The darkness in the ***Ashen Grave*** was not a void. It was a physical weight.
In the ***High Heavens***, **Khai** remembered the night as a silk veil—cool, deep, and silent. But here, on ***Universe 1***, the dark had teeth.
It felt like a living thing that squeezed through the cracks in the rusted metal walls. It smelled of ozone, stale oil, and the slow rot of a dying world.
**Khai** lay on the shredded industrial tarp. His frame was as rigid as a piece of petrified wood.
*Thump.*
His heart kicked against his sternum. It was a frantic bird slamming into the bars of a cage.
The ***Grade-B nutrient paste*** had reached his stomach. But instead of relief, it had ignited a civil war within his veins.
**[VITALITY: 1.45%]**
**[STATUS: SYSTEMIC REJECTION IMMINENT]**
The blue holographic interface wavered before his eyes. It flickered like a dying candle in a gale.
It offered no comfort. Only the cold mathematics of his extinction.
**Khai** clenched his teeth. A thin trickle of copper-tasting blood leaked from his gums and slid down his throat.
The irony tang of his own blood mixed with the chemical sweetness of the protein paste. It created a cocktail of nausea that threatened to undo him.
His stomach churned like a boiling vat of molten lead.
His digestive tract, dormant and shriveled after years of starvation, did not recognize this "High-Grade" fuel.
It treated the nutrients like an invasion. It fought back.
"No..."
The word was a dry husk. A sound that barely left his cracked lips.
He dug his claw-like fingers into his midsection. His jagged nails sank into the translucent skin over his abdomen.
His body bucked. A violent spasm of his diaphragm forced his throat to constrict.
He felt the bile rising—hot, acidic, and relentless.
But he knew—if he vomited now, he wasn't just losing calories.
He was losing **Tian's** sweat. **Tian's** blood. The only sliver of a future they had left.
*Gulp.*
With a guttural groan, he forced the rejection back down.
He swallowed the burning liquid. His throat muscles spasmed in protest.
Sweat began to pour off him—not the salt-water of a healthy man, but a grey, oily film.
It reeked of industrial toxins. His cells were finally finding the energy to expel the filth of the mines.
**[VITALITY: 1.46%]**
A mere zero-point-zero-one percent.
A ragged, breathless laugh escaped him. All that agony for a fraction of a fraction.
He felt his toes curl suddenly. Locked in a brutal muscle cramp.
It felt as if a rusted wire was being threaded through his nerves and yanked tight from the inside.
He threw his head back. The back of his skull hit the hard, soot-packed earth.
*Drip. Drip.*
From the ceiling, a bead of acid-rain fell. It landed on his cheek.
It hissed. It ate a tiny, red pockmark into his skin.
**Khai** didn't flinch.
The stinging pain was a tether. It was the only thing keeping his consciousness from drifting into the grey fog of the "**Great Sleep**."
The darkness deepened.
From the bowels of **Marrow-Burn**, the "Thrum" of ancient machinery vibrated through the floor.
The planet was a machine that had forgotten its purpose. It was grinding him down with every pulse.
Then, he heard it.
*Scritch. Scritch.*
The sound of metal being gnawed. It wasn't human.
It was the frantic, mechanical scratching of a **Rust-Rat**—a creature evolved to eat through heavy pipes.
Or perhaps it was a mutated scavenger. Drawn by the scent of "High-Grade" proteins leaking from **Khai's** feverish pores.
**Khai's** breath hitched. He couldn't move.
He was a skeleton draped in rags. Pinned to a dirty mat by his own weakness.
But his hand was not empty.
He reached for the **copper fragment**.
He squeezed his fist until the jagged edge of the **Sun-Gatherer's coin** sliced deep into his palm.
The sharp, clean bite of the metal sent a jolt of clarity through his fever-muddled brain.
He gripped that pain like a hilt.
"I am a **Prince**," he snarled internally. Only a wheeze left his mouth.
"I will not be scavenged in the dirt."
***
Inside his gut, the ***Grade-B paste*** was no longer just fuel.
It felt like a colony of microscopic insects gnawing at his insides.
It forced his dormant cells to stretch and tear as they expanding.
**[VITALITY: 1.49%]**
His muscles twitched with involuntary electrical shocks.
It was the "***Refined Aether***" in the paste trying to find a circuit.
Trying to spark a body that was essentially a heap of rusted wires.
"Move," **Khai** hissed.
His brain sent the command. A royal decree issued from a crumbling throne.
His right arm, thin as a dry branch, shook violently.
The friction of his skin against the tarp sounded like sandpaper on wood.
He dug his fingernails—blackened with soot—into the dirt beyond the mat.
He didn't lift himself. He dragged.
*Scraaape.*
The sound of his own ribs grinding against the floor echoed in the small shack.
Every inch was a price paid in agony.
**[VITALITY: 1.48% - STAMINA DEPLETED]**
The number flickered red.
He was burning his life force just to move toward the door.
He didn't care. To stay on that mat was to accept the status of a corpse.
To crawl was to claim the status of a predator.
Outside, the scratching stopped.
The creature had heard him. It let out a low, wet hiss.
The sound of air being squeezed through a throat clogged with filth.
*Thud.*
The bottom of the metal door buckled inward.
A snout, covered in oily fur and dripping with grey saliva, poked through a gap.
It was a **Rust-Rat**. Mutated by the ***Deep Vein radiation***.
Its eyes were milky-white. Blind to light, but sensitive to heat.
Sensitive to the fever radiating from **Khai's** skin.
**Khai** watched the snout twitch. He could smell it.
A stench of rotting meat and battery acid.
**[VITALITY: 1.50%]**
Suddenly, the ***Null-Link*** interface didn't just flicker. It hummed.
**[SYNC STATUS: 0.01%]**
**[SENSORY OVERLOAD DETECTED]**
For a split second, **Khai's** vision split.
He saw the **Rat's** heat signature—a glowing orange mass of muscle.
He saw the "**Weak Point**" in its neck.
Where the spinal cord was exposed through patches of missing fur.
It was a glimpse of his ***Sovereign Sight***. The "Show" he had been waiting for.
"One... strike," **Khai** whispered.
He gripped the **copper fragment**. His fingers felt heavy, like cooling lead.
He didn't have the strength to swing. He didn't have the speed to lunge.
He had to wait.
The **Rat** squeezed its head through the gap.
The metal screeching against its fur set **Khai's** teeth on edge.
One more inch.
The creature's front claws—stained with the rust of a thousand pipes—dug into the dirt.
It was five feet away.
Four.
**[VITALITY: 1.51%]**
**Khai's** heart rate slowed.
He pushed the chaos of the nutrient rejection into a corner of his mind.
He focused everything—every drop of the **Li Clan's** pride—into his right hand.
The **Rat** lunged.
A blur of grey fur and yellow teeth.
**Khai** didn't move his body. He simply let himself fall.
He used the momentum of his own collapse. Gravity doing the work his muscles couldn't.
As his chest hit the dirt, his right hand lashed out in a short, jagged arc.
*Squelch.*
The **copper fragment** didn't just cut. It bit.
The jagged edge buried itself into the soft tissue of the **Rat's** throat.
Hot, thick blood sprayed across **Khai's** face.
The creature shrieked—a high-pitched, mechanical sound.
It thrashed against him.
Its claws raked across **Khai's** shoulder, tearing through his thin rags.
**Khai** didn't let go. He twisted the fragment.
He leaned the entire weight of his **1.51% vitality** into the wound.
*Crrrk.*
The **Rat's** thrashing slowed. Its milky eyes rolled back.
With a final, wet gurgle, the creature went limp.
Its heavy body pinned **Khai** to the floor.
**[VITALITY: 1.50% - PHYSICAL TRAUMA DETECTED]**
**[EXPERIENCE GAINED: NIL]**
**[SYNC STATUS: 0.01% - STABILIZED]**
**Khai** lay there, pinned under the carcass of a scavenger.
Gasping for air that tasted of blood and ash.
He was bleeding. He was exhausted. He was dying.
But for the first time in seven years, he wasn't just a victim.
He was a killer.
"**Tian**..." he choked out. His eyes burned with a cold, dark fire.
"I'm... coming... for... you."
***
**Khai** lay beneath the cooling weight of the **Rat**.
His lungs burned as if he had swallowed embers.
The silence that followed was heavy. Broken only by the rhythmic *drip-drip* of dark blood.
**[VITALITY: 1.51%]**
The number flickered. It wasn't rising. It was struggling to stabilize.
His body was a leaking vessel.
"Get... off..."
He shoved the carcass. It felt like moving a slab of lead.
His muscles, strained beyond their breaking point, tore with a dull pop.
With one final heave, the **Rat** rolled over.
**Khai** stared at the corrugated metal ceiling.
His vision was swimming. The blue notifications were blurring into violet streaks.
**[WARNING: CRITICAL STAMINA DEPLETION]**
**[SYNC STATUS: 0.01% - FLUCTUATING]**
He looked at his hand. Bathed in the **Rat's** blood.
In the ***High Heavens***, a **Li Prince** would never touch such filth.
But here, blood was just another form of energy.
**Khai** closed his eyes. He forced his mind back into that dark, static-filled space.
The ***Null-Space*** of his soul.
He didn't have the **System's** help yet. He only had his heritage.
*"The Grave remembers its Princes,"* the whisper echoed.
He realized then that reaching 100% Vitality wasn't just about eating.
It was about **will.** If he spent the next seven days lying on that mat, he would be dead before **Tian** returned.
The **1.45%** wasn't his baseline; it was his countdown.
**[VITALITY: 1.55%]**
He felt a tiny spark of heat. Not from the paste.
From the act of killing.
The adrenaline was being converted.
His ***Sovereign mind*** was forcing his biology to adapt.
Rewiring his damaged nervous system one synapse at a time.
He dragged himself back toward the mat. Inch by agonizing inch.
The floor felt like ice against his feverish skin.
The scent of the dead **Rat** filled the shack. A reminder that more scavengers would come.
The smell of blood in the **Gutter** was a dinner bell.
He reached the edge of the tarp. Collapsed onto it.
His fingers found the empty silver tube.
He squeezed the last smears of the golden gel onto his fingers and licked them clean.
Every milligram was a second of life.
**[VITALITY: 1.65%]**
"One week," **Khai** whispered into the dark.
The numbers on the interface felt less like a death sentence now.
They felt like a challenge.
He didn't need a miracle. He needed time.
He needed to survive the next 168 hours while his body rebuilt itself.
He clutched the **copper fragment** to his chest.
**[AWAKENING PROGRESS: 1.65 / 100%]**
Outside, the toxic winds of **Marrow-Burn** began to howl.
The world wanted him dead. The planet wanted to recycle him.
But **Khai** simply closed his eyes and began the long process of breathing.
In.
Out.
One beat of a mending heart at a time.
**[VITALITY: 1.66%]**
**[TIME TO TOTAL COLLAPSE: 182 HOURS]**