Cold.
That was the first sensation that clawed its way through the fog—stone beneath him, ancient and unforgiving, leeching warmth from his spine. Veldex's fingers twitched against the slab, and even that small movement sent lightning through his nerves.
Then came the words.
They materialized in his vision like cracks spreading across glass, glowing with an otherworldly luminescence that had nothing to do with the dim torchlight flickering somewhere above.
[Congratulations for becoming the God Of Systems.]
His breath hitched. The air tasted wrong—metallic, thick, like copper pennies dissolving on his tongue. He tried to swallow, but his throat constricted.
'What does that even mean?'
The Babylon Tower's summoning chamber pressed down on him with its oppressive silence. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped in a steady rhythm. The sound echoed off walls he couldn't see, couldn't focus on. His vision swam, doubled, reformed.
'I wanted the healing system.'
The thought came with a face—Elara's face. His sister, pale as moonlight in her sickbed, her breathing shallow and rattling.
He'd climbed the Tower for her. Endured the trials. Survived when others hadn't. All for the chance to draw the healing system, to pull her back from death's threshold.
His chest tightened, ribs compressing around lungs that suddenly couldn't expand properly.
[Activating the Bear System.]
The voice wasn't his own thoughts this time. It was mechanical, sterile, invasive—like something had reached inside his skull and spoken directly into the meat of his brain. The words reverberated through his bones.
Heat built behind his eyes. Pressure. His vision blurred, and he realized moisture was gathering, spilling over, tracking hot lines down his temples.
'My sister…'
He couldn't finish. The words dissolved into nothing, swallowed by the enormity of his failure.
Elara would die. He'd gambled everything on this moment, and the universe had answered with cruel indifference.
His body felt wrong. Heavy. His limbs didn't respond the way they should. When he tried to lift his hand, it moved sluggishly, as though underwater. His eyelids were lead weights he couldn't quite lift.
[Your body grows weak. You need 3 kilos of human meat.]
The message burned across his vision. The mechanical voice followed, emotionless and absolute.
Then the pain started.
It began in his jaw—a deep, grinding ache that spread through his skull like roots burrowing into soil.
His mouth filled with the taste of iron and salt. Something was moving in there, shifting, growing.
He tried to run his tongue over his teeth and felt them—longer than they should be, sharper, pressing against the inside of his lips.
His four canines were elongating.
Veldex's heart slammed against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat that echoed in his ears.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Each pulse sent waves of heat through his changing body.
But worse than the pain was the hunger.
It came from somewhere primal, somewhere he didn't recognize as himself.
A gnawing emptiness that clawed at his stomach, his chest, his throat. The scent of something filled his nostrils—not the musty stone of the Tower, not the torch smoke. Something else. Something that made saliva pool in his mouth despite his horror.
Meat. Fresh. Warm.
Humans.
His stomach growled, a sound too deep, too animalistic to have come from him.
'Shit. I've become an animal.'
The tears came freely now, hot and bitter, sliding down his face as he lay paralyzed on the summoning slab.
His body betrayed him with every breath, every heartbeat that pumped this new, terrible hunger through his veins.
Images flashed through his mind—the dungeon beneath the Tower, where they kept the others who'd transformed.
The beast-humans. He'd seen them once, heard their howls echoing up through the stone. Caged. Chained. Fed like livestock until they lost whatever humanity remained.
That would be him now.
The realization settled over him like a burial shroud. He'd survived the Tower's trials only to become something that needed to be locked away.
Elara would never know what happened to him. She'd die thinking he'd abandoned her.
His chest heaved with a sob he couldn't voice.
[Your hunger grows. You should consume 3 kilos within 3 days. Or you will not like to know the downsides of failing to meet up with the system's mission.]
The message dissolved, replaced by numbers that glowed an ominous red:
[71:59:47]
The seconds ticked down with mechanical precision. Each number that changed felt like a nail being driven into a coffin.
Veldex's transformed canines pressed against his lower lip, sharp enough to draw blood. The taste made his stomach clench with need.
Three days to consume human flesh, or face consequences the system deemed too terrible to name.
Three days before whatever remained of his humanity would be tested in ways he couldn't imagine.
'What an absurd mission.'
The thought drifted through his mind, hollow and bitter. He'd come to the Babylon Tower to save a life.
Instead, he'd become something that needed to take them.
"Hello, Veldex."
The voice cut through the darkness like a blade through silk—human, warm, "alive".
His eyes snapped open.
The world exploded into overwhelming clarity. Every torch flame in the chamber burned with individual tongues of fire he could count.
The stone ceiling above revealed textures he'd never noticed—ancient chisel marks, water stains, the delicate web of a spider in the far corner, each strand visible despite the distance.
But it was the "smell" that nearly broke him.
The old man stood three paces away, and Veldex could smell "everything".
The soap he'd used that morning—lavender and lye.
The coffee on his breath. The cotton of his white lab coat, starched and clean. The leather of his shoes, worn and supple.
And beneath it all, the scent that made Veldex's jaw ache with need: warm blood pumping through living veins.
The salt-sweet musk of human flesh. The pulse of life itself, so close, so "easy".
His stomach twisted with hunger so intense it felt like his insides were eating themselves.
"Welcome to the academy of the awakened systematic humans."
The gentleman smiled—grey beard neatly trimmed, wire-rimmed spectacles catching the torchlight, age spots dotting his temples.
He couldn't have been less than seventy. Fragile. Slow. His throat was exposed above his collar, the skin there thin and papery.
Veldex could see the pulse beating there, steady and rhythmic.
'Thud-thud. Thud-thud.'
His own heart answered with a thunderous gallop.
'Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.'
'Do you know what I've become?'
Veldex's fingers curled against the stone slab, and he felt them—claws where his nails should be, scraping against rock with a sound like knives on a whetstone.
His muscles coiled, ready to spring. Every instinct screamed at him to "move", to "hunt", to "feed".
The old man took a step closer.
The scent intensified. Veldex could hear the blood rushing through the man's carotid artery, could smell the iron richness of it just beneath that thin layer of skin. His mouth flooded with saliva. His canines throbbed.
'I should start by eating you.'
The thought came unbidden, primal, terrifying in its simplicity.
Three kilos. This man probably weighed sixty, seventy kilos. More than enough.
The hunger painted vivid images across his mind—teeth sinking into soft flesh, warm blood coating his tongue, the satisfaction of finally, "finally" feeding the gnawing emptiness inside him.
'Probably I'll get to see my sister one last time.'
That thought—Elara's face, pale and dying—was the only thing that kept him frozen on the slab.
His entire body trembled with the effort of restraint. His claws dug deeper into the stone, and he heard it crack beneath his grip.
The gentleman didn't flinch. Didn't step back. Didn't show even a flicker of fear.
He just smiled, patient and knowing, as though he'd seen this exact struggle play out a hundred times before.
"I know the hunger feels overwhelming right now," the old man said, his voice maddeningly calm.
"But you're not going to attack me, Veldex."
Veldex's breathing came in ragged gasps—too fast, too shallow.
His vision tunneled, focusing on that pulse point, that vulnerable throat.
The human part of him screamed in horror at what he was becoming.
The beast part of him calculated distances, angles, the fastest way to strike.
His muscles bunched.
The timer in his vision ticked down another second.
[71:59:31]
"Do you know why?" the gentleman continued, taking another step forward.
Veldex's lips pulled back from his teeth in an involuntary snarl.