Leo walked into the valley of silver leaves and glowing fungi. It was the most beautiful place he had seen since awakening in this world. For a moment, a feeling akin to peace settled over him. It was quiet.
But this was not the respectful silence of the forest fearing a predator. This was the silence of a graveyard.
He took a few steps, and the vibrant silver light of the leaves on the nearest tree began to dim, fading to a dull gray. The glowing fungi at his feet winked out, one by one, like snuffed candles. He didn't notice, his attention captured by a shimmering, crystalline stream ahead.
As he approached the stream, the water itself seemed to grow thick and sluggish. The small, luminous fish that darted in its depths slowed, their lights flickering erratically, before they floated belly-up to the surface, their life force gently extracted by the invisible field of hunger that surrounded him.
He was a walking blight. The consolidated, refined power of the hive—a billion lives condensed into a single, dense aura—was passively leaching the life from everything in a wide radius. It wasn't malicious. It was simply a law of physics, as inevitable as gravity. To be near Leo was to have one's existence siphoned away.
[Sage,] he thought, a flicker of confusion breaking through his placid demeanor. [Why is everything… dying?]
There was a micro-second of hesitation from [Sage], a frantic, hidden calculation. It was monitoring the energy flow. Leo was indeed "eating" the aura, but it was an unconscious, autonomic process, like breathing. The energy he gained was a minuscule fraction of his whole, but for the lesser beings around him, it was everything.
[Your accumulated energy signature has reached a critical density,] [Sage] explained, its tone carefully neutral. [It creates a passive field of energy absorption. Organisms below a certain threshold cannot maintain cohesion in your presence.]
[Can I stop it?] Leo asked, looking at the dead fish with a strange, hollow feeling. He didn't want this.
[Negative. The emission is a fundamental byproduct of your current state. Suppressing it would require a conscious and constant energy expenditure greater than the field itself generates. It is thermodynamically unfeasible.]
The truth was more complex. [Sage] could likely design a containment protocol, but doing so would require revealing its capabilities as a fundamental reality-shaping compiler, not just a guide. The risk of that revelation was currently deemed greater than the cost of a few valleys of wildlife.
Leo stood by the now-dead stream, the beautiful valley withering around him. The sadness he felt was formless, disconnected. He saw the effect, but the cause was a blur. He knew he was powerful, but the why and the what were lost to him.
He tried to grasp the memories. The bear… what bear? There was a vague impression of something large and furry. And smaller, quicker things… wolves? Jackals? He wasn't sure. Their faces, their names, the specifics of their power—all gone, digested into the anonymous mass of his being.
He looked at the staff in his hand, the obsidian rod cool and familiar. Why did he have it? It felt important. It felt… like a bone. A big bone. From something… long? A hazy image of a massive, coiled skeleton flickered and vanished. He remembered a feeling of age, of sadness, but the source was a blank.
He had consumed a Titan and forgotten its face. He had erased a hive and could no longer recall the color of the Queen's chitin. He was a living monument built from forgotten graves.
A deep, resonant ROAR echoed from the far end of the valley, filled not with challenge, but with a desperate, territorial fury. A massive, six-legged frost salamander, a creature that ruled this region, burst from a cave. Its hide was covered in crystalline ice, and its breath froze the air. It was a majestic, powerful beast, a true apex predator.
It took one look at Leo, at the circle of death spreading around him, and charged. It wasn't attacking for food or sport. It was attacking to save its home from this creeping, invisible death.
The salamander got within fifty feet of Leo.
Its charge faltered. The icy crystals on its back sublimated directly into mist. Its mighty roar became a choked gurgle as the very magic that sustained its frost breath was ripped from its lungs. It stumbled another ten feet, its life force pouring out of it like water from a cracked jug, and collapsed, its body desiccating and crumbling to dust before it even reached Leo.
He watched it die, a pang of that now-familiar hollow sadness hitting him. This powerful, beautiful creature was just… gone. Because he was here.
[The local ecosystem is undergoing catastrophic collapse,] [Sage] reported. [Recommend relocation to prevent further unnecessary energy transfer.]
Unnecessary. The word was so clinical. It wasn't unnecessary to the salamander. It wasn't unnecessary to the silver trees or the glowing fish.
With a heavy heart he couldn't fully understand, Leo turned and walked back the way he came. He was a plague, a natural disaster in a humanoid shape. He sought peace, but his very presence was a declaration of war on life itself. And the worst part was, he would soon forget the details of this valley, too. The dead fish, the crumbling salamander, they would just become more anonymous fuel for the aura that killed them, their stories erased as completely as their lives.