The whisper lingered, soft as smoke.
"I was expecting more from you, Master."
My throat locked. My body was at its limits and suddenly my shadow wasn't mine—my legs trembled, my arms buzzed with cold lightning. Even the air had weight, pressing me flat. My lungs burned with every drag of breath, like the void itself was grinding its heel into my ribs.
Then the System blinked at the edge of my vision:
> [Warning: Identity Overlap Detected.]
[Shadow General Is Rising.]
"Oh, hell no…" My voice cracked like old wood, too fragile to be taken seriously.
Because the thing beneath me—my shadow—wasn't still. It moved. It grinned. It rippled forward in slick waves, latching onto the nearest beast. Before I could even breathe, black tendrils shot out, pinning the monster to the ground. It screeched, writhing with claws scraping grooves into the void floor—then went silent, swallowed whole by the dark.
> [Subdued: 21/50]
"I didn't… I didn't tell you to do that."
The shadow didn't care.
The other beasts hesitated. Their claws dragged slow, screeching arcs against the endless floor. Their eyes weren't on me anymore. They were on it. On the thing behind me. They stared like prey caught in the gravity of a predator too old to understand mercy.
And me? I was nothing more than the meat suit caught in between.
---
The kills stacked.
One after another, beasts drowned in black.
> [Subdued: 27/50]
[Subdued: 33/50]
Each tally carved into me, hollowing me out. My heart didn't beat—it stumbled, stuttered, skipping like a broken metronome. Every new digit wasn't a victory; it was a hammer blow chipping me down into something I didn't recognize.
The void echoed with shrieks and silence, a cycle of terror swallowed whole. And with each kill, I felt more like a parasite clinging to a beast far bigger than me.
At [39/50], I broke. My throat ripped raw as I screamed. "Stop it! I said STOP!"
And the whisper came again—clearer this time, almost patient, like it had been waiting for me to reach this exact point.
"After serving the strongest being a thousand years ago, I slumbered after his death. And now I awaken… under this spineless mortal who can't even absorb a single shadow beast without writhing in pain. Pathetic."
"I don't want your service," I spat, teeth rattling so hard I thought they'd crack. "If you don't have a way to get me out alive, then take your bloody service back to hell!"
The laugh that answered was mine—only deeper, echoing from the cavern of my ribs like I'd swallowed another man whole.
---
For a split second, I wasn't in the void.
I was back on the palace steps. Kaela stood before me, hair whipping in the wind, her stance as fierce as the sun. She stilled at the sight of her shadow—not in challenge, but in fear. Her shadow loomed jagged, swollen, stretching too far, too long, reaching like claws across the courtyard. Much like the ones in the void realm.
I blinked, and the vision shattered.
Back in the void, the beast before me bore her outline. The braid coiled against her back. The fire in her eyes.
"No, no, no…" My knees buckled. My palms pressed into my sockets until colors burst behind my eyelids. But the shapes didn't vanish. The more I tried to crush them out of existence, the clearer they became.
The next monster wore the princess's tiara, cracked and dripping black ichor.
This wasn't survival anymore.
This was butchery.
And I was the one being butchered.
---
> [Subdued: 45/50]
My shadow didn't need me anymore.
The beasts rushed, desperate, perhaps sensing the end. One of them—a hulking mass with too many fangs, slavering, frothing black drool—barreled into me. It crushed me flat, my chest caving under its colossal weight. My ribs screamed. My vision swam gray at the edges. I clawed uselessly at its throat, nails splitting, skin tearing, but I couldn't budge it an inch.
Then the shadow moved without me. A spear of darkness erupted upward through the beast's stomach, splitting it clean in two. The halves sloughed off me in wet chunks. Blood spattered across my face, hot, metallic, as the fragments made it's way into my mouth coating my lips with black blood
> [Subdued: 46/50]
But the System didn't just ding.
> [Shadow Dominance 51%. Host Recessive.]
Host. Recessive. The words burned like brands across my skull. I wasn't the master of this power. I wasn't even its equal.
I was the side character in my own body.
---
"No…" I wheezed. My lips trembled, blistering with heat. My skin burned like parchment held over flame.
I did the only thing left—something insane, reckless, desperate.
I reached down and seized my own shadow.
My fingers sank into cold tar. My flesh sizzled like meat on a pan. Pain detonated through me, and I screamed until my throat shredded into sandpaper.
And it screamed back.
For one terrible second, the shadow shrieked like a beast being skinned alive. The sound rattled my teeth, shook my skull, made my vision swim. The darkness writhed, ripping itself apart, bleeding into the void floor like oil. My palms peeled raw, strips of skin curling back from bone. The stench of burnt flesh filled my nose, clinging to me, choking me.
Then it snapped back into place—angrier, heavier.
And standing.
No longer a smear. No longer a stain.
A humanoid silhouette.
Broad shoulders. Long arms. A head tilted like mine—but sharper. Taller. A mockery of me, perfected in ways I couldn't stand.
---
The timer flickered in the corner of my vision.
[10:00].
Ten minutes left.
My body was a heap, blood pooling in dark crescents from my ruined hands.
And the System sealed my fate:
> [Warning: Shadow General Base form Awakening Imminent.]
I forced my head up with what scraps of strength clung to me.
And it smiled down at me.
"There's no escape, Carl. I awakened because of your incompetence. You can't be his successor. In any case, either you sit still—like you've been doing for the past thirty minutes—and let me handle this… or you die. Both outcomes are fine by me. Either way, I'll enjoy myself."
Its voice was my voice, perfect and poisoned, polished into a blade.
I couldn't move. I could barely think. My body was wrecked, my mind unraveling, my will hanging by a single fraying thread.
Tears stopped flowing. I sat there, watching.
Obedient. Like a loyal dog.
Who knew an hour in the wrong place could carve a man hollow? Who knew sixty minutes was all it took to tear the spine out of someone's soul?
I let my head fall, lips trembling with the last words I'd ever get out.
"Kaela… I'm sorry. I won't make it in time."