The night tasted of iron.
Soul Ming knelt . Blood slicked his palms as he clutched the cold hand of his sister. Her eyes,once bright stared blankly at the sky. Behind her, his parents lay broken on the floor like ruined statues.
Closer than any of them, nearer than betrayal should ever be, she stood with a smile that did not reach her eyes. His girlfriend. Her dress was soaked. Her hands trembled, stained with the blade she'd buried in his back.
"I never loved you, Ming." Her voice was thin, the lie already cracking. "The gods promised me freedom. Riches. Power."
The gods' system hovered above her like a tiny sun—radiant, holy, poisonous. It pulsed and whispered, choosing its pawn.
[You have failed.]
The words cut through him without a mouth saying them. The light's voice sank into his skull: verdict, not mercy.
Ming tasted metal. Pain lanced his ribs. He tried to speak; the words dissolved into blood. He watched everything like someone watching a play—his sister's hand going limp, his mother's silent sob, the woman he loved stepping away under that bright, whispering sphere.
[Your existence ends here.]
He wanted to scream that it wasn't fair. He wanted to ask why. Strength bled out of him in slow, hot drops. The floor tilted. The world narrowed to a pinprick of light—the system—then black.
Dark should have been the end.
Instead, something older and colder slid into that dark. A voice that smelled of iron and teeth, deep and tempting.
> [Tell me—do you crave vengeance?]
Ming's soul, stripped to a raw and furious thread, answered before he thought. There was nothing left of hope, only a single, burning thing.
"…Yes."
The voice hummed like a blade approving its edge. "Rise, Soul Ming. I grant you a second chance—not for redemption, but for vengeance. Slay those who brought you pain."
Chains of light snapped. Warmth—familiar and foreign—wrapped around his soul. It hummed with rules and names, an instrument forged for one purpose: to kill gods.
His lungs filled with air. His eyes opened to black irises. Mercy had been erased.
A name flickered in his mind, clinical and certain:
[System: Revenant Protocol — Assigned: Soul Ming.]
Beneath it, a command pulsed like a heartbeat.
[Objective: Slay those who brought you pain.]
He rose. His hands were stained, but they no longer shook with helplessness. The first step tasted of iron; the second tasted like a vow.
This was not mercy. It was a contract signed in the language of ruin.
If the gods thought him broken, they had not counted on one thing: someone who had nothing left to lose becomes very dangerous.
He would make them pay.