The commander's gauntleted hand gripped Caelan's throat, lifting him from the mud like a drowned kitten. "Look at you," he sneered, breath hot with wine and contempt. "The great Voralis heir. Pathetic."
Caelan's legs dangled, his vision swimming. But the Temporal Sight showed him three seconds ahead—the commander's other hand drawing a dagger, the blade's descent toward his heart, Seraphine's shadow emerging from the grate. The futures overlapped, possibilities collapsing into now.
Let them come.
"Please," Caelan gasped, the voice of a dying child he'd never been. "Don't—"
The commander's soul burned like a furnace. Through the contact of skin on skin, the Soul Harvester record stirred, hungry. But something else stirred too, buried deep beneath the Frozen Soul passive and the hunger of the Codex.
A memory.
"You held on longer than anyone expected," the doctor had said, her voice kind and professionally detached. "Your sister will be here tomorrow."
But she hadn't come. The monitors had beeped their final dirge, and Caelan—the other Caelan, the real one—had died alone in a white room that smelled of antiseptic and defeat. No power. No choices. Just the slow erosion of self as cancer ate him from within.
Was this better? Trading one death for another?
The dagger rose. Seraphine's blade whispered from the shadows.
But Caelan moved first.
His small hand shot up, not to block the dagger, but to grab the commander's wrist. The spirals on his skin flared, and the Soul Harvester record activated with a will of its own.
Soul Harvester – Level 0 [0/1000] → [1/1000]
The commander's eyes widened. He tried to pull away, but the contact was a bridge, and Caelan was the flood. Aether poured from the Rift State warrior into the boy's frail frame, a torrent that should have annihilated him.
It didn't.
Because this wasn't Aether absorption. This was theft.
"Wha—" The commander's mouth worked, but no sound emerged. His skin grayed, his muscles withering as Caelan drank not just his soul, but the condensed essence of his training, his kills, his very sense of self.
Soul Harvester – Level 0 [1/1000] → [347/1000]
The number climbed too fast to track. Souls weren't just points—they were everything a person had been, compressed into pure potential. And a Rift State commander was worth hundreds of Mortal State grunts.
Yet as the essence flowed into him, so did the fragments. Not full memories—those were burned away by the Codex—but the feelings. The commander's pride when he'd first manifested his bloodline. His grief when he'd killed his first innocent. His absolute certainty that House Kuron was righteous, that House Voralis was corruption that needed cleansing.
"We're not monsters," the commander's ghost-voice whispered in his skull. "We just do what must be done."
Caelan had said those words once. To his sister, when he'd refused the experimental treatment that would have bankrupted her future. He'd chosen to die "with dignity," leaving her alone.
The hypocrisy of it hit him like a physical blow. He'd been so certain too.
The Frozen Soul passive flared, numbing the emotional impact. A convenient thing, that numbness. But was it protecting him, or erasing him?
Seraphine's blade didn't falter. She'd emerged from the tunnel and was systematically cutting down the five Mortal soldiers, her movements a dance of perfect economy. They died before they realized she was there.
The commander's body collapsed into ash, his silver armor clattering hollowly to the mud. Soul Point: 347.0749
Caelan stood alone in the moonlight, his small frame trembling—not from weakness, but from the influx of power. The Orochi's Spiral bloodline was digesting the stolen essence, converting it into progress.
Orochi's Spiral [ATAVISM] – Level 0 [560/3000] → [907/3000]
He was now roughly one-third of the way to the first level-up. At this rate, three more Rift State warriors would push him into true power.
"Your Highness." Seraphine's voice was flat. She'd seen. Of course she'd seen. "We need to move. The armor will draw attention."
But Caelan couldn't move yet. The commander's certainty still echoed in him, and it brought questions he didn't want to face.
The original Caelan Voralis—this body's previous owner—had been poisoned for eleven years. Had he known? Felt the betrayal? Had he died thinking his protector had failed him?
And what did it mean that Caelan could barely summon pity for the boy whose body he'd stolen?
Frozen Soul (Level 2) the Codex whispered. Reduces emotional interference by 85%.
A blessing and a curse. He could think clearly under pressure, make the cold calculations necessary to survive. But he remembered the hospital—how even in pain, he'd held his sister's hand when she visited, had felt something. Love. Fear. Regret.
Now he just felt... hunger.
"Your Highness," Seraphine said again, and this time there was an edge to it. "The boy I swore to protect would have wept for that man's soul."
Caelan looked at her. The Temporal Sight showed futures branching: her loyalty fracturing, her blade turning on him, her walking away into the night.
"He would have," Caelan agreed. "And he would have died here, in the mud."
He reached down and picked up the commander's sword. It was too heavy for his child's body, but the Orochi's bloodline helped, time-dilating the strain.
"That boy is gone," Caelan said, and wasn't sure if he meant the original prince or himself—the person who'd died in a hospital bed believing dignity mattered more than survival. "What remains is House Voralis."
Seraphine's jaw tightened, but she nodded. "Then let us find shelter. Dawn comes fast, and the Hollow District will be crawling with Kuron scum."
As they moved into the warren of refugee shacks, Caelan accessed the Codex one more time. The Records page had a new entry, red and pulsing:
New Record Detected: Guilt Echo (Unstable)
Would you like to integrate? [Y/N]
He stared at it. The commander's certainty, trying to become part of him. A permanent record of the man he'd just consumed.
Caelan's finger—his small, stolen finger—hovered over the option.
In the hospital, he'd refused treatment that would have changed who he was. He'd clung to "himself" even as the cancer ate him.
Now, to survive, he had to become a mosaic of other people's souls.
The Frozen Soul passive urged him to accept. Efficiency. Power. Nothing else mattered.
But for the first time since waking in blood and ruin, Caelan hesitated.
"No," he whispered. The Codex flashed once, and the red record dissolved, its essence converted to a mere 12 Soul Points.
Soul Point: 359.0749
It was inefficient. Wasteful. The old Caelan—the hospital Caelan—would have approved...