The next four days passed in a blur of desperate labor.
Aarav drove himself and his people without mercy. They cut trees, sharpened stakes, dug trenches, reinforced every section of the wall. Kiri patrolled the perimeter constantly, her massive form a moving promise of death to any goblin scout foolish enough to approach.
But everyone could see the truth. It wasn't enough.
[ AETHEL - DAY 7 ]
[ LOCAL TIME: 04:33 ]
[ MANA POOL: 33/1000 ]
[ EVOLUTION AVAILABLE: 1/1 ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aarav stood at the wall, watching the eastern horizon lighten. Thirty-three mana. After four days of recovery, he barely had enough for one cheap evolution. The wall needed two hundred twenty. A soldier needed eighty to one twenty. Everything needed more than he had.
I should have planned better. I should have saved—
No. The dog had bought them time. Four extra days. Without Kiri, the goblins would have already attacked.
"Lord." Varen appeared beside him, looking ten years older than a week ago. "The scouts report movement. Lots of movement. They'll come today."
Aarav's chest tightened. "How many?"
"At least four hundred. Maybe five." Varen's voice was steady, but his hands trembled slightly. "They've been gathering for three days. Waiting for something."
"Waiting for us to exhaust ourselves." Aarav looked at the wall—still too low, still too weak. At his people—exhausted, frightened, but still working. At Kiri—pacing at the wall's base, her hackles raised, sensing what was coming.
[ AETHEL - THREAT ASSESSMENT UPDATE ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ BROKEN FANG COALITION ]
├─ ESTIMATED FORCE: 470 WARRIORS
├─ COMPOSITION: 4 TRIBES UNITED
├─ LEADERSHIP: WAR CHIEF GRIMLAK (D-RANK)
├─ SPECIAL UNITS: 12 CAVE TROLLS (E-RANK)
├─ TIME TO ARRIVAL: 3-5 HOURS
└── SURVIVAL PROBABILITY (CURRENT FORCES): 12.7%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Twelve point seven percent.
Aarav stared at the number. Cold. Precise. Inescapable.
I need more.
He looked at Kiri. Seventy mana to evolve her again—to D-rank, to something even larger, even deadlier. But that would leave nothing for anything else, and one wolf couldn't fight five hundred goblins alone.
He looked at Varen. Eighty mana to make him something more than a fading captain with a rusted sword. But one soldier, no matter how enhanced, wouldn't turn the tide.
He looked at the wall. Two hundred twenty mana. Impossible.
[ AETHEL - ALTERNATE TARGETS DETECTED ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ UNUSED ASSETS ]
├─ IRON VEIN: UNTAPPED (3 HOURS EAST - GOBLIN TERRITORY)
├─ ANCIENT WOODS: E-RANK (2 HOURS SOUTH - GOBLIN TERRITORY)
├─ ABANDONED GOBLIN CAMP: DETECTED (1 HOUR NORTHEAST)
└── NOTE: ALL LOCATIONS CURRENTLY INACCESSIBLE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Inaccessible. Everything was inaccessible. They were trapped, waiting to die.
No. He wouldn't accept that.
"Varen, get everyone inside the walls. Non-combatants in the center. Everyone who can hold a weapon on the wall."
"And you, Lord?"
Aarav looked toward the northeast. Toward the abandoned goblin camp the System had detected.
"I'm going hunting."
---
The camp was smaller than he'd expected.
Twenty crude huts, arranged around a central fire pit. No movement. No sentries. The goblins had abandoned it when the war council was called, leaving everything behind.
Aarav moved through the trees with Kiri at his side, her massive form silent despite her size. The goblins' scent was everywhere—acrid, disgusting, unforgettable.
[ AETHEL - LOCATION DISCOVERED ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ABANDONED GOBLIN CAMP ]
├─ STATUS: VACANT
├─ RESOURCES DETECTED:
│ ├─ 47 CRUDE SPEARS (F-RANK)
│ ├─ 12 HIDE ARMORS (F-RANK)
│ ├─ 3 CAPTURED HUMAN WEAPONS (E-RANK)
│ ├─ SMOKED MEAT (7 DAYS RATIONS)
│ └── 1 UNUSUAL OBJECT (RANK UNKNOWN)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Unusual object. Rank unknown.
Aarav's heart hammered. "Kiri, watch the perimeter."
The wolf padded off, her nose testing the air.
Aarav moved through the camp, gathering what he could. The spears were crude but usable. The armor was disgusting but better than nothing. The human weapons—three iron swords, well-maintained—were a treasure.
And then he found it.
In the largest hut, on a crude altar of stacked skulls, lay a crystal. Dark purple, almost black, pulsing with an inner light that seemed to hunger.
[ AETHEL - ENTITY ANALYSIS ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ TARGET: UNKNOWN CRYSTAL ]
├─ RANK: UNKNOWN (POTENTIALLY D-RANK OR HIGHER)
├─ ORIGIN: UNKNOWN (NOT NATIVE TO AETHEL)
├─ PROPERTIES:
│ ├─ ABSORBS AMBIENT LIFE FORCE
│ ├─ PULSES WITH DARK ENERGY
│ ├─ PARTIALLY CONSCIOUS
│ └── APPRAISED BY GOBLINS AS "GOD HEART"
├─ DANGER LEVEL: EXTREME (UNPREDICTABLE)
├─ POTENTIAL USES: UNKNOWN
└── NOTE: THIS OBJECT SHOULD NOT EXIST HERE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aarav stared at the crystal. It seemed to stare back.
This object should not exist here.
The words chilled him more than any threat assessment. If the System—cold, impersonal, all-knowing Aethel—didn't understand something, that something was very, very wrong.
He reached for it.
The moment his fingers touched the crystal, pain exploded through him. Not physical pain—something deeper. Something that touched his soul.
Images flooded his mind.
A void. Darker than dark. And in that void, things. Not the Devourers—something older. Something that had been waiting since before the first universe.
HUNGER.
The word wasn't spoken. It was felt.
WE HUNGER.
The crystal pulsed, and Aarav felt something trying to reach him. Trying to connect. Trying to use him.
He wrenched his hand back, gasping.
The crystal sat on its altar, innocent. Waiting.
[ AETHEL - WARNING ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ CONTENT DETECTED ]
├─ SOURCE: UNKNOWN CRYSTAL
├─ NATURE: VOID-TOUCHED
├─ THREAT: COSMIC
├─ RECOMMENDATION: DESTROY OR SECURE
└── NOTE: THIS IS BEYOND YOUR CURRENT CAPABILITIES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Beyond his capabilities. Everything was beyond his capabilities.
But he couldn't leave it. If the goblins came back for it—if they used it—
Use it.
The thought crystallized in his mind.
[ AETHEL - EVOLUTION PROTOCOL ]
[ TARGET: UNKNOWN CRYSTAL ]
[ RANK: UNKNOWN ]
[ PROJECTED OUTCOME: UNKNOWN ]
[ MANA COST: UNKNOWN ]
[ RISK: CATASTROPHIC ]
[ CONFIRM? THIS IS EXTREMELY UNWISE ]
Aarav's hand hovered over the crystal.
He had no mana. No time. No hope.
But he had this. This impossible, terrifying, wrong thing that the goblins called a god heart.
If he evolved it—if he used his impossible talent on this impossible object—what would happen?
He might destroy himself.
He might destroy the valley.
He might create something that could save them all.
Behind him, far to the east, a war horn sounded. Deep. Primal. The sound of five hundred goblins beginning their march.
Aarav made his choice.
---
He ran.
Not toward the enemy. Toward his people. The crystal clutched against his chest, burning with cold fire.
Kiri appeared beside him, her ears flat, her growl constant. She could feel it too. Everyone would.
The war horn sounded again. Closer.
He burst from the trees fifteen minutes later, lungs burning, legs screaming. The valley spread before him—his people on the walls, faces pale with terror. Varen at the gate, eyes widening as he saw what Aarav carried.
"Lord! What is that?!"
"No time!" Aarav skidded to a halt, gasping for air. "How long?"
"Minutes! They're coming through the woods now! Hundreds of them!"
Aarav looked at the crystal. At the wall. At his people.
At the evolution counter, reset at dawn.
[ AETHEL - EVOLUTION AVAILABLE: 1/1 ]
[ MANA POOL: 41/1000 ]
[ TIME TO CONTACT: 4 MINUTES ]
Four minutes.
He ran to the wall.
The goblins emerged from the trees as he climbed. A tide of green bodies, crude weapons raised, howling with bloodlust. At their front, a massive figure—War Chief Grimlak, easily D-rank, twice the size of his warriors. Behind him, twelve cave trolls, each one a walking engine of destruction.
[ AETHEL - COMBAT ASSESSMENT ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ENEMY FORCES ]
├─ 470 GOBLIN WARRIORS (F-RANK)
├─ WAR CHIEF GRIMLAK (D-RANK)
├─ 12 CAVE TROLLS (E-RANK)
[ ALLIED FORCES ]
├─ 23 ABLE-BODIED ADULTS (F-RANK)
├─ VAREN (F-RANK)
├─ KIRI (E-RANK)
└── SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 12.7% → 8.2% (ENEMY APPROACHING)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aarav stood on the wall, the crystal in his hands. It pulsed faster now, responding to the violence in the air. Responding to the hunger.
Use me.
The thought wasn't his. It came from the crystal.
Use me and live.
"No deals," Aarav whispered. "I don't make deals with things I don't understand."
He looked at the oncoming horde. At his people. At the wolf who had trusted him.
And he made a different choice.
---
Kiri stood at the wall's base, her massive form tensed to leap, to fight, to die.
"Kiri! Catch!"
Aarav threw the crystal.
The wolf caught it mid-air, her jaws closing around the pulsing darkness. For one frozen moment, nothing happened.
Then Kiri screamed.
Not in pain—in transformation. The crystal's power merged with Aarav's evolution talent, both activating at once, feeding each other, becoming something new.
[ AETHEL - CHAOS PROTOCOL ]
[ TALENT + VOID CRYSTAL = UNSTABLE COMBINATION ]
[ EVOLUTION INITIATED - TARGET: KIRI ]
[ MANA COST: 41 + VOID ENERGY ]
[ OUTCOME: UNPREDICTABLE ]
Light exploded from the wolf. Darkness and violet and colors that burned the eyes. Her form shifted, grew, changed. Fur became something like shadow. Eyes became pools of violet fire. Size doubled. Tripled.
When the light faded, something stood before the wall that had never existed in Aethel before.
Kiri was twice the size of the cave trolls. Her fur rippled with living darkness. Her eyes held the void. And her jaws—jaws that could crush stone—opened wide.
She howled.
The sound was not of this world. It carried echoes of the void, of the hunger, of something ancient and terrible.
Five hundred goblins stopped in their tracks.
War Chief Grimlak's face, for the first time, showed fear.
[ AETHEL - ENTITY ANALYSIS ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ TARGET: KIRI ]
├─ NEW RANK: C (EPIC)
├─ CLASSIFICATION: VOID-TOUCHED DIRE WOLF (UNIQUE)
├─ ABILITIES:
│ ├─ SHADOW FORM (PHASE THROUGH PHYSICAL ATTACKS)
│ ├─ VOID HOWL (INFLICTS PRIMORDIAL FEAR)
│ ├─ DARKNESS MANIPULATION
│ └── HUNGER TRANSFER (CAN CONSUME ENEMY LIFE FORCE)
├─ LOYALTY: ABSOLUTE (BOND STRENGTHENED BY VOID TOUCH)
└── NOTE: THIS CREATURE SHOULD NOT EXIST. AETHEL HAS NO RECORD OF THIS FORM.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aarav stared at what he had created.
Kiri looked back at him, and in her violet eyes, he saw recognition. Love. And hunger.
The hunger is manageable, her gaze seemed to say. For you.
Then she turned to face the goblin horde and moved.
---
The battle lasted seventeen minutes.
Seventeen minutes of slaughter that would be told in nightmares for generations.
Kiri moved through the goblin ranks like a shadow of death. They couldn't hit her—their weapons passed through her darkness. They couldn't outrun her—she was everywhere at once. They couldn't fight back—her howl froze them in place, and her jaws ended them.
War Chief Grimlak lasted forty-three seconds against her. His D-rank meant nothing. His massive axe meant nothing. His courage meant nothing.
She ate him first.
The cave trolls tried to flee. She hunted them down one by one, her void-touched form passing through stone, through trees, through their terrified bodies.
By the time the sun reached its zenith, four hundred seventy goblins were dead.
The survivors—maybe thirty, maybe forty—fled into the woods, screaming prophecies of doom.
Kiri returned to the wall and sat, her massive form somehow calm, somehow peaceful. She licked blood from her paws and looked at Aarav with the same devotion she'd had as an old gray dog.
[ AETHEL - COMBAT SUMMARY ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ BATTLE OF THE UNTAMED VALLEY ]
├─ ENEMY FORCE: 483 (INCLUDING LEADERS)
├─ ENEMY CASUALTIES: 443
├─ ENEMY ROUTED: 40
├─ ALLIED CASUALTIES: 0
├─ TERRITORY STATUS: SECURED
└── NEW THREAT LEVEL: MINIMAL (EASTERN WOODS OPEN FOR EXPLORATION)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ QUEST UPDATE: THE GOBLIN MENACE ]
[ STATUS: COMPLETE (TRIBE ELIMINATED) ]
[ REWARD PENDING: CONTROL OF EASTERN WOODS + IRON VEIN ACCESS + ??? ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aarav slid down the wall, his legs giving out. He sat in the dirt, staring at the carnage, at the impossible creature he had created, at the people who were now cheering his name.
He should have felt triumph.
Instead, he felt the crystal's echo in his mind. The hunger that now lived in Kiri. The thing that had spoken to him from the void.
Use me and live.
He had used it. They had lived.
But at what cost?
Kiri padded over and pressed her massive head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, feeling the warmth beneath the shadow-fur, feeling her love, her loyalty, her control.
For now, she was still Kiri.
For now.
[ AETHEL - SYSTEM STATUS ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ HOST: AARAV OF ORION ]
[ TERRITORY: THE UNTAMED VALLEY (RANK F → E) ]
[ DAY 7 - 12:47 LOCAL ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ TALENT STATUS ]
├─ EVOLUTION USED TODAY: 1/1
├─ NEXT AVAILABLE: 23H 13M
├─ MANA POOL: 0/1000 (DEPLETED)
└── NOTE: VOID CRYSTAL CONSUMED IN PROCESS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ TERRITORY STATUS ]
├─ RANK: E (PROMOTION PENDING)
├─ FOOD: ABUNDANT (POST-GOBLIN SUPPLIES)
├─ MORALE: EUPHORIC (+35%)
├─ SECURITY: STABLE (EASTERN WOODS CLEARED)
├─ MILITARY ASSETS:
│ ├─ KIRI (C-RANK, VOID-TOUCHED) - COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS: EXTREME
│ ├─ VAREN (F-RANK) - PROMOTION RECOMMENDED
│ └── 23 ABLE-BODIED ADULTS (F-RANK) - EXPERIENCED
└── NEW RESOURCES: IRON VEIN (ACCESSIBLE), EASTERN WOODS (CONTROLLED)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ACTIVE QUESTS ]
├─ PRIMARY: SURVIVE THE FIRST WINTER (47 DAYS) - 25%
├─ REGIONAL: THE EASTERN WOODS (EXPLORATION RECOMMENDED)
├─ PERSONAL: UNDERSTAND YOUR GIFT - 0.7% (+0.6%)
└── WORLD EVENT: LORD RANKING COMPETITION (23 DAYS)
└─ YOUR NEW RANK: CALCULATING... 4,872,331,009 → 847,226,441
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ COSMIC REGISTRY UPDATE ]
├─ MYTHICAL TALENT HOLDERS: 8,347 (53 DIED TODAY)
├─ YOUR STATUS: STILL UNLISTED
└── NOTE: VOID CRYSTAL DETECTED AND CONSUMED. ORIGIN UNKNOWN.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ FINAL NOTE ]
[ YOU SURVIVED. ]
[ YOU CREATED SOMETHING THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST. ]
[ SOMETHING IN THE VOID NOTICED. ]
Aarav read the last line and felt his blood freeze.
Something in the void noticed.
He looked at Kiri, at the shadow-fur, the violet eyes, the hunger that she controlled—for now.
He looked at the eastern sky, where the Devourers waited.
And he understood, with terrible clarity, that the goblins had been the least of his problems.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
---
End of Chapter 3
Next Chapter: The Voice in the Void
---