The stone was cold.
Kaine Ashford lay on the sacrificial altar with iron chains locked around his wrists and ankles, the other ends embedded deep in the platform. Metal bit into skin. He didn't struggle.
Twelve black-robed priests stood around the altar, bone staves raised, chanting in low voices. The air reeked of sweet rot—incense meant to wake evil gods, rendered from corpse fat.
"Begin."
His father spoke. Bernard Ashford, current head of House Ashford, stood ten meters away on the lower steps, his face empty of expression. Behind him stood the family elders, knights, and servants, all dressed in formal attire.
Kaine turned his head to look at those familiar faces.
His brother Edwin leaned against a stone pillar, wine cup in hand, contempt curling his mouth. His sister Claire kept her head down. Old William the steward clutched his ledger with vacant eyes.
No one spoke. No one questioned.
"Kaine Ashford." Bernard's voice echoed through the empty chamber. "You are a bastard son with no inheritance rights and no talent. The family owes a debt to the temple of the Rot God—a debt requiring a sacrifice of pure bloodline. You are the optimal choice. You won't affect the succession, and no one will speak for you."
Kaine didn't answer.
Three days ago, the steward had summoned him to the study and informed him of the decision. Kaine had asked: "What if I refuse?"
Old William had been silent for three seconds. "Then you'll die more painfully."
So Kaine had agreed.
Not out of acceptance. He needed time. Those three days, he'd memorized every secret passage in the family castle, carved every face involved in this decision into his memory. He'd even snuck into the archives and found a copy of the contract between the family and the temple.
If he survived, these people would pay.
"Begin the ritual."
The head priest raised his staff and struck the ground. A dull reverberation spread through the altar as the air began to twist. Invisible pressure squeezed from all directions, as if something was tearing through space, trying to force its way into this world.
Below the altar, the family members stepped back. Edwin set his wine cup on a stone ledge as the smile vanished from his face, replaced by excited anticipation. Claire closed her eyes.
Kaine stared at the stone dome overhead.
Cracks spread from the center outward like a spiderweb—seventeen major fractures, each branching into finer tributaries. The distribution was too regular, each one pointing precisely toward a specific position on the altar.
This was part of the formation.
Kaine didn't understand magic, but he understood logic. If these cracks were structural elements of the formation, then some kind of rule must maintain its operation. If rules existed, there had to be exploits. He just needed to find one.
The priests' chanting grew louder. Something invisible gripped Kaine's chest. His heartbeat slowed, became heavy. Vision blurred. A low hum filled his ears.
"Offer flesh for protection."
The head priest's voice turned shrill as green flame ignited at the tip of his staff, crackling and hissing.
Kaine's skin began to burn.
Fine black lines appeared on his skin's surface, like parasites crawling beneath, spreading upward from his wrists, past his elbows, advancing toward his heart.
Not surface pain. This was a burning sensation seeping from the marrow. Kaine clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to make a sound.
The altar began to shake.
Rumbling came from beneath the stone platform as the ground split open. Sickly green light poured from the fissure, illuminating the entire altar.
The family members retreated again.
Finally, an expression crossed Bernard's face—satisfied relief. He turned to speak to an elder, who nodded.
Kaine filed this away.
His consciousness was fading, black shadows appearing at the edges of his vision. He could feel his life force draining, pulled by some invisible force, flowing through those black lines toward an unknown abyss.
But before his consciousness vanished completely, he saw something he shouldn't have seen.
The cracks in the stone dome began to glow—not the sickly green of evil light, but transparent, almost invisible. The glow outlined the cracks, making them look less like ordinary stone fractures.
Lines.
Precise, interwoven lines arranged according to some rule.
Kaine stared at those lines as his mind accelerated. That wasn't magic—at least not magic as he understood it. It was more like some kind of underlying structure.
The rules themselves.
The head priest raised his staff high and released a final shriek: "Rot God, accept your offering!"
The green light surged.
The head priest's brow furrowed as he stared at the altar's center, confusion flashing in his eyes.
The flow of light... wasn't quite right.
Kaine's consciousness plunged into darkness.
Pain.
Like hooks piercing his soul, pulling piece by piece. Kaine tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were heavy as lead. His body no longer obeyed.
The black lines kept spreading over his shoulders, down along his collarbones, burrowing into his chest cavity. Wherever they passed, sensation vanished, replaced by hollow numbness.
The priests continued chanting, but their voices grew distant and muffled.
The air trembled. Not just the air—the entire space shook, as if some massive thing was trying to squeeze through too small a gap. The pressure increased, not physical pressure, but existential oppression.
That was god.
Kaine didn't know why he was certain, but he was. That oppressive presence completely exceeded human comprehension.
His consciousness began to collapse.
Not fading slowly—shattering like glass. Memories, thoughts, perceptions—everything that made up "Kaine Ashford" was disintegrating.
The world warped.
Kaine forced his eyes open and what he saw made him wonder if he'd already gone mad. The head priest's body stretched upward, as if pulled by invisible force, arms becoming irregular curves, his staff twisting into a spiral in his hands.
The other priests were the same—outlines blurred like smudged oil paintings. Some areas too dark, dark as void. Some areas too bright, blindingly so.
He was disappearing.
Not death—death at least left a corpse. This was existence itself being erased.
He saw the green light surge up from beneath the altar, covering the platform, the chains, his body. Kaine felt himself submerged, dragged into a bottomless abyss.
Something waited in the abyss.
He couldn't see what it was, only sense a massive, rotting, nauseating presence. It writhed. It breathed. It waited.
Kaine was its meal.
Consciousness fading. Vision shrinking to a pinpoint, everything around him falling into darkness. His heartbeat slowed, weakened.
Three beats.
Two.
One.
Then—
The presence in the abyss hesitated.
Like some massive predator suddenly sensing something wrong with its prey. That devouring force paused for a fraction of a second, then surged up even more violently.
Not hunger. Greed.
Not a controlled ritual, but an out-of-control plunder.
The world stopped.
No—not stopped. Misaligned, like time suddenly jammed, like a video paused on a single frame. All sound vanished. All motion froze. The entire world became a static image.
He could still think.
This was wrong. By all rights he should already be dead, or at least unconscious, but his mind still operated, abnormally clear.
He looked down at his body.
The black lines remained, but they no longer moved, all frozen at precise positions, forming a complex pattern. Kaine stared at the pattern.
Those lines weren't randomly distributed. They followed specific rules, each line connecting to a particular point. If you connected those points, they formed a network—one designed to transmit life force.
Kaine raised his head.
The cracks in the stone dome still glowed, not just glowing but resonating with the lines. Each crack corresponded to a line, each node connected to a point. The entire altar was like a precision machine, and he was a component in the gears.
He saw more.
The sickly green light didn't flow randomly but moved along fixed pathways, rising from the altar's base, passing through specific nodes, ultimately converging on his body. Those pathways had patterns.
Kaine's mind raced.
If the light was energy, the pathways were conduits, the nodes were switches—then this entire system was an energy transmission network.
And networks had vulnerabilities.
Every system had exploits. This was Kaine's most basic understanding as a programmer. He studied the flow paths of light, searching for inconsistencies.
Found it.
One node's light was dimmer than the others, not because it had less energy, but because the node itself was flawed. Its position was wrong—offset from where it should be by about three centimeters.
Three centimeters. In the massive formation, this deviation was negligible, but in a precision system, three centimeters could create critical errors.
Kaine's consciousness locked onto that node.
The world resumed.
Sound returned. Motion returned. Everything returned to normal temporal flow while consciousness began fading again, his body collapsing again.
But this time was different.
He had seen the rules.
He knew where to strike.