Coker didn't move for a long time.
His breath was cold steam. His hands still trembled—not from fear, but from something else. From power. Raw and reckless. The kind of power that didn't feel borrowed, or gifted. The kind that felt stolen.
He looked down at his fingers. They were still his… but something inside them had changed. When he blinked, he could almost see faint black veins pulsing beneath the skin—like shadows had veins now, and they bled through him.
He was alone again, but he didn't feel alone.
There was a voice in his head now.
It wasn't always speaking… but it was there.
Waiting.
Breathing.
And somewhere behind that still-burning village, the wind finally howled again.
Like it had seen something it wanted to forget.
Coker turned.
The road forward wasn't a road anymore. It was a path carved into ruin—burnt trees, scorched marks that glowed with the same cursed language he couldn't read, and bones. So many bones. Some still wore armor. Some were beast bones. Some… he couldn't even recognize.
But he walked anyway.
With each step, the ground felt softer, like it wasn't made of dirt anymore. Like it had absorbed something else. Old magic. Or maybe blood. The air was heavier. He could feel it in his teeth. Hear it under his skin.
And then—he found it.
A gate.
Old. Iron. Buried halfway in the ground like it'd been swallowed centuries ago. But the symbols across its frame sparked when he stepped close.
Not golden. Not blue. Black.
And they reacted to him like they knew him.
He didn't have to push the gate open.
It opened for him.
What waited on the other side wasn't another forest or a village. It was a pit. Huge. Endless. Like a hole carved into the center of the earth. And chained across it—suspended by threads of dying light—was a creature.
Massive.
Broken.
Breathing.
A beast.
It had no skin—only shadows. No face—just a mouth filled with jagged teeth that hummed when it breathed. The chains that held it were etched in runes and leaking magic that looked too old for this world. And when Coker stepped near, its head twitched.
It smelled him.
And it smiled.
"You… came back," the beast said.
Its voice didn't echo.
It echoed inside him.
"I never left," Coker whispered, though he didn't know why he said it. The words came out on their own, like they were waiting in his mouth.
The beast moved again, its chains tightening with a horrible scream of metal.
"I was your first," it said. "Your only. You are the last Master I will serve."
Coker stepped closer. "What… are you?"
The beast tilted its massive head.
"I am what was sealed to keep this world breathing. I am what the old kings feared and fed. I am the dark they drowned… and the curse you carry."
Coker swallowed. "You're inside me."
The beast's mouth opened wider.
"No," it said. "You're inside me."
A pulse of dark light erupted from the pit.
Coker fell to one knee, groaning as pain surged through his spine, his mark burning brighter than ever. His vision blurred. His blood itched. The beast was not speaking anymore—it was remembering. And every memory it held… poured into him.
He saw flashes.
A battlefield of black fire.
A throne carved from dragon bones.
A boy with white eyes sealing a beast inside his heart.
Himself.
Himself?
No—someone before him.
A bloodline.
The same one that made him… this.
Coker collapsed, eyes wide, lungs empty.
When he blinked again, he wasn't in the pit anymore.
He stood in a vast room made of obsidian, stars swirling in the ceiling like trapped night.
And before him sat seven figures. Cloaked. Hooded. Their faces burned away by time.
"You've accepted the mark," one said.
"You've touched the origin," said another.
"But to master the beast," whispered a third, "you must feed it."
"Feed it what?" Coker asked, voice small in the dark.
"Your name," they answered together.
The dream shattered.
Coker woke up coughing blood, lying by the pit's edge, the chained beast gone… as if it had never been there.
But the mark on his arm had grown.
So had the voice in his head.
And the worst part?
He could feel something else now.
Something following him.
Something that knew his name.