Consciousness was a deep ocean, and he was sinking through it.
Slowly, something began to rise — small bubbles catching faint light as they drifted upward, carrying the first hints of color back into the dark.
*[Mutation complete.]*
*[Entering First Hunting Ground…]*
"...Ngh—"
A sharp, throbbing pain behind the eyes. Raphael opened them.
Grey sky. Flat and featureless, stretching in every direction.
*Caw. Caw. Caw.*
A scatter of black crows crossed overhead and disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the sound of them — unsettling in the silence that followed.
He got his hands under him and pushed himself upright. Stood there for a moment. Looked around.
Wasteland. No color anywhere.
The soil was dead and cracked, and on the low hill in the distance, leafless trees stood like broken teeth — sparse, skeletal, wrong.
Nothing lived here.
Directly in front of him, a tall wooden stake had been driven into the ground.
Something was bound to it — a charred body, burned down to blackened remnants — but even through the damage, the silhouette of elongated canines was still faintly visible.
He walked closer.
A page materialized in the air before him, translucent and faintly luminous, covered in the same abstract symbols he'd been seeing since he touched the tablet.
*[Demon Contract: Artificial Vampire.]*
*[Demon Level: 1.]*
*[Cardinal Sin: Superbia.]*
*[Matching sin detected. All mutation abilities extracted.]*
---
*[Blood Frenzy: Raises all physical functions to 200%. Additional 100% on full moon nights. Additional 300% on blood moon nights.]*
*[Vampire's Constitution: Grants regeneration and blood absorption. Effects doubled when fresh blood is obtained.]*
---
*[Contract Cost: Blood Thirst.]*
*[Warning: Refusing this contract will result in permanent revocation of Hunter status.]*
---
At the bottom, a blank line. Waiting.
Raphael looked at it for a long moment. Then he looked around again.
He already knew what a Demon was — a classification, the standard term for supernatural entities.
Within IFSA, the existence of the occult wasn't exactly a secret. It just belonged to a different department.
His department was the Black Gloves. Violent crime. The underground — trafficking, narcotics, organized gangs.
The Red Gloves handled the other kind.
"...Where the hell is this place?"
He ignored the contract and did a full circuit of the area. Found nothing.
The hill in the distance stayed exactly as far away no matter how long he walked toward it, as though the space between them kept quietly resetting.
He came back to the stake.
*CRACK.*
A bolt of purple lightning split the sky above the hill. The thunder that followed was low and muffled.
Then the ground started shaking, like something enormous shifting underground.
Deep, rolling tremors. Cracks webbed outward across the dry soil.
"...Looks like I don't have a choice."
He exhaled quietly. Reached out.
A quill pen appeared in his hand, conjured from nothing.
He looked at it. Looked at the contract.
"You couldn't have included ink?"
The tremors were getting worse. The ground was beginning to split in earnest now, dark gaps opening in the earth around his feet.
"...Fine."
He bit down on his fingertip. Pressed the nib of the quill into the blood welling up from the wound and wrote his name in the blank space at the bottom of the page.
The moment the last stroke was finished, the contract went translucent — and then it didn't so much disappear as dissolve inward, drifting into his chest like smoke finding a vent.
*Thud.*
His heartbeat. Louder than it should have been. There was *weight* to it now, a resonance he'd never felt before.
*Thud.*
His vision shifted — a red tint bleeding in at the edges. His canines pressed longer against his lower lip, and something moved through his veins like current finding a wire.
*Thud.*
He opened his eyes.
A face looked back at him.
She was close, watching him with an expression that sat somewhere between concern and careful assessment. White skin, clean features.
Eyes so green they looked like still water — clear all the way through.
Silver hair falling loose past her shoulders. At her throat, a teardrop pendant in pale blue, catching the light.
A white veil framed her face.
Raphael's headache sharpened briefly, then backed off. Recognition surfaced.
"...Evelyn?" His voice came out rougher than intended. "What are you— where am I?"
He recognized the ceiling before she answered.
The IFSA medical bay. He'd spent enough time here to know it without thinking — always against his preference.
He moved to sit up. The IV line pulled taut and sent a sting up his arm.
He looked to the side. A half-empty blood bag hanging from the stand, still slowly draining into him. Several empty ones discarded beside it.
Evelyn's fingertips brushed his cheek — light, almost absent, tracing the edge of stubble that had gotten longer than he usually let it.
When she spoke, her voice had that quality it always did. Unhurried. Like a melody that didn't insist on being heard.
"After you went dark, the organization sent people to find you.
You were brought back in severe hypovolemic shock — blood loss that should have been fatal.
The doctors said something inside you was keeping you alive. Holding the line."
She paused.
"When I heard what happened, I came."
Raphael turned his head and looked at her. Blue eyes meeting green.
She smiled — just slightly — and withdrew her hand, the one wearing the red glove moving to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear with the particular casualness of someone pretending they hadn't just been doing something else.
He took her in properly. The nun's veil. Beneath it, a close-fitted tactical uniform. A holstered sidearm on one hip, a short silver blade on the other.
Same as always.
"You look fine," she said. "From the outside, nothing's different."
A brief pause.
"Inside is another story. When I touched you just now, I could feel it — arcane energy moving through you. Not much yet, but it's there."
She held his gaze. "In simple terms, Raphael — you're one of us now. You've become a transcendent."
*Arcane energy.*
He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward.
He'd been aware of it since he woke up — something circulating through his limbs that didn't belong there.
Not uncomfortable, exactly. Just foreign. A current that carried a strength that wasn't his in any way he recognized.
Something caught his eye.
His wrist.
A line of gold characters wrapped around it, fine and precise as engraving, following the curve of the bone like a bracelet. He hadn't noticed them before.
He looked at them directly — and the information moved.
*[Sinner's Hunting System.]*
*[Hunter: Raphael Alanster.]*
*[Cardinal Sin: Superbia.]*
*[Level: 1.]*
*[Sin: 1.9 / 40.]*
*[Sin-Fruit: 20.]*
*[Mutations Available: 0.]*
*[Physical Functions: Lv2. Physical Resistance: Lv1.]*
*[Arcane Reserve: Lv1. Arcane Resistance: Lv1.]*
Gone as quickly as it came. He was left frowning at nothing.
Evelyn's palm waved slowly in front of his face.
"Still with me?"
He refocused.
"Can you walk me through what happened?" she asked.
He considered it. Then he went through the mission — the target, the hidden room, the fight, the aftermath. He left out everything related to the tablet.
Evelyn rested her chin in one hand and listened without interrupting, her eyes on him the whole time. It made him clear his throat for no particular reason.
"I see," she said when he finished.
She thought for a moment.
"It sounds like during the coma, you entered into a contract with a Demon. Willingly or not, that's how you got the arcane energy." A small pause.
"Now that you're a transcendent, the Black Gloves isn't where you belong anymore."
She reached into her pocket and produced an envelope — already prepared, already sealed.
She held it out to him.
"This is an invitation. From my Red Gloves unit." Her voice stayed light, easy. "Raphael — do you want to join my team?"
He looked at the envelope. Reached for it.
His fingertips grazed hers.
*[Witch detected.]*
*[Evelyn Vigo.]*
*[Cardinal Sin: Luxuria.]*
He looked up at her.
"Hm?"
She tilted her head slightly, lips parting, the faint trace of a smile settling at the corner of her mouth.