The sky was low, the clouds smothering the moon like a dying breath.
Kael sat on the outskirts of the village that had raised him, the same village now filled with tension thick enough to choke on. His hands were wrapped around his knees, his back against a moss-covered stone, and the cold ground beneath him pressed into his spine like a warning—one he had started to feel long before the boy's blood dried on his skin.
The silver-eyed child was dead.
And the silence afterward was louder than any scream he could have uttered.
Kael hadn't told anyone. Not the elders. Not the hunters. Not even the few children who used to trail behind him like lost chicks. The body lay buried beneath a split-bark tree far beyond the village's edge, covered with stones he'd gathered with trembling fingers. No grave markers. No words. Just weight—stone above and within.
But the world didn't stop.
Instead, it turned colder.
The villagers had begun watching him again. Not with suspicion—no, not yet—but with that quiet hesitance people reserve for things they can't name. Something in him had changed, and even if they couldn't understand what, they sensed it.
He had grown quieter. Sharper. And something behind his eyes no longer blinked.
Ashes of the Day
It started with whispers. Then rumors.
A few hunters returned from the southern paths, speaking in hushed tones about signs—broken bindings, a snapped cage, and blood smeared across trees like symbols. No beasts left behind. No remains. Just a hollow scene soaked in violence.
They thought it was poachers.
Kael knew better.
It was him.
He had killed it—whatever it had been. A beast bred in chains. And in doing so, he'd devoured it.
That word had haunted him since.
Devour.
Not kill. Not defeat.
Devour.
It wasn't just instinct anymore. It was design.
And now, at night, when the village slept, Kael wandered.
He walked the animal paths and shadowy thickets with the awareness of someone expecting to be hunted, but no creature dared approach him. Not now. Not anymore. He moved like a ghost, and the forest had learned to yield.
Tonight was no different.
Except for the cold.
A Whisper Beneath the Skin
Kael's breaths steamed as he reached a clearing where the trees broke just enough to let in the starlight.
He stood still.
Eyes closed.
Listening—not to the world outside, but the one within.
It was time.
He drew his awareness inward.
And there… it was.
Not a voice. Not a presence. A structure.
There were layers within him—like rings in a tree trunk—each one formed by something he had consumed. Not physically. Not entirely. But at some fundamental level, he had taken more than strength.
He had taken essence.
The beast's savage reflexes. The silver-eyed boy's fading spark of gift. Both inside him now. Not as possessions, but functions. Pieces of a system. Like inherited memories.
He flexed his hand.
A flicker passed across it—like heat. A shimmer that warped the air. The boy's gift, barely awakened, yet still there.
He could reach it. Trigger it. Use it.
But he felt nothing change in his soul.
No voices.
No corruption.
Just... assimilation.
Like it belonged.
A Question of Hunger
He sat on a rotting stump, the wood damp beneath him, the trees whispering.
What am I becoming?
He had asked that question before.
But now he asked it again, differently.
It wasn't about power.
It was about cost.
He had always believed morality was something taught—rules passed down to make sure people stayed in line. Don't steal. Don't kill. Don't take what isn't yours.
But what if the world was built on theft?
What if those at the top had climbed there by devouring everything beneath them?
Was he just another monster in waiting?
Or had he always been a correction?
Kael didn't feel evil. But he no longer believed good intentions made someone righteous. The village elders claimed order came from tradition. The world claimed peace came from obedience. But he had seen what obedience looked like.
Chained children.
Bleeding hybrids.
Silent corpses with silver eyes.
If morality required ignoring such things, then morality could go to hell.
The Village Tenses
The next morning, Kael walked through the village like a fading shadow.
Conversations stopped when he neared. Old men shifted on their stools. Children watched him with wide, confused eyes.
He passed by the hunter's hall. A few familiar faces glanced up but didn't speak. One of them—Tarn, the older one with the wolf tattoo—nodded subtly, almost respectfully.
They knew something was changing.
They just didn't know what.
Kael didn't either.
That made him dangerous.
He passed the forge without looking in. The blacksmith's hammer was silent today.
Too many had noticed the signs.
Too many could feel it: something was coming.
And Kael was the shape of that something.
The Broken Trail
Later that evening, Kael left again—quietly, as he always did.
But this time, he walked south.
Not out of habit.
Something pulled him.
About an hour from the village, the wind shifted.
He paused, crouched, and scanned the undergrowth.
Footprints.
Fresh.
Small.
Children's.
Not villagers.
The path wasn't natural—someone had been herding them. He followed the broken branches and crushed leaves, each sign a louder alarm in his blood.
Then he found it.
A torn piece of cloth. Red, stained. Threaded with patterns he didn't recognize—foreign, coarse. Not of the village.
His pulse slowed.
This wasn't a rescue.
It was a route.
A delivery path.
Slavers? Traders? Crimson Coil?
He didn't know.
But he knew this: the boy had not been the last.
And they were still moving children.
Somewhere nearby.
Hunger Without End
That night, Kael returned to the same clearing as before. The same cold stars above. But he wasn't the same.
He understood his ability now.
Not fully.
But enough.
He didn't just devour flesh.
He took lineage.
Abilities weren't just gifts. They were inheritances. Passed through blood, anchored in memory.
And Kael?
He stole inheritance.
He erased bloodlines.
He wasn't a predator.
He was an extinction.
And that terrified him.
Because part of him—deep down—knew he wasn't afraid of what he could do.
He was afraid he might be meant to do it.
Signs in the Ash
As the fire died beside him, Kael stood once more and looked southward—where the broken trail ended in shadow.
He would not tell the village.
He would not warn the elders.
He would follow the path alone.
And if the world wanted to trade children for power, he would teach them what real power tasted like when it bit back.