Neo took another step toward the chained corpse.
The change in the chamber came at once.
Until then, the ruin had felt cold, oppressive, wrong in the distant way old places often did. Now it felt awake. The air thickened around him until each breath dragged in slower than the last. The black stone under his boots seemed heavier somehow, as though the whole chamber had gained weight and dropped it onto his shoulders.
His fingers went to the ring at his chest.
Warm.
Neo frowned.
A second ago it had only been warm. Now it was getting hotter by the heartbeat, the metal pressing into his skin with a heat that no necklace should have held.
Ahead of him, the yellow crystal lodged in the corpse's hollow chest trembled.
He stopped.
The light inside it pulsed once. Then again, brighter this time, throwing weak gold across the broken remains of the body kneeling beneath the shaft of pale light. All around the circular ruin, the chains reacted with it. One shudder ran through them, then another, and the sound spread outward until the whole chamber was ringing with iron dragged slowly across stone.
Neo's mouth tightened.
'No. I don't like this.'
The pressure grew worse. Breathing turned ugly. Even the silence between the chain sounds felt packed with something vast enough to crush him flat if it chose to.
His hand closed around the ring.
The heat bit into his palm.
"What!?" he snapped, yanking at the chain. "This is burning like hell."
It got worse.
The metal seared his skin hard enough to make his fingers jerk open. Neo stumbled back a half step, eyes widening as the crystal in the corpse's chest shook harder than before. The yellow light deepened, almost alive now, and for one impossible instant the whole chamber seemed to draw inward toward that single point.
Then the Soul Core tore free.
One moment it rested inside the corpse. The next it was flying at him, swift as a thought, bright enough to split the gloom.
Neo threw himself backward.
His body failed him.
Pain flared through his ribs, killing the movement before it became escape. He twisted off balance, one hand lifting on reflex.
The Soul Core struck his chest.
Then vanished into him.
Neo's body arched.
Air fled his lungs in a voiceless convulsion. For one suspended instant he felt nothing.
Agony hit him a heartbeat later. It came from deeper than all of that, from somewhere no pain had any right to reach. Heat ripped through the center of him, followed by a crushing force that exploded outward in every direction at once.
He crashed to one knee, fingers scraping across the black stone hard enough to split skin.
A sound tore out of him.
"Ahhh!"
Light ran beneath his flesh.
He saw it in flashes along his arms and at the edge of his vision, molten gold moving through him where nothing should have been moving. His heartbeat stumbled, then slammed back harder than before. Heat and frost collided inside him. Fragments tore past too fast to understand. Hunger. Ruin. Vastness. A silence older than language. Something immense forcing its way into him and breaking open every part that resisted.
Through the blur, Neo managed to lift his head.
The chained corpse still knelt beneath the falling light, silent and unmoving, as if all of this had been waiting for him long before he had ever drawn breath.
Then the strength left his body.
Neo pitched onto the black stone, and the world vanished beneath the weight of pain.
...
When Neo woke up, he had no idea how much time had passed.
For a few seconds, he did not move. The black stone was still beneath him. The pale shaft of light still fell over the chained corpse in the distance. The chamber had not changed. What felt wrong was him.
The agony was gone.
That alone almost disturbed him more than the pain had.
Neo stayed there staring ahead, breath still shallow, as if his body had not yet decided whether it was safe to belong to him again. The crystal tearing free. The heat. The pressure. Something inside him splitting open. Then darkness.
'What the hell just happened?'
He pushed himself up onto an elbow and looked down at himself. The tears in his clothes were still there. Dried blood still stained his side and thigh. His ribs still hurt. His leg still ached. But when he shifted, the pain that should have dropped him back onto the floor never came. It was there, yes. A deep ache. The ghost of damage. Not the kind of crippling agony that had owned his body before.
Neo frowned and flexed one hand, then the other.
His body felt different, lighter in a way that had nothing to do with weight. As if something beneath his skin had been taken apart and put back together while he was unconscious.
He pressed one hand against his chest. His heartbeat was steady now, yet each beat carried an unfamiliar weight to it.
Then he looked toward the corpse.
Empty.
The hollow in its chest was empty. The yellow crystal was gone.
Neo stared at the empty hollow.
So it had really happened.
The Soul Core had entered him, forced its way through his soul, and left him on the floor like a corpse beside a corpse.
'Did I just go through my First Resonance? Like this? It's that possible?'
He had heard people talk about it all his life. Awakening. The soul opening. A beautiful moment. A sacred step into power.
Neo almost laughed.
'Beautiful my ass.'
It had felt like something immense had kicked every locked door inside him off its hinges.
Still, one thing should have come from it.
A class.
Neo exhaled slowly and focused inward, more out of instinct than understanding. A pale yellow panel unfolded before him, clean and thin like glass suspended in the air.
[Soul-Window]
Name: Neo
Age: 16
Soul Core: Ember
[0/1000]
Primary Class: Soul Reaver
Rank: Divine
Description: Soul Reaver, a divine class belonging to [...]. The soul of [...] could store all classes, which was why it was feared even by its own kind. That is why it lies here, hidden and forgotten by the world, so that no one may ever find it. You can steal the classes of people, Soul Beasts, and even gods, and make them your own.
Neo did not move.
Ember. The first stage. The lowest of the ten Soul Core stages. That made sense.
He read lower.
Primary Class: Soul Reaver.
"Soul Reaver," he muttered. "That sounds strong as hell."
His attention caught on the next line.
Rank: Divine.
Neo read it once.
Then again.
"Divine?"
The word left his mouth before his mind fully caught up.
Then it did.
"DIVINE?!"
His voice cracked through the chamber and came back to him in jagged echoes. He pushed himself halfway upright on pure shock, forgot his injuries for one glorious second, and nearly lost his balance when the ache in his body reminded him he was still not fine.
He did not care.
'Since when is there something above Mythic?'
He read the panel again, then the description.
The soul of [...] could store all classes.
Neo went still.
Feared even by its own kind.
Buried here.
Hidden and forgotten.
So that no one would ever find it.
Then his gaze dropped to the last part.
Steal the classes of people, Soul Beasts, and even gods.
He read it again.
People.
Soul Beasts.
Even gods.
A laugh almost came out.
It died just as fast.
Registration.
The World Government.
The moment this entered the system, it was over.
Neo could already see the rest too clearly. Questions that were not questions. Men deciding what was more significant, the boy or what had appeared inside him.
His jaw tightened.
'No.'
Roderic's face flashed through his mind. The old man in his blood. The chase. The forest.
'Never again.'
The thrill was still there. Soul Reaver. Divine. A path so absurd it could overturn everything.
Neo shut the Soul Window.
Excitement could wait. The ruin could not.
He forced his attention away from the panel and finally looked around the chamber again with clear eyes. That was when he noticed it.
There had been nothing there before.
Now a spiral staircase of black stone curled upward along the edge of the chamber, narrow and clean, as though it had risen out of the ruin itself while he was not looking. Neo stared at it, his expression tightening.
So the place had reacted again.
First the mountain had opened. Then the Soul Core had chosen him. Now this.
The ruin was not passive. It had not simply swallowed him and spat him back out with a class inside his soul. It had answered him. That thought sat badly in him.
'You really are creepy.'
Still, he was not about to complain about a way out.
Neo pushed himself to his feet and immediately felt the truth of his body again. Better did not mean fine. His ribs still hurt. His leg still carried a deep ache through it, and when he straightened too quickly, a blur passed across his vision hard enough to make him brace one hand against the black stone beside him.
He waited a moment, breathing shallowly, then started climbing.
The ascent was slow.
Every few steps, something in him protested. His leg dragged slightly on the worst of them, and his ribs punished him every time he forgot and pulled in too deep a breath. The staircase seemed longer than it had any right to be, curving upward through the black interior of the ruin while the corpse and its chains gradually sank farther below. Neo kept going anyway, one hand trailing against the wall when he needed it, jaw tight, eyes fixed up.
At the top, the stone in front of him shifted.
A narrow opening appeared in the wall, and pale daylight spilled through it. After so long in the black ruin, the light felt almost hostile.
Neo stepped through at once.
The mountain closed behind him the moment he was out.
He turned back at once, but there was already no trace of the entrance. Only rough stone. Silence. A stretch of ordinary mountain wall that gave away nothing.
Something cold passed over him.
'Perfect. So now I can't even prove any of this happened. I wasn't going to do it either; I'll take this to my grave.'
He stood there another second, staring at the place where the opening had been, then forced himself to move. Standing still in the open would only get him killed if Roderic was still nearby.
The Duskmane could still be alive. Roderic could still be alive. Both of them could be waiting somewhere ahead, ready to finish what the forest had started. Neo followed the same route he had taken while fleeing, holding onto it by instinct and memory more than sight. The trees still looked wrong around him, heavy with shadow and broken by the violence that had passed through them. Split trunks and torn earth, marks cut into bark where claws or steel had landed hard enough to leave the forest itself wounded.
Then something huge appeared ahead and made him stop cold.
The Duskmane.
Its body lay in the middle of the path between broken roots and fallen trunks, black fur dark against the churned earth. Even dead, it looked scary. Too large and heavy. Like something the forest should never have allowed to exist in the first place.
Neo's whole body locked.
He looked closer.
It was not moving.
He edged nearer, every muscle ready to jerk him back if the thing so much as twitched. It never did. The truth sharpened with every step. The beast was dead. Its body had been opened in places, flesh torn apart as if someone had searched through it after the kill.
Roderic.
Neo's mouth flattened.
So the bastard had won.
He started past it at first. That was the smart thing. Keep moving. Get away. Stay alive.
Then his eyes dropped to the beast's torn-open chest.
He stopped.
Something faintly yellow still glowed there.
For one second, Neo only stared.
Roderic had killed the Duskmane. He had even opened the body after. But he had not taken the Soul Core.
That changed things.
A crooked smile pulled at Neo's mouth.
'So you missed this, you ungrateful bastard.'
Pain stayed with him. Blood loss stayed with him. The danger stayed with him. Everything was still with him.
Underneath all of that, something else lit up.
Opportunity.
Neo crouched beside the corpse with a wince and reached into the torn flesh. The Soul Core still held its faint glow, yellow and steady in the dark cavity of ruined muscle and bone. When his fingers closed around it, he felt at once that it was heavier than the cheap cores he had carried for other people. Not in weight. In presence.
He pulled it free and held it in his palm.
'Let's see if this absurd class of mine actually works the way it says.'
Neo focused, not because he knew exactly what to do, but because there was only one thing that made sense. The class could steal. The Soul Core was in his hand. So he reached for it with his will and pushed.
The core answered at once.
Yellow light bled across his fingers, then sank inward, the crystal dissolving into his skin like it had found a way home. There was no agony this time.
[Soul-Window]
[You have absorbed the Soul Core of Duskmane - Throne]
[+125 Souls] [125/1000 Ember]
[You have obtained a new class. Do you wish to use it?]
[Duskmane Beast - Ascendant
Abilities:
Beast Regeneration
Beast Strength - More mastery required.
Mastery level: Low]
Neo stared at the window.
So it was real.
Not a joke. He could actually take them. Classes. Power. Whatever sat inside the Soul Cores of things stronger than him.
His eyes dropped to the listed abilities.
Beast Regeneration.
Beast Strength.
He did not think about which sounded cooler. He did not think about long-term potential. He thought about his body.
His ribs.
The ache still living under every movement.
'I need Beast Regeneration.'
Neo accepted it.
The panel shifted.
[Secondary Class Updated.]
Warmth spread through him at once, sinking first into his chest, then flowing through his limbs. When it reached his leg, Neo sucked in a breath. The pain did not vanish, but it loosened. The wound no longer felt like a raw tear dragging at every step. His ribs still hurt, though not in the same sharp, biting way.
Better.
That was enough.
Neo pushed himself back up and stood there for a moment, feeling the change settle through him.
His gaze drifted to the dead beast, then toward the trees beyond it.
[Soul Reaver.]
[Divine.]
[Duskmane Beast - Ascendant.]
One day. That was all it had taken.
One Soul Core had forced open his First Resonance. Another had already made him stronger.
Neo looked down at his hand.
'So this is how it all starts, the legend of Neo.'
He made it three steps before his expression twisted.
'God, that sounded cringe.'
A short huff escaped him.
'Good thing no one heard that.'
The trees began to thin, and the route turned familiar.
Neo slowed.
Through the gaps ahead, the old man's place came back into view.
His mood dropped at once.
He was no longer in the ruin. No longer alone with the chained corpse, the Soul Core, and the kind of secrets no one else in the world knew. He was back where questions existed.
Shapes were already moving around the tavern. More than one. Even from a distance, he could make out the posture of people who were not there for a drink. Uniforms, or something close to them. Investigators.
They had already arrived.
Neo's jaw tightened.
Covered in blood. Clothes torn apart. Coming out of the forest behind the old man's place. He did not need much imagination to know how that looked.
Bad.
He angled his body slightly and kept walking, trying not to turn his face too much, trying not to limp more than he had to, trying not to look like exactly what he looked like.
For a few seconds, it almost worked.
Then a voice cut across the clearing.
"Hey!"
Neo stopped.
A young man, maybe in his mid-twenties, had turned toward him from near the front of the building. His eyes flicked over Neo once, taking in the blood, the torn clothes, the way he carried himself.
"You," the man said, already moving in his direction. "Do you know what happened here? Where are you coming from looking like that? Come here and stay still."
Neo's first instinct was to run.
His body killed that idea at once. Pain pulsed through him, sharp enough to remind him what shape he was still in.
So he stayed where he was, every muscle tightening beneath dried blood and torn cloth, while his mind started moving much faster than his legs ever could.
He had survived the corpse.
The Soul Core.
The ruin.
The Duskmane.
And somehow, the situation had still turned worse again.