Initializing...
Death was supposed to be quiet. It was supposed to be an end to the noise, the hunger, and the pain.
But for Thalos, death was loud.
He was floating in a void of suffocating darkness. There was no ground, no sky, no direction. But there was sound. A screaming, grinding noise like tectonic plates rubbing together. It was the sound of the Titan.
Then, the darkness tore open.
Blue text seared into his vision, burning bright against the black. It wasn't written in ink or light; it was etched directly onto his mind.
[WARNING: Host Body Critical.] [Foreign Contaminant Detected: Divine Essence (Type: Dead Titan).] [Cellular breakdown imminent.]
Thalos tried to scream, but he had no mouth. He was just a consciousness suspended in the code. He watched as the text scrolled faster, red warning boxes flashing like alarms.
[Defense Protocols Activated.] [Attempting to purge contaminant...] [FAILED.]
[Attempting to isolate infection...] [FAILED.]
The blue light began to fracture. The "Dead God Dust" he had swallowed wasn't just poison; it was aggressive. It was trying to rewrite him. He felt it invading his genetic code, smashing apart his human DNA and replacing it with something ancient and heavy.
[System Error: Contaminant has fused with Host Bone Marrow.] [Genetic Structure: 98% Human / 2% Unknown.]
The system paused. The scrolling text stopped. It pulsed, as if the machine-god controlling it was confused.
[Unknown Variable Detected: Host Willpower exceeds safety parameters.] [Analysis: Host is refusing to die.]
Thalos felt a surge of defiance. I can't die yet. Not while she's waiting for me.
The text flickered, glitching and distorting. The clean blue pixels bled into a violent, warning red.
[System Adaptation Required.] [Protocol 404: If you cannot purge the parasite... Assimilate it.]
[Re-writing Host Biology...] [Calibrating...] [Calibrating...] [ACCESS GRANTED.]
"GAAAAH!"
Thalos woke up with a gasp that tore his throat raw.
He sat bolt upright, his lungs heaving, sucking in the stale air of the shop like a drowning man breaking the surface.
He was back.
He was lying in a pool of his own sweat and black bile on the metal floor of Vargas's ruined shop. The smell was atrocious—like burnt rubber, ozone, and old blood.
Thalos scrambled backward, crab-walking away from the puddle of bile, expecting the pain to return. He waited for the fire in his veins. He waited for the stone-sickness to freeze his limbs.
But there was no pain.
In fact, there was... silence.
The constant ache in his lower back from years of mining? Gone. The rattle in his chest from breathing dust? Gone. His body felt light, humming with a strange, electric energy he had never felt before.
He looked at his hands.
They didn't look like his hands. The skin was paler, tighter, stretched over muscle that felt denser than before. The veins on his forearms were no longer the soft blue of a human; they were dark, etched against his skin like black spiderwebs, pulsing with a slow, heavy rhythm.
"What..." Thalos croaked. His voice sounded deeper. Scratchier.
He blinked, trying to clear his vision. But the spot in the center of his eyes didn't go away.
A semi-transparent blue window was floating in the air, right in front of his face.
He waved his hand through it. His fingers passed through the light like it was smoke. It wasn't a hologram. It was inside his eyes.
"I'm hallucinating," he whispered. "The poison fried my brain."
But the text was crisp, clear, and impossible to ignore.
[SYSTEM AWAKENED]
Name: Thalos Race: Human (Variant - Ascended) Class: [TITAN EATER] (Unique)
Level: 1 Experience: 0/100
Health: 15/15 (Recovering) Ichor: 10/10
Stats:
Strength: 6 (Average Human: 5)
Agility: 7
Constitution: 8 (+2 Mutation Bonus)
Spirit: 12
Innate Trait:
[Iron Stomach]: You are what you eat. The Host can consume organic and inorganic matter derived from the Titan to restore health and energy. Consumption of high-grade materials may trigger evolutionary mutations.
Thalos stared at the screen. He had heard legends, whispered in the deep mines, that the Highborn Archons living on the Spine had "Systems"—magical interfaces granted by the Gods that gave them their power.
But a scavenger? A helot from the pits? It was impossible. Systems were for heroes, not rats.
He read the class name again.
TITAN EATER.
He looked at the trait description. You can consume matter... to trigger mutations.
He looked down at the black bile on the floor—the rejected toxins his body had purged. Then he looked at the steel desk Vargas had used.
He reached out. His hand was trembling, not with fear, but with a strange, vibration. He gripped the edge of the steel desk.
Squeeze.
He didn't even grunt. The thick industrial steel groaned. Under his fingers, the metal warped and folded like wet cardboard. He left a perfect imprint of his hand in the solid iron.
Thalos pulled his hand back, staring at the dent.
He was stronger. Not just a little bit. He felt like he could punch through a wall.
He stood up, his legs steady. The exhaustion was gone. The despair that had nearly killed him in the previous chapter was gone, replaced by a cold, burning clarity.
He checked his pocket. Empty. The credits were gone. The Ichor was gone.
He still had no money for Elara's medicine.
But he looked at the blue screen again.
[Experience: 0/100]
If this was real... if he was really like the Archons now... then he didn't need money. He didn't need to beg Vargas for scraps or hide from Captain Vane.
He needed XP. He needed to level up.
And the trait said he could eat the Titan.
A dark, terrifying hunger rumbled in his stomach. It wasn't a hunger for food. It was a hunger for power. The Titan's dust hadn't killed him; it had made him a predator.
Thalos turned toward the shattered door of the shop. The alleyway outside was dark. Somewhere out there, in the twisted tunnels of the Ribs, there were monsters. Tunnel-Stalkers. Corpse-Rats. Things that hunted humans.
Thalos smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was a baring of teeth.
"Vane," he whispered, the name tasting like acid on his tongue. "You should have killed me when you had the chance."
He stepped over the debris and walked out into the dark. He wasn't going back to the mines to dig.
It was time to feed.