The sky bled red.
Leon pressed his face against the apartment window, watching as the Crimson Moon rose over Neo-Veridia like a wound opening in the heavens. Three days had passed since his awakening—three days of avoiding neighbors' pitying looks and ignoring recruitment messages from the lowest-tier labor guilds.
"It's beautiful," Maya whispered beside him, her breath fogging the glass.
Beautiful wasn't the word Leon would have chosen. The moon's surface writhed with patterns that seemed almost alive, casting the entire city in shades of crimson and shadow. The news feeds had predicted it would be visible for three hours. What they hadn't predicted was the intensity.
This wasn't the pale red glow from archived footage of previous Crimson Moons. This was a bleeding star, so bright that the city's artificial lights seemed dim by comparison.
"Leon, close the blinds," his father called from the living room, his mechanical hand tapping nervously against his leg. "The news says to stay inside."
The alert sirens started a moment later.
Not the usual monster warnings—those were sharp and urgent. These were different. Deeper. The kind of sound that vibrated in your chest and told your hindbrain that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
Leon's datapad exploded with emergency notifications:
**CRITICAL ALERT: BARRIER FLUCTUATION DETECTED**
**ALL CITIZENS REMAIN INDOORS**
**DEFENSE FORCE MOBILIZING TO SECTORS 4, 7, 9**
Sector Seven. His sector.
"Mom, get the girls to the safe room," Leon's father said, already moving toward the door. Despite his injury, despite his shattered core, years of muscle memory kicked in. "I'm going to the shelter coordination point—"
The building shook.
It wasn't an earthquake. Leon had felt those before—the rumbling bass note of the earth shifting beneath the city. This was sharper. More violent. The sound of something massive impacting concrete and steel.
His mother herded the twins toward the reinforced interior room that every lower district apartment was required to have. Maya's face had gone pale, but Lily clutched her sister's hand with fierce determination.
"Leon, come on!" his mother shouted.
But Leon was already at the window, watching as a section of the defensive wall—barely two blocks away—erupted in a shower of sparks and debris. Through the gap, he could see them.
Crimson Hounds.
They poured through the breach like water from a broken dam, their bodies warped and swollen by the moon's radiation. Each one was the size of a small car, their hides the color of old blood, eyes burning with mindless hunger. The defensive turrets opened fire, cutting down the first wave, but more kept coming.
"The market," Leon breathed. "The evening market."
Where hundreds of people were buying dinner. Where the crowd would be panicking, trampling each other in the rush to escape. Where the Hounds would find easy prey.
Where he'd sent his sisters to buy ingredients an hour ago, before they'd come back laughing about the strange red moon.
"I'm going to help with the evacuation," his father said, already halfway out the door despite his mother's protests.
Leon grabbed his jacket. "I'm coming with you."
"The hell you are—"
"Dad." Leon met his father's eyes. "You can't fight. I can't either. But we can help people get to shelter. We have to try."
For a moment, his father looked like he wanted to argue. Then he nodded sharply. "Stay close. If a Hound gets near us, we run. Understand?"
They ran.
The streets were chaos. People screamed and scattered as the Hounds' howls echoed between buildings. Enforcement officers in tactical gear rushed past, their weapons humming with charged energy. Leon saw a C-Rank awakener with a Stone Skin ability body-check a Hound through a storefront window.
"This way!" his father shouted, pulling Leon toward the market district.
They helped where they could—pulling people from overturned stalls, directing them toward the nearest shelter, carrying an elderly woman who'd twisted her ankle. The Crimson Moon painted everything in nightmare shades, and Leon's heart hammered so hard he thought it might burst.
Then he heard it.
Two familiar voices, screaming in unison.
"Lily! Maya!"
Leon's blood turned to ice. He spun, following the sound down a narrow service alley that ran behind the market. His father was right behind him, cursing.
The twins were backed against a wall, shopping bags scattered at their feet. Between them and escape stood three Crimson Hounds, their muzzles dripping with saliva that sizzled where it hit the pavement. The smallest one—barely the size of a motorcycle—crouched low, preparing to pounce.
Leon didn't think. Thinking was for people with options, and he had none.
He grabbed a length of metal pipe from the scattered construction debris and charged.
"HEY!"
The Hounds' heads snapped toward him. Red eyes locked onto new prey. The smallest one abandoned the twins and lunged.
Leon swung the pipe with everything he had. It connected with the Hound's jaw with a satisfying crunch, but the impact sent shockwaves up his arms. The creature barely seemed to notice, already recovering, already turning back toward him with murder in its eyes.
His father tried to pull the twins away, but the other two Hounds cut off their escape. They were trapped. All of them.
*I'm going to die,* Leon thought with crystal clarity. *We're all going to die.*
The smallest Hound lunged again. Leon raised the pipe, knowing it was futile, knowing that his F-Rank strength wasn't enough, his Empty Core wasn't enough, he wasn't enough—
The world exploded in sensation.
Pain, like ice water injected directly into his spine. A presence, vast and ancient, unfurling inside his chest where his hollow core resided. The Crimson Moon's light seemed to intensify, and suddenly Leon could see patterns in it—geometric shapes that hurt to look at, equations written in a language older than human civilization.
Then, a voice. Cold. Mechanical. Utterly inhuman.
**[HOST SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE]**
**[ANCIENT BLOODLINE RESONANCE DETECTED]**
**[SHADOW EXTRACTION SYSTEM ACTIVATED]**
Leon's vision fractured. The world slowed to a crawl. He could see the individual dust motes suspended in the air, could track the exact trajectory of the Hound's claws as they descended toward his face, could feel his Empty Core suddenly flooding with power that felt like darkness given form.
**[MONARCH'S HEIR DETECTED...]**
**[AWAKENING PROTOCOL: ECLIPSE INITIATED]**
A translucent blue screen materialized in his vision, overlaid on reality itself:
```
╔════════════════════════════╗
║ SHADOW EXTRACTION SYSTEM ║
║ STATUS: INITIALIZING ║
║ ║
║ HOST: LEON VALE ║
║ LEVEL: 1 ║
║ CORE TYPE: SHADOW (ACTIVE) ║
║ ║
║ ANALYZING THREATS... ║
╚════════════════════════════╝
Time snapped back to normal speed.
The Hound's claws were inches from his face. But Leon's body moved without conscious thought, guided by something beyond instinct. He twisted, the claws passing so close he felt the wind of their passage. The pipe in his hands seemed to sing as he brought it up in a perfect arc, striking the exact point where the Hound's skull met its spine.
The crack was sickening.
The Hound collapsed, twitching. Not dead, but dying. And Leon—Leon felt something else now, something that terrified and exhilarated him in equal measure.
Hunger.
**[HOSTILE ENTITY NEUTRALIZED]**
**[SHADOW EXTRACTION AVAILABLE]**
**[EXTRACT SHADOW? Y/N]**
He didn't know how he knew, but he understood. The dying creature before him held something his system wanted. Something his core needed. All he had to do was take it.
Leon's hand moved of its own accord, reaching toward the Hound. His Empty Core pulsed once, and the creature's shadow—which shouldn't have been visible under the Crimson Moon's direct light—tore free from its body like smoke ripped by a hurricane.
It flowed into him.
The sensation was indescribable. Foreign memories crashed through his mind—running through moonlit forests, the taste of blood, the thrill of the hunt. Skills and instincts that weren't his own integrated into his nervous system, rewiring him at a fundamental level.
**[SHADOW EXTRACTION SUCCESSFUL]**
**[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: SHADOW EXTRACTION]**
**[SKILL GAINED: LESSER AGILITY (PASSIVE)]**
**[STRENGTH +3]**
**[AGILITY +5]**
The remaining two Hounds stared at him. In their bestial eyes, Leon saw something that hadn't been there before.
Recognition. And a hint of fear.
"Stay behind me," he told his father, his voice coming out cold and flat. "Get the girls out of here."
"Leon, what—"
"GO!"
The Hounds attacked together. But Leon was no longer the F-Rank failure who'd stood in the Awakening Chamber three days ago. He was something else now. Something changing.
He met them head-on, pipe singing through the air, his movements impossibly fluid. Each strike found its mark, guided by the system's analysis, enhanced by stolen agility. His Empty Core blazed with dark power, filling with stolen essence.
One Hound fell. Then the other.
**[SHADOW EXTRACTION AVAILABLE]**
**[SHADOW EXTRACTION AVAILABLE]**
He consumed them both, their shadows flowing into him like water into a cup. More memories. More strength. The system's interface flickered with new information, but Leon couldn't focus on it. His sisters were staring at him with wide, terrified eyes.
"Leon?" Lily whispered. "Your eyes..."
He caught his reflection in a broken shop window. His eyes glowed with a faint crimson light, the same color as the moon above. As he watched, the glow faded, but the memory of what he'd seen—what he'd become—remained.
The sound of armored boots on pavement made him turn. Three Enforcement officers rounded the corner, weapons raised, then lowered when they saw the dead Hounds.
"Civilians, report!" the lead officer barked. "Who took down these—" He stopped, staring at Leon's father. "Vale? That you?"
"Jenkins." His father's voice was tight. "We got lucky. A high-ranker must have passed through, cleared them out before moving on."
The lie came easily. Too easily. Leon met his father's eyes and saw the questions there, along with something else. Understanding. His father knew what it meant to have power you couldn't explain, abilities that marked you as different.
"Lucky indeed," Jenkins said, though his eyes lingered on Leon for a moment longer than comfortable. "Get to a shelter. This isn't over yet."
As they hurried away, Leon felt it—a fragment of memory that didn't belong to any of the Hounds he'd killed. A vision, crystal clear:
*A throne room, vast and desolate, lit only by a perpetual Crimson Moon visible through shattered windows. On a throne of shadow and bone sat a figure, crowned and terrible, watching him with eyes that saw across time and space.*
The vision faded, but the cold certainty remained. Whatever had awakened inside him, it had drawn the attention of something ancient. Something powerful.
Something that would come looking for him.
Leon pulled his sisters close as they ran, feeling his father's hand on his shoulder. The Crimson Moon painted their shadows long and dark across the blood-stained pavement.
His life had changed. The world as he knew it had ended.
And deep in his chest, his no-longer-empty Shadow Core pulsed with stolen power and whispered a single truth:
*This is only the beginning.*