Fifty years had passed since the Rupture split heaven from earth.
And the world still hadn't stopped bleeding.
The mines of Baron Fenris stretched beneath the old mountains like the veins of a buried god—walls of damp stone, slick with something that pulsed faintly under the touch. Human slaves dug at them day and night, their picks ringing dull against the mineral flesh. The air was thick, humid, and smelled of metal and rot.
Among them worked a boy.
He was seven, small even for his age, his hair matted with dirt and sweat. His name was Mathias, though most just called him "rat."
He didn't remember his parents. Only the mines. Only the sound of metal and screaming.
The overseer's whip cracked again somewhere behind him.
Mathias flinched, but didn't stop digging.
He had learned early that hesitation hurt more than exhaustion.
The others around him—men and women reduced to bones and calluses—worked with dead eyes. None spoke unless they had to. The only sound that filled the tunnels was the rhythmic clang of picks, the squelch of mud, and the distant growl of demons guarding the upper shafts.
The world above belonged to them now.
Humans were just the marrow they fed on.
Mathias's shovel struck something soft.
He blinked, pushing aside a clump of dirt. Beneath it, the stone looked… wrong. It wasn't stone at all, but skin—grayish, veined, twitching faintly under his fingers.
He recoiled, heart jumping. "What the…"
He glanced around. No one noticed. The others were too tired, too focused on their quota to care about one boy's discovery.
Curiosity tugged at him. He touched the patch again—it was warm.
And then it moved.
A slit opened in the middle of the fleshy wall, oozing dark fluid. The gap widened, breathing faintly, until a small tunnel revealed itself—narrow, glistening, leading downward into red light. It wasn't natural. It couldn't be.
But Mathias had never seen "natural."
Only orders. Only pain.
And something about the hole called to him—softly, like a whisper beneath his thoughts.
He crouched lower and crawled inside.
The tunnel tightened around him. Every inch pressed against his skin, wet and warm. The deeper he went, the louder the heartbeat became—thump, thump, steady and deep. It wasn't his.
The smell changed too. Less earth, more iron. Sweet and nauseating.
When the passage finally opened, he found himself in a chamber lit by a red glow. The walls were alive—pulsing softly, strands of meat connecting from floor to ceiling. And at its center floated a mass of flesh, suspended above the ground, glowing with a purplish-red flame.
It wasn't burning, not exactly. The light shimmered like breath, each pulse in time with that unseen heart.
Mathias froze.
For the first time in his life, the fear he felt wasn't of demons or death—it was of something watching him.
The floating mass turned slightly, as if noticing him.
"…What… are you?" he whispered. His voice sounded too small here.
It pulsed once, and the whisper came—not with words, but inside his bones.
"Hungry…"
He should have run. Every instinct screamed to crawl back to safety.
But something inside him—something buried deep—pulled him closer.
He reached out a trembling hand.
The instant his fingers brushed its surface, the light flared.
The entire cave shook. The walls screamed—a chorus of flesh tearing—and every drop of moisture, every thread of meat, surged toward the center.
The glowing mass collapsed into a single stream and shot into Mathias's chest.
Pain.
Raw, electric pain.
He screamed, falling to his knees as the light poured into him, crawling beneath his skin, filling his veins. His vision turned white, his heart pounding like it was being carved open.
And then—silence.
He collapsed, gasping, sweat and blood mixing beneath him. The red glow faded. The chamber dimmed. Only his ragged breathing remained.
"Kid!"
A rough hand shook his shoulder. Mathias blinked, eyes unfocused.
An old miner knelt beside him, his beard streaked gray with dust. "By the gods, boy—what in the pits are you doing? You're white as bone."
Mathias tried to speak. "I… I saw—"
"You saw nothing," the old man cut him off sharply. "You're exhausted. You've been skipping rations again, haven't you?"
"I didn't—"
"Hallucinations," the elder muttered. "The mine gas does that. Come on, rat."
He pressed a hard biscuit into Mathias's palm. "Eat. You'll be fine."
Mathias stared back at the hole—but it was gone. The wall looked normal again, cold stone and mineral veins.
Maybe the elder was right. Maybe it was just his hunger.
But as he bit into the biscuit, he swore he could still taste iron.
That night, when the torches were extinguished and the others fell into uneasy sleep, Mathias lay awake staring at the ceiling of the slave barracks. The air was thick with snores and coughs, but his heartbeat was too loud to ignore.
Something throbbed beneath his skin.
Then—a sound.
Dum… dum… dum…
Not from outside.
From inside his head.
[System Initialization…]
Mathias froze.
[Fragment of Divinity Detected]
Origin: The Fractured God of Flesh]
Host: Mathias (Human)
Compatibility: 14.3%
Congratulations, you have obtained the trait — Fleshborne Vessel.
Words formed in front of his eyes—shimmering, red, alive. They weren't projected light. They were veins, shaping themselves into symbols that writhed faintly before fading.
Mathias's breath caught. "What… what is this…?"
[Skill Unlocked: Butcher Smith]
Mold life into tools. Shape death into strength.
Cost: Life essence of living organisms.
Warning: Uncontrolled use may result in corruption.
His heart stuttered. He sat up, looking around wildly. Everyone else was asleep.
"What kind of sick joke—"
[I am no joke.]
The voice came softly, vibrating against his skull. It wasn't robotic or divine—it was wet, whispering, like something breathing through a wound.
[I am the remainder of what the gods abandoned.
You touched me. You are mine now.]
Mathias's mouth went dry. "You… what do you want?"
[To feed.
To grow.
To hate what you hate.]
And then it was gone. The silence that followed was even worse.
He sat there until dawn, too afraid to sleep.
By morning, the vision hadn't faded. He still saw faint red threads at the edges of his sight, pulsing like veins in the air. When he blinked, they vanished. When he stared, they swirled.
He told the elder miner what he'd seen.
The old man frowned, rubbing his temples. "Boy, you've been breathing too much of that gas again. Dreams, voices—it happens. Forget it. Just keep your head down."
"But it's real," Mathias insisted. "It called itself a god—"
"Stop." The elder's tone hardened. "You speak like that, and they'll cut your tongue. You hear me?"
Mathias bit his lip, nodding.
Still, the whisper stayed.
Sometimes it hummed in the rhythm of his heartbeat. Sometimes it chuckled quietly when the demons whipped someone too hard. It was always there.
Two nights later, curiosity won over fear.
He sat in the dark corner of the barracks, staring at a cockroach crawling near his foot. The voice was silent tonight.
Maybe it had gone.
He whispered, "Butcher Smith."
The air warped.
The roach froze mid-step. Its body began to twitch violently, the shell cracking as if something inside it wanted to get out.
"Stop," Mathias hissed, heart hammering.
But the flesh of the insect twisted, melting, pulling toward his hand like invisible strings. It stretched and shrank at the same time, forming into a black, glistening shard the size of a pebble.
The smell—burnt meat.
Mathias recoiled, shaking. The shard pulsed once before crumbling into ash.
The voice returned, amused.
[You shaped death. You fed me.
We are learning.]
"No…" Mathias whispered. "No more."
[Then starve.]
He crawled back to his straw bed, shaking uncontrollably. The others around him muttered in their sleep, unaware that something ancient and hungry now lived inside a child among them.
As he closed his eyes, the last thing he felt was the pulse under his ribs—beating not quite in time with his own.
And deep inside his mind, the voice purred:
[You hate them, don't you?
The ones who chains you. The ones who feast on your kind.
Then so do I.]