Novels by Ittazura

“Am I the hero you wanted me to be, brother?”The air in the fractured sub-basement cracked with Leo’s words, echoing off shattered steel and raining debris. His body, now shimmering with a permanent ash-grey hue and adorned with fresh, subtle glyphs absorbed from Arthur Thorne's consumed core, pulsated with barely contained energy. His eyes, burning crimson, fixed on Marcus. Black tendrils of shadow, like nascent wings, briefly flared from his back, casting grotesque, shifting phantoms against the collapsing architecture before receding, ready to strike. The dust-choked cavern around him was his stage, carved from the very foundation built on blood.Marcus Thorne staggered back, his pale face reflecting genuine terror beneath the grime. The triumph he’d felt just moments before – the final, agonizing proof of Leo's death – had turned to a sickening dread. He pointed a trembling finger, not a gesture of co

Leo Thorne landed hard, not with the deafening clang he’d anticipated on a metal sub-floor, but with a sickening crunch. Pain flared through his newly enhanced nervous system, quickly subdued by the Echo's rapid self-correction, as his feet found purchase not on concrete, but on a vast, shifting expanse of… bone. Dust, heavy and ancient, billowed around him, tasting of desiccated despair and something far older than mere decay – the ghost of countless ritualistic endings.His crimson eyes, now almost painfully sharp in the gloom, swept over the macabre landscape. This wasn’t a cavern, or a deep shaft. It was a purpose-built pit. Walls, smooth and cold, disappeared into the suffocating darkness above, etched with faded, intricate glyphs that pulsed with barely contained residual mana. The ground, an unending mosaic of broken femurs, splintered ribs, and cracked skulls, stretched as far as his enhanced vision could penetrate. Bones of hundreds. Thousands. Perhaps millions, crushed and f

Leo Thorne stood, a grim, monstrous silhouette etched against the sickening green glow emanating from the pod directly before him. A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through his obsidian-hardened skin, not from fear, but from a surge of an emotion he struggled to categorize. It was raw. Primordial. And deeply, terrifyingly, familiar. His vision, a permanent crimson haze since the transformation, focused solely on the figure suspended within the translucent fluid."Mama?" The word, a strained rasp that felt alien in his altered throat, escaped him before the System's cold, logical analysis superimposed itself over his burning eyes.```SYSTEM ANALYSIS: TARGET ACQUIREDENTITY: ELENA THORNE (BIOLOGICAL PROTOTYPE: PRIMARY)CLASSIFICATION: HIGH-QUALITY MANA FILTER (TIER-B ACTIVE)STATUS: UNCONSCIOUS (SEVERE ATROPHY. FUNCTIONAL LIFE SUPPORT)VALUE: IRREPLACEABLE (REDUCES IMPURITIES IN SOURCE MANA. SUSTAINS NETWORK EFFICIENCY)WARNING: INTERFERING WITH PRIMARY UNIT WILL CAUSE… SYSTEM F

"He thinks a scrap of paper and an old knife are enough to rattle me," Leo said, his fingers tightening around the silver hilt of the dagger.The metal groaned under his grip, the silver warping as a surge of Primal mana traveled from his palm into the blade. Behind him, the charred skeleton of his childhood home stood as a jagged monument to Marcus’s cowardice, the embers still glowing like the eyes of a dying beast."He isn't just rattling you, Leo," the Ancient Echo’s voice resonated from the shadows at his feet. "He is inviting you to the slaughter.""Then I’ll make sure I’m the one holding the cleaver," Leo replied, his gray, stone-like skin smoothing over as he forced his form back into a human shape.He tucked the warped silver dagger into his belt, the blade a bitter reminder of the night his brother had first tried to end him. The city lights flickered in the distance, dominated by the towering black monolith of the Thorne Guild Headquarters."The ring was the only thing our

"Fire! Neutralize the anomaly!" the lead Cleaner screamed, his voice muffled by a high-grade tactical mask.A volley of blue mana-bolts hissed through the air, converging on the spot where Leo stood in Jax’s stolen form. Leo didn't dodge; he felt the Primal Core in his chest pulse, a barrier of dark, flickering static erupting to meet the projectiles with a violent crackle."Your toys are useless against the Sovereign," Leo growled, his voice a terrifying mix of Jax's grit and the Ancient Echo's dual-toned rumble.The Cleaners didn't hesitate, their training overriding the fear that the dark barrier should have instilled. Two more hunters dropped from the ceiling, their heavy boots cracking the concrete as they leveled mana-suppression rifles at Leo’s chest."Target is resisting! Switch to heavy containment shells!" the squad leader ordered, signaling his men to flank.Leo felt the air grow heavy as the containment shells whistled toward him, designed to drain the mana of any hunter t

"I'm going to enjoy turning your skull into a trophy for Marcus," Jax sneered, his hand tightening on the hilt of his broadsword.Leo shifted his weight, his human disguise flickering like a dying candle as the rot from the glitched slime pulsed in his chest. He could feel the eyes of the underground crowd burning into him, hungry for a slaughter that didn't involve a betting slip."You always talked too much, Jax," Leo rasped, his voice vibrating with the dual-toned resonance of the Sovereign."And you always were a pathetic little porter, but look at you now," Jax laughed, drawing the massive blade with a metallic hiss. "I don't know what kind of dark magic you stumbled into, but it ends here.""The only thing ending is your career as a Thorne lapdog," Leo replied, his eyes bleeding into a predatory crimson.Jax lunged, the broadsword glowing with a heavy, yellow mana that signaled an earth-elemental reinforcement. The concrete floor beneath Leo’s feet cracked as the gravity in the