The world became teeth and terror.
The first Gloom Rat launched through the air, a black blur of matted fur and needle-sharp teeth. Leo's new body reacted before his mind could. A jerky, panicked twist of his spine—a loud CRACK—and the rat sailed past his skull, smacking into the stone floor with a squeal.
The second rat didn't jump. It scurried in low and fast, sinking its teeth into the bare femur of his right leg.
SCRAAAAAPE.
The sound was horrific. A high-pitched grating of enamel on dense bone. He felt no pain, but a jolting, wrong vibration traveled up his leg, a tremor in his very soul. A notification, cold and small, flickered in the corner of his vision.
[Soul Integrity: -1%]
It's eating me. It's literally eating me!
A silent scream ripped through his mind. He looked down. The rat, eyes blazing red, was shaking its head, trying to worry the bone apart. Without thinking, Leo reached down. His skeletal fingers, clumsy and stiff, closed around the rat's squirming body. The feeling was alien—pressure and vibration through bone, no warmth, no fur texture, just resistance.
He pulled.
The rat held on, teeth locked. A terrible, brittle feeling surged in his leg bone. It's going to snap.
Pure, undiluted panic gave him strength. A strength not of muscle, but of desperate will. He yanked the rat free and, in the same motion, slammed it against the nearby stone floor.
THUD-CRACK.
The squealing stopped. The red light in its eyes winked out. The body went limp in his hand.
The third rat was already in the air, aimed at his ribcage.
He had no time to swing the corpse. He brought his other arm up in a clumsy block. The rat latched onto his radius bone, teeth scrabbling for purchase. Leo stumbled back, off-balance, and fell against the damp wall. The impact shuddered through his entire frame.
The remaining rat on the floor, the one that had missed first, was circling, chittering, looking for an opening.
He was cornered. Clumsy. Fragile.
The rat on his arm bit down harder. Another wrong vibration. Another flicker.
[Soul Integrity: -2%]
I'm going to die. Again. For real.
The thought was clear and ice-cold. This wasn't a game respawn. This was his one, broken skeleton body, and it was being chewed apart.
Deep within him, in the hollow where a heart should beat, something stirred.
It was a cold so deep it felt like a void. A silent, yawning hunger. It had been sleeping. Now, it was awake. And it was looking at the life-lights burning before it—the frantic, hot energy of the two remaining rats.
The hunger rose, a wave of alien imperative. It wasn't his. It was the Mantle's.
TAKE.
The command wasn't a word. It was an instinct, sharper and more urgent than his own fear.
SURVIVE.
The rat on his arm reared back to bite again.
Leo's free hand shot out. Not to grab the rat, but to clamp over it, pressing it against the bone of his forearm. Palm bone against furry back. Contact.
The cold hunger surged up and out.
He didn't know how to do it. He just willed it. He focused every ounce of his terror and need onto that point of contact. Give me your strength. Give me your life.
From the center of his being, a tendril of pure darkness lashed forth. It was invisible to the normal eye, but to Leo's soul-vision, it was a slick, black rope of negation. It speared through the rat's tiny body.
The creature's frantic struggles ceased instantly. The fierce red light in its eyes guttered and died.
Then, he felt it.
A stream of energy, cold and blue, began to flow up the dark tendril from the rat and into him. It was not warmth. It was the essence of motion, of hunger, of simple, rodent life. It poured into his hollow bones, filling the spaces with a chilling power.
Notifications whispered directly into his consciousness.
[Soul Energy +12]
[Skill Acquired: Gnawing Bite (Normal)]
The physical sensation was overwhelming. As the energy flowed in, a flood of other things came with it.
The sharp, metallic taste of moss on stone.
The instinct to hide in the darkest, tightest crevice.
The primal urge to chew, to gnaw, to never stop moving and eating.
The simple, driving rhythm of a heartbeat that was not his own.
It was over in less than three seconds. The rat in his hand crumbled into dry, lifeless dust, its essence utterly consumed.
Leo stood frozen, his hand still outstretched.
He felt… different. The vibrations of damage in his arm and leg bones softened, then smoothed away entirely. The hairline fractures sealed. His soul felt denser, more substantial.
[Soul Integrity: 100%]
But that wasn't all.
He looked at the last remaining rat, which had stopped its circling and was now backing away, hissing in fear. For a fleeting moment, Leo didn't see a monster. He saw a source of warmth. Of food. A deep, itching urge rose in him—to drop to all fours, to scurry over, and to bite.
He shook his skull, the bones rattling. No. That's not me. That's the rat.
The foreign instinct faded, but it didn't disappear. It settled in a dark corner of his awareness, a new layer of alien impulse. The Gnawing Bite skill was now part of him, and with it came the ghost of the creature's nature.
The surviving rat turned to flee.
The cold hunger inside him pulsed, eager, unsatisfied.
No. He fought it. It's running. Let it go.
But another part, the part that had just felt the sweet rush of power and repair, whispered. It is energy. It is strength. It will tell others. You are weak. You need to be strong.
His human mind and the Mantle's hunger warred for a single, breathless second.
Survival won.
He took two lurching steps forward. The rat was faster, but it was heading for a pile of rubble, not the open archway. Leo didn't know how to run, but he knew how to lunge. He threw his body forward, skeletal hands outstretched.
He missed the rat, but his hand landed on its thrashing tail. He pulled it back.
The rat squealed, twisting to bite. This time, Leo didn't hesitate. He brought his other hand down, a clumsy hammer-fist of bone.
CRUNCH.
The rat went still.
The hunger didn't need contact this time. It simply reached out from his core. The black tendril emerged from his chest, invisible and deadly, and plunged into the small corpse. The cold blue energy flowed. Another whisper.
[Soul Energy +11]
[Soul Energy reserves insufficient for new skill acquisition. Energy stored.]
The same rush. The same faint, invasive whisper of rodent instincts—the taste of stagnant water, the feel of squeezing through a damp crack. He absorbed it, and the ghost-impression grew slightly stronger. He pushed it down.
He stood in the silent chamber, the dust of three monsters at his feet. He looked at his hands. They were the same bleached white. But he felt the new energy thrumming within his bones, a cold, quiet power. He had healed. He had grown stronger.
It was horrifying.
It was miraculous.
A profound, sickening revulsion churned within him. He had just consumed the souls of living things. He had felt their most basic instincts invade his own mind.
But beneath the revulsion, a grim, cold understanding was forming. This was the rule of this world. This was his only tool. Devour or be devoured.
The chilling efficiency of it was almost beautiful. And that thought scared him more than the rats had.
He needed to move. The noise might have attracted more.
As he turned, a new sound froze him in place.
It wasn't skittering. It wasn't chittering.
It was a low, heavy, grinding scrape. Stone dragging slowly against stone.
It came from the dark, gaping archway that led deeper into the temple ruins. Something was in there. Something much, much bigger than a rat. And it was moving. Slowly. Deliberately.
It knew he was there.