The siren was a physical weight in the air, a rhythmic, screaming pulse that vibrated through the steel-reinforced concrete of Blackwall Penitentiary. It smelled of ozone, burning mattress stuffing, and the copper tang of fear.
Astrea Vance, prisoner 9940, didn't run with the mob. While the general population of Block D was busy smashing reinforced glass and setting fires to the guard station in a cacophony of primal rage, Astrea was pressed flat against the cold cinderblock of a maintenance alcove, waiting.
He checked his watch, a cheap plastic thing he'd bartered three packs of cigarettes for. Two minutes until the automated lockdowns seal Sector 4. I have to move.
He was twenty-one years old, but his eyes held the hollow, jagged look of a man who had seen the bottom of the world. Two years ago, he had been a history student at the University of Chicago, worrying about thesis papers and rent. Then came the dig site in Argentina. The discovery of the black-iron relic that defied carbon dating. The sudden arrival of the mercenaries in unmarked helicopters.
He could still hear the sound of the gunfire that day. He could still smell the dry highland dust turning into mud as the blood of Dr. Elias and Dr. Alana Vance soaked into the earth. His parents hadn't just been killed; they had been erased. They were victims of The Archaic Trust, a global criminal syndicate that masqueraded as high-end collectors, hoarding ancient artifacts and silencing anyone who got too close to the truth.
He touched his chest. Beneath the rough, orange jumpsuit, the cold metal of his mother's locket pressed against his sternum. It was his anchor. It was the only piece of the "Argentine Artifact" he had managed to hide before the police arrived to frame him for the murders.
Move.
Astrea pushed off the wall, sprinting low through the smoke-filled corridor. His target was the utility shaft behind the laundry distribution center. It was a suicide run, but staying here was a death sentence. The guards wouldn't retake the block with batons; they would retake it with gas and live rounds.
He rounded the corner, skidding on the slick, polished floor.
He stopped dead.
Blocking the narrow hallway, illuminated by the flickering red emergency strobe, was a mountain of a man. Tattooed muscle, scarred knuckles, and a grin that looked like a jagged tear in a slab of meat.
Bull.
The inmate wasn't wearing his standard-issue shirt; it was tied around his waist, revealing a torso that looked like it had been carved from granite. A spiderweb tattoo covered his throat, vanishing beneath his jaw. In his right hand, he held a shank, a piece of bedframe filed down to a needle point, wrapped in duct tape for grip.
"Going somewhere, Vance?" Bull grumbled, his voice deep and wet, like gravel churning in oil.
Astrea took a step back, his hands raising slowly. The adrenaline spiked in his blood, turning his vision sharp. "The block is burning, Bull. The guards are going to gas the whole sector. Get out of the way."
Bull chuckled, stepping forward. The movement was deceptively casual, like a predator stretching its limbs. The shank twitched in his hand. "Let 'em gas it. I got a job to finish first."
Astrea's eyes narrowed. "Job?"
"You think a riot just happens?" Bull spat on the floor. "The Trust has deep pockets, kid. They paid the guards to look the other way for ten minutes. They paid me to make sure you don't walk out of this smoke."
Astrea felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. It wasn't just bad luck. It was a hit. Even here, in the darkest hole of the penal system, the shadow of his parents' murderers hung over him. The Archaic Trust. They knew he still had the key.
"They're using you," Astrea said, his voice dropping, desperate calculation running through his mind. He scanned the hallway for a weapon, a pipe, a loose brick, anything. There was nothing but smooth concrete. "You kill me, you get the chair. The Trust doesn't leave loose ends. You think they'll pay a convict? They'll silence you just like they're trying to silence me."
"They paid half upfront," Bull grinned, revealing a gold tooth that glinted in the red light. "And that's enough for my family on the outside. You? You're just a loose end, Vance. A rat that knows too much about some old iron pot."
"It wasn't a pot," Astrea hissed, the rage flaring up, overriding the fear. "It was a relic of an era you couldn't comprehend. It creates a bridge to—"
"Don't care."
Bull lunged.
It wasn't a clumsy brawl. Bull moved with terrifying speed for his size, closing the distance in a single stride. The shank slashed the air where Astrea's throat had been a second before.
Astrea ducked, adrenaline dumping into his system. He didn't have a weapon, but he had desperation. He scrambled backward, grabbing a heavy, industrial fire extinguisher off the wall bracket. The metal was cold and heavy in his hands. He swung it with all his strength.
CLANG.
The metal tank connected with Bull's shoulder, a bone-jarring impact that would have shattered a normal man's clavicle. Bull roared, stumbling back, but he didn't fall. He shook it off like a fly bite, his eyes darkening with pure, homicidal fury.
"That was a mistake," Bull growled.
Astrea tried to swing again, to bring the tank down on Bull's head, but Bull was inside his guard. A massive hand clamped around Astrea's throat, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the concrete wall.
The impact drove the air from Astrea's lungs. The extinguisher clattered to the floor, rolling away uselessly.
Astrea clawed at the hand, gasping, his legs kicking. It was like trying to pry open a hydraulic press. Bull's grip was absolute.
"Say hello to Mommy and Daddy," Bull whispered, leaning close. His breath smelled of stale tobacco and rot.
He brought the shank up and drove it forward.
Astrea twisted, trying to put his arm in the way, but there was nowhere to go. The steel punched through his orange jumpsuit, through the muscle of his abdomen, and deep into his gut.
The sound was wet and sickening.
Bull twisted the blade.
Pain, white-hot and absolute, exploded in Astrea's center. It was a sensation of being unmade. His vision tunneled. Bull released his throat, and Astrea slid down the wall, his hands instinctively clutching the wound, the hot blood pumping out over his fingers.
Bull stepped back, wiping his hand on his pants. "Clean. Done."
Astrea slumped on the floor, the cold seeping into his bones. The red emergency light strobed above him. Flash. Darkness. Flash. Darkness.
He was dying. He knew the feeling from the history books, the cold extremities, the fading sound, the metallic taste in the back of the throat. The Trust had won. They killed Elias. They killed Alana. And now they had killed their son in a dirty hallway, erased from history.
His hand moved from the wound to the locket beneath his torn jumpsuit. He clenched it so hard the metal cut into his palm.
No.
The thought wasn't a plea. It was a refusal. A rejection of this ending.
I don't accept this.
"Hey... Bull..." Astrea rasped, blood bubbling past his lips.
The giant turned back, frowning, already looking toward the exit. "Die already, kid."
Astrea stared up, his eyes burning with a hatred that defied the fading light. He poured every ounce of his remaining will into the gaze.
"I refuse..." Astrea choked out, the words wet and gurgling. "I refuse to die as your victim. Do you hear me? Even if I rot... even if I become a ghost... I will hunt you. I will hunt the Trust. I will hunt every single one of you who murdered my parents!"
Bull took a step back, unsettled by the sheer, venomous intensity in the dying boy's eyes. It wasn't the look of a victim. It was the look of a judge passing a sentence. "You're crazy."
"I will make you pay!" Astrea screamed the final words in his mind as his heart stuttered and stopped.
He died.
But the locket didn't let him go.
The relic, forged in an unknown, ancient era, drank that hatred. It drank the soul that refused to pass on. It recognized the specific frequency of his rage, the Yang calling out to a distant Yin.
A pulse of black light, darker than the smoke, exploded from Astrea's chest.
The hallway warped. The red emergency lights shattered.
Bull screamed.
It wasn't a scream of pain. It was the scream of a man whose brain could not process what he was seeing.
The shadows in the corners of the hallway began to move. They peeled off the walls like wet, black skin, slithering across the floor with a hissing sound. They weren't just an absence of light; they were physical, viscous, and alive.
They swarmed over Astrea's body.
"What is that?! What is that?!" Bull shrieked, waving his shank at the intangible darkness.
The shadows swallowed the body of Astrea Vance whole. They didn't just cover him; they dragged him down, dissolving the concrete floor into a swirling vortex of nothingness.
Astrea or the thing that used to be Astrea, opened its eyes. They were violet voids.
Bull looked at the "demon" rising from the floor. He looked at the shadows consuming the hallway.
And then the realization hit him like a physical blow.
"The Trust..." Bull whispered, his face draining of color.
"They paid the guards to vanish... that means they aren't coming back."
He was locked in a sealed sector. Alone. With this. The Trust hadn't just bought silence; they had sealed his tomb.
"NO!"
Bull dropped the shank. He didn't attack. He spun around and ran.
He sprinted down the corridor, his boots slamming against the floor, crashing into the heavy fire doors, screaming for help that he had personally ensured would never come.
"OPEN THE DOOR! IT ATE HIM! THE DARKNESS ATE HIM! OH GOD, LET ME OUT!"
Behind him, the concrete vanished. The siren faded. There was only the INFINITE VOID.
Where... where am I?
The thought floated in a sea of static.
Didn't I die? The shank... the blood... Bull running away...
Astrea tried to breathe, but his lungs felt heavy, filled with fluid. He tried to move his hands, but they were pinned.
I'm alive? Hospital? Did they save me?
Then, the pain arrived.
It wasn't the sharp stab of the shank. It was a metaphysical sledgehammer slamming into the soft tissue of his consciousness.
[SYSTEM INITIATING... HOST SOUL INTEGRITY: 100% (CRITICAL)]
"ARGHHH!"
Astrea screamed, but the sound that came out wasn't his voice. It was higher, weaker, cultured.
His head felt like it was being pried open with a crowbar. It was a migraine of absolute disassembly. It felt as if a giant hand was crushing his skull, trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
Get out! Get out of my head!
But nothing got out. Instead, memories that weren't his flooded in, burning like acid.
A throne room of gold and white marble.
The sneer of a man in golden armor—the Emperor Solus Vance.
The sensation of a hot iron branding his chest.
Then, a sudden warmth amidst the pain. A memory so bright it hurt.
A secret garden, hidden from the eyes of the court. The smell of jasmine and old stone.
His mother, Empress Lyra, sitting on a bench, her face not yet pale from illness.
She was smiling, a rare, true smile.
Elara, young and laughing, trying to braid a crown of white flowers into his hair.
The three of them linking pinky fingers in a circle.
"We are the three stars," his mother whispered, her voice like a melody. "No matter how dark the night gets, we never burn out. Promise me, Aethel."
"I promise," he had said.
Then, the darkness returned.
The words: "Exiled. Banished. Worthless."
The name: Aethel Vance.
Astrea retched, dry heaving into the mud. The memories of Prince Aethel crashed into the memories of Astrea Vance. The history student and the banished prince collided, their souls fusing in a horrific, glue-like agony.
The Yang of Earth met the Yin of Arcanum. Two halves of a broken whole, snapping back together after twenty years of separation.
[HOST VESSEL: PRINCE AETHEL VANCE (EXILED)]
[WORLD ALIGNMENT: ARCANUM PRIME (SOLARIAN ERA)]
[SYSTEM NAME: THE SOVEREIGN'S SHADOW SYSTEM (SSS)]
[SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE.]
The blue text burned in his retina, superimposed over the grey, swirling sky.
Astrea gasped, lying back, tears streaming down his face from the sheer pressure in his cranium. The migraine throbbed in time with his heartbeat, thump-agony, thump-agony.
He forced his eyes to focus. He wasn't in Blackwall. He wasn't in a hospital.
He was lying in a ravine filled with grey mist. The trees were twisted, black skeletons clawing at the sky. The air smelled of sulfur, rotting meat, and ancient, damp earth.
He looked down at his body. He was wearing tattered purple silks, stained with mud and dried blood.
And iron.
Heavy, black iron cuffs bound his wrists. A thick, suffocating iron collar was bolted around his neck. He could feel the metal humming, actively suppressing the energy in his veins.
"Solarian Iron..." the words slipped out of his mouth unbidden, Aethel's knowledge supplying the term. Anti-magic metal. Used to bind mages and traitors.
He tried to sit up, the chains rattling.
"I'm... I'm in a game? A hell?" Astrea whispered, his voice trembling. "System? What is this?"
[TRANSMIGRATION SUCCESSFUL. YOU ARE THE SOVEREIGN.]
The voice in his head was cold, genderless, and indifferent to his pain.
Astrea looked around, trying to ground himself in this new reality. "If I am a Sovereign, why am I in the mud?"
He saw the wreckage then.
A carriage, made of fine dark wood and gilded steel, lay splintered and overturned a few yards away. It looked like it had fallen from a great height, likely the cliff face looming above them in the mist.
Scattered around the wreckage were bodies. Dead soldiers in gold armor, Imperial Guards. They were twisted like broken dolls. Their limbs were torn off. Not cut. Torn.
And then, a groan.
Astrea froze. The sound came from the other side of the carriage wheel.
He dragged himself through the mud, the chains heavy on his weak limbs. This body, Aethel's body was pathetic. It had no muscle tone, no stamina. It was a vessel that had never known hardship.
Lying against the splintered wheel was a giant of a man.
He wore shattered plate armor that bore the crest of the Royal Guard. His helmet was gone. His face... Astrea recoiled in horror.
The man's eyes were gone. Gouged out, leaving bloody, ruined sockets that streamed red tears down his pale cheeks. Miraculously, a shallow breath rattled in his chest.
"Prince... Aethel?" the man rasped, spitting blood.
Astrea's mind supplied the name instantly, accompanied by a wave of grief from the dead prince's memories.
Zhak. The Royal Guard. The Personal Shield. The only one who didn't spit on me when I was banished. He jumped into the carriage as it fell... trying to shield me with his own body.
"Zhak," Astrea said, his voice shaking as he crawled closer. "I'm here."
Zhak turned his head, the bloody sockets staring blindly into the grey sky. "Run..." Zhak wheezed, his hand gripping the hilt of a broken sword. "It's... still here."
[IMMINENT THREAT DETECTED. HIGH-GRADE ABERRATION APPROACHING.]
A wet, sucking sound came from the mist.
Astrea turned his head, the iron collar grinding against his skin.
It emerged from the fog like a nightmare birth. It stood seven feet tall. Its skin was pale, wet, and stretched tight over jagged bones. It had no face, just a smooth dome of white gristle, and below that, a vertical slit of a mouth that dripped yellow fluid. Its arms were too long, ending in scythe-like bone protrusions.
An Aberration. A monster of the Shadow Marches.
It sniffed the air, its faceless head snapping toward Zhak. It wanted the fresh meat. It could smell the life fading from the giant.
[MANDATE: THE THRONE'S AWAKENING]
[QUEST: FIRST BLOOD SACRIFICE]
[OBJECTIVE: Utilize the lingering dark energies of the Shadow Marches to fuel the SSS. Sacrifice a life or a significant resource to gain initial operational power.]
Astrea stared at the blue box. Sacrifice a life?
He looked at Zhak. The loyal guard who had taken a beating for him. The man who was currently bleeding out to protect a Prince everyone else hated.
No.
Astrea Vance had died on Earth because of betrayal. He wouldn't start his second life by betraying the only ally he had.
"System," Astrea snarled, the pain in his head flaring into white-hot anger. "I choose Resource."
He looked at his wrist shackles. Solarian Iron. Anti-magic. Anti-Chaos. But physically, it was just metal.
The Aberration lunged, moving with a terrifying, jerky speed toward Zhak.
"Hey! You ugly bastard!" Astrea screamed.
He didn't run away. He scrambled toward a jagged, upright rock jutting out of the mud—part of the cliff face that had fallen with them. He slammed his left wrist shackle against the stone edge.
Clang.
He pulled. He twisted. The metal bit into his skin, tearing his wrist open, but he didn't stop. He channeled all his frustration, all the rage of his death on Earth, into his arm.
Break!
With a scream of effort, the locking pin of the shackle snapped. The Solarian iron, likely damaged from the carriage crash, gave way.
Astrea grabbed the loose, heavy iron cuff. It was jagged and sharp, a makeshift weapon.
The Aberration was looming over Zhak, its mouth opening to bite the guardsman's head off.
Astrea jumped.
It was a clumsy, weak leap, fueled only by adrenaline. But it was enough. He drove the jagged Solarian iron shard into the creature's kidney.
SCREEEEEEE!
The Aberration shrieked, a sound like tearing metal. The holy iron burned its corrupted flesh. It thrashed, knocking Astrea back into the mud with a backhand blow that nearly broke his ribs.
"Now!" Astrea gasped, spitting mud.
He grabbed the nearest corpse, a dead Imperial guard whose armor was gold and pristine and shoved it toward the thrashing monster.
"Eat him! He served the Empire! You'll love the taste of traitor!"
The Aberration, blind with pain and hunger, lashed out. Its tendrils snagged the dead guard. It forgot about Zhak. It forgot about Astrea. It began to feast, the sounds of crushing bone filling the silence of the ravine.
[QUEST OBJECTIVE FULFILLED (RESOURCE CONSUMPTION).]
The air around Astrea grew cold. The shadows lengthened, curling around his boots like smoke.
[AETHER-CORE UNLOCKED. AURA GAINED: 50 POINTS.]
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: SHADOW STEP (PASSIVE)]
Astrea ignored the skill notification. He scrambled on his hands and knees through the mud, sliding to a halt beside Zhak.
The big warrior was fading fast. The bloody craters where his eyes used to be stared blindly. His breath was a wet, ragged rattle. His skin was turning grey.
"Zhak!" Astrea grabbed his shoulder, shaking him. "Stay with me!"
Zhak's head lolled to the side. "Prince...?" he whispered, his voice barely audible over the crunching sounds of the Aberration feasting nearby. "Go... save... yourself."
A wave of fury washed over Astrea. In his old life, he had died alone. He had died because the world was cruel and indifferent. He refused to let this loyal man die the same way.
"I am not leaving you," Astrea hissed. "You didn't abandon me when the Emperor threw me out. I won't abandon you now."
"Too late..." Zhak coughed, blood spilling over his chin. "Eyes gone... broken... useless."
"System!" Astrea shouted in his mind, panic rising. "How do I save him? I have Aura now. Tell me how to use it!"
[ANALYSIS: SUBJECT 'ZHAK' CRITICAL. ORGAN FAILURE IMMINENT.]
[HEALING MAGIC: UNAVAILABLE.]
[ALTERNATIVE: AETHER INFUSION. BIND SUBJECT TO AETHER-CORE.]
[COST: 50 AURA.]
Fifty Aura. Every single point he had just earned. The currency he needed to buy weapons, to summon soldiers, to survive the next hour. If he spent this, he would be defenseless.
Astrea looked at Zhak's ruined face. He thought of Bull. He thought of Bull. He thought of the Empire.
Power means nothing if you have no one to stand beside you.
He didn't hesitate. Not for a second.
"Do it," Astrea commanded. "Take it all."
[AFFIRMATIVE. INITIATING AETHER INFUSION.]
Astrea felt a sudden, violent lurch in his chest, as if a hook had snagged his heart. The cold energy he had just gained was ripped out of him.
He slammed his hand onto Zhak's chest.
Black, smoky energy poured from Astrea's palm, driving into Zhak's body like a spear.
"ARGH!"
Zhak arched his back, a silent scream frozen on his face. The black smoke swirled around him, diving into his wounds, knitting flesh together with unnatural darkness. It flowed into his empty eye sockets, filling the void where his eyes had been.
[AURA CONSUMED: 50/50.]
[SYSTEM ALERT: UNIQUE EVOLUTION TRIGGERED.]
[SUBJECT: Zhak (Human/Royal Guard) -> EVOLVED -> Zhak (Umbral Warden)]
The black mist didn't just heal Zhak; it redefined his very existence.
The heavy, broken plates of his Imperial armor didn't fuse to him; they sloughed away like dead skin, dissolving into smoke. His massive, bulky frame began to shrink, compressing.
Zhak rose to his feet.
The mountain of muscle was gone. In its place stood a figure of normal human height, but unnaturally slender. His skin was a stark, porcelain pale, contrasting sharply with the clinging shadows that seemed to weave themselves into a living cloak around his gaunt frame.
The most horrifying change was his face.
The bloody craters were healed over, smooth and pale. But where eyes should have been, there was nothing. No glow. No smoke. Just two pits of absolute, endless darkness that seemed to drink the scant light of the ravine.
Astrea looked up, his heart hammering. Had he created a monster? Had he wiped his friend's mind?
"Zhak?" Astrea whispered.
The wraith-like figure tilted its head. The twin abysses in his sockets focused intensely on Astrea's chest, right where the locket, and his soul, resided.
Zhak dropped to one knee. The motion was impossibly fluid, silent as a whisper.
"I see you, Highness," Zhak's voice echoed. It was quieter now, sibilant, like wind whistling through a crypt. "Not your face... I see the fire inside you. It burns... darker than before."
Astrea let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "You remember me?"
"I remember the Emperor's betrayal," Zhak said, his slender, pale hand clenching into a fist. "I remember the exile. I remember the pain of the iron."
He paused, the darkness in his eyes seemingly deepening.
"And I remember you refused to let me die. You poured the Void into my veins."
[UNIT ANALYSIS: ZHAK]
Class: Umbral Warden (Unique)
Level: 1
EXP: 0 / 600 (Unique Scaling: 3x Standard)
Status: Bound (Loyalty: Absolute)
Passive Ability: Void Sight. (The subject is physically blind but perceives the souls and heat signatures of living things through walls and darkness.)
Active Ability: Shadow Walk. (Can merge with shadows to move instantly over short distances.)
Zhak stood up, his form seeming to blur at the edges. He turned toward the petrified forest, where the sounds of the Aberration feasting had stopped.
"The hunger returns," Zhak warned, his voice devoid of fear. "Something watches from the trees, my Prince. I can smell their souls. Shall I extinguish them?"
Astrea forced himself to stand. He was weak. He was drained of Aura. He was hunted by the Empire and Monsters alike.
But he wasn't alone. He had his first knight.
"No," Astrea said, clutching the Solarian Iron shard in his hand. "We need a base first. Can you lead us through the dark, Zhak?"
"Where shadows go," Zhak vowed, offering his pale arm, "I am the path."
Astrea took the arm. The touch was cold, like marble, but solid.
They turned their backs on the wreckage of the carriage and walked into the mist, leaving the old world behind.