The iron gallows of Oakhaven stood like a jagged, blackened tooth against the bleeding sunset. In the center of the Great Plaza, the air was heavy with the scent of cheap incense and the copper tang of impending death. Thousands had gathered in a hushed, terrified reverence, their faces blurred by the gray mist of a relentless rain. They were here to witness the fall of a titan, and the Holy Dominion was eager to provide the spectacle.
Sylas stood among the outer ring of the Inquisitorial guards, his posture rigid and his hand gripping the cold haft of a standard-issue halberd. At twenty-one, he was merely an initiate, a disposable pawn in the Dominion's grand game of light and shadow. His face was a mask of dull, submissive obedience—the kind that survived the longest in the barracks of the Third Inquisition Unit. But behind those hollow eyes, Sylas was counting heartbeats. He was measuring the distance to the execution platform and calculating the exact angle of the wind. He was a scavenger born in the gutters, and he knew that when a giant fell, the crows fed best.
At the center of the platform stood Duke Valerius. Once the "Shield of the Western Marches," he had been stripped of his titles and his humanity. Now, he was the "Demon Duke," a monster created by the decree of the High Synod. His massive frame was bound by silver-etched chains that glowed with a sickeningly bright holy radiance, burning into his skin and leaving charred, smoking wounds.
"Behold the filth that dares to defy the Divine Will!" High Inquisitor Malachi bellowed from the balcony. His white robes remained pristine despite the rain. "Valerius has traded his soul for the whispers of the Abyss! Today, the Light reclaims its debt!"
The crowd let out a low, practiced roar. Sylas watched Malachi, noting the greed in the priest's eyes. The Dominion thrived on these spectacles. Every decade required a new villain to reinforce the lie of divine protection. Sylas shifted his weight, his eyes locking onto Valerius. The Duke raised his head. His eyes were not the eyes of a broken man; they were crimson shards of defiance.
As the heavy, silver-edged axe of the executioner caught the fading light, Valerius's gaze swept across the guards. For a fraction of a second, his eyes met Sylas's.
Inherit...
The voice was not a sound; it was an impact. It was the weight of a dying empire slamming into Sylas's consciousness. The Great Bell tolled. The executioner kicked Valerius's knees, forcing him onto the block. The axe rose, hung at the apex of its arc, and fell.
A sickening thud echoed across the plaza. The head of the Demon Duke rolled across the wooden planks, but the blood that sprayed was not red. It was a violent, pulsing violet energy that defied gravity. To the thousands in the crowd, it looked like the final dissipation of a cursed soul. To the priests, it was a successful purge.
But to Sylas, it was a bridge.
The violet mist ignored the holy barriers and the silver wards. It surged through the air like a starving predator, veering away from the platform and toward the periphery of the plaza. It struck Sylas in the chest with the force of a battering ram. He didn't fly backward; instead, his feet seemed to root into the cobblestones. His vision fractured into a thousand shards of memory.
[Legacy Assimilation Initiated.]
[Host Identified: Sylas (Vessel of the Void).]
[Inheriting First Legacy: The Demon Duke, Valerius.]
[Acquiring Core Authority: Dread Aura.]
The pain was exquisite. It felt as if his veins were being filled with liquid lead. Images flooded his mind—flashes of a burning throne room, the feeling of a black dragon's scales, and the chilling realization that the "Light" was nothing more than a parasite feeding on the world's vitality.
"Soldier! Eyes front!" a sergeant barked, shoving Sylas's shoulder.
Sylas didn't flinch. He slowly turned his head to look at the sergeant. In that moment, Sylas allowed a fraction of the [Dread Aura] to leak out. It wasn't a physical strike, but a psychological one. To the sergeant, the world suddenly grew cold. The rain felt like needles of ice, and the young recruit before him seemed to loom like a mountain of shadows.
The sergeant stumbled back, his face turning an ashen gray. He tripped over his own feet, falling into the wet mud. "I... I..." he stammered, his bravado vanishing.
"My apologies, Sergeant," Sylas said. His voice was calm, devoid of the tremor it had possessed only minutes ago.
The execution was over. The Duke's body was being dragged away like trash. Sylas marched back to the barracks in perfect formation, his mind already mapping out his next moves. He was no longer a soldier of the Light. He was a grave for the gods, and the harvest had only just begun.
The "Regret" of Valerius pulsed in his blood—not a regret for the sins committed, but a regret for the enemies left alive. Sylas felt a cold, crystalline clarity settling over him. He needed more. The Duke was only the first. According to the fragments of memory now etched into his soul, there were others.
That night, as the barracks fell into a restless sleep, Sylas sat on his narrow cot. He looked at his palms, where faint violet veins shimmered beneath the skin. He could feel the power simmering, waiting for him to reach out and take it. But he also felt the weight of the Dominion's eyes. They would notice the missing essence. They would come looking for the vessel.
He stood up silently, moving with a fluid grace that was not his own. He needed to leave Oakhaven before the High Inquisitor realized the "Light" had failed to destroy the Duke's soul. He reached for his standard-issue dagger, but as his fingers brushed the steel, the metal turned a dull, matte black.
The first trial was approaching. He could hear the heavy boots of the night patrol approaching the barracks door. They weren't making their usual rounds. They were stopping.
The door burst open, and a squad of elite Temple Knights stepped into the room, their armor glowing with a harsh, artificial radiance. At their head was a priest holding a shimmering crystal that pulsed with a rhythmic, golden light—a soul-seeker.
"There is an impurity in this room," the priest hissed, his eyes scanning the rows of sleeping recruits.
Sylas stood in the shadows at the back of the hall, his heart beating with a slow, deliberate rhythm. He felt the Duke's pride surging within him, a violent urge to crush the intruders. He suppressed it. He needed to be surgical.
The crystal in the priest's hand flared as it pointed toward Sylas's cot. "You. Stand into the light."
Sylas stepped forward, but he didn't walk into the light. He walked through it. As he moved, the shadows in the room seemed to stretch and coil around his boots. The [Dread Aura] expanded, not as a wave, but as a suffocating shroud.
The recruits who had been awakened by the commotion found themselves unable to breathe, gripped by a primal terror they couldn't name. The Temple Knights reached for their swords, but their hands trembled. The holy light of their armor flickered and died, consumed by the sheer density of the darkness Sylas radiated.
"What... what are you?" the priest stammered, the soul-seeker crystal cracking in his grip.
Sylas didn't answer. He was already in front of the priest. He moved faster than any human soldier, his hand closing around the man's throat. The violet energy of the Duke flared in his eyes.
"I am the inheritance," Sylas whispered.
He didn't just kill the priest; he used the [Dread Aura] to shatter the man's mind first. The knights lunged, their silver blades whistling through the air, but Sylas was a ghost. He slipped between their strikes, his movements a blur of lethal efficiency. He didn't use a weapon. He used his hands, reinforced by the Duke's mana, to tear through plate armor as if it were parchment.
In seconds, the barracks were silent again, save for the ragged breathing of the terrified recruits. Blood pooled on the stone floor, turning violet where it touched Sylas's shadow.
He looked at the survivors. They were witnesses. In his old life, he might have spared them. But Sylas was no longer the boy who scavenged for bread. He was the heir to a demon's throne. He knew that any loose thread would eventually hang him.
"Do not pray," Sylas told them, his voice echoing with a terrifying authority. "Your god isn't listening."
He didn't kill them all—not yet. He needed them to tell a story. He needed the Dominion to know that the Demon Duke had returned, but he needed them to look in the wrong direction. He focused his power, weaving a suggestion into their panicked minds, a false memory of a hooded monster that had vanished into the northern woods.
As he slipped out of the barracks and into the rainy night, Sylas felt the first layer of the Duke's power stabilizing within him. [Assimilation Progress: 5%]. It was a start, but it was far from enough. To survive the coming hunt, he needed to find the second legacy.
He moved through the outskirts of the city, avoiding the main thoroughfares where the Golems of Light patrolled. He headed toward the "Grey Quarter," a lawless labyrinth of crumbling stone and desperation where the Church's influence was thinnest. There, beneath the ruins of an ancient cathedral, lay the remains of the second villain—the Bone Emperor.
The memories of Valerius guided him through the sewers and hidden passages. Sylas felt the hunger growing. The more he used the power, the more he craved it. The "regret" of the dead was a powerful motivator, a cold fire that pushed him forward.
He reached the entrance to the catacombs, a heavy stone door marked with a seal that had been forgotten for centuries. As he placed his hand on the cold surface, the violet veins on his arm flared. The stone groaned, recognizing its new master.
Suddenly, a voice rang out from the darkness behind him.
"I knew the Duke's essence wouldn't go quietly, but I didn't expect it to find such a lowly vessel."
Sylas turned slowly. Standing at the mouth of the alley was a woman dressed in a high-ranking Inquisitor's cloak. Her hair was a shock of white, and her eyes were a piercing, unnatural blue. She held no weapon, but the air around her hummed with a concentrated holy force.
"Serafina," Sylas murmured, the name rising from the Duke's memories. She was the "Hand of the Saintess," the Dominion's most lethal hunter.
"You have five minutes before the rest of the Inquisitors arrive," she said, her voice like cracking ice. "Surrender the legacy, and I will give you a quick death. Resist, and I will peel the Duke's soul from your body while you are still conscious."
Sylas didn't move. He felt the [Dread Aura] coiling like a spring. He looked at the catacomb door, then back at the woman who represented everything he was meant to destroy.
"I don't think you understand," Sylas said, his voice dropping to a low, predatory growl. "I'm not the vessel. I'm the owner."
He slammed his fist into the catacomb door, not to open it, but to shatter the seal. A wave of necro-mana erupted from the tomb, a green-and-black fire that clashed with the golden radiance of the Inquisitor.
The cliffhanger was set. The hunt had begun, and the scavenger was about to become the emperor.