The cloaked figure's voice lingered in the frigid air like a curse etched into reality itself each syllable a cold blade sliding between ribs, vibrating through frost-cracked ground and sinking deep into flesh until blood felt thick and sluggish in veins. The crimson orb atop the staff pulsed brighter with deliberate malice, each beat sending visible ripples of red light washing across the clearing in sickening waves. The eclipse overhead responded in perfect, horrifying sync its blood-red corona throbbing like a diseased heart, narrowing further until the sky felt like a raw, weeping wound that bled darkness onto the world below.
Kai's dark aura spilled outward uncontrollably now thick, writhing black tendrils that licked and snapped at the air around him with wet, hungry sounds, hissing violently where they touched frost and leaving trails of instantly melted ice that steamed and re-froze in jagged spikes. The black veins creeping from his eclipse tattoos had reached his jawline and temples, pulsing visibly with every frantic heartbeat, each throb sending sharp, icy pain lancing through his skull. The corruption hunger was no longer a claw it had become a raging storm behind his sternum, a roaring void that clawed at his insides with razor desperation, tasting the figure's immense power on the wind like fresh blood spilled in water, drawing inevitable frenzy.
Elara's hand clenched against his chest in bone-white terror, nails digging painfully through skin and into muscle, grounding him even as her own body trembled violently against his. Her breath came in sharp, ragged bursts that brushed hot and moist against the sensitive skin of his neck each exhale a scalding contrast to the biting cold that made his nerves scream. Rose oil from her hair mixed with the sharp metallic tang of her adrenaline-sweat, the scent intoxicating in its raw humanity amid the growing darkness.
"Vessel?" she whispered, voice cracking for the first time since the eclipse began raw fear threading through the words like breaking glass. Her glacial eyes searched his face desperately, widening as they traced the spreading black veins. "Kai... what are they talking about? What vessel?"
He couldn't answer words stuck in his throat like shards of ice. Every instinct screamed that this enemy was far beyond the brutes, far beyond anything he'd faced. Predator's Instinct burned like molten metal poured behind his eyes, painting the figure in warning crimson that pulsed in time with the orb.
The reforming ichor puddles across the bloodied ground had coalesced into new, grotesque shapes larger, twisted amalgamations of shadow that rose slowly, wetly, with sickening sounds like flesh knitting backward in reverse. Their forms shifted unnaturally: limbs too long and jointed wrong, torsos bulging with absorbed remnants of previous beasts, heads faceless but for burning crimson slits that wept void essence. The stench intensified to nauseating levels rotting meat left in summer sun mixed with something metallic and ancient, like rusted blood scraped from a thousand-year grave, thick enough to coat tongues and make stomachs heave.
Survivors screamed anew high, animal sounds of pure terror as they scrambled backward over frozen corpses. A mother clutched her child so tightly the boy wailed in pain, small hands beating futilely against her iron grip. Guards who could still stand raised broken spears with arms that shook uncontrollably, faces drained bloodless under flickering firelight, lips moving in silent prayers.
The figure took one deliberate step forward.
The ground beneath its foot blackened instantly in a perfect circle, frost sublimating into thick black vapor that rose with the smell of burnt ozone and scorched earth. The staff's orb flared again, brighter, and the reforming shadows solidified with wet pops eight new brutes, each larger and more malformed than the last, flanked by twenty hounds that materialized from swirling darkness with sounds like tearing fabric.
"Surrender the Devourer," the voice repeated, colder now, layered with ancient power that pressed against minds like invisible fingers squeezing skulls. "Or I will harvest every soul here to feed the eclipse's endless hunger."
Elara drew her sword with a ringing metallic scrape that cut through the screams, frost runes igniting brilliant blue despite her shaking hand the blade exhaling thick visible mist that swirled around her boots in freezing eddies. "You'll take no one while I breathe," she spat, stepping protectively in front of Kai, body trembling but stance defiant. The gesture sent something fierce and painfully warm surging through his chest amid the corruption's icy storm.
The figure tilted its hooded head slowly, as though genuinely amused beneath the swirling darkness.
"Brave words from one already marked for death, Princess Elara of Fallen Veyne."
Elara froze completely.
The sword wavered in her grip, frost runes flickering uncertainly. Color drained from her face until she looked like porcelain about to shatter. "How... how do you know my name?" Her voice came out small, broken the first time Kai had heard real fear from her.
Kai moved without thought.
*Eclipse Dash* carried him forward in a blur of black and silver, closing half the distance to the figure in a heartbeat. Wind screamed past his ears; dark tendrils lashed outward instinctively, seeking essence hungrily but they recoiled violently from an invisible barrier around the harbinger, hissing and sparking black against shimmering crimson like oil on water.
The figure raised its free hand with casual grace.
Invisible force slammed into Kai like an avalanche made of pure will lifting him off his feet and hurling him backward thirty paces through the air. He hit the frozen ground hard enough to crack ice in radiating spiderwebs that spread beneath him, breath exploding from lungs in a white cloud that hung frozen. Pain flared white-hot across his back, ribs, and skull sharp enough to make vision tunnel black at the edges.
Elara cried out his name raw, desperate, breaking and ran to him, boots crunching frantically over frost and blood.
The reforming shadows advanced with deliberate, earth-shaking steps.
Kai rose slowly, tasting hot copper where he'd bitten his tongue. Power surged in furious response to the pain Level 12 strength coiling like steel cables in his limbs. Tattoos blazed black-silver until they cast their own eerie light; the dark aura thickened dramatically until it blocked firelight entirely, casting him in living, breathing darkness that made survivors recoil.
He placed himself between Elara and the approaching horde, cracked sword raised, body vibrating with barely contained power.
The figure laughed a sound like grinding glass mixed with tearing metal that made ears bleed and minds reel.
"You fight what you cannot hope to comprehend, vessel. The system chose poorly indeed if it believed a mere mortal blacksmith could contain the void's eternal hunger without breaking."
Kai's blood ran colder than the frost.
System.
The word hung in the air like a death knell, impossible for anyone else to know.
Elara reached his side, hand gripping his arm hard enough to bruise through the pain. "Kai... it knows. About the voice in your head. The power." Her voice trembled with betrayal and fear. "How does it know?"
More survivors noticed now the writhing dark aura, the spreading black veins across his face and neck, the way remaining shadows seemed to bend subconsciously toward him. Whispers spread like wildfire through the terrified crowd: "Demon." "Monster." "He's one of them." "He brought this upon us."
A guard the same young man who'd dropped his spear earlier raised his broken weapon toward Kai instead of the advancing shadows, face twisted in terror and accusation.
The figure's orb pulsed again, brighter.
The new brutes charged as one earth shaking beneath their weight.
Battle erupted anew fiercer, more desperate, more hopeless.
Kai fought like a force of nature unleashed, *Shadow Devour* claiming essence in endless, intoxicating waves that fed the growing storm inside him. Power surged with each kill muscles burning, senses sharpening to painful clarity. Elara stayed at his back despite everything, frost blade singing in perfect, desperate sync their movements flowing together like they'd fought side-by-side for years. Her ice created openings; his tendrils exploited them ruthlessly.
But the enemy was truly endless now.
For every shadow felled, three more rose from bubbling ichor with wet, sucking sounds. The figure watched impassively from the treeline, staff glowing brighter with each death feeding on the carnage, growing stronger.
Kai's corruption climbed relentlessly, unstoppable.
30%... 35%... 40%... 45%.
Black veins spread across his face completely now, visible to all like living ink. His aura thickened until it became a visible storm of black fire that blocked firelight and cast long, reaching shadows. The hunger became a roar he could barely control eyes flicking toward wounded survivors with dangerous, predatory interest that made his stomach twist in horror.
Elara noticed everything.
She grabbed his arm mid-battle, forcing him to meet her terrified, pleading gaze through the chaos. "Kai... your face. The darkness it's spreading everywhere. Fight it! Please!"
He wrenched away with a guttural sound, devouring another brute to buy precious, fleeting seconds of clarity.
The figure's voice cut through the chaos like a blade through flesh.
"Time grows short, vessel. The eclipse hungers as you do endlessly. Join me willingly, and I will teach you to master it. Refuse... and I will rip the system from your soul piece by screaming piece, leaving this hollow shell for the void to play with."
The orb flared blinding crimson light so intense it bleached color from the world.
Every shadow beast froze as one.
Then impossibly they knelt.
Heads bowed toward Kai in perfect, horrifying unison.
The survivors' screams reached new, breaking heights pure animal terror.
Elara's sword clattered to the frozen ground with a sound like breaking hope.
She stared at Kai at the darkness writhing violently around him, at the hundreds of beasts bowing to what he'd become, at the black veins that now covered every inch of visible skin.
"Kai..." Her voice broke completely, barely audible over the wind. "What... what are you?"
The figure extended its skeletal hand.
Thick black chains erupted from the staff living shadow forged into links thicker than Kai's arms, humming with ancient power that made his system scream frantic warnings in his mind, red text flashing urgently.
[Warning: Anti-System Artifact Detected – Severe Interference]
[Corruption Surge Imminent – 50% Threshold Approaching]
[Resist or Submit? Immediate Decision Required]
The chains shot toward him with impossible speed inescapable, inevitable.
Elara unarmed, trembling, tears freezing on her cheeks stepped directly in front of him.
"No," she said to the figure, voice shaking but unbreakable. "You'll have to go through me first."
The chains paused inches from her chest, humming hungrily.
The figure tilted its head, orb pulsing with interest.
"How fascinating," it murmured, voice layered with dark amusement. "The princess chooses the monster over her own survival."
Then the orb pulsed once more brighter, crueler.
The chains redirected with lightning precision wrapping Elara instead in an instant.
She gasped as living darkness engulfed her completely chains biting into skin, frost runes on her fallen sword flickering out one by one. The cold was immediate and absolute; ice spread across her body in crawling veins as she was lifted off her feet, struggling futilely.
Her terrified eyes met Kai's across the clearing one last, desperate, pleading look filled with pain, fear, and something deeper that shattered what remained of his control.
"Kai!"
Then darkness swallowed her completely.
The figure turned, dragging Elara's bound, struggling form deeper into the treeline her muffled cries growing fainter with terrifying speed.
Kai roared a sound no longer entirely human, laced with void and corruption.
Power exploded outward uncontrollably corruption surging past 60% in a cataclysmic wave that turned his aura into a violent storm of black fire and writhing tendrils. Tattoos bled pure darkness. Black veins covered his face and hands completely, spreading beneath clothes.
He lunged after them 'Eclipse Dash' chaining desperately but an invisible barrier slammed him back, sending him skidding across frost.
The shadow beasts dissolved into smoke, vanishing as quickly as they'd come.
Silence fell absolute, soul-crushing.
Only the wind through pines and survivors' broken sobs remained.
Kai stood alone in the center, dark aura raging like a living tornado, body trembling with barely contained power and loss.
The system notification burned crimson and urgent in his vision.
[Eclipse Oath: Critical Failure – Companion Captured]
[Corruption: 65% – Partial Loss of Control Imminent]
[New Mandatory Quest: Rescue the Princess... Before the Void Claims Her Soul]
In the far distance, a new sound rose not howl, but something worse.
Elara's scream muffled, pained, fading.
And beneath it, the figure's cold laughter.
Something ancient was awakening.
And it was calling Kai by name.