The first thing Valerius noticed was the smell. Not the scent of scorched wood or the metallic tang of dried blood, both of which had become the staples of his life since the Fire. No, this was something else. It was the rich, loamy aroma of damp earth, the almost sickening sweetness of decay, and a faint, electric hum that seemed to vibrate in the very air. He blinked, the weak morning light filtering through the gaping hole in the roof of his ancestral manor. Dust motes danced in the solitary shaft of light, illuminating the ghost of his former life.
His body ached with a deep, bone-weary fatigue. The kind of exhaustion that settled in your marrow and refused to leave. Every muscle screamed in protest as he tried to sit up on the ragged cot that had been his bed for months. He pushed himself upright, his head swimming for a moment before the world stabilized. That's when he noticed the other strange thing.
A small, intricate sapling was growing from the cracked stone floor directly beside his cot. It wasn't there yesterday. He would have sworn on it. Its bark was a deep, charcoal black, and its leaves, though no bigger than his thumbnail, were a vibrant, impossible emerald green. It seemed to pulse with a faint, internal light, and as he watched, a single, deep red berry, no bigger than a marble, seemed to materialize on one of its tiny branches.
A wave of dizziness hit him, stronger this time. He closed his eyes, and the world behind his eyelids was not darkness. Instead, he saw the tree. Not the sapling, but a full-grown, gnarled leviathan of a tree, its canopy stretching into a starless void. Its roots were an impossible web, burrowing into an infinite, shadowy abyss. It was ancient, terrifying, and it was rooted firmly in his mind. He could feel the sap running through its branches as if it were his own blood. It wasn't a vision; it was a reality, a second existence that had somehow grafted itself onto his own.
A raspy cough tore through his throat. He reached for a half-empty canteen on a crate beside him, his hand trembling. He took a long, desperate gulp of the stale water, the sensation of it a welcome grounding force against the surreal chaos of his mind. The water, the dust, the ruined manor—all of it was a testament to his failure. The people of the village, his people, were gone. Burned to ash by a minor lord's army who wanted to expand his territory. Valerius, a non-powered human, a mere boy with nothing but a ruined inheritance, had been helpless.
It was his powerlessness that had led him to this cot, this ruined hall, this haunting silence. He was the last of his line, a king without a kingdom, a lord without a single subject. And now, he had a tree in his head.
Devour.
The word wasn't spoken; it was a thought, a primal instinct that seemed to emanate from the tree itself. Valerius shuddered. He looked at the berry on the sapling, a strange magnetism pulling his gaze. He reached out a hesitant finger and plucked it. The moment his skin touched its waxy surface, a flash of red lightning seared through his hand, up his arm, and directly into the tree in his mind. The sapling withered, crumbling to dust on the floor. He hadn't even had a chance to put it in his mouth.
He stared at his hand, his mind reeling. The tree in his head felt… energized. Satisfied. It had consumed the berry, and with it, a new, bizarre sensation. It was an emptiness. A hunger. Not the hunger of his body, but a profound, cosmic void that seemed to want to swallow the world.
It hungers. It desires.
He stumbled to a makeshift mirror, a cracked piece of glass leaning against a wall. He stared at his reflection: gaunt cheeks, wild eyes, a boy on the verge of starvation. The image was a cruel reminder of his current state. He hadn't eaten anything substantial in days. The manor's stores were long gone, plundered by the invading army. All that was left was the barren earth and the hostile, monstrous creatures that roamed the Cursed Woods beyond his village's scorched borders.
His reflection shifted. The mirror seemed to ripple, showing him not just his own face, but a faint, shimmering field of purple energy around his hands. He blinked, and the energy vanished. He willed it to return, and it did. It was a tangible, visible absence, a pocket of nothingness. He tentatively focused the feeling, and a small wooden splinter from the floor began to glow with the same faint purple light. He felt an intense pull, a ravenous want, and with a pop, the splinter vanished. Not into thin air, but into the tree in his mind, where it dissolved into a single, faint wisp of power.
The sensation was terrifying, intoxicating. This was his Devouring ability. A power that could erase things from existence and feed the terrifying tree within him.
But there was more. As he stared at his reflection, the mirror showed him something else. A thin, black coating, like dried tar, formed on his hand. It was brittle, yet it felt impossibly hard. He flexed his fingers, and the coating shattered into a thousand glittering motes of dust, only to reform a moment later. A thought, a whisper from the tree, informed him this was Armament Haki. A defensive and offensive power that could coat his body in an invisible armor.
He felt a different kind of sensation then, a tingling at the back of his neck. It was as if he could feel the ghost of a presence behind him. He spun around, but there was nothing there. He closed his eyes, and this time, the world wasn't a void. It was a faint, blurry echo of the real world. He could sense the wind as it rustled through the scorched branches outside, the slow, steady drip of water from a broken pipe somewhere in the manor, and the heavy, lumbering footsteps of a creature far off in the distance. He could feel its malevolent intent, its primal hunger. This was Observation Haki. The ability to perceive the intentions and movements of others, to sense their very presence.
His mind was a maelstrom of new information, a torrent of power that he was ill-equipped to handle. The Empty Empty Fruit. Orbs of Armament and Observation Haki. His Devouring ability. A secret, terrifying power that had chosen him, a powerless boy, as its host. He was no longer just Valerius. He was a vessel, a walking paradox of nothingness and immense potential.
He stumbled out of the ruined manor, the midday sun a sharp, painful reality. He walked up the small hill that overlooked the edge of his village. The view was a cruel joke. To his left lay the charred remains of his home, a graveyard of shattered dreams and broken lives. To his right lay the Cursed Woods, an oppressive, ancient forest that pulsed with a dark, primal energy. It was a place of monsters and death. A place he had always been told to avoid.
But now, he felt a pull towards it. The tree in his mind was ravenous, a black hole of need. It had given him these powers, and now it demanded to be fed. The hunger in his stomach was a dull, constant ache, but the hunger of the tree was a terrifying, all-consuming void.
He looked down at his trembling hands, the hands of a boy who had only known helplessness. Now, they were a weapon. A tool for devouring, for conquering, for survival. He was no longer a victim. He was a predator in the making. The thought of it both repelled and excited him.
A new emotion, cold and hard as stone, began to crystallize within him. It was a desperate resolve. He would no longer be a scavenger of ruins, but a scavenger of the forest. He would feed the tree, and in doing so, he would feed himself. He would turn the very things that had cursed this land into his salvation. His fear of the woods was still there, a knot in his stomach, but it was now eclipsed by a strange, newfound determination.
He was going to survive. No matter the cost.
He stood on the hill, the wind whipping his hair, the silent promise of the Cursed Woods beckoning him forward. He took a deep breath, the taste of ash and decay no longer a symbol of his despair, but the taste of a new beginning. He would conquer this fear, this forest, and this world. He would use the power of the curse to end the curse itself. His heart pounded in his chest, a frantic drumbeat of terror and resolve. The world had taken everything from him, but now, he would take everything back.