The undercity stank of sulfur, mana oil, and cold iron.
Kael adjusted his scarf as he walked down the rusted steps beneath Hollowgate's eastern wall. The signal had started two days ago—a low hum in the back of his skull, growing stronger every hour. Vessa called it a "dungeon bleed"—a flare of unstable energy that leaks from the cracks between realms whenever a new dungeon is about to form.
Not all bleeds became dungeons. Some just rotted the ground. Others warped reality so badly that entire blocks had to be evacuated.
Kael couldn't risk that.
Especially not with Lira staying behind.
"She's safer with Vessa," he thought. "Better there than down here with whatever's trying to hatch."
He tightened the straps of his gauntlets. Both were relic-grade, scavenged years ago. One had a broken mana circuit. The other still hummed when he got too close to corrupted cores.
The deeper he went, the more the walls pulsed. Faint lines of light crawled across old brick—sigils left behind by prior dungeon infections.
Then it hit him.
Heat. Pressure. Like standing too close to a forge.
He found the source at the edge of an old cargo station. The rails had long since been buried, but the loading bay still stood. And something was bleeding through the far wall.
The air shimmered.
A hole opened.
Dungeon gates didn't always roar. Sometimes they whispered.
This one sounded like it was breathing.
Kael stepped forward.
"Show me what you are," he muttered, drawing the short blade from his belt.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the world changed.
He stood in a room of glass and bone. The walls weren't walls—just shifting reflections of things that had never lived. Doors opened without hinges. Shapes moved without shadows.
Then they came.
Spawnlings.
Dungeons always had early feeders—basic monsters that emerged during the formation stage to defend the space. These ones looked like dogs built from shattered porcelain. Their eyes flickered like candlelight, their movements glitching with every step.
Kael crouched low, watching their legs twitch.
"Fast. Sharp. Low armor."
The first lunged. He dodged, barely, and brought the flat of his blade across its jaw. It cracked like ceramic. A second one leapt—and Kael rolled beneath, slicing upward. Shards flew.
Then a third bit into his arm.
Pain flared—then vanished.
"No blood?" he thought, confused.
He looked down. The wound was there. The blood wasn't.
It was being drained.
The Spawnling grinned wider, jaws melting into the cut.
Kael's heart pounded.
"It's absorbing mana. Feeding."
His vision blurred for a second. Then something inside him stirred.
A low voice echoed—not from the dungeon. From himself.
"Devour or be devoured."
Kael didn't hesitate.
He reached with his will—not his weapon. Not his hand.
His relic gauntlet flared to life, and the air around the creature shimmered. He felt something pull. Not physically, not magically—something deeper.
The monster twitched. Then screamed.
The next second, it was gone—pulled into Kael's relic like smoke into flame.
Kael dropped to one knee. His breath came short. Cold sweat soaked his back.
"What the hell did I just do?" he thought.
His HUD flickered—text scrolling across the lens embedded in his right eye.
Class Skill Acquired: Hunter's InstinctSource: Lesser SpawnlingStatus: Temporary Integration
Kael blinked.
"So that's what Devour does..."
He stood slowly. The other Spawnlings backed away. They could feel it too.
Something had changed.
Kael was no longer just an intruder.
He was something worse.
Back in Hollowgate, Lira sat quietly in Vessa's upstairs room. The window was cracked open, and the sound of rain echoed softly in the distance.
Her pendant pulsed again.
Only this time, it didn't just glow—it whispered.
She touched it gently, eyes wide.
"What are you trying to tell me?" she whispered.
No answer came. But for the first time, she felt something clear.
Direction.
She stood. Vessa's voice called up from the shop floor, "Don't go far!"
Lira didn't answer.
She wasn't going far.
Just a few streets over.
Where something familiar was calling.
Kael walked back into the waking world half an hour later, body aching but alive. The dungeon was already collapsing—walls fading, air cracking like glass. The bleed was done.
He stepped back into the cold undercity.
His arm still hurt—but the wound was gone.
Instead, his relic showed a new glyph.
A fragment of the monster's hunger—left behind like a scar.
"If I can do that again..." he thought. "If I can take what I fight..."
He wasn't sure what it made him.
But he knew one thing:
He'd need more control.
Because the voice in his relic hadn't faded.
It was still there.
Watching.
Waiting.