Kell knelt on the jade floor, arms around the little girl's body.
She weighed almost nothing.
Too light.
Too still.
Her head rested against his shoulder, curls limp, eyes open and ruined. The sockets held no blood, no burns, no injury—just emptiness, as if the sight of something awful had burned the truth out of them.
Every corpse looked the same.
Acolytes. Aliens. Prisoners. All hollow-eyed, slack-jawed, and untouched.
Kell rocked slowly, breath shaking through his teeth. "I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair. "I'm so sorry. I tried. I—"
A chime cut the silence.
Soft. Musical.
Wrong.
A glowing blue window hovered beside him, faint light spilling across the girl's pale cheek.
Kell's breath hitched.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED]
Greetings, Eldritch Lord.
R'lyeh awaits you.
He stared, throat tightening. "No. No, what? What is that supposed to mean? I'm not—what are you talking about?"
His voice cracked. Tears blurred the words into streaks of blue.
"What are you talking about?" he whispered again, softer, as if an answer would materialize if he begged.
Something answered.
Stop your mewing, fleshling.
Kell jerked back so violently the girl slid from his arms. He hit the stone with both palms, scrambling away from nothing, from everything.
The voice had no source, no direction. It pressed into the chamber from every surface, as if the walls inhaled and exhaled the words.
These offerings are your gifts.
Kell pressed himself into the corner, breath scraping through his chest. "Who's there? What do you want?"
The shadows behind the altar thickened.
Something stepped out.
It didn't walk so much as glide, each motion spilling like ink poured over invisible bones. A shape formed—too tall, too thin, too fluid—wreathed in smoke darker than night.
Multiple limbs? Or one limb moving too fast to track? His mind couldn't decide. The creature circled him, soundless. Cold air followed its path.
Inadequate for my vessel.
Kell shook his head, tears slicking his cheeks. "I don't—I'm not anyone's vessel, I'm—"
We shall remedy this error.
The air split open.
A vertical seam tore itself through the chamber, thin as a paper cut at first, then widening into a rip that bled shadow. Tentacles of ink-black darkness slid through, liquid and animate, curling through the air like searching fingers.
"No—no, wait—STOP—"
They wrapped around him.
They lifted him.
The chamber, the bodies, the girl—all vanished as they dragged him screaming into the dark.
The world spat him out.
He slammed into rough ground, sand spraying across his skin. A red-tinted sky stretched overhead, smeared like dried blood. A black sun hung above the horizon, swallowing light instead of giving it.
Kell coughed, scrambling to his feet. "Hello?" His voice cracked. "Someone—anyone—hello?"
A howl answered.
It rose from behind a ridge of twisted, bone-white stone. The ground trembled under clawed feet. Kell backed away, hands raised without knowing why.
A creature vaulted over the knoll.
It wasn't animal, alien, or anything the human brain wanted to recognize. The limbs had too many joints at the end. Its face held too many angles. Its skin crawled with symbols that writhed like living tattoos.
Kell froze.
A system message flickered beside him.
[DEATH LOGGED. RESURRECTION COMPLETE.]
Survive.
The creature hit him before he could scream.
Death #1: The Mauler
Its claws dug through his chest. His scream was cut off under the weight. Blood flooded the sand in a spreading halo. Darkness swallowed him—and spat him back out onto the same red-sanded hill.
He gasped. Fell to his knees. And realized the wound across his chest was gone.
Death #6: The Drowned Shade
He tried to run. He tripped. A tendril wrapped his ankle and snapped him like a ragdoll.
His vision snapped to black.
[RESURRECTION COMPLETE.]
Kell lay panting on the ground. The hoodie he wore was loose. His face felt thinner. His hands shook with something that wasn't fear anymore.
Death #27: The Glass-Thread Serpent
He found a stone shard and swung. He screamed until his throat tore. The serpent still wrapped around him, slicing him open with hair-fine filaments.
Darkness.
Light.
Breath.
Another resurrection.
His ribs showed beneath his hoodie now. Hair touched his jaw. His feet felt quicker on the sand.
Death #74: The Cradle Lurker
It rose from the cracks beneath him. He fought, but died locked in its jaws.
The world reset.
His hands glowed faintly when he clenched them. A soft, shadowy shimmer trailed his fingers.
He stared at them, horrified.
"Stop. Please stop. I don't want this."
The system, nor god said anything.
The world just reset.
Death #121: The Bone Choir
It split itself into pieces. Each piece screamed. The sound peeled his mind apart before his body gave out. When he resurrected, Kell didn't cry anymore.
His cheekbones sharpened, torso slimmed, and his hair reached the middle of his back.
Power thrummed under his skin, a low, psionic hum. He could whisper into the shadows now.
Sometimes they whispered back.
Death #333: The Devourer
He didn't die fast this time. He fought, clawed at its flesh with hands that dripped darkness, and tore its limbs apart with shadows shaped into blades.
Wordlessly, he screamed in fury, not fear. The Devourer crushed him eventually.
He resurrected, gasping, on his knees. A storm of black tendrils curled and uncurled across his shoulders like phantom limbs. He looked less human. More angular. More wrong.
Yet more alive.
Final Encounter: The Leviathan Spawn
Kell stood on a ridge of bone. Shadows bled from his hands like smoke. Black tendrils curled behind him, rippling with breath.
Across the wasteland, something massive crawled into view. Bigger than buildings. Eyes like shattered moons. Skin flecked with galaxies.
It let out a roar that shook the sky.
Kell didn't flinch.
"Good," he said. His voice cut like cold iron. "It's about time you came."
The creature lunged.
Kell shifted—his body folding into something tall and twisted, smoke pouring from his mouth, shadow fur bleaching into nothingness. He moved like an eclipse given form.
He became the thing the training ground had demanded and struck.
The Leviathan Spawn fell into pieces.
Its body dissolved into black ash.
The system chimed.
[LEVEL UP.]
[FORM UNLOCKED: ELDTRICH LORD–SHADE ASCENDANT]
[TRAINING COMPLETE.]
A portal split the sky open above him.
This time, the shadows didn't drag him.
He walked through them.
The portal released him like a breath held too long.
Kell stepped back into the ritual chamber. He had left behind a world that waited in the exact moment he'd left… bodies sprawled across jade stone, shadows pooled under lifeless limbs, and the thin smell of cold air pressed into silence.
The god waited.
It moved like ink poured into water, shape forming and dissolving in the same breath. Tendrils unfurled. A silhouette stretched tall and thin. Claws glided through the air, leaving faint tears in the space they passed.
One brushed Kell's cheek.
Cold swept across his skin.
Pretty. The dark voice slid through him like oil over stone. My vessel returns.
It circled him again, the same slow appraisal it had given him before the loop—only this time, Kell didn't tremble. His breath held steady. His shoulders didn't hunch. He had defeated fear deaths ago.
A shadowed limb drifted behind him. Long fingers slipped into his hair, raising it gently, letting the strands fall like a red curtain down his back.
His hair reached the curve of his hips now. Silken. Floating in the god's wake like smoke.
You exceeded my expectations. A finer vessel than I dared hope.
The shadows gathered closer.
Kell lifted his chin. "What do you want of me?"
The god stopped in front of him.
Its face—if it had one—held nothing but darkness. Yet in that darkness, Kell saw a reflection. Two eyes stared back at him: his own, but wrong.
Cosmic gray. Liquid moonlight churning inside the irises. Stars flickered where pupils should be. The god breathed a laugh.
The Greylith—the name rolling through the chamber with an old, drowned weight. They claim this place as theirs. They dared seat their filth upon my city, upon my altar. R'lyeh belongs only to two beings.
The shadows tightened, curling around Kell's ankles, climbing his arms.
Me… and my vessel.
Memories surged. The little girl's sobs. Her mother's scream. The bodies dragged like meat. The needles were in his skin.
The pain.
Hundreds of brutal deaths. Every horror the Greylith inflicted. Kell felt them all at once. He bowed his head.
"Thy will be done."
The god drifted closer, as if amused by the archaic phrasing. Its claw touched Kell's chest. Something tore open within him.
A system message flared into existence:
[DOWN-LEVELING…]
[RESETTING ALL STATS TO BASELINE]
[LEVEL: 1]
[ALL SKILLS LOCKED]
Kell staggered, gripping his ribs. "No. No, no—what are you doing? I earned that! That was hundreds of deaths! I—"
A cold, quiet pressure filled his skull.
Use that eagerness to hunt them. When sharpened, a weapon does not complain.
A hint of a smile entered its voice.
Do not disappoint me, vessel.
The world snapped.
He returned to Earth.
With a wave of his hand, a portal welcomed him. R'lyeh blurred into the mundane world like ink washing off glass. Kell stood in an alley choked with debris. Sirens echoed somewhere far off. Smoke curled from a collapsed building. Human voices cried or shouted or whispered from unseen corners.
He shivered, suddenly aware of the chill.
His hoodie hung on him like wet cloth. His jeans sagged around his narrow hips. He scavenged the remains of clothing strewn across the pavement and tied them tight around his waist to keep them from falling.
He walked. His bare feet padded silently across broken concrete. He turned a corner.
Four men stepped from the shadows. Tired faces. Dirty jackets. Weapons glinted under dim street lamps.
"Wallet," one said. "Phone. Everything. Now."
Kell stopped.
Their voices dripped with confidence.
Predators used to easy prey.
Shadow peeled from Kell's skin, rising like mist. His fingers curled. Darkness coiled around his arms, sharpening at the edges into shapes of shadowed abyssal claws.
He didn't warn them, didn't answer, and simply moved. The alley filled with screams.
When it ended, the shadows dissolved, and the men lay scattered around him in pieces the human eye could not easily categorize.
A system window hovered above the cooling blood.
[LEVEL UP]
Name: Kell Sterling
Level: 2
HP: 35 | Mana: 60 | Stamina: 25
Strength: 12 | Intelligence: 16 | Dexterity: 9 | Willpower: 20 | Affinity: 1 | Vitality: 10
Stat Points Available: 3
Kell exhaled sharply through his nose. "Level two. After all that?" The bitterness in his voice cut like a blade.
The god's voice threaded through reality. Hone thy instincts, vessel. You should have ended them the moment they encircled you.
Kell nodded once. The message sank straight to the bone. He stepped deeper into the alley, shadows curling behind him like a cloak.
Darkness welcomed its lord.