The dark does not just hide monsters. It turns you into one.Lincoln didn’t think. He threw himself sideways, shoulder slamming into jagged stone. The creature’s bladed limb came down where his head had been, striking the floor with a crack like thunder.Move. Move or die.He scrambled on hands and knees, loose shale slicing his palms. The thing behind him clicked and chittered, tasting the air. Lincoln ran. He didn’t know where—only that he had to put distance between himself and the thing that breathed hot rot down his neck.His foot caught a slope steeper than the last. He tumbled, a brief, violent cartwheel, until a rock wall stopped him with a sickening thud. Stars burst behind his eyes. His ribs screamed.Then he saw light.A faint orange glow, feeble and stuttering, painted the walls of a small hollow. Lincoln squinted, certain the fall had rattled his brain loose. But the light remained.A figure huddled beside it—withered, trembling, wrapped in torn robes. The man’s face lifte

Some call it luck. I call it the price of one more breath.Lincoln scrambled backward, his boots sliding on the slick stone floor. The pinned Shadow Scavenger thrashed in its death throes, claws scraping the cavern wall with a sound that set his teeth on edge.“Lincoln, get back!” Santiago shouted, huddled against the wall and clutching his side.“I’m okay,” Lincoln panted. “I’m okay.”“You’re covered in blood. Is that yours?”“Mine, the beast’s—all of it.” Lincoln wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked at the creature. Its obsidian eyes dimmed, the last twitches fading.A faint chime sounded in his mind—weaker than before, a flicker of blue light swimming at the edge of his vision. The ring on his finger pulsed, barely perceptible. Something was drawing energy from the dead beast, a trickle of power the ring drank in like water on parched earth. The hollow ache in Lincoln’s chest eased, just slightly.A translucent screen flickered to life before his eyes, dimmer than bef

The hardest part of saving someone is realizing that holding onto them might be the very thing that kills them.Lincoln knelt in the dust, the salvaged everflame core from the supply depot sputtering in his hands. Its light was sickly, barely holding back the dark. Beside him, Santiago shivered, his skin pulled tight over bones that seemed to be turning to glass. The air in the chamber was cold, but the heat radiating off the old man was feverish and wrong.“You have to breathe,” Lincoln said, his voice tight. “Santiago, please. Just breathe.”“I’m trying,” Santiago wheezed, his eyes unfocused. “It’s just… so heavy. The air is so heavy.”Lincoln watched the way Santiago’s chest rose and fell. Ragged. Broken. He looked down at his own hand, pressing it against the stone floor to steady himself, and he saw it—a thin, black vein snaking up his wrist, pulsing under his skin. The toxicity of the mine was getting inside him, too. Eating them both alive.“We need to move,” Lincoln said, thoug

They say blood is thicker than water. In this godforsaken hole, blood is the only currency that buys a future.The swarm poured through the tunnel behind him, a tide of chittering hatchlings that flooded every crevice. Lincoln ran, his lungs on fire, the violet glow of his dagger the only light in the suffocating dark. The safe zone was somewhere ahead—Santiago's alcove—but he couldn't lead the swarm there. He wouldn't.A massive wooden support beam loomed out of the darkness, rotten and splintered, wedged between floor and ceiling. A relic from the mine's operational days. Lincoln skidded to a halt, eyes tracing the cracks spiderwebbing through the timber. The ceiling above it sagged, heavy with unstable rock.A choice. Seal the path, bury the swarm—and lose his way back to Santiago.The hatchlings screeched, closer now, their mandibles clicking in a frenzied rhythm. No time. No options.He pressed his palm against the beam, feeling the groan of strained wood. "I'm sorry, Santiago," h

Mercy is a luxury for those who do not know the taste of ash. Today, I am starving.Lincoln moved through the tunnels like a ghost, his void blade whispering against the air with a sound like tearing silk. A scavenger lunged from the shadows—he didn't even look. A flick of his wrist, and the creature dissolved into dark vapor before it could make a sound. He kept walking.He'd left the forge behind, sealed behind its ancient doors, but the System hadn't faded. The blue interface still flickered at the edge of his vision, steady now where it had been unstable before. No longer borrowed. No longer dependent on the door's power or the ring's proximity. The Void Smith advancement had burned it into him, as permanent as the sigil on his arm. He was the conduit now.He wasn't sure how he felt about that. The System had changed—its voice more present, more deliberate. It called him by name now, a small thing, but it unsettled him. He'd spent weeks with nothing but Santiago's voice and his own