Raghavendra's soul drifted in silence above a vast, ancient forest.
Midnight had claimed the land completely. Darkness lay over the trees like a burial shroud, thick and absolute. No wind stirred the branches. No insects chirped. Even the leaves hung motionless, as though the forest itself had stopped breathing. Life had abandoned this place, or been driven from it.
Something pulled him downward.
Figures resolved out of the gloom below. Fifteen of them stood in a perfect circle around a roaring fire, their crimson-and-black robes swallowing the light. Deep hoods hid their faces. They did not speak. They did not move. The only sound was the crackle of the flames and the soft, wet creak of wood under the weight of the dead.
Corpses ringed the gathering. Men and women, impaled on long spears driven into the earth, their bodies swaying gently despite the absence of wind. Blood had long since dried into black crusts along the shafts. The smell of roasted flesh and copper hung heavy in the air.
A cult. A demonic one.
Before the soul could pull away, an irresistible force seized him. It dragged him toward the fire with the inevitability of gravity. Faster. Closer. The heat rose. The light swallowed everything.
Then there was only fire.
His eyes snapped open.
He was inside the blaze.
Agony hit him like a physical blow. Heat beyond anything mortal should survive roared across every nerve. His body was already ruined—skin blackened and cracked, layers of ash and charred flesh fused into a grotesque shell. Pieces of it flaked away with every shallow breath. He should have been dead. He had, in fact, already been burned alive.
Yet he lived.
And beneath the pain, something else stirred.
Power.
Raw. Overwhelming. Alien.
Hunger followed it. Not the ordinary kind. This was a deep, bottomless need that clawed at the edges of his mind. Anger came with it—pure, directionless rage that did not belong to him. Madness coiled underneath both, waiting.
Memories that were not his flooded in.
The body had belonged to a young man. Kidnapped. Dragged into these woods. Sacrificed. Burned alive while the cultists chanted. The boy's final, pure hatred had fused with Raghavendra's wandering soul at the moment of death. One last wish remained, etched into every cell of the ruined flesh.
Kill them all.
The fire died as though someone had snuffed a candle.
Raghavendra vanished.
The fifteen cultists straightened, smiling beneath their hoods.
"The sacrifice has awakened!"
"We've done it!"
"Our master will reward us beyond measure!"
A wet sound cut through the celebration.
A head rolled across the packed earth, trailing a thin ribbon of blood that never quite reached the ground. The body it had belonged to remained standing for half a second longer, then crumpled.
Before the others could process what they had seen, another cultist dropped. Then a third. A fourth. Heads fell in rapid succession, cleanly severed, as though an invisible blade were dancing among them.
Panic erupted.
"What is happening?!"
"Where is he?!"
One of the older cultists staggered backward, eyes wide with dawning horror.
"No… it's not that we can't see him. He's moving so fast our eyes can't track him."
Raghavendra moved through them like a ghost given form and purpose.
His first target never even raised a hand. Raghavendra appeared behind the man in a blur of ash and pale skin, fingers already locked around the cultist's throat. He did not squeeze. He simply twisted. The neck snapped with a wet crack. In the same motion Raghavendra's other hand closed around the man's skull and tore the head free. Blood sprayed in a fine mist that never touched the ground—something in Raghavendra's new body drank it mid-air.
The second cultist managed to shout a warning. A jagged black blade of condensed demonic energy formed in his hand. He swung wildly.
Raghavendra was already inside the arc.
He caught the wrist, crushed the bones to powder, and used the man's own momentum to drive the blade up under the cultist's chin and out through the top of the skull. He ripped the head free before the body finished falling.
Three more rushed him together, chanting in a guttural tongue. Circles of crimson light flared around their hands. Spears of shadow lanced toward Raghavendra's chest.
He did not dodge.
He stepped into them.
The first spear struck his shoulder and shattered against the residual power still burning in his flesh. The second and third met the same fate. Raghavendra closed the distance in a single heartbeat. His right hand became a claw. He tore through the nearest cultist's ribcage, fingers closing around the still-beating heart, and crushed it. The body dropped. He used the dying man's momentum to spin, kicking the second cultist's legs out from under him. As the man fell, Raghavendra's foot came down on the throat and kept going until vertebrae ground to paste.
The third managed to land a desperate slash across Raghavendra's chest. Blackened flesh parted, revealing pale skin beneath that was already knitting shut. Raghavendra looked down at the wound, then up at the cultist. Something cold and amused flickered in his mismatched eyes.
He moved.
The cultist's head left his shoulders before the scream finished leaving his throat.
Five remained.
They tried to run.
Raghavendra did not allow it.
He appeared in front of the nearest fleeing figure, caught the man by the collar of his robe, and slammed him face-first into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk. Blood and teeth sprayed. Raghavendra tore the head free with a wet, grinding sound and dropped the body without looking at it.
Two more tried to form a barrier of interlocking demonic runes. The symbols glowed an angry red. Raghavendra walked through them as though they were paper. The runes shattered against his skin. He reached the first of the pair, seized both of the man's arms, and pulled. The shoulders dislocated with wet pops. He kept pulling until the arms came free entirely. The cultist's scream was cut short when Raghavendra drove both severed limbs through the man's chest like spears.
The last cultist standing was the oldest—the one who had understood first. He fell to his knees, hands raised.
"Mercy—"
Raghavendra's hand closed around the man's face. Fingers dug into the soft flesh beneath the hood. He lifted the cultist off the ground and, with a single violent twist, tore the head free. The body collapsed. The head remained in Raghavendra's grip for a moment longer before he let it fall.
Silence returned to the forest.
Fifteen headless corpses lay scattered around the dying embers of the ritual fire. Not a single drop of blood remained inside any of them. Every ounce of it coated Raghavendra—his lips, his hands, his bare feet, the pale skin now fully revealed as the last layers of burnt flesh crumbled away like dried mud.
He stood in the center of the carnage, breathing slowly.
Long white hair fell down his back in a soft cascade. Two soft leopard ears twitched atop his head, catching sounds only he could hear. His face was sharp and striking, almost delicate in its beauty, yet the mismatched eyes—one radiant gold, one polished platinum—held nothing soft.
"The hunger," he murmured, voice rough from disuse, "is gone."
Memories began to surface in fragments.
Earth. A life lived and ended there. He remembered the shape of that world, the feel of its air, but the manner of his death remained a blank.
Another life. A kingdom called Cuba. He had been a hero there, standing against a demonic empire until the final, necessary sacrifice.
A third. Ordinary foot soldier in the army of a mighty Soul King. That king had turned on his own men in the end. Raghavendra had been among those sacrificed. That life had taught his soul a terrible lesson: consume or be consumed. Soul Devourer.
The memories faded as quickly as they came. After countless years drifting as a lonely spirit, he finally possessed a body again. This body and his soul had fused completely. Death itself would no longer be able to separate them.
A different memory struck harder.
The pendant.
It had followed him across every reincarnation, a silent companion floating at his side. Now it was gone. He searched the blood-soaked ground, then felt a strange warmth against the side of his neck. His fingers found a tattoo etched into the skin there—seven circular gems arranged in a familiar pattern, each a different color. The shape matched the pendant exactly. Only the object itself had vanished.
"What happened to you?" he asked the empty air.
No answer came.
As the last of the borrowed madness drained away, human emotion returned. Regret settled over him like a cold cloak.
"I shouldn't have done that," he said quietly. "Killing them was one thing. But drinking their blood… bathing in it…"
He lowered his head.
"That wasn't me."
A fresh surge of hatred rose from the body's residual will, sharp and clear.
"No. They deserved it. They burned an innocent man alive. If there are more like them…" His mismatched eyes hardened. "I'll hunt every last one. I swear it."
He searched the corpses methodically. Rings. Leather pouches heavy with gold and silver coins. Strange pendants that hummed with residual demonic energy. Identification cards. A single black stone engraved with crimson symbols that pulsed with an ominous aura—a demonic rune he did not yet understand how to use.
One identification card stopped him cold.
The picture on it looked almost exactly like the face he now wore. Same white hair. Same leopard ears. Same sharp features. The resemblance was too precise to be coincidence.
"…Is this me?"
Before he could examine the card further, a sharp pulse erupted deep inside his chest.
Thump.
His body locked in place.
Thump.
The beat echoed through every vein, every nerve. His eyes flared with sudden, brilliant light—gold and platinum burning like twin stars. An invisible pressure rolled outward through the forest, silencing even the insects that had begun to return.
A calm, emotionless voice spoke directly inside his mind.
«Conditions fulfilled.»
«All prerequisite conditions satisfied.»
«Neural barriers removed.»
«Soul Records recovered.»
«Synchronizing memories…»
«Synchronizing authority…»
«Synchronizing host…»
A brief pause.
«Synchronization complete.»
«System Fragment successfully activated.»
Raghavendra stood motionless.
"…System?"
The word felt both foreign and strangely familiar, like a half-remembered dream.
Golden streams of light erupted before his eyes, weaving themselves into a translucent interface only he could see. No levels. No experience bars. No cluttered lists of meaningless numbers. The display looked incomplete—almost broken.
A new message appeared.
«Warning.»
«Current System is incomplete.»
«Current System consists of only one System Fragment.»
«Primary Quest activated.»
[Gather System Fragments]
Objective: Locate and obtain additional System Fragments.
Requirement: Merge compatible fragments to expand System functions.
Final Objective: Construct a personalized System.
«System potential will be determined by the quantity, quality, compatibility, and authority of acquired fragments.»
Raghavendra stared at the floating text.
A personalized System. Not something handed down by a god or a king. Something he could build himself.
The Status window unfurled next.
STATUS
Name: Raghavendra
Age: 14 (Current Body) / 17+ (Soul Age)
Race: Snow Leopard
Condition: Recently Awakened
Skills
- Super Soldier
- Gender Bender
- Soul Devourer
- Link
System Status
System Type: Fragmentary
Fragments Acquired: 1
System Completion: Unknown
Customization: Locked
He studied the four skills. These were not random gifts. They were pieces of lives he had already lived.
Super Soldier. A memory surfaced of a distant, technological future—endless wars against alien threats, a body modified beyond ordinary human limits, instincts sharpened to lethal precision. That life had left this skill behind.
Gender Bender. His expression tightened. The sixth reincarnation. A life as a demonic incubus, a existence of temptation and shifting forms. That experience had sunk deep into his soul and now manifested as power.
Soul Devourer. He knew this one intimately. The life under the Soul King. Betrayal. Sacrifice. The desperate necessity of consuming other souls simply to continue existing.
Then Link.
He stared at the final skill. Nothing came. No memory. No image. No sensation.
"…I don't remember this."
The System remained silent.
Raghavendra's frown deepened. There were pieces of himself even his recovered memories could not explain. His past was incomplete. His skills were incomplete. The System itself was incomplete. Everything about his existence seemed to be missing fragments.
His gaze returned to the quest.
Gather System Fragments.
He closed his fist slowly.
"If this is only one fragment…" His golden and platinum eyes narrowed, cold and determined. "Then I'll find the rest."
He did not know who had created the System. He did not know how many fragments existed or why they had been scattered. He did not know why it had chosen him.
But one truth stood clear.
For the first time across countless reincarnations, Raghavendra possessed something that belonged solely to him. Not a kingdom. Not a master. Not a god's borrowed power.
A System he could forge with his own hands.
Somewhere beyond the blood-soaked clearing, deeper in the darkness of the forest, the first true fragment waited to be claimed.
And Raghavendra, still dripping with the blood of the cult that had tried to sacrifice him, turned toward that darkness and began to walk.