Blue burned my eyes until the world became a single, endless color.
I didn't flinch. I didn't curl up like it could change anything. I stepped through it—blind—until my feet met solid stone, and the jolt of contact told me I'd arrived.
The blue haze thinned in layers, like my vision was finally syncing with the place I'd stepped into. I blinked—once, twice—until shapes sharpened. Under me was a circle carved into what looked like stone, packed with what looked like ancient runes that glowed faintly. I stood perfectly in the center without meaning to, like I'd been placed there.
I tilted my head down and stared at the runes. They were ancient—worn at the edges, chipped and scarred like time had tried to erase them and failed.
When I looked up, I froze.
Floating in the air around me at chest height were translucent boxes of information, the same sterile style the System used when it showed my stats. Only these weren't numbers.
These were names.
I narrowed my focus out of habit—predator instinct more than choice—and the nearest box snapped into clarity.
Each one had saved me. Each one had made me pay for it.
Claw Slash.
Blood Frenzy.
Mimic Copy.
Sovereign's Sight.
Shadow Step.
Solar Thread.
Pulse Tremor.
Burrow Lunge.
They hung around me like baited hooks, each one with its own description and its own side effect section, the negatives sitting there like a bill that always came due.
I turned slowly, taking them in, and the strangest part was how still they were—calmly floating like this place had been made for them.
Why are they hovering around me?
Wings fluttered behind me—just once.
My body snapped around on instinct, balance catching a fraction late, ready for something that wanted my throat.
Then I saw it.
The System.
And the tension bled out of me as fast as it had arrived.
For a second I thought, How did it get in here? Then my memory clicked into place.
Right. This was its home.
I turned back to the floating abilities, and my stomach did something unpleasant when I noticed what hadn't been there a moment ago.
Two button-like options had appeared beneath every ability.
Except for Mimic Copy and Sovereign's Sight.
Those two sat there without options, untouchable.
Under the rest, in the System's clean, indifferent font:
[Keep]
[Discard]
Is this what the System meant by deciding?
"Yes." The System's voice came as a simple reply, like it had been waiting for the question. It drifted toward me slowly, not rushed.
I exhaled, slow, and felt my shoulders drop. "I forgot you can hear my thoughts."
It floated closer until it was just off my shoulder, then angled its gaze back to the boxes. My attention snapped to them too, because avoiding them felt impossible.
"You have to choose," it said calmly.
It drifted to the Claw Slash box and perched on it as if it were a ledge, hovering directly over the floating pane.
I stared at it perched there like this was normal. "Can I only choose one?"
"You can choose three." It glanced down at the box it sat on, like it was considering the text itself. "The rest will be discarded and lost forever."
I went very still, but not from fear—more from the sheer unfairness of it. I should feel grateful for a choice at all. But I didn't. I felt cornered.
I looked at the list again. Eight abilities. Three keeps. Five… no, wait—
Mimic Copy and Sovereign's Sight didn't have buttons. They weren't part of the choice.
My gaze flicked back between the ones with buttons. There were six with choices.
So I have to keep three and discard three.
That sounded simple until I remembered what "discard" meant.
"So that means I'll never be able to copy them again." The words slipped out before I meant to say them—more thought than voice.
"Yes. This is where you decide what monster you will become."
I hated how reasonable it sounded saying that.
I stood there, surrounded by my own stolen survival tricks, and asked the question because I had to. "If I choose to keep them, do I get any benefits other than not losing them forever?"
The System drifted down off the Claw Slash box and pointed with a thin finger of blue, crystallized skin at the side effect section.
"Every ability comes with a side effect."
I nodded, because my body remembered them better than my mind ever could.
"If you choose to keep it, that side effect is removed."
I stared at it for a moment, like my brain refused to accept good news.
Then it sank in.
A smile spread across my face so fast it felt almost painful. I should've been terrified of smiling in this place. I wasn't. I felt relief so sharp it could've cut.
"So I'll finally be able to use abilities that don't try to kill me?" I asked, sarcasm and excitement tangled together because my body didn't know what to do with good news anymore.
The System simply nodded and floated back down toward the floor, hovering over the rune circle like it owned it.
I stared at the choices again.
I had to remove three.
"This is difficult," I muttered, and the words felt stupid the moment they left my mouth because difficult didn't even cover it.
Every single ability there had saved my life. Some more than others, sure. But even the "minor" ones had mattered. That was the cruel part—nothing on that list was useless. Every ability had value.
But there was only one question which mattered.
Which one do I need the most?
I moved closer, the stoned runes under my feet cool and unmoving, and my eyes locked onto Shadow Step first.
I approached the box and actually read the side effect properly for the first time, not just the summary my body had been too busy screaming to interpret before.
(Overuse of this ability will cause a rupture within the cells of the body, causing fatigue and loss of control of the body.)
So that was it. That was why my body had quit on me when it did. Not weakness—just a limit I hadn't understood yet.
Without its side effects, I could use it often without failing.
That was invaluable.
I shifted to the next one floating nearby.
Burrow Lunge.
I'd only used it once, and it still ended up mattering. It helped me beat the Coloss.
Survival was never elegant. It was just having something—anything—that worked when it had to.
Then my focus slid to Pulse Tremor.
Its side effect sat there in plain text—the forced stillness.
I'd worked around it every time, using Pulse Tremor only when I was already hidden, already careful.
Without that limitation… I wouldn't have to ration it.
I could listen whenever I wanted—moving or fighting or just breathing.
That would make my senses sharp all the time.
It would make it harder for anything to get close without me knowing.
I moved on to Solar Thread and stared at it longer than I meant to.
In sunlight, it was immense.
But it was dead weight in the dark. It had been useless in the dungeon, and it would be useless in any fight without the sun.
That wasn't a side effect. It was a condition. A dependency.
Next was Claw Slash—my first ability.
I breathed out, slow, as the memory of earning it crawled up my spine. That hunt. The wolves. The alpha. It had been useful, but it hurt like hell to use.
Without the side effects, I'd be more comfortable using it.
And it would be my only ranged ability that could cause real damage.
My mind snapped to the Riftscour—how close I'd had to get, how desperate. I'd grabbed it, and all I'd earned for it was a blade sprouting from its limb and slicing my hand open. I hadn't even been close to hurting it.
If it hadn't had side effects… maybe I could've defeated it there.
Maybe was a stupid word, but it wouldn't leave me alone.
Finally, I looked at Blood Frenzy.
Just seeing the words made my skin feel wrong, like I was remembering movements and decisions that didn't belong to me. I hated that reaction. I should feel impressed by strength. I felt uncomfortable instead.
It was the strongest ability on that list.
It had saved me more than once.
But every time I used it, the cost wasn't just the aftermath in my body. It was what happened during.
Urges I didn't remember having pushed to the front, and I was just a passenger while something else drove.
I wanted strength. I needed it. But I didn't want it to consume whatever was left of me.
I stepped back until all six choices hovered in front of me again, their buttons waiting. The circle beneath my feet didn't move, but it felt like it was waiting for the order to wake up.
The System floated toward me and stopped beside my shoulder, close enough that I could hear the faint controlled adjustments of its wings.
"Have you decided?" it asked, its face turning toward me.
I nodded, but it wasn't confidence. It was understanding—the kind you get when you've had to learn what keeps you alive.
I drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly.
"I've decided."
I walked forward, stared at each box, and forced my finger to move.
The moment I made the last choice, the circle beneath me came to life.
Light gathered as three boxes I'd chosen to keep disintegrated into thin lines—filaments of gold streamed down into the rune-carved stone. The runes flared, bright gold igniting along their grooves, and those threads sank into them like water into thirsty cracks.
The three I'd marked to discard… collapsed.
Not dramatically. Not violently. They just crumbled inward, the text breaking apart, the boxes fading until there was nothing left but empty air.
Lost forever.
The runes around my feet glowed brighter, and the one directly under me—the center—burned like a small sun. Light climbed up from it in a slow spiral, runes flaring as it rose.
I looked toward the System, and for the first time its calm annoyed me.
It floated away from the circle, putting distance between itself and whatever was about to happen to me.
"Do not fight it," it said. "Accept what you will become."
I exhaled and nodded. For the first time since all this started, I didn't fight it. I let the change come.
Then I let my expression drain away. My eyes went flat—dull with concentration—until there was nothing left on my face but intent.
The circle ignited.
The runes blazed a powerful gold, and the center rune under me flared so intensely it felt like I might disintegrate into the light. Then it seeped into my flesh—warm at first, almost gentle, like the morning sun faintly peeking through the leaves.
For a moment, it was calm. A steady warmth.
Then the warmth sharpened into something else.
My body remembered this feeling—the ripping, the remaking—and when it hit, I didn't fight it. Pain rose hard and fast, and I let it wash through me like tidewater pouring over loose sand.
I looked down at my hands, expecting flesh, expecting my familiar wrongness.
Instead, the flesh I knew was… gone.
My limbs were bright light—blue and green layered over each other, pushing and tearing like two currents fighting for the same space. My body twisted and changed as if it couldn't decide what shape it wanted to be, parts pulling apart, reconnecting, rearranging. There was no clean line between me and the light anymore.
I didn't fight the pull. I let it take me apart and put me back together.
I closed my eyes as the light consumed me.
Then nothing.
I tossed and turned, and for a while it felt like the thorn wall was back against my spine—hard, uneven, familiar in the worst way. My awareness drifted in and out, feeling brief flashes—warmth, air, something moving nearby.
Light pressed against my skin.
My eyes opened to it, and for a second I lay there blinking up at the bright sun, warmth on my skin, the blue sky above me too natural to belong in the spirit realm.
I was back.
For a second I didn't understand how—how I was in the exact same spot, like I'd never left at all.
The grove. The thorn walls. The same canopy overhead, the same tight space around me.
And the Brambleharts.
They surrounded me, bodies tense, antlers angled forward, eyes wide. The one I'd healed—the one I'd started to think of as a friend—stood nearest. It stared at me like I'd crawled out of a different world.
The Bramblehart approached slowly and sniffed me, then nudged me with its nose, as if checking whether I was solid. It poked again, more insistent, and I had the ridiculous urge to tell it I was fine.
Why are they looking at me like this?
I pushed myself up—and stopped.
Something was different.
Not just different in the way everything was different now. Different in a physical, undeniable way.
I felt larger but not heavier. If anything I felt lighter, like the weight had been redistributed into something cleaner. My eyes were higher off the ground than before, the world shifted upward by a few solid inches.
I glanced at the Brambleharts without meaning to, using them as a measuring stick. I'd always been bigger than the young ones, but this was different. Now I was just below eye level with the adults—close enough that their gaze didn't feel distant anymore.
Then I felt my feet—
not the old, accidental stickiness. This felt different, it felt controlled. I could still anchor to the earth, but it felt deliberate, like a choice instead of a reflex.
I looked down.
Not Mimic flesh feet. Real paws—formed, supported by stubby limbs—and from the ends… claws. Pink, close to my own flesh tone, curved like hooked knives.
I stared, because for the first time I didn't look like a crawling mistake. I looked like a monster.
The claws were long enough to bite into the dirt. When I tightened them instinctively, they sank in and ripped the earth beneath me, leaving dark furrows. The sensation wasn't painful. It felt right in a way I didn't know how to describe.
My gaze lifted over my body, and that's when I noticed the tiny holes—dozens of them, scattered across me like pinpricks. They were so small they looked like freckles in the light, but I felt something through them.
Vibrations.
A Bramblehart shifting near the gate. A bird flitting overhead. A tree swaying as wind threaded through its leaves. The world wasn't quiet anymore. It was loud in a new language, and somehow my body understood it. Sharper than before.
A slight smile crossed my face before I could stop it.
I felt stronger, but not just that. I felt more in tune. Like the world and I finally agreed on where my edges were.
Then I took a step—
—and I was in the tree above me.
Not climbing. One step and the branch was under my paws, leaves brushing my sides. My claws bit into the thick bark on instinct, and that controlled stickiness answered with them, like I could anchor myself wherever I wanted.
The Brambleharts below panicked for a second, heads snapping up, antlers jolting, hooves scraping.
Then my friend stared up at me and… settled. It didn't understand, but it wasn't afraid in the same way the others were.
I stood on the branch, swaying slightly as the tree moved with the wind, and looked out over the forest, the mountains, the distant grassland beyond. I breathed in fresh air until it filled every space in me.
I felt different.
But good.
Small birds chirped next to me—baby birds, still ugly and new, mouths open and screaming hunger into the world like they thought sound alone would feed them. I actually smiled at that. It was pathetic. It was also strangely endearing.
I stepped down to the ground, grabbed fruit from a nearby tree, then stepped again—
—and I was back on the branch beside the nest.
I dropped the fruit one by one. The babies pecked clumsily, then started to sing in little bursts between bites, their tiny bodies vibrating with frantic joy. The sound tickled through my new senses.
For a moment, the grove didn't feel like a battlefield.
For a moment, it felt like mine.
I looked out over my region and felt it—tremors, wind, distant life moving across my land.
I'll protect it, I thought, and the confidence in that thought startled me.
I have survived for now.
More threats were coming.
But this time, I wouldn't be prey