is trying to make me lose it."
He stared east, where the dunes swallowed the horizon.His back was slick with sweat.The night wind cut through him, dry and sharp.
He took one step, then another, forcing himself forward.
"I'm done trusting miracles," he said quietly. "Next time I see a warm meal waiting, I burn it first."
The desert swallowed his words.Somewhere behind him, in the hollow of the ruins, a faint sound answered.A laugh.Or maybe the wind.
He didn't look back.But every step he took felt watched.
And for the first time, the hunter knew what it meant to feel like prey.