The obsidian smoke didn't just enter David's lungs; it felt like he was swallowing molten glass. He collapsed onto the marble floor of the museum, his fingers clawing at the stone tiles. The "Mirror-Guardian"—that pristine, fake version of himself—began to flicker and dissolve into gray ash, its job as a psychological barrier finished.
Now, the real trial began.
[First Ancestral Blessing: The Primal Heart]
[Integration Progress: 2%]
[Warning: Cardiac override in effect. Brace for Refinement.]
David's chest felt like it was being pried open by invisible talons. Inside his ribcage, his mortal heart—the one that had sustained him through twenty-four years of life and five years of Void-hell—was being dismantled. The black smoke coiled around his muscle fibers, squeezing until the vessels burst.
"Argh!" David's scream echoed through the hollow museum.
Thump-THUMP.
The sound wasn't just in his ears anymore. It was a physical shockwave. Every time the new, obsidian-infused heart tried to take its first beat, the floor beneath him cracked. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Then came the sound from outside.
Scritch. Scratch. Scritch.
It wasn't the sound of footsteps. It was the sound of thousands of dry, needle-like fingers dragging against the exterior stone walls of the museum. The "Constructs"—the neighbors, the street hawkers, the fake Tunde—were no longer pretending to be human. They were Cradle Scavengers now, the white-blood cells of the simulation sent to purge a virus.
And David was the virus.
SMASH.
The high stained-glass windows of the rotunda shattered. Grey, faceless shapes began pouring in like a waterfall of ash. They had no mouths, yet they emitted a high-pitched psychic wail that made David's ears bleed.
[Integration Progress: 14%]
[Current Status: Vulnerable. Movement Restricted.]
"Not... like... this..." David wheezed. His vision was swimming. He saw a Scavenger land just five feet away. It looked like a man made of wet clay, its limbs elongating into jagged blades. It lunged, its arm whistling through the air to take David's head.
Skip-Beat.
His heart didn't just notify him; it forced his body to move. A sudden burst of black adrenaline shot through his nervous system. David's torso jerked backward with supernatural speed, the blade missing his throat by a hair's breadth.
Badum-tap!
His right hand shot out, grabbing the creature's clay-like neck.
[Skill Trigger: Ancestral Feedback (Passive)]
As he touched the creature, the obsidian energy currently ravaging his own body found an outlet. A vein of black fire traveled from David's palm into the Scavenger. The creature didn't just die; it inverted. It collapsed into a microscopic black hole and vanished with a soft pop.
[Integration Progress: 22%]
"The pain... is the fuel," David realized, his teeth gritted so hard they felt ready to shatter. The more he fought, the faster the blessing merged. He wasn't just enduring the ritual; he had to earn it through slaughter.
He forced himself to his feet, his legs shaking. More Scavengers were crawling over the balconies. They looked like a tide of grey static.
Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter.
The Rhythm of Fortune? Now?
David squinted through the haze of pain. His heart was directing his gaze toward the fallen Scavengers. As they died, they left behind tiny, flickering blue sparks—Data Shards of the simulation.
Badum-tap! [Beat Sync: Harvest.]
David lunged forward, no longer running away. He became a blur of black smoke and desperate violence. Every time his heart gave that specific, rhythmic skip, he struck. A palm to a chest here, a kick to a knee there. Each contact allowed the Ancestral Heart to "drain" the simulation's energy.
[Integration Progress: 45%... 68%... 89%...]
The room became a whirlwind. David was the center of a storm of black and grey. His clothes were shredded, his skin mapped with glowing black veins that pulsed in time with the obsidian stone in his chest.
Finally, the pressure reached a breaking point.
"ENOUGH!" David roared.
His chest erupted. A pillar of pure, starlight-black energy shot upward, piercing through the roof of the museum and stabbing into the fake sky.
The shockwave was absolute.
Every Scavenger in the building was instantly atomized. The museum walls groaned and settled. Silence, heavy and thick, returned to the hall.
[Integration Complete.]
[First Ancestral Blessing: The Primal Heart – Successfully Bound.]
[New Passive: Pulse of the Origin – You can now perceive 'Glitches' in the Cradle's reality.]
[Attribute Boost: Strength +15, Agility +10, Perception +20.]
David stood in the center of the ruins, breathing heavily. He looked at his chest. Beneath the skin, a faint, rhythmic black glow remained. He felt... different. He felt like he was finally "heavy" in a world made of paper.
He looked toward the exit. The street outside was no longer a bustling Lagos road. It was a distorted wasteland of floating geometry and frozen "people" waiting to be reset.
A new notification appeared in his vision, glowing with a golden light that seemed to come from a much higher plane than the blue text of the simulation.
[1/5 Blessings Obtained.]
[Next Target: The Breath of the Wind.]
[Location: The Eye of the Storm (The Central Bank Vault).]
[Hint: The Governor is not sleeping. He is hungry.]
David wiped the black blood from his lip. The "Tutor" in the sky had called this a Nursery. To David, it felt like a cage match.
"One down," David whispered, his voice vibrating with the power of the Primal Heart. "Four to go. I'm coming for that Eternity Realm. And I'm taking the whole damn Cradle down with me."
Far off in the distance, a massive siren began to wail. The "Governor" had noticed the glitch. The city was no longer a simulation of home—it was turning into a war zone.