The yard behind the house had two fresh graves.
The earth still raw. Still soft. Still unwilling to bury what once laughed beneath that crooked fence.
No wind stirred. No birds sang. No poison crept.
Only silence. The kind that thickens in the lungs like oil.
Flow lay beside the front door. His tail unmoving, his eyes hollow. He made no sound.
He was not sleeping. He was guarding.
Inside the house, behind the left-hand door of the hall, Ithariel stood.
The room had not changed. Her body had not moved.
She lay still—propped against those faded pillows, face ghostlike, veins faintly silvered by the Hollow Hour.
No one could tell she was alive. Not unless you'd listened to her breath for years. Counted each one like it was the last heartbeat in the world.
He didn't sit in the wooden chair this time.
He knelt. His knees pressed to the worn floorboards. Hands trembling at his sides.
"They're gone, Mom."
His voice cracked. The words didn't echo.
"Jon… Yuna… the town… all of them."
She didn't move. Didn't stir.
"I buried them this morning… behind the house. Right where we used to play. Right where Dad used to tell us stories—those dumb ones that never ended, even when poison rode the wind."
His throat tightened.
"I promised I'd protect them. Promised I'd make things better. That if I worked hard enough—if I just kept trying—"
His shoulders began to shake.
"But I wasn't enough."
He didn't cry. He couldn't anymore. The grief had passed crying. It had become a bone-deep echo.
"I thought if I just held on… if I gave everything away… maybe life would finally give something back."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"But it didn't."
He reached out. Touched her face.
Her cheek was cold. But not empty.
"You're still here. And for once… I'm glad the Hollow Hour has you."
His voice almost broke again.
"Because if it didn't… if the other poisons touched you too…"
He couldn't finish.
"I'm going to train, Mom."
Not to survive. Not to save.
"To destroy."
His voice was calm now. Dead calm.
"I'll become the thing they fear. I'll carve their names into my bones if I have to. And when I'm strong enough… I'll leave. But I'll come back—with a cure. If one still exists. Because if there's one soul I won't lose—"
His eyes closed.
"It's yours."
She did not stir. She had not stirred in six years.
But in that silence—something ancient stirred instead.
The voice.
The one inside the boy.
[Now you're ready, brat.]
Its tone was as mocking as ever. But something about it had shifted. It no longer sneered. It understood.
[Touching. Don't make a habit of it.]
Ithariel's jaw tightened.
He had no choice. Not anymore. He had seen what this voice could do. What it had done. How it had moved his body like a god wearing a corpse.
"What do I do?" Ithariel asked.
[Simple. Go outside.]
He did.
Back to the yard. Back to the poisoned sky and the two fresh mounds of dirt.
[When I took control of your body, I opened your mana paths. You didn't notice. Too full of grief. But now—]
Lightning didn't strike. The earth didn't quake.
But Ithariel felt it.
The pull.
As if the world had shifted slightly, just for him.
[Mana will now answer to your will. But your body? Still human. Still weak. So it must be reforged. Inside and out.]
[The serpents you seek to destroy are gods in flesh. To kill them…]
A pause. Like the sky inhaling.
[You must become something greater.]
Ithariel didn't blink.
"How?"
The voice laughed. Not with joy, but with the sound of teeth sinking into fate.
[You've already heard them—the pitiful humans. Whispering in the streets of that ruined town… about mages who shape the elements with trembling hands… superhumans birthed from dungeons… hybrids of beast and man… swordmasters who carve truth into flesh… and the blessed, touched by divine rot. Beings forged to change the world. To ruin it.]
The voice slithered deeper, filling his marrow.
[It was because of them… that a pact was made with the serpents.]
Ithariel said nothing. He remembered the town. The whispers. The stories. Now buried beneath rubble and screams and black veins.
He listened.
The sky crackled as if it, too, remembered.
[Your training starts now.]
[Morning—you will master mana. Noon—you will forge your body. Night—you will learn the blade.]
[And we'll do all of them at once.]
[Are you ready to embrace hell, brat?]
Ithariel didn't hesitate.
He looked at the scorched sky. At the graves. At Flow lying down watching as he licked his wounds.
And he answered.
"Foolish question coming from you."
"Hell's already here. Add more—it won't matter."
The voice laughed.
Not cruelly.
Almost proudly.
[Fine then,] it whispered. [Let's begin.]
The dirt beneath his feet was uneven. Cracked. Sour. Still soaked from last night's rain. Behind him, two fresh graves rested like mouths that would never speak again.
The house stood to his left—rotted, crooked, quiet.
But forward—forward was where it had to begin.
Ithariel stood shirtless. The wind slashed over his ribs like dull blades. His arms trembled. His chest still heaved faintly—not from fear, not anymore. From grief, barely dried.
And still, he stood.
"Tell me," he whispered. "How do I start?"
The voice came, dry and cold.
[You start by forgetting what you were.]
No comfort. Only purpose.
[You are no longer a boy. Not to them. And not to the world.]
[Your vessel now holds something old—something cruel. Rage, not righteous. Rage, refined. I felt it… and I like it.]
Ithariel clenched his fists. The wounds still hadn't healed from the night before.
"What now?"
[First, understand something. I will never speak of myself. Time will reveal what matters. What we have is a pact. Mutual. You gave me pity. I give you war.]
[You wish for extinction.]
[I will help you fulfill it.]
Ithariel spat to the side.
"You think I care?"
"You know I've never asked who you are. Not in five years. Not once. I still don't care. Just tell me how to begin."
A pause. Then laughter.
Not cruel. Not kind. Just amused. Like a fire flickering inside stone.
[That's why I like you.]
[Let's begin.]
[Do you know why humans started losing the Serpentfall?]
[At first, they were winning. The mages. The blessed. The gifted.]
[Why? Because the air was still clean. Mana flowed pure. Their bodies obeyed.]
[But as the poison mixed into the air… so too did it poison the mana.]
[And with each breath, they inhaled ruin.]
They had two choices, the voice said.
[Use tainted mana—and rot from the inside.]
[Or don't use it at all—and die clean.]
[But you… you are different, aren't you?]
Ithariel nodded slowly.
"Because I'm immune."
[Exactly. Your curse is your crown.]
[Since I forcefully opened your mana paths, your core's been shattered. Shards scattered. Destroyed.]
A pause.
[In a normal human, that would be the end. No core, no circles. No magic. Nothing.]
It spat the word like ash.
[But you're already an irregular.]
[No venom touches you. No rules hold you. So I'll teach you a method that no one sane would attempt. Because to others, it's chaos. Anomalous. Irreversible.]
A breath. A pulse.
[But for you… it fits like rot on a corpse.]
[You will absorb mana from the very air—poisoned or pure. Just by breathing.]
[We will imprint the method. And once it's imprinted, it will never leave you. You will never run dry.]
Ithariel stepped forward. The blood on his chest had dried. He could feel something beneath the wind now—a hum, invisible.
[Draw a circle. In blood. Sit inside it. That will be the first gate.]
No hesitation. He raised the axe. Cut across his forearm. Not deep—but deliberate.
With his own blood, he drew the circle. Then sat in the center, cross-legged. His breath heavy. His heart silent.
[Now, I will push mana through your eyes. You will see it for the first time.]
A click echoed in his mind.
And beneath his skin, something stirred.
Crack.
Silver veins—thin as cobwebs—flared across his chest, pulsing once, then fading.
Hiss.
His breath came out black. Not smoke. Not heat. Just… decay.
Twist.
For a moment, his shadow flickered wrong.
Shift.
It twisted on the ground like it wasn't his.
And the world—changed.
The air was black with rot. A fog invisible to humans—now visible to him.
The Pale Reaper's Breath.
A poison that shimmered like oil on glass.
But between it—countless drifting orbs of mana. Colorful, yes. But all tainted. Each one specked with black veins.
[You see it now, don't you?]
Ithariel nodded.
[Now—breathe.]
[Like you did before. When you stole the poison from that town people. Use the same method—but shift your hunger.]
He opened both palms. Opened his mouth. And began to draw.
At first, they trickled—cautious, almost shy.
Then came the pull.
The air warped.
The circle pulsed like a bleeding vein.
Mana poured in—mouth, skin, lungs.
It wasn't absorption.
It was hunger.
And it wouldn't stop.
"It's working," Ithariel whispered. "It's actually working—"
[Of course it is, you idiot,] the voice snapped. [Keep going.]
He did.
He kept going.
One.
He didn't count time. Only the pulse—slower, heavier.
Two.
The hunger didn't fade. It grew claws.
Three.
His chest tightened.
Four.
His skin felt too thin.
Five.
Something inside him was tearing.
Six.
Quietly.
Seven.
Beautifully.
Eight.
Like silk unraveling over bone.
"Something's wrong," he muttered. "I… I feel strange."
[Stop absorbing.]
"I can't."
"It won't stop."
[Brat—stop it! Cut it off!]
"I can't, damn it!"
"It's not listening!"
His eyes burned. His palms shook.
The orbs kept coming. From every direction. Into his mouth. Into his chest.
"Damn you—tell me how to stop it!"
And then—
Silence.
He collapsed. His body hit the earth.
Breath gone. Vision black.
Only the blood circle remained—now dried.
And the voice whispered into the silence.
[Still conscious… barely.]
[You overloaded. Magnificent brat.]
[The first step… done.]
[You are now tethered to the world's rot.]
[Welcome to your taste of hell.]
And still—his shadow twitched, like it hadn't finished changing.