Chapter 12: Plagueborne Blessing The descent felt like slipping through a wound in the world. The air thickened with each step, the stone stairway stretching endlessly downward, twisting into the underbelly of the city like a spine carved from ash and memory. The old man shuffled ahead, his voice barely a whisper against the hum of unseen engines somewhere deep below. Kael followed, eyes tracing the flicker of faint light blooming through cracks in the rock, the pulse of something that wasn’t quite natural. When the final step gave way to flat earth, Kael paused, breath curling into the stale air. Below him sprawled a city lit not by the sun, but by hundreds of suspended lights—small, luminous orbs hovering like captured stars. They floated in layers, illuminating the narrow streets and the crumbling towers with an otherworldly shimmer. It was like staring at a night sky turned inside out, the heavens buried under dirt and despair. Kael’s lips twitched in disbelief. How does some

Chapter 14: Awakened IDA few weeks had crawled by since Kael hit Level 22 and buried himself in the filth and faith of the slums. The air down here always smelled like rusted prayers and damp stone, yet somehow, he’d made it home.Every day felt the same: he woke to the sound of dripping roofs, ate what could barely be called breakfast, opened the cracked doors of the church, healed whoever stumbled in bleeding or broken, blessed the ones too far gone to be saved, then closed up again when the night rats started singing. Rinse, repeat, suffer, survive.There wasn’t anywhere else to go. The moment he’d tried to walk outside the church, every gaze turned sharp, suspicious, reverent, or hungry. People didn’t just look at him; they watched him, like he was some holy artifact that might explode.So he stayed.He made himself a chair—a miserable little throne of scrap wood—and placed it beside the Statue of Gabriel that towered in the center o