Akira's bloodstained hands from the night before, the merchant's corpse still slumped in the alley. Dawn light filters through the smog of Valeria City's slums. The system window lingers mockingly:
[Essence: 10/100 → Rank Up (F → E). Skill: Stealth (Lv.1 → Lv.2). Sanity: -3% (Current: 97%). Hallucination event queued.]
Akira wipes the blood on his rags and slips away before patrols arrive. He spends the day scavenging and observing the city's brutal rules: higher ranks openly extort or kill the weak with impunity. Every act of violence he witnesses chips away at whatever innocence he had left.
Thorne finds him again at dusk, this time in a dingy tavern filled with low-rank adventurers. The grizzled warrior slides a tankard across the table.
Thorne: "You're still breathing. Good. That means you're useful. Whispering Blades is recruiting probationary blades suicide jobs no one else wants. Pay's decent if you live. Interested?"
Akira doesn't hesitate. "How much to register?"
Thorne: "Fifty gold upfront. You'll earn it back in blood."
Cut to a montage of Akira's first week of grim work:
• Clearing sewer rats infested with minor void parasites (his first deliberate essence absorptions).
• Acting as bait in a trap for a street gang preying on F-ranks.
• Nighttime courier runs carrying sealed packages he's smart enough not to open.
Each kill is clinical, efficient. The system rewards him coldly:
[Essence +8… +12… +15. Stealth Lv.3 Acquired. New Skill Branch Unlocked: Dagger Proficiency (Lv.1). Sanity: -7% cumulative.]
Hallucinations begin: fleeting glimpses of a child's hand reaching toward a closing door, a foster parent's sneer, the glint of a knife he doesn't remember holding. He shakes them off, but they leave him colder.
Mid-episode, Akira completes a high-risk job: assassinating a corrupt E-rank guild clerk who's been selling probationary member locations to slavers. The kill is clean — a shadowed throat slit in a crowded market, body gone before anyone notices. Reward: 60 gold.
He returns to Thorne with the proof of kill. Thorne nods approval and hands him directions to the Whispering Blades' hidden recruitment hall.
The hall is beneath an abandoned cathedral, accessed through a crypt. Mistress Nyx waits in the shadows — tall, pale, eyes like polished obsidian. She studies Akira as though tasting his soul.
Nyx: "You absorb essence without flinching. Most new blood retches. You… enjoy it."
Akira meets her gaze. "I survive it."
Nyx smiles thinly. "Survival is the first lesson. Payment of fifty gold accepted. Welcome to the Blades, probationary shadow."
[Guild Affiliation: Whispering Blades (Probationary). Class Path: Assassin (Reaper Branch) Locked until 100 Essence absorbed.]
As he leaves the crypt, the hallucinations hit harder: a child's voice whispering "monster" in his own tone. He stumbles, clutching his head.
On a rain-slick rooftop that night, Akira counts his remaining gold and stares at the distant spires of the Royal Academy the place where nobles train, far above the slums.
Akira (voiceover, low and bitter): "They all look down from up there. One day… I'll make them look up."
The camera pulls back as thicker void wisps coil around his silhouette, hungry.