Corvus coughed violently, clutching his bruised ribs as he dragged himself up to a sitting position against the damp brick wall of the alley. He squinted through his swollen left eye at the terrifying, shadow-draped figure standing before him. In all his years as a Vanguard scout, he had seen horrors that would break a normal man's mind, but the entity standing in front of him felt fundamentally different. It didn't radiate the aggressive, burning heat of high-tier Mana. It radiated a cold, absolute void.
"If you're here to collect the boss's debt," Corvus wheezed, wiping blood from his chin, "you're late to the party. And you're severely overqualified."
"I have no interest in the petty debts of street thugs," Same replied, his deep, resonant voice echoing unnaturally in the confined space. He kept his optical shroud firmly in place, presenting the illusion of a towering, faceless master. "I am here for you, Corvus."
Corvus let out a bitter, barking laugh that quickly devolved into another coughing fit. "Me? Look at me, shadow-man. I'm a crippled drunk. My meridians are shattered glass. I couldn't channel enough Qi to light a cigarette, let alone fight."
"Your Vanguard masters threw you away because their crude understanding of energy told them you were broken," Same said, taking a slow step forward. "They view meridians as unchangeable pipes. When they crack, the water leaks, and the vessel is deemed useless."
Same crouched down, bringing his shadowed face level with the battered scout. The faint, starlight crown glowing in his dark eyes seemed to pierce right through Corvus's soul.
"I do not use water," Same whispered. "And I do not care about your pipes. I can rebuild you, Corvus. I can give you a power that will make the Vanguard generals look like children playing with sparklers. In return, your life, your skills, and your absolute, unquestioning loyalty belong to me."
Corvus stared at the entity. It sounded like the desperate ravings of an undercity cultist, but the crushing, suffocating pressure radiating from the figure said otherwise. He was a dead man walking anyway, surviving on cheap whiskey and spite. What did he have to lose?
"If you can actually fix my core," Corvus rasped, his good eye narrowing, "my life is yours. Point me at your enemies, and I'll tear their throats out."
"We will not be tearing throats like animals," Same corrected smoothly. "We will be playing a much larger game. Brace yourself. This is going to hurt significantly more than their kicks did."
Before Corvus could react, Same reached out and pressed two small, childish fingers—hidden beneath the illusion of a large, gloved hand—directly against the center of Corvus's chest.
Same didn't channel diluted Mana. He tapped into the pure, unadulterated Origin Qi resting near his own heart. He extracted a single, microscopic drop of the golden energy and injected it directly into Corvus's shattered meridian network.
Corvus's eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror.
It was as if a miniature sun had just detonated inside his ribcage. He tried to scream, but the air was instantly burned from his lungs. The Origin Qi was violent, chaotic, and utterly merciless. It didn't gently repair the cracked pathways of his body; it completely incinerated them, burning away the necrotic tissue left by the Higher Realm beast five years ago.
Corvus convulsed, his back arching off the pavement, his veins bulging and glowing with a faint, terrifying golden light beneath his skin.
Just as the man's heart was about to give out from the agonizing strain, Same's perfect comprehension took over. He used his mental dominance to command the Origin Qi to shift from destruction to creation. The energy cooled, rapidly forming new, wider, and infinitely more resilient meridians in place of the old ones. The brutal process of forced evolution that Same had practiced on himself was now being applied to his new subordinate.
The entire process took less than thirty seconds.
Same withdrew his hand and stood up.
Corvus collapsed onto the wet pavement, panting heavily. The bruises on his face were already fading. The agonizing ache in his chest—a constant companion for five years—was completely gone. He slowly lifted his hands, staring at them in disbelief.
He didn't just feel healed. He felt like he had been reborn into a different species. He closed his eyes and instinctively reached for his internal core. Instead of the sluggish, painful trickle of Mana he was used to, he felt a roaring, pristine river of energy waiting to be unleashed. He was easily twice as strong as he was in his prime as a Vanguard elite.
Slowly, Corvus pushed himself off the ground. He didn't stumble. He stood tall, his posture straight, the fire of a predator returning to his eyes. He looked at the shadowed figure before him and, without a word of hesitation, dropped to one knee, bowing his head deeply.
"My life is yours, Master," Corvus said, his voice stripped of its previous despair, replaced by a cold, hardened resolve. "What are your orders?"
"First," Same said, "you will clean yourself up. Second, you will take the capital I am about to provide and establish a front company in Sector 7—a logistics firm specializing in the transport of low-grade Mana-tech."
Same reached into his pocket and tossed a heavy, encrypted cred-stick onto the ground in front of the kneeling man. It contained fifty thousand credits he had effortlessly siphoned from the Vanguard's untraceable black-budget accounts earlier that day in the archives.
"Third," Same continued, his voice devoid of emotion, "you will begin quietly recruiting. I want informants, smugglers, and outcasts. I want eyes in the Vanguard command, and I want ears in the black market. We operate entirely in the shadows. If you are caught, you do not know me. Do you understand?"
"Crystal clear, Master. What is our organization called?"
Same turned away, the light-bending shroud rippling around him as he prepared to merge back into the night. He thought of the cosmic entities treating humanity as a mere statistic in their grand game. He thought of the Giant Eye watching him from the cosmos.
"We are the Eclipse," Same answered quietly. "And we are going to swallow the light."
With a silent rush of displaced air, the shadowed figure vanished, leaving the reborn scout kneeling alone in the alley, clutching the cred-stick that would fund the downfall of the 49th race's status quo.