The masked man's grip tightened.
Fingers like iron bands dug into Urana's throat, cutting off the thin stream of air that still fed his battered lungs. His vision swam. The stars above fractured into shards of light.
Yet beneath the suffocating pressure, beneath the spreading warmth of blood beneath his skull, something stirred.
Urana did not know where the strength came from.
But he felt it.
Not power.
Not yet.
Just awareness.
His blood was flowing.
His heart was still beating.
And as long as it beat, he could fight.
Instinctively, he reached inward not to muscle or bone, but deeper. Past flesh. Past nerves. Into the invisible center that had once defined him.
His dantian.
In his former world, chakra had been the foundation of existence.
Chakra was not merely energy. It was will given form. It was life distilled into a current that flowed through veins and meridians, gathering in the dantian — the spiritual core nestled within the pit of the stomach. With it, cultivators transcended human limits. They hardened flesh like steel. They leapt across mountains. They split the heavens.
Urana had once wielded oceans of it.
Now—
He found nothing.
The space where his dantian should have pulsed like a miniature sun was hollow.
Cold.
Dead.
He reached deeper, ignoring the burning in his lungs.
The masked man leaned closer, tightening his grip further, savoring the kill. Through the narrow slits of the mask, Urana saw delight in those eyes and the unmistakeable thrill of a predator.
It was a look he knew well.
He had worn it himself.
His consciousness probed the empty spiritual void within his abdomen.
But there was nothing.
Questions started to grow in his mind...
Had this body never cultivated?
Had it lived and died without ever awakening the universal force?
The man's thumb shifted against his windpipe.
He could hear his artilage creaking.
Urana's time ran thin.
There was no chakra to draw from his surrounding.
No spear to summon.
No divine will to fracture reality.
Only this broken body.
FINE!
Then he would kill with that.
Summoning every scrap of stubborn will that had once defied the gods, Urana forced his right arm upward.
The motion was sluggish. Pain tore through his muscles like rusted blades.
His vision sharpened.
He locked eyes with his killer.
There it was again — that satisfaction.
That certainty.
Urana bared his teeth.
With a hoarse, wordless snarl, he lunged forward.
The masked man had not expected resistance from a dying body. His grip faltered for a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
Urana's hands shot up and seized the man's head.
His thumbs drove forward.
There was a wet, sickening pop.
Like overripe fruit bursting under pressure.
Warm fluid splashed across his fingers as his thumbs sank deep into soft tissue. He felt the resistance of orbital bone, then the sudden give as he forced past it.
The masked man's scream tore through the night.
He staggered back, releasing Urana instantly, and then clawing at his own face. Blood poured from the ruined sockets in thick, pulsing streams. He howled not like a soldier, not like a professional killer but like an animal caught in a trap.
Urana collapsed onto the pavement.
Air rushed into his lungs in ragged, painful gulps. His throat felt crushed. Every breath was agony.
He lay there, staring at the man writhing a few meters away.
"Damn you!" the masked man roared, stumbling blindly. "I'll kill you! I'll—"
His words dissolved into choking screams.
He tried to orient himself, turning toward the faint sound of Urana's breathing. He stumbled forward once, twice but his blood loss was catastrophic. His movements slowed. His curses weakened.
Even so, he refused to surrender quietly.
He lunged blindly in Urana's direction, arms outstretched.
But Urana did not move.
He could not.
His limbs felt detached from his will. His nerves were fading into numbness. His heartbeat stuttered erratically.
The masked man took one final step.
Then his knees buckled.
He collapsed face-first onto the pavement with a heavy, final thud.
Silence returned.
Urana lay there, staring at the corpse.
Two hollow sockets stared back at him, dark pits leaking red fluid.
He felt no triumph.
Only serenity.
His heart was slowing.
His vision dimmed at the edges.
This body would not survive long.
If he possessed even a fraction of the chakra he once commanded, he could stabilize himself. Force his heart to beat. Reinforce torn vessels. Seal damaged tissue.
But this body had never cultivated.
And cultivation was not simple.
In his world, three paths existed.
The first was passive awakening which was waiting for the body to harmonize naturally with the world's force. It was rare. Unreliable.
The second was rigorous training through meditation, breathing techniques, breaking the body and rebuilding it until it learned to draw chakra on its own.
The third—
Was forbidden.
To siphon chakra from the dead.
To rip the lingering spiritual flame from a recently deceased body and force it into one's own.
It was crude.
Violent.
Corrupting.
Cults practiced it in secrecy. Many who attempted it without preparation tore their own meridians apart or descended into madness.
Urana had never needed such methods.
Until now.
His heartbeat skipped a beat and he knew there was no time left for purity.
He closed his eyes.
Ignoring the cold pavement beneath him, he turned his awareness inward once more.
This time, he visualized.
Veins.
Muscles.
Nerves.
He mapped his body as an intricate network of threads, a complex weave of interlocking channels. In his prime, those channels would have glowed with brilliant light.
Now they were gray.
Dry.
Cracked riverbeds awaiting rain.
At the center, his dantian appeared as a hollow void, a black sphere of absence.
Then he extended his perception outward.
Toward the corpse.
In his mind's eye, the dead man's body flared faintly. Though life had fled, residual chakra lingered as a dying ember.
He saw it clearly.
A flickering white flame nestled within the man's abdomen.
Weak.
But present.
Urana did not reach for it gently.
He reached with hunger.
He imagined his empty dantian opening like a starving maw.
The first thread of energy responded instantly.
A thin stream of pale light peeled away from the corpse and drifted toward him.
When it touched his body, pain exploded through his meridians.
They rejected it.
This body was untrained. Unprepared. The channels constricted instinctively, as though trying to repel poison.
Urana gritted his teeth.
"Accept it," he commanded silently.
More chakra tore free from the corpse.
The white flame flickered violently.
His own channels burned as foreign energy forced its way through narrow spiritual pathways. It felt as though molten metal was being poured into fragile glass tubes.
Cracks spread.
His vision flared white.
But he did not release it.
He dragged the energy inward, thread by thread, overwhelming the body's resistance through sheer will.
The corpse's spiritual flame dimmed.
Then guttered.
Then vanished.
The masked man's remaining warmth faded completely.
Urana's dantian trembled.
At first, the stolen chakra swirled chaotically, unstable and hostile. It clashed against the emptiness, threatening to dissipate.
He compressed it.
Forced it downward.
Condensed it into a single, trembling spark.
A faint pulse answered him.
His heart beat stronger.
Once.
Twice.
Blood began flowing with greater force through his veins.
The numbness in his fingers receded slightly.
It was crude.
Impure.
Barely enough to keep him alive.
But it was enough.
The hunger lingered.
A dark, insatiable craving awakened within him, not just for survival, but for more.
More chakra.
More strength.
More power.
For the briefest moment, he recognized the danger.
This path led to something twisted.
Something monstrous.
He almost laughed.
Had he ever walked a pure road?
Exhaustion claimed him at last.
The stolen chakra stabilized into a fragile ember within his once-dead core.
His breathing evened.
His pulse steadied.
As darkness pulled him into unconsciousness, one thought drifted through his fading awareness.
This world does not know what it has allowed to survive.
And when he wakes—
It will learn.