The room was silent except for Kael's ragged breathing.
He staggered into an abandoned building near the city's fault line, its broken glass walls reflecting fragments of a man who no longer knew his shape. Blood still clung to his knuckles. His heart thundered like a war drum, half from exertion, half from something he couldn't name.
He paused by a half-shattered mirror.
His reflection stared back.
At first, it was normal—mud-streaked skin, hollow cheeks, bloodshot eyes. But then… something moved.
The left side of his face warped.
Just for a second.
A ripple beneath the skin. Veins pulsed black-red. One eye glowed faintly, not with light, but with hunger. His jaw sharpened unnaturally. His teeth—longer. Wrong.
Then, like water settling, it faded.
Kael stumbled back, hand over his face.
"What… what was that?"
His reflection was still. But it had changed. Not the mirror—him.
Inside his skull, the Blood System pulsed, calm and cold.
[Morphological Adjustment: 3% Complete]
Vyr Blood Core Progression: 13%
Note: Visual anomalies are a result of early-stage stabilization.
Voice: "Progression is not without transformation. Fear is irrelevant."
"Fear is irrelevant?" Kael whispered. "I just watched my own face turn into a monster."
The System didn't answer. But something deeper did. A pulse in his spine. A whisper under the skin.
Consume. Evolve. Ascend.
"No," he said aloud, backing away from the mirror. "I'm not becoming that. I'm still me. I have to be."
But the silence of the room pressed in tighter. The mirror offered no comfort—only a truth he couldn't deny.
The System wasn't just giving him power.
It was rewriting him.
He sat on the cold floor, legs shaking, trying to steady his breath. Duran's warning came back like smoke in his lungs: "The Vyr didn't die out—they changed. Those who lived became something else. Something that couldn't be trusted."
Kael closed his eyes.
He saw flashes again.
A woman in white armor, screaming as crimson chains bound her. A red sky. A burning tower. A figure with no face—but Kael knew that figure was him.
Or would be.
The System stirred again.
[New Trait Detected: Identity Recoil]
Definition: Psychological rejection of core evolution.
Status: Mild.
System Suggestion: Embrace the shift.
Voice: "You are not losing yourself. You are shedding the skin that chained you."
"No," Kael growled. "I'm not some weapon. I'm not some… thing."
But the System didn't argue.
It never argued.
It waited.
Because it knew.
Sooner or later, Kael would need the power again.
And each time he did…
He would slip further into whatever the Vyr truly were.
A sharp noise outside—metal scraping against stone. Kael jolted upright.
Through a broken panel in the wall, he saw movement. Another Bloodhunter, scanning the area.
He reached for the dagger at his belt.
His hand trembled—not from fear of the fight.
From fear of what he might become during it.
Inside, the Red Ledger pulsed again, hungry.
And in the mirror, Kael's reflection smiled without him.