The rain in Sector 4 wasn't water.
It was a chemical slurry, a grey mist that clung to the skin like oil and tasted of sulfur.
I followed the woman—Haneul—through the labyrinth of rusted shipping containers and skeletal cranes. My legs felt like they were made of lead, yet they moved with a strange, mechanical precision.
Every step I took felt disconnected from my will.
I looked down at my chest.
Still nothing.
No rhythmic thump. No vibration of life. Just a hollow, echoing silence where my heart used to be.
It was as if I had become a ghost inhabiting my own corpse.
"Don't stop," Haneul said, her voice cutting through the hiss of the rain. She didn't look back. "If you stop, the static will find you."
"The static?" I wheezed. My lungs felt cold. Not the cold of the winter air, but a deep, crystalline frost that seemed to be spreading from my center.
"The resonance signature you left back there," she explained, her hand resting on the hilt of her jagged blade. "A Shard activation is like a flare in the dark for those who know how to look. The Archive is tracking the frequency. The Church is tracking the 'sin'. If we stay in the open, we're dead."
I stumbled over a piece of scrap metal.
I didn't feel the pain of the impact.
Instead, I felt a flash of violet light behind my eyelids.
*Fragile...*
The voice in my head sounded like two stones grinding together. It was ancient, yet curiously childlike.
*This cage... is so very fragile...*
"Shut up," I whispered.
Haneul stopped. She turned, her grey eyes scanning the darkness behind me.
"I told you," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous low. "If it speaks to you, do not answer. Every time you acknowledge the Shard, you give it a bridge. You're inviting it to cross over."
"I can't just ignore it!" I snapped, my frustration finally bubbling over the numbness. "It's inside me! It's eating my memories! I can't remember my mother's name, Haneul. It's just... a blank space. Like someone took a knife and cut a hole in my brain."
Haneul looked at me then. Truly looked at me.
There was no sympathy in her eyes. Only a grim, weary recognition.
"That is the price," she said.
She reached into her coat and pulled out a small, silver locket. She didn't open it. She just held it, her knuckles white.
"My sister's face," she whispered. "I know I have a sister. I know I love her. But when I close my eyes, I can't see her features. I can't remember the sound of her laugh. My Shard ate those three years ago."
She shoved the locket back into her pocket.
"You lost a name tonight. Tomorrow, you might lose the ability to feel hunger. Next week, you might forget how to cry. That is what it means to be a Vessel. We are being hollowed out so that a god can have a place to sit."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the rain.
We were nothing but empty cups.
And the liquid being poured into us was poison.
"Why didn't you kill me?" I asked.
She turned back toward the shadows, resuming her pace.
"Because an 'Insight' class Shard hasn't appeared in ten years. The last one belonged to the man who tore this world apart during the Fracture. If you have it, you're either the key to fixing this mess, or the fuse that's going to blow us all to hell."
She stopped in front of a heavy, unmarked steel door set into the side of a decaying warehouse.
She knocked—a specific, rhythmic pattern.
The door creaked open, revealing a sliver of warm, amber light.
"Inside. Now."
I stepped into the room. It was a stark contrast to the industrial decay outside. It was a workshop, filled with glowing monitors, strange brass instruments, and the smell of ozone and old books.
A woman stood behind a central table, her hands deep inside the chassis of a drone. She had short, dyed-blonde hair and a pair of goggles perched on her forehead.
Lina Park.
She didn't look up as we entered.
"You're late, Haneul. And you brought a stray."
"He's not a stray," Haneul said, closing the door and engaging three separate locks. "He's the asset from the Sector 4 transport."
Lina stopped. Her hands froze inside the drone.
She slowly looked up, her eyes widening as she saw me.
"He's still alive?" she whispered. "The report said the containment breach was total. He should have been vaporized."
"He didn't vaporize," Haneul said, leaning against the door. "He merged. Spontaneously. Without a neural bridge."
Lina walked around the table, her eyes scanning me with a terrifying intensity. She reached out, her fingers hovering just inches from my chest.
"I can feel it," she breathed. "The air around him is... heavy. It's like a localized gravity well."
I shifted uncomfortably. "I'm right here. I'm a person, not a science project."
Lina smiled, but it was a cold, clinical thing.
"Are you? Let's find out."
She grabbed a handheld scanner and pointed it at my chest.
The device immediately began to scream. A high-pitched, distorted wail that made my teeth ache.
"Impossible," Lina muttered, staring at the screen. "His resonance frequency is off the charts. It's not just sitting in his nervous system... it's rewriting his DNA. The Shard isn't just hosting. It's *rebuilding*."
*Yes...*
The voice in my head hummed. It sounded pleased.
*Better... stronger... more room...*
"Make it stop," I groaned, clutching my head. The pressure was building again. The violet light was leaking from the corners of my eyes, casting long, jagged shadows against the walls.
"He's going into resonance!" Haneul shouted, drawing her blade. "Lina, get the dampeners!"
"I can't!" Lina yelled back, frantically typing on a terminal. "The energy output is too high! If I trigger the dampeners now, the backlash will level this entire block!"
I felt my feet leave the floor.
I wasn't floating. It was as if the ground had simply lost its grip on me.
The room began to distort. The edges of the tables blurred. The monitors flickered, showing images that weren't there—faces I didn't recognize, cities made of glass and fire, a sky that was a swirling vortex of violet and gold.
*Look...* the Shard whispered.
*See what was... and what will be again...*
I saw a man.
He was standing in the middle of a great white void. He held a sphere of pure, blinding light in his hands.
"It's too much," the man said. His voice was like thunder. "They can't hold it. The vessels are too small."
Then, the sphere cracked.
The sound was the end of the world.
I saw the light shatter into a million pieces, each one a jagged shard of a broken consciousness. I saw them falling, screaming through the atmosphere, landing in the hearts and minds of terrified people.
I saw the first Vessel.
He didn't turn into a hero.
He turned into a monster of black glass and screaming shadows.
"Akira! Fight it!"
Haneul's voice was a distant echo.
I felt a sharp, stinging pain in my arm.
The vision shattered.
I slammed back onto the concrete floor. The violet light receded, leaving my vision swimming with dark spots.
Haneul was standing over me, a specialized syringe in her hand. Her face was pale.
"That was a close one," Lina said, her voice shaking. She was leaning against the table, staring at a monitor that was now nothing but static. "He almost tore the veil. In a basement. Without even trying."
I coughed, the taste of copper filling my mouth.
"What... what was that?" I asked, my voice hoarse.
"A memory," Haneul said, her eyes dark. "But not yours. It was the Shard's memory of the Fracture."
She knelt down beside me, her hand gripping my shoulder. It was the first time she had touched me. Her skin was freezing.
"You need to listen to me, Akira. Very carefully."
I looked at her, the violet crack in my eye pulsing faintly.
"The Archive isn't the only one looking for you," she said. "The Church has a special unit. They call them the 'Inquisitors of the First Light'. They don't just kill Vessels. They 'purify' them."
"By killing them?" I asked.
"By burning the Shard out of them while they're still conscious," she corrected. "And they just arrived in Sector 4."
As if on cue, the heavy steel door of the warehouse shuddered.
A golden light began to leak through the cracks in the door.
It wasn't a warm, welcoming light.
It was a harsh, blinding radiance that smelled of burning incense and scorched flesh.
"Open in the name of the Whole God," a voice boomed from the other side. It was calm. Terrifyingly calm. "Deliver the stolen Shard, and your deaths will be merciful."
Haneul stood up, her blade glowing with a dull, black energy.
"Lina, the back way. Now."
"It's blocked!" Lina shouted, pointing to a monitor. "They've surrounded the building with a Sanctified Barrier. We're trapped."
The steel door began to glow cherry-red. The metal was melting, not from heat, but from the sheer weight of the 'holiness' pressing against it.
I stood up, my legs feeling strangely steady.
The hollowness in my chest was replaced by a cold, predatory hunger.
*Feed...* the Shard whispered.
*The gold... tastes... like lies...*
"Akira, stay back," Haneul warned, her stance shifting into a combat crawl. "You don't know how to control it yet."
"I don't have to control it," I said.
My voice didn't sound like mine anymore. It was layered, as if a thousand people were speaking through my throat at once.
I walked toward the melting door.
"Akira! Stop!"
The door exploded.
Not inward, but outward.
A wave of golden energy flooded the room, blinding me.
Through the radiance, a figure stepped forward. He was tall, dressed in white silk robes that remained untouched by the grime of the sector. His eyes were pure gold—no pupils, no irises. Just two burning suns.
An Inquisitor.
He looked at me, and a small, beatific smile touched his lips.
"There you are," he said, raising a hand encrusted with golden rings. "The little thief with the God-Heart."
He pointed a finger at me.
"Kneel."
A weight like a falling mountain slammed into my shoulders.
The floor beneath my feet cracked. My knees buckled, the concrete shattering under the pressure.
"You are a sin, boy," the Inquisitor said, walking toward me with measured steps. "A vessel for a broken thing. Allow me to mend you."
He reached out his hand, his fingers glowing with a searing white flame.
I looked up at him, the violet crack in my eye widening until it consumed the brown.
I didn't feel fear.
I felt... insulted.
*Eat...*
The word wasn't a whisper anymore. It was a command.
I reached out and grabbed the Inquisitor's wrist.
The white flame didn't burn me.
Instead, the violet light from my skin began to bleed into his golden sleeve.
The Inquisitor's smile vanished.
His golden eyes widened as the violet light began to climb up his arm, turning his white robes into ash.
"What... what is this?" he stammered, his voice losing its divine calm. "This isn't a Shard... this is..."
He didn't finish his sentence.
The darkness erupted from my chest again, but this time, it wasn't a sphere.
It was a set of jagged, ethereal jaws.
They closed around the Inquisitor's arm.
And then, I did something I would regret for the rest of my life.
I pulled.
The scream that left the Inquisitor's throat wasn't human. It was the sound of a star dying.
The golden light in the room was swallowed by the violet void.
When the light returned, the Inquisitor was on the floor, clutching the bloody stump where his arm used to be. But it wasn't just his arm that was gone.
The golden light in his eyes was flickering. Fading.
I stood over him, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
I felt... full.
For the first time since I broke the cylinder, I could feel a pulse.
One.
Slow.
Heavy.
Thump.
But it wasn't coming from my chest.
It was coming from the Shard.
I looked at Haneul and Lina. They were staring at me with expressions of pure horror.
"Akira," Haneul whispered, her blade trembling in her hand. "Your face..."
I reached up and touched my cheek.
My skin felt cold. Hard.
Like glass.
"What's happening?" I asked, my voice sounding like a choir of the damned.
Haneul didn't answer. She only looked at the door.
Outside, a hundred more golden lights were appearing in the rain.
The Church hadn't just sent an Inquisitor.
They had sent an army.
And the voice in my head—the Shard that had just tasted 'holy' blood—laughed.
*More...* it whispered.
*Bring me... the rest of them.*
I looked at my hands, now stained with the Inquisitor's golden blood, and realized a terrifying truth.
I wasn't the one being saved.
I was the one being used to hunt.
But as the first golden spear pierced the warehouse wall, I felt something else.
A memory.
A name.
Not my mother's.
But the name of the man I had seen in the vision. The man who broke the God.
*Elias.*
I looked at the Inquisitors storming the building.
"Run," I told Haneul and Lina.
"What about you?" Lina cried out.
I turned toward the golden tide, the violet void expanding behind me like a pair of broken wings.
"I'm going to see how much of a god I can swallow."