The Awakening Stone turned pitch black.
Not the brilliant gold of a noble prodigy. Not the steady, reliable silver of a Vanguard knight.
Black. An absolute, light-devouring void that sent a chill through the grand hall of the Ironclad Guild.
Kaelen kept his hand pressed against the smooth, cold surface of the monolith. His breathing was ragged. He was eighteen years old, practically a walking corpse composed of scavenged rations and trench-mud, but he had spent five years risking his life to pay for this single moment. Five years of hauling Aether-slag from the lower levels just to afford the Guild's Awakening fee.
"A Void Core," Guildmaster Thorne sneered, stepping down from his elevated podium. He didn't bother to hide his disgust. "A parasitic defect. You don't have an Aether Core, boy. You have a tumor."
"That's impossible," Kaelen rasped. His throat felt like sandpaper. "I passed the physicals. I survived the trench runs. The stone is just calibrating!"
"The stone does not lie, street rat." Thorne gestured to the two heavily armored guards flanking the altar. "His core isn't generating Aether. It's actively consuming it. He'll be dead in a week when the core finishes eating his life force. Strip him of his initiate token."
Panic spiked in Kaelen's chest, sharp and cold. "Wait! I paid my dues! Give me a rusted sword and point me at the Abyss. I can still fight!"
A gauntleted hand clamped onto Kaelen's shoulder, gripping hard enough to bruise bone. The guard yanked him backward, away from the Awakening Stone. Kaelen thrashed, driving his elbow backward toward the guard's visor, a filthy street-fighting trick that had saved his life a dozen times in the Lower Tiers.
The guard didn't even flinch. He casually slammed a plated knee into Kaelen's stomach.
The air left Kaelen's lungs in a violent rush. He collapsed to the polished marble floor, gagging. But the physical blow was nothing compared to the sudden, agonizing flare in his chest. Right behind his sternum, something pulsed. It felt like a freezing black hole had ripped open inside his ribcage, hungrily sucking away his stamina, his breath, his very will to live.
"Parasite," Thorne repeated, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. The surrounding initiates, clean, well-fed noble children, stepped back in unison, treating Kaelen like a plague victim. "You are a liability to the Shattered Realms. Toss the garbage down the Scrap Chutes. Let the abyss claim its own."
"You arrogant..." Kaelen choked on his own blood, glaring up at the Guildmaster. His paranoia, honed by years of surviving alone, screamed at him to stay quiet, to play dead. But a ruthless, spiteful anger burned hotter than his fear. "I paid you! You stole my life!"
The guards didn't let him finish. They dragged him by his ankles across the pristine marble, leaving a faint trail of trench-mud and blood.
They dragged him out of the grand hall, out into the blinding sunlight of the High Tiers, and straight toward the Edge. The Shattered Realms were a series of floating archipelagos, suspended over an endless, churning sea of dark mist known as the Abyssal Void. The High Tiers sat in the sun. The Lower Tiers sat in the shadows.
The Scrap Chutes were a massive network of rusted iron pipes where the nobles discarded their refuse. It emptied directly into the darkest slums of the Lower Tiers.
"Enjoy the fall, defect," the guard sneered, hauling Kaelen off the ground by his collar.
Kaelen tried to swing a fist, but his body betrayed him. The Void Core pulsed again, sending a wave of absolute exhaustion through his muscles. His arm dropped limply to his side.
The guard tossed him over the edge.
Wind roared in Kaelen's ears. The sheer velocity of the drop pinned his arms and legs as he plummeted through the strata of the floating islands. The golden sunlight of the High Tiers rapidly vanished, replaced by the eternal, smog-choked twilight of the Lower Tiers.
He collided with the rusted iron slope of the chute, screaming as the jagged metal tore through his scavenged clothes and sliced his skin. He tumbled like a ragdoll, bouncing off the sloped walls of the chute in a dizzying blur of pain, rust, and darkness.
Crack.
Kaelen slammed into a towering mountain of discarded machinery and rotting beast carcasses. The impact knocked him completely unconscious for several seconds.
When he finally gasped awake, the taste of rust and copper filled his mouth.
He was lying broken at the bottom of the world. Above him, a canopy of crisscrossing iron bridges and leaking sewage pipes blocked out the sky. Thick, corrosive mist rolled through the alleyways of the slums, clinging to his skin like a damp shroud.
"I'm alive," he wheezed, rolling onto his side. Searing agony shot up his left arm. Dislocated. Maybe broken. Every breath felt like inhaling glass.
But the worst pain wasn't his bones. It was the core.
Kaelen ripped his torn shirt open, staring down at his chest. Beneath his pale skin, a network of pitch-black veins pulsed outward from his sternum. They writhed like living things, seeking out his remaining vitality and consuming it. A sudden, terrifying wave of weakness washed over him. His vision blurred, static creeping into the edges of his sight.
Thorne had been right. It was a parasite. It was eating him alive from the inside out.
No. Kaelen clenched his good hand into a trembling fist, digging his fingernails into his palm until it bled. The sharp pain grounded him. No, I refuse. I didn't survive eighteen years in this hellhole just to be eaten by my own body.
He forced his legs to move. He had to find shelter. He had to find a healer, an alchemist, a dark-market surgeon, anyone who could cut this thing out of him.
He managed to stagger to his feet, using a rusted gear-shaft for balance. The world tilted dangerously. With every step he took through the trash heap, the black veins on his chest throbbed.
Then, Kaelen noticed something strange.
The sensation radiating from the Void Core wasn't just an empty, draining void. As he pressed his hand over his heart, he realized the pain was accompanied by an overwhelming, primal emotion.
It was hunger.
His core was starving. It wasn't eating his life force out of malice, it was eating his life force because there was nothing else to consume.
Before Kaelen could process that terrifying revelation, a sound echoed through the thick mist.
Click. Clack. Hiss.
Kaelen froze. His street-honed instincts screamed at him to run. The sound of claws on rusted iron. The wet, heavy sound of acidic drool hitting the pavement and sizzling.
The mist parted ten yards away.
A shadow detached itself from the gloom. It was the size of a large hound, but its body was a grotesque fusion of segmented chitin and raw, pulsing muscle. Eight needle-like legs pierced the trash heap. Six glowing, crimson eyes locked onto Kaelen.
An Iron-Rank Void Crawler. A scavenger beast that fed on the weak and the dying in the Lower Tiers.
Kaelen's breath hitched. He had no sword. He had no armor. He had a dislocated arm, a failing body, and a parasitic core that was draining his last ounces of strength.
The Void Crawler opened its mandibles, releasing a deafening, metallic shriek that rattled Kaelen's teeth in his skull. The beast's hind legs coiled, preparing to launch its massive weight directly at his throat.
Kaelen backed up, his heel hitting a solid wall of scrap metal. Trapped.
The beast lunged.