The rain didn't fall in the Undersprawl—it bled.
It oozed from the cracked sky like the world itself was wounded, thick and black with soot, rust, and the lingering stink of burnt mana. The rain dripped from the tangled veins of pipes above, from shattered gutters and bent girders, turning everything it touched into streaks of oil and shadow. The stormlight it carried wasn't silver or gold—it was bruised, purple and red like something half alive and dying slow.
Below, the Undersprawl stretched like a wound that refused to close.
A maze of leaning towers and broken steel ribs, its alleys choked with refuse and the ghosts of the past. It was Caldrath's lowest ring—the underbelly of a once-glorious city now cannibalizing itself. Everything above was light and order and law; everything below was the dripping rot that kept it running.
They called it the Undersprawl.
The pit of the world.
Here, no sunlight endured. No stars pierced the smog. The air itself was a poison: a mix of iron dust, sweat, and the stale breath of machines that should've died a century ago. The pipes sang their rusted songs through the night, and the forges never slept.
And if you were born here, the world had already made its decision about you.
To live in the Undersprawl was to be unwanted. To survive it was to steal another man's chance to breathe.
---
Somewhere in that darkness, between a collapsed bakery and what used to be a pleasure den, a boy lay sprawled across a bed of glass and blood. The rain hissed as it met his skin, each drop thick enough to sting.
He didn't move. Didn't scream. He was too far past the point of pain.
His leg—if you could still call it that—was mangled beyond repair. Torn flesh clung to exposed bone like wet paper. A shard of glass jutted through his calf, gleaming faintly whenever lightning crackled above. His breath came shallow, every rise of his chest a battle he wasn't sure he was winning.
The boy's name—or what he chose to call himself—was Rex.
Not his birth name. He didn't remember that one. Names didn't last long in the Undersprawl; they were stolen, sold, and buried with the people who owned them. But Rex—that one he'd kept.
"Rex," meaning King.
He'd stolen it years ago, back when he still thought survival could be conquered like a throne. He'd bled for it, fought for it, and whispered it to himself on nights when hunger was louder than the city's screams.
A name to remind him that even rats could dream of crowns.
---
But kings didn't bleed out in alleys. Kings didn't crawl through refuse with broken bones. Kings didn't die alone.
"Stupid…" he rasped, spitting red. His voice trembled with the effort. "Should've… taken the sewer route…"
His words dissolved into a cough, and the taste of metal filled his mouth again. The world tilted, swaying in and out of focus. Above, lightning cracked purple against the smog, its light briefly catching the token around his neck—a dull copper coin etched with runic circuitry.
Every citizen of Caldrath carried one.
A System Token.
Your birthright. Your curse.
When a person came of age, their token awakened—linking to the city's divine lattice, identifying their Class, Skills, Stats. It was the world's one mercy: proof that even the gutter-born could rise, given luck or will.
Except his had never awakened.
Blank.
From the day it appeared on his sixteenth birthday, it had mocked him with its emptiness. No Class. No System. No chance. In a world defined by numbers and tiers, Rex was nothing. Not even a glitch—just a void.
And yet… as he lay there dying, something stirred.
The token twitched. Once. Then again.
A faint hum rose beneath the rain, soft as a heartbeat. Silver lines carved across the coin's surface, thin as veins, pulsing brighter with every beat until the light became unbearable.
Then, the voice came.
Cold. Metallic. Timeless.
> [System Awakening Detected]
Initializing…
Class: Undefined. Tier: N/A
System Type: Forbidden – Devourer Protocol
A second pulse. The light deepened from silver to black.
> Passive Skill Unlocked: EXP Gain +100%
Active Skill Unlocked: System Assimilation [0/∞]
WARNING: This system is illegal under Divine Accord 7-4A.
Report immediately to your nearest Temple Enforcer.
Rex's eyes widened, disbelief piercing through his haze. The token vibrated once more—then melted, sinking into his chest like liquid fire.
He screamed.
The mark it left behind glowed beneath his torn shirt: a black crown of thorns, etched directly over his heart. The veins around it darkened, pulsing with an unfamiliar rhythm.
And then came the pain.
It tore through him in waves—bones grinding, muscles twisting, organs repairing themselves in a grotesque dance of rebirth. He felt his broken leg snap back into place, sinew reweaving like living thread. His ribs realigned with a crunch, his breath catching in agony.
Blood reversed its flow, crawling back into his veins. The cuts along his skin sealed with soft, sickening sounds.
He convulsed, clawing at the pavement until his nails broke.
Then, silence.
He lay there gasping, staring at the rain-soaked sky. Every inch of him burned, but beneath the pain was something else—something raw, primal, and alive.
When he finally moved, it was with slow disbelief. His limbs obeyed. The pain dulled into a tremor, a memory already fading.
"...What the hell…" he whispered. "What am I?"
---
A sound cut through the rain.
Footsteps—wet, dragging, uneven.
Rex froze, body tensing on instinct. From the far end of the alley, a figure emerged: an old man, slouched and bleeding. His clothes hung in tatters, and his system token flickered weakly against his chest.
Rex knew that face.
The Vault Whisperer. The snitch who'd sold their route to the guard.
The one who'd doomed the job—and everyone in it.
The man leaned against a rusted wall, wheezing laughter that ended in a cough. "Still breathin', eh, kid?" he rasped. His eyes were yellow with age and greed. "Guess I won't die alone after all."
He stumbled closer, a knife gleaming in his trembling hand.
Rex's instincts screamed. His body was healed, but his mind hadn't caught up. He staggered backward, half-ready to run, half-ready to fight.
The old man grinned—a broken, red-stained thing. "You don't even know what's in you, do ya? Whatever that is… they'll burn you for it. The Temples, the Enforcers—hell, even the street gangs won't touch somethin' like that."
He raised the knife. "So I'll just take it off your corpse."
Then—
> [System Alert: Nearby System Detected]
System Type: Shadowstep – Tier E
Assimilate? [Y/N]
Rex blinked.
The question hung in the air, pulsing faintly in his vision like a whisper only he could hear.
He didn't have time to answer aloud.
But something inside him already had.
The mark on his chest flared black. A hunger, sharp and ancient, surged through his veins like molten tar. It wasn't thought—it was instinct.
Yes.
The world convulsed.
The old man lunged, knife flashing—
—and then he was gone.
Not exploded. Not sliced apart.
Just gone.
The rain fell through where he had been, scattering a faint drift of ash that swirled once, then vanished.
A faint chime echoed in Rex's ears.
> [Shadowstep Acquired – Cooldown: 12s]
EXP Gained: 4,000 XP
Level Up: 1 → 5
The notifications burned across his vision, symbols shifting like fire. Rex stared at his hands—steady now, strong. The tremor of death was gone. His breath came easy. His wounds were healed.
He was whole.
He was alive.
And for the first time, he didn't feel human.
---
A laugh escaped him—low at first, cracked and raw. Then it grew, rising into something manic. Something free.
It echoed off the walls, a sound too wild for the dying city around him.
He staggered to his feet, chest still glowing faintly beneath his shirt. The mark burned cold and steady, like the heartbeat of something greater than him.
The rain still bled, the city still moaned, and the Undersprawl remained a pit. But Rex stood in it not as one of its victims—but as something the pit itself had spat back out.
He flexed his hand and the shadows rippled faintly at his fingertips. For a heartbeat, the world dimmed, and he felt paths—a hundred slivers of space where he could step, vanish, reappear.
The skill hummed in his blood.
Shadowstep.
He didn't know what "Devourer Protocol" meant, or why the system in his chest whispered like a living thing—but he didn't care.
He felt the hunger growing inside, a gnawing, endless need that whispered one truth:
This world had fed on him long enough.
Now, it was his turn.
---
Somewhere high above the smoke, Caldrath's upper towers pulsed with blue light. The bells of the Temples rang midnight—deep and metallic, echoing through the smog like judgment. The sound never reached this deep, not clearly, but tonight it carried.
The Enforcers would soon find the bodies—the guards, the burned-out relic shop, the trail of blood that led here. They would whisper about the Forbidden System. About the Devourer.
But by then, Rex would already be gone.
He pulled up his torn hood, eyes gleaming faintly violet under the smoglight.
"Not a rat anymore," he muttered, voice low, steady. "Not prey."
The mark on his chest throbbed in answer.
The hunger had tasted its first bite.
And it wanted more.