Ren Ashmore has one thing the Sentinel Academy never wanted — his last name.

Son of Aldric Ashmore, the only S+ ranked Sentinel in all of Eryndal and the most powerful man alive, Ren should have been born with everything. Instead, he was born without the one thing that matters — the ability to use magic. His ring never connected. His rank was never recorded. In a world measured from S+ to F, Riven doesn't even reach F.

Unranked. Powerless. A disgrace to the Ashmore name.

He remains in the academy on borrowed time, tolerated only because of his father's name — and ignored by that same father entirely. His professors resent his presence. His classmates don't bother learning his name. And the director has quietly made a decision: Ren Ashmore needs to go.

When his professor arranges a surprise exam inside a gray rift — the simplest, safest kind there is — it isn't an opportunity. It's an execution. A chance to fail publicly and get expelled without anyone asking questions.

But nothing inside that rift goes as planned.

Trapped within an ancient ritual alongside something old and endlessly hungry, Ren watches his entire group die one by one. And when nothing is left — no allies, no magic, no way out — something finds him in the dark and offers a deal.

"Survive. Feed me. Or become the meal yourself."

Now Ren carries a mark burned into his skin that pulses with every heartbeat, a system that demands blood quotas he can barely meet, and a secret that would destroy what little he has left if anyone ever found out.

He can't use magic. He has no allies. His own family has already written him off.

But he's still breathing.

And he'll make sure every person who ever looked through him lives to regret it.

Not his fingers. Not his hands. *His nails* — as if something had decided to concentrate every last bit of the pain right there, in that thin edge between skin and nothing.


He stumbled to the bathroom and turned the tap all the way up.


Plunged both hands under the ice-cold water up to his wrists.


"Stop." He pushed them in deeper. "Stop it."


It didn't stop. The water ran and ran and the pain stayed exactly the same — indifferent to the cold, indifferent to everything, as if it wasn't coming from outside but from within. From something living under his skin that the water was never going to reach.


Then a floating message appeared in front of him.


Red background. Threatening. He had seen it before.


[You have failed to meet the blood quota...]


[ACTIVATING AUTOMATIC CONSUMPTION PROTOCOL.]


The scream bounced off the tiles and came back twice as loud. He collapsed against the sink, both hands pressed to his chest without thinking — and that made it worse, so much worse, and he screamed again before he could stop himself.


When he pulled his hands away the blood was already running down his fingers. Dripping into the white porcelain in a rhythm that was almost calm.


"My nails—" The words barely made it out. "Where are my—"


Something warm sliding down from his feet. His toenails had torn away too, staining the floor red.


He collapsed onto the floor with his back against the wall, breathing too fast for it to do any good, staring at the scene and unable to look away.


The window kept floating in front of him. Still. Unhurried.


Chapter 1 - Chapter 0 — Prologue