The enchanted dagger pierced Kael's chest, and the world shattered into fragments of pain and encroaching darkness.
He'd failed. Again. Three years of serving the Crimson Hand, three years of loyalty to a thieves' guild that treated its members like disposable tools, and this was his reward—a blade between the ribs in a forgotten alley. His captain's sneer was the last thing he saw in the dim torchlight, right before the enchanted steel found his heart and twisted with cruel precision.
So this is how it ends, Kael thought as blood filled his lungs, hot and thick. Betrayed in an alley like common trash.
The cobblestones were cold and slick against his back. Rain began to fall in sheets, washing the blood from his leather armor, mixing crimson with gutter water. Above, the twin moons of Aethermoor—Celith the silver and Morath the red—cast their light through storm clouds, indifferent to his suffering.
Captain Vorcen loomed over him, a mountain of muscle and malice, wiping the blade clean on a silk handkerchief. "Nothing personal, Draven. You just asked too many questions about the shipments from the eastern docks. The Hand doesn't tolerate curiosity. Bad for business." He turned to his men—Marcus, Dren, and young Tam, all of whom Kael had considered friends just hours ago. "Dump the body in the Serpent River. Make sure it's weighted down proper. Can't have him washing up and causing problems."
Kael tried to speak, to curse them, to do anything but die like a dog in the gutter. But his lungs wouldn't obey. His vision dimmed, narrowing to a tunnel, then a pinpoint, then nothing at all.
Death came.
But death, it seemed, had other plans.
As Kael's consciousness faded to black, something stirred in the emptiness. Not the peaceful void of death he'd expected, but something ancient and terrible and aware. A presence that had waited eons for this exact moment, watching countless souls pass by until finally—finally—it found what it had been searching for.
His consciousness drifted in absolute nothingness. This wasn't the darkness of a moonless night or the black behind closed eyelids. This was the primordial void that existed before creation itself, the canvas of non-existence upon which reality had been painted. Here, time had no meaning. Here, the laws of physics bent and broke and ceased to matter.
Kael floated in this space without space, terrified and confused. He should be dead. He should be... somewhere. The afterlife, whatever that meant. Heaven or hell or the great nothing. Not this.
Then the voice came.
It echoed through the nothingness, cold and vast as the space between stars, ancient as the bones of the universe: "VESSEL LOCATED. SOUL INTEGRITY: NINETY-SEVEN PERCENT. ACCEPTABLE. HATRED QUOTIENT: MAXIMUM. RESONANCE WITH VOID: UNPRECEDENTED. INITIATING INTEGRATION PROTOCOL."
"What—" Kael tried to speak, but he had no mouth, no body, no lungs to draw breath.
"YOU DIED WITH HATRED IN YOUR HEART," the voice continued, each word reverberating through his very essence like the toll of a cosmic bell. "YOUR SOUL RESONATES WITH THE FUNDAMENTAL VOID. YOUR RAGE MATCHES THE PRIMORDIAL DARKNESS. YOU ARE THE FIRST SUITABLE VESSEL IN TEN THOUSAND YEARS. YOU ARE CHOSEN."
"Chosen for what?" Kael somehow managed to project the thought into the void.
"REBIRTH. POWER. VENGEANCE. DESTINY."
Before he could respond, pain exploded through every fiber of his being—or what remained of it. His soul felt like it was being torn apart atom by atom and reassembled into something new, something that should not exist in the mortal realm. Agony beyond description tore through him as something massive and ancient forced itself into the container of his consciousness.
Memories that weren't his own flooded in like a tidal wave. He saw empires that had risen and fallen before recorded history, their names lost to time but their glory still blazing in these ancient recollections. Gods who walked the earth in flesh and blood, their power so vast they could reshape continents with a gesture. Wars that had lasted centuries, fought between beings of such power that their clashes created new mountain ranges and boiled seas.
And at the center of it all, he saw the Void itself—not empty nothingness, but a force of pure potential. The space between existence and oblivion. The canvas upon which reality was painted. The source code of creation itself.
Ten thousand years ago, the gods had feared this power. Feared what would happen if a mortal truly mastered it. So they had sealed it away, locked it in chains of divine magic, buried it so deep that even the universe itself had nearly forgotten it existed.
Until now.
Until Kael.
The integration seemed to last forever and no time at all. When it finally ended, Kael found himself gasping, drawing in deep lungfuls of rain-soaked air. He was alive. Impossibly, inexplicably alive.
He lay in the alley for a long moment, staring up at the twin moons. The rain had stopped, and steam rose from his body as if his very blood was boiling. Slowly, shakily, he pushed himself to his feet.
His hand went to his chest, expecting to find the fatal wound that Vorcen's enchanted dagger had left. Instead, his fingers traced black markings that definitely hadn't been there before—intricate patterns that crawled across his skin like living tattoos, writhing and pulsing with dark energy. They emerged from where his heart should have been pierced, spreading across his chest, down his arms, up his neck.
The markings glowed faintly with purple light, and Kael could feel power thrumming through them. Real power. The kind of power he'd only ever sensed from high-ranking mages and cultivators who'd spent decades refining their abilities.
Then, something impossible happened.
A translucent screen materialized before his eyes, glowing with an ethereal blue light that only he could see. Text appeared on it, written in a script that was simultaneously foreign and instantly comprehensible:
[VOID SYSTEM INITIALIZED][WELCOME, CHOSEN VESSEL]
Name: Kael Draven
Level: 1
Class: Void Initiate (Unique)
Title: None
Attributes:
Strength: 8
Agility: 12
Vitality: 10
Intelligence: 11
Wisdom: 9
Void Affinity: MAX
Health: 100/100
Void Energy: 50/50
Experience: 0/100
Abilities Unlocked:
Void Step (Rank F): Teleport up to 10 meters to any location within line of sight. Cost: 10 Void Energy. Cooldown: 5 seconds. Void Drain (Rank F): Absorb life force and energy from defeated enemies to restore health and Void Energy. Efficiency: 10%
Passive Skills:
Void Body (Rank F): Your body has been fundamentally altered by Void energy. Immune to mortal poisons and diseases. Enhanced regeneration. Language of the System: Automatically understand all System prompts and measurements.
Current Quests: [0]
Inventory: [Empty]
Kael stared at the impossible display floating in his vision. This wasn't magic as he understood it. In Aethermoor, magic users either cultivated internal energy over years of meditation, or they were born with elemental affinities that took decades to master. This... this was something else entirely.
"What is this?" he whispered.
The ancient voice responded in his mind, quieter now but still carrying immense weight: "THE SYSTEM. IT WILL MEASURE YOUR GROWTH. GUIDE YOUR EVOLUTION. REWARD YOUR VICTORIES. THIS IS HOW THE VOID MANIFESTS IN YOUR REALITY. THIS IS YOUR PATH TO POWER."
A sound echoed from the mouth of the alley. Footsteps. Multiple pairs, moving with the practiced silence of trained killers.
Kael's enhanced senses—another gift from whatever had happened to him—picked up whispered conversations.
"Check the body. Make sure he's dead before we weight it."
"Vorcen said to take his guild marker too. Don't want it traced back."
"Just hurry up. This place gives me the creeps."
Three thugs turned the corner, torches held high against the darkness. Kael recognized them immediately—Dren, a brutal enforcer who enjoyed his work too much; Marcus, the quiet killer who never missed with his thrown daggers; and Tam, barely seventeen, new to the Crimson Hand and still trying to prove himself.
They'd been his companions. His drinking buddies. The people he'd trusted to watch his back.
And they'd all stood by while Vorcen murdered him.
"Well, well," Dren laughed, his scarred face splitting into a yellow-toothed grin. "The corpse is walking. Marcus, you're getting sloppy with your killing."
Marcus frowned, hand already moving to the bandolier of daggers across his chest. "I watched Vorcen pierce his heart. He should be dead. He should be very dead."
Tam just stared, eyes wide with fear. "What... what is he?"
Kael looked down at his hands, watching the Void markings pulse with power. A smile slowly crossed his face—cold and empty and promising violence.
"Something new," he said quietly, his voice carrying an edge it had never held before. "Something you shouldn't have created."
The System chimed in his vision:
[NEW QUEST AVAILABLE: FIRST BLOOD]
Objective: Defeat the three Crimson Hand members (0/3)
Reward: 150 EXP, +1 to all attributes, 50 Gold
Bonus Objective: Kill all three without taking damage
Bonus Reward: Skill Book (Random), Additional 100 EXP
Kael accepted the quest with a thought.
It was time to see what the Void could really do.