The transition from the blinding crimson of the battlefield to the absolute, suffocating darkness of the underground clinic was not a gradual fading, but a violent severing of consciousness. When the first spark of awareness finally clawed its way through the fog of trauma, Alex Kane did not feel pain. He felt an agonizing, hollow silence where his left side used to be.
The air in Old Jack's basement clinic smelled of ozone, stale tobacco, and the copper-heavy scent of drying blood. A single, flickering industrial lightbulb hung from a frayed wire, casting jagged, dancing shadows across the cracked concrete walls.
Alex lay on a rusted surgical table that groaned with every shallow, ragged breath he took. His chest felt as though it had been hollowed out and filled with molten lead. He tried to shift his weight, but a white-hot spike of agony instantly lanced through his nervous system, originating from his left shoulder.
"Don't move, boy. You're held together by sheer spite and some very expensive medical tape," a gravelly voice rasped from the shadows.
Old Jack stepped into the circle of dim light. The old scavenger looked as if he had been dragged through a rock crusher; his face was a mosaic of bruises, and his hands, usually steady as a surgeon's, were trembling as he adjusted a translucent IV drip filled with a murky, yellowish fluid.
"The arm?" Alex's voice was a dry rattle, barely audible over the hum of a nearby generator.
Old Jack paused, his gaze flickering toward the thick, blood-soaked bandages swaddling Alex's left shoulder. There was nothing below the joint. The bandages were flat against the table. "Gone. Vaporized. You're lucky the shockwave cauterized the arteries, or you'd have bled out in that gutter before I could drag you ten feet."
Alex closed his eyes. The memory of the Archdemon's descent flashed behind his eyelids—the crushing weight of gravity, the sound of his own bones snapping like dry kindling, and that singular, terrifying moment of absolute powerlessness. He had gambled everything, and the house had nearly buried him.
But as he lay there, a different sensation began to manifest. It wasn't the dull ache of a missing limb. It was a rhythmic, pulsing heat deep inside the marrow of his remaining bones. It felt like a nest of hornets made of fire, stinging him from the inside out.
Something is wrong.
Alex didn't ask for a mirror. He didn't ask for water. With a mental effort that felt like pushing a boulder uphill, he forced his consciousness to connect with the flickering interface of his internal vision.
"God's Eye... activate," he hissed through gritted teeth.
He refused to use the term 'SSS-Rank'. To the world, that rank was a badge of destiny; to Alex, it was merely a tool that hadn't been sharp enough. He needed to see the truth of his ruin.
The world shifted. The grey basement dissolved into a landscape of pulsating energy strings and shifting thermal gradients. Usually, he looked outward to find value in trash. This time, he turned the lens inward.
What he saw made his heart hammer against his ribs with frantic violence.
His skeletal structure was highlighted in a ghostly blue, but at the site of the amputation, a terrifying blotch of ink-black and violent crimson was festering. It wasn't just a wound. Tangled within the shredded muscle fibers and shattered bone of his shoulder were jagged, crystalline shards of dark energy—remnants of the Archdemon's "Destruction" attribute.
These shards were like parasitic organisms. They weren't just preventing the wound from healing; they were actively eating his vitality, converting his very life force into a decaying, ashen soot.
"Jack... get the... the obsidian chest," Alex wheezed, his forehead slick with cold sweat.
"You need rest, Alex. Your heart is skipping beats every five seconds."
"The chest! Now!" Alex's right hand shot out, grabbing Jack's wrist with a grip that made the old man wince. His fingernails, torn and jagged, dug into Jack's skin. "The corruption... it's spreading. If I don't... pull it out... I'm dead by dawn."
Jack saw the desperation—the manic, calculating glint in Alex's eyes that surpassed mere survival instinct. He turned and hauled a heavy, soot-stained metal box from the corner of the room. He slammed it onto the rolling tray beside the table.
Alex didn't wait. He ignored the screaming protests of his muscles and forced his right hand toward his own shoulder.
"Void Hand," he whispered.
The air around his right palm began to warp, a small, localized vacuum forming in the center of his hand. As he pressed his fingers against the bandages, the sensation was like plunging his hand into a furnace.
He wasn't just touching flesh. He was reaching into the metaphysical layer of his own injury.
Tear it out. Don't let it consume. Refine. Reclaim.
He felt his fingers wrap around something cold, jagged, and impossibly heavy. It was the "Destruction" attribute. It fought back. The black energy surged up his arm, trying to rot his remaining limb, but Alex's will was a fortress of pure, unadulterated greed. He had lost his arm for this power; he would not let the power take the rest of him.
"Extraction... full capacity!"
A guttural scream tore from Alex's throat, a sound of primal agony that echoed through the pipes of the underground hideout.
Old Jack watched in horrific fascination as wisps of black smoke began to leak through the bandages. The smoke didn't dissipate; it swirled around Alex's right hand, thickening into oily, tattered ribbons. Slowly, agonizingly, Alex began to pull.
From the depths of his own mangled shoulder, a cluster of dark, pulsating crystals began to emerge, dragged out by the sheer force of the Void Hand. These were the "Ember Crystals"—solidified fragments of a Calamity, birthed from the intersection of a demon's malice and a human's stubborn refusal to die.
As the last shard left his body, the black veins receding from his neck, Alex slammed the crystals into the open obsidian chest. He collapsed back onto the table, his breath coming in jagged, wet gasps. The room spun. The fire in his marrow had subsided into a low, smoldering ember.
The bandages on his shoulder were no longer soaked in fresh blood; they were charred, as if a localized fire had burnt out the infection.
"You're a monster, kid," Jack muttered, wiping sweat from his own brow. He looked at the chest, where the dark crystals were humming with a low, predatory vibration. "Most people would have prayed for a quick death. You just turned your own murder into a mining operation."
"I... I don't pray," Alex spat, his eyes fluttering open. "I collect."
"Well, you'd better start collecting your wits," Jack said, his voice turning somber. He walked over to a small, flickering television monitor in the corner, a relic salvaged from a pre-cataclysm junk pile.
He turned up the volume.
The screen showed a high-definition broadcast from the Inner City. The backdrop was the Drake Estate, now swarming with reporters and high-ranking military officials. In the center of the frame stood Victor Drake.
Victor looked magnificent. His silver armor was pristine, save for a few "heroic" scuffs that looked carefully curated. His left arm was encased in a glowing, runic cast, and he was being presented with the 'Medal of Northern Valor'.
"The people of the North District owe their lives to the bravery of the Drake family," a sleek news anchor announced. "While the S-Rank Calamity claimed many lives, Victor Drake stood as the final line of defense. Unfortunately, the chaos was exacerbated by a rogue scavenger—an identified criminal named Alex Kane—who reportedly sabotaged military supply lines and fled with high-level mana cores. A warrant for his immediate execution has been issued by the North District Oversight Committee."
Alex watched the screen. He saw Victor's face—the subtle, arrogant smirk hidden behind a facade of solemn grief. Victor hadn't just taken the credit for the demon's retreat; he had turned Alex into the scapegoat for every death that occurred tonight.
"They're calling you the 'Vulture of the Red Gate'," Jack said, turning the TV off. "The Drakes have sealed the borders of the North District. They're doing 'containment sweeps' in the slums. They aren't looking for demons, Alex. They're looking for a one-armed kid who knows too much."
Alex lay in the silence, the flickering light casting his face in stark relief. He looked down at his right hand. It was stained with ash and blood, the skin raw and peeling.
He didn't feel anger. Anger was a volatile, inefficient emotion. What he felt was a profound, crystalline clarity.
Victor had the medals. Victor had the cameras. Victor had the "Status" of a hero.
But Alex looked at the obsidian chest. He thought about the Ember Crystals he had just ripped from his own flesh. He thought about the [Demon Heart] fragment he had snatched from the ash of the Archdemon.
The world saw a hero on the screen and a corpse in the gutter.
"Let them search," Alex whispered. He felt the phantom itch of his missing arm, a ghost of a limb that was already demanding to be filled with something far more dangerous than flesh. "Let Victor climb as high as he wants. The higher the tower, the more scrap I get when I pull the foundation out."
He looked at Jack, his gaze sharp enough to cut. "Jack, I don't want a prosthetic. I don't want a piece of plastic and wires that will break the first time I hit something."
He pointed his right hand toward the chest, where the dark-red tissue of the demon heart pulsed like a dying star.
"I want the real thing. I'm going to build something that the System didn't intend for me to have."
The pain was returning now, the adrenaline fading to leave behind a cold, hollow ache. But as Alex Kane drifted back into a feverish sleep, he wasn't dreaming of the life he had lost. He was dreaming of the things he would take.
Outside, the rain began to fall, washing the soot of the North District into the sewers, carrying the scent of a dying city down into the dark where the monsters were waiting to be born.
Alex's breathing stabilized. His heart, though strained, beat with a new, irregular rhythm—a heavy, metallic thud that matched the pulse of the dark energy in the chest.
The hunt had begun. But for the first time in his life, Alex Kane was no longer the prey. He was the one waiting in the shadows, counting the cost, and preparing to collect the debt in blood and attributes.
The fire in his marrow wasn't an infection anymore. It was an engine. And he was just beginning to turn the key.