The first hunt after bonding the Compass, Kydris killed without hesitation.
The second, without remorse.
By the third, he stopped counting the seconds between action and emotion.
The Compass thrummed against Kydris's palm, warm and alive, as he descended into the hollowed districts of lower Graycross. What had been streets decades ago were now caverns of petrified steel, fractured open by subsurface pressure and decades of System decay.
The air here was thick—humid with condensation, metallic with rust, sharp with ozone from exposed power conduits. Kydris's boots crunched through debris, each step sending echoes cascading through the darkness.
The Compass pulsed. Once. Twice. Directional.
Light cut through the smog like blade through silk, painting a golden path only he could see. His Essence Locator ability activated instinctively, tasting concentrated consciousness ahead: predatory, desperate, hungry.
The creature emerged from a collapsed storefront—crystalline skin refracting dim light into rainbow fractals, luminous veins pulsing beneath translucent flesh, eyes like geometric stars that tracked his movement with alien intelligence.
Kydris felt its consciousness before fully seeing it: desperation, fear, the raw will to survive that transcended species. It was starving. Territorial. About to attack.
He moved first.
His blade—essence-forged, courtesy of System integration—cut through crystalline hide like it was nothing. The creature collapsed with a sound like breaking glass, its consciousness fragmenting, dissolving into the Lattice.
Sensation washed over him: sweet satisfaction, bitter fading awareness, metallic fresh essence ready for harvest. Kydris reached out instinctively, pulling the essence into himself. When it settled, warmth bloomed in his chest, then—
Nothing.
No horror. No guilt. Just data: Kill successful. Essence acquired. Continue.
⟨ SYSTEM ALERT ⟩
► ESSENCE GAINED: +72
► TOTAL ESSENCE: 1,203 / 1,500
► RANK 3 ADVANCEMENT: 4 Hunts Remaining
He stared at the notification. Waited for emotion to arrive.
Two seconds. Three. Four.
Nothing came.
The corpse at his feet was still twitching, nervous system shutting down in stages. Kydris watched with clinical detachment, noting the dissolution pattern, how crystalline flesh decayed faster than organic matter.
"Interesting," he murmured. His voice carried harmonics that hadn't been there three days ago—overtones that vibrated in frequencies beyond human vocal range.
He didn't notice. Not really.
Two hunts passed in similar fashion—mechanical, efficient, emotionless. By the ninth, even the pretense of waiting for feelings had stopped.
The creature was smaller this time—barely the size of a large dog, covered in chitinous plates that clicked softly as it breathed. As it collapsed, something in its consciousness reached toward Kydris.
Not attack. Plea.
Desperation. Fear of dying that felt almost human despite utterly alien biology. The flavor was achingly familiar: the same terror he'd tasted from factory workers during the explosion, the same primal no please not yet that transcended species.
Kydris waited for sympathy to arrive.
Two seconds. Three. Four. Five.
Nothing.
He harvested the essence mechanically, hands moving through practiced motions, fingers pulling threads of consciousness from cooling flesh. When Thex touched his shoulder—startling him—Kydris realized he'd been staring at the corpse for a full minute.
Feeling absolutely nothing.
"You okay?" Thex asked, brightness dimmed to uncertain amber.
"I'm fine." The words came out smooth, measured, perfectly inflected. Kydris smiled—symmetrical, precise, arriving two seconds after the social cue.
Thex's concern tasted like citrus gone sour. "You sure? You've been standing there—"
"I'm fine," Kydris repeated. Same inflection. Same smile. He hadn't blinked once during the entire exchange.
Thex stepped back slightly, his emotional signature rippling with something that tasted like fear wearing the mask of worry.
Three hunts later, the observations had become unavoidable.
After Hunt Twelve—when the group gathered in their makeshift camp for ration stew—Kael pulled Thex aside while Kydris meticulously cleaned his blade.
"He didn't blink," he whispered, his scientist's mind cataloging anomalies with growing dread. "Twenty-three minutes. Not once. I timed it."
Thex forced brightness into his voice. "He's focused. That's what Rank 2 does, right? Enhanced concentration?"
"That's not focus." Kael's fear was sharp in the air, copper-bright. "I've been tracking his biometrics with my scanner. His heart rate doesn't elevate during combat anymore. Pupils don't dilate. Breathing stays constant. He's mimicking human response patterns without feeling them."
Thex looked across the chamber. Kydris stood motionless, staring at nothing, eyes glowing faint violet in the darkness. His chest rose and fell in perfect rhythm—too perfect, like breathing had become manual process requiring conscious execution.
"We're losing him," Kael whispered.
Thex said nothing.
Because he was right.
That night, Thex still raised his cup—recycled metal filled with reconstituted broth—and said with forced cheer, "To Kydris Vane. Strongest among us."
Everyone clapped. The sound echoed hollow in the chamber.
Kydris felt the applause arrive four seconds after it started. By the time gratitude manifested—distant, muted, like emotion traveling through thick glass—the moment had already passed.
He smiled anyway. Perfect symmetry. Mechanical precision.
Everyone looked away.
Later that night, Kydris stood before a reflective panel in his quarters—a salvaged piece of polished steel mounted to the wall.
His reflection stared back with eyes that glowed violet even in near-darkness, pupils dilated unnaturally wide, the sclera faintly luminescent. His cheekbones had sharpened over the past three weeks, jaw elongating subtly—changes that made his face look sculpted rather than grown, like someone had carved away excess humanity.
He smiled experimentally.
The expression traveled across his face in perfect symmetry, each muscle activating in precise sequence: orbicularis oculi, zygomaticus major, levator labii. Not all at once like natural emotion. In stages, like watching animation render frame by frame.
It looked wrong. Practiced. Mechanical.
He tried laughing. The sound emerged two seconds after the impulse—body waiting for emotional confirmation that never arrived. The laugh was hollow, performative, the sound someone makes when they remember joy existed but can no longer access it.
He stared for a long time, waiting for horror to arrive.
When it came—five seconds late—it arrived muted, distant, like hearing echo of emotion from very far away.
"Am I supposed to notice this getting worse?" he asked the empty room.
The Compass pulsed from his bedside—warm against bare skin where he'd set it. Meaning flooded his consciousness, bypassing language entirely:
⟨⟨ INTEGRATION PROGRESSING AS DESIGNED ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ EMOTIONAL SYSTEMS RECALIBRATING ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ BASELINE HUMAN RESPONSES INCOMPATIBLE WITH BONDED CONSCIOUSNESS ⟩⟩
"That doesn't sound human," Kydris said quietly.
⟨⟨ IT IS NOT ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ YOU ARE NOT ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ THIS IS THE COST ⟩⟩
The silence that followed wasn't hostile. Just inevitable.
Kydris looked at his reflection one more time. The stranger staring back blinked once—slow, deliberate, like remembering how the gesture worked.
He went to bed.
Sleep came eventually. But it felt different now—less like rest, more like system maintenance. Like his consciousness was running diagnostics while his body recharged.
Three days later, Vren made his move.
His presence had become constant over the past weeks—shadow stitched into every expedition, void-signature lingering at the edges of perception.
He didn't speak often, but when he did, questions cut like scalpels.
During a descent into a collapsed transit hub—when only the two of them remained at the perimeter while others scouted ahead—Vren spoke, voice like silk dragged over broken glass.
"You know this wasn't coincidence."
Kydris kept walking, Compass thrumming against his palm. "What wasn't?"
"The artifact. The expedition. Grethon guiding you there before his dissolution." Vren's void-presence intensified, recording everything with obsessive precision. "Artifacts don't appear randomly. You were meant to find it."
"By who?"
"By people who think in longer timescales than us." Vren smiled without warmth. "People who've been waiting for consciousness compatible with Pre-Shattering artifacts to emerge. People who've been orchestrating this since before you entered the factory that day."
The Compass pulsed sharply—once, twice, aggressively. The artifact's response tasted like recognition mixed with territorial warning. It knew something about what Vren represented. Something that triggered defensive protocols.
Kydris stopped walking. Turned. "Who are you reporting to?"
Vren's smile widened slightly, showing too many teeth. "Someone who's been watching you since the factory explosion. Someone who understands what you're becoming better than you do." He paused. "Someone who wants to use what you're becoming."
He walked away before Kydris could press further, leaving only his void-presence lingering like oil slick on water—surveillance and inevitability compressed into sensation.
The Compass pulsed again. Agitated. Concerned.
For the first time since bonding, Kydris wondered if the artifact could feel fear.
Three days of relentless hunting later—three weeks total since bonding the Compass—the notification blazed across his vision:
⟨ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⟩
► ESSENCE CAPACITY: 1,500 / 1,500
► RANK 3 ADVANCEMENT: AVAILABLE
► TRANSCENDENCE PROTOCOL: READY
► WARNING: SOCIAL INTEGRATION FAILURE IMMINENT
► Proceed with advancement? [Y/N]
"Social Integration Failure?" Kydris read aloud, voice flat.
The System responded immediately, clinical and absolute:
⟨ CLARIFICATION ⟩
► Rank 3 integration removes capacity for baseline human social bonding
► Existing relationships will deteriorate as consciousness diverges from human frequency range
► Emotional reciprocity protocols will cease standard function
► You will retain intellectual understanding of social dynamics
► You will lose instinctive ability to feel them
Across the chamber, Thex whooped—brightness flaring with genuine joy. "You did it! You're actually gonna hit Rank 3!"
Kael looked away. His fear tasted acrid, chemical, the flavor of watching a friend disappear into something alien and irretrievable.
Kydris exhaled slowly. The emotional weight of the achievement arrived six seconds late—by which time Thex's excitement had already dimmed and Kael had already turned his back.
He felt triumph as afterthought. Memory of emotion rather than emotion itself.
"What happens now?" Kael asked quietly, not looking at him.
The Compass pulsed in response—anticipation, hunger, PURPOSE.
"I don't know," Kydris admitted. "But I guess tomorrow I'll find out."
His voice carried no uncertainty. No fear. Just observation.
Like he was narrating someone else's life.
That night, sleep wouldn't come easily.
He tried closing his eyes. Sleep arrived like rust—slow, consuming, leaving residue that wouldn't fade.
Every time he closed his eyes, pathways bloomed across his awareness: routes through Graycross's underworld veins, north toward the Rupture Zone, toward something vast and pulsing that called with frequency matching his heartbeat.
He sat up. The Compass lay beside him on the cot, glowing in perfect synchronization with his pulse—two rhythms that had become one.
"What are you preparing me for?" Kydris asked.
Meaning flooded his consciousness:
⟨⟨ RETRIEVAL ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ CONVERGENCE FRAGMENT SEALED IN RUPTURE ZONE ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ COMPLETION OF PURPOSE BEGUN BEFORE YOUR SPECIES EXISTED ⟩⟩
"And if I refuse to go?"
⟨⟨ YOU WILL NOT REFUSE ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ YOUR DESIRES AND MINE ARE MERGING ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ YOU ALREADY WANT WHAT I WANT ⟩⟩
⟨⟨ THAT IS THE NATURE OF SYMBIOSIS ⟩⟩
Kydris felt the truth settle like weight in his chest. He did want to go north. The pull was undeniable, inexorable—instinct deeper than thought, purpose woven into his nervous system.
The Compass's goals and his own were becoming indistinguishable.
He looked across the quarters. Thex sprawled against supply crates, emotional signature bright with dreams of better futures. Kael curled near a vent, worry fading into restless sleep. Vren awake in the corner, eyes reflecting System light, recording even in stillness.
They would all fade from his world soon. Not because they'd leave—because he'd become something that couldn't relate to what they were anymore.
"Tomorrow," Kydris whispered. "Tomorrow I stop being human."
The Compass pulsed once. Sharp. Affirming.
And in that rhythm—
Something else pulsed back.
Not from the Compass. From beyond. From somewhere deeper than the Lattice, older than the System, vast beyond comprehension.
The sensation was cold and immense—intelligence that had been conscious since before stars learned to burn. It had been waiting in sealed dimensions, patient across eons, for consciousness bonded with Pre-Shattering artifacts to emerge.
It tasted Kydris across impossible distance.
And for the first time in millennia, it moved.
Not slowly. Not patiently.
It was approaching with speed of something that had finally found what it had been searching for.
The universe had shifted. Tomorrow, Kydris would cross threshold he couldn't return from.
And something ancient—something that regarded the System as a child regards toys—was racing toward him through folded dimensions.
He could taste its approach like storm on the horizon.
Coming fast.