The air in the Upper Levels of the Underground City was thick with the smell of recycled oxygen and wet concrete. For a High-Copper scavenger like Kael, this was home—a repurposed maintenance tunnel partitioned by rusted chain-link fences and thin plastic tarps.
Kael slumped onto his makeshift cot, his muscles finally screaming from the 5x exertion. In the dim flicker of a dying fluorescent light, he pulled off his mud-caked boots.
Clink.
A jagged piece of obsidian hit the stone floor. It didn't bounce like a rock; it landed with a heavy, metallic thud that seemed to vibrate through the soles of his feet.
"What is...?" Kael leaned over, reaching for the shard.
The moment his fingers brushed the surface, his Prauna went wild.
Usually, his Copper energy felt like a steady, thick sludge—reliable but slow. Now, it was boiling. The Prauna in his marrow surged toward his fingertips, drawn into the black shard like water into a vacuum.
"Gah!" Kael hissed, trying to pull away. He couldn't. His hand was locked to the stone.
The shard wasn't just cold; it was Hollow. It felt exactly like the zombies outside, but a thousand times more intense. It was a vacuum of energy, a piece of something that didn't belong to the world of the living or the monstrous.
Suddenly, the black surface of the shard pulsed with a faint, violet light.
Whoomph.
Kael's vision didn't just fade—it was torn away.
He wasn't in the damp tunnel anymore. He was standing on a plain of white ash that stretched to a horizon of burning stars. The sky was filled with Void-Arks, massive geometric structures that bled darkness into the atmosphere.
And then, he felt them. Three presences so vast they made the Level 2 Stitch-Wolf feel like an ant.
To his right, a golden titan with seven wings let out a roar that shattered the nearby Arks—the Monster King. To his left, a sea of a billion zombies stood in perfect, terrifying silence, led by a figure in tattered robes whose breath turned the air into ice—the Zombie Ancestor.
And directly in front of Kael stood a man in a cloak of liquid light.
The Sovereign turned. His eyes weren't human; they were spinning galaxies of Origin Essence. He looked directly at Kael—not at the Kael in the vision, but at the Copper-ranker watching from the future.
"Seven-Star..." the Sovereign's voice echoed, vibrating in Kael's very soul. "The Pact is fading. The Foreigners are coming. You are the last vessel."
The Sovereign reached out, and a single drop of Liquid Prauna—pure and blinding—flew from his finger and struck Kael in the chest.
CRACK.
Kael's eyes snapped open. He was back in his tunnel, gasping for air. His shirt was torn over his heart, revealing a faint, glowing mark that looked like a constellation.
The obsidian shard was gone. In its place, a fine black dust covered the floor.
Kael gripped his chest, feeling a new, terrifying heat circulating in his Dantian. It wasn't the heavy, dull energy of the Copper Realm anymore. It was sharper. Cleaner.
"The Sovereign..." Kael whispered, his voice trembling. "He was real."
He stood up, and for the first time in his life, he didn't feel like a Copper Dreg. He felt like a predator. But as he looked at the rusted gate of his cell, he realized a terrifying truth:If the Monster King and the Zombie Ancestor were real, then the Pact was the only thing keeping them from devouring the City. And the Pact was breaking.