13 Heavens: Rise Of The Bloodline Dreg

The Devouring

Leo’s lungs, the Zephyr Lungs refined to a mythical 13th level, did not breathe air. They screamed. It was a silent, internal shriek of protest as the System seized control and forced them to do the impossible.

He didn't pull in a trickle of the Wisp's energy. He opened the floodgates.

The Chaos Wisp's tendril, meant to siphon his life, became a highway for a catastrophic reversal. The dark, crackling energy of the Wisp a condensed storm of madness and raw, unrefined power surged into Leo.

It was not like the stag’s corruption. That was poison. This was an avalanche.

It felt like his bones were being replaced with live wires, his blood turning to molten lead. His vision whited out. The pain was so total, so absolute, it stopped being pain and became the only reality.

He could feel the System working frantically, a tiny, brilliant logic engine at the core of the storm, trying to channel the impossible flood.

[FULL ASSIMILATION INITIATED.]

[ENERGY OVERLOAD: CRITICAL.]

[RE-ROUTING TO REFINEMENT PATHWAYS…]

[PATHWAYS OVERWHELMED.]

[INITIATING EMERGENCY CONTAINMENT: MARROW SINK.]

The ocean of chaotic force was too much for his organs, for his skin. The System, in a desperate bid to stop him from exploding, slammed it all downward, into the deepest reservoir he had: his Phoenix Marrow.

His bones, refined to perfection, became prisons for a hurricane.

He felt them heat up, glow from within. The silvery corruption scars on his skin blazed with purple-black light. He was no longer a man in a pool; he was a lamp made of agony, burning in the dark water.

The Chaos Wisp recoiled. It was not used to having its energy stolen. It was the devourer, not the prey. It tried to pull back, to sever the connection.

The System wouldn’t let it.

[HOST SURVIVAL PARAMOUNT.]

[CONTINUE ASSIMILATION.]

Leo’s body, acting on an instinct deeper than his own, lunged forward. His hands, moving without his command, shot out of the water and grabbed the shifting, semi-solid form of the Wisp.

Contact.

The flood became a tidal wave.

The Wisp shrieked a sound of psychic feedback that made Elias whimper and cover his ears. It thrashed, trying to dissolve into mist, to escape.

But the connection was locked. Leo was a black hole for chaotic energy, and the Wisp was being pulled in.

It began to shrink, its dark light dimming, being sucked into the glowing, screaming figure in the pool.

In ten seconds, it was over.

The last wisp of darkness vanished into Leo’s palms. The chamber was silent, save for the drip of water and the ragged, wet sound of Leo’s breathing.

He slumped back in the pool, submerged to his chin. The water around him was steaming, bubbling slightly. The black water was now streaked with sickly purple swirls that slowly faded.

The Heart-Stones around the pool were dark and cracked. They had burned out, shattered by the violent exchange.

The sanctuary was broken.

Leo was alive. But he was not well.

He could feel it. The Wisp was gone, but its energy wasn't. It was inside him. A ocean of raw, chaotic power was contained within his bones, held there by the System’s desperate lockdown. It wasn't refined. It was imprisoned.

He felt immensely, terrifyingly heavy. His own pure energy was a tiny, bright island in a vast, dark sea.

[FULL ASSIMILATION COMPLETE.]

[ENERGY RESERVOIR ESTABLISHED: CHAOTIC CORE (CONTAINED).]

[WARNING: CONTAINMENT IS TEMPORARY. HOST MUST REFINE OR EXPEL ASSIMILATED ENERGY BEFORE IT BREACHES MARROW CONTAINMENT. TIME ESTIMATE: 72 HOURS.]

[ALTERNATIVE: INITIATE ORGAN REFINING (HEART) USING CHAOTIC CORE AS CATALYST. SUCCESS WILL PERMANENTLY INTEGRATE AND STABILIZE ENERGY. FAILURE WILL RESULT IN CATASTROPHIC ENERGY DISPERSAL (HOST TERMINATION).]

Three days. He had three days before the storm in his bones broke free and tore him apart.

Or he could try to refine his next organ, his Heart, right now, using the most volatile, poisonous energy imaginable as the fuel.

Elias staggered to his feet, leaning against the wall. He looked at the dark, cracked stones, then at Leo, his face a mask of awe and horror.

"What... what did you do?" the old man whispered. "You didn't just survive it. You ate it."

"I didn't have a choice," Leo rasped. His voice sounded strange, layered with a faint, discordant echo. "It's in me. I have to get it out, or use it. Fast."

Elias hobbled to the edge of the ruined pool. He looked at Leo's hands, which still faintly smoked. "The spring is dead. The Heart-Stone is gone. This place... it's just a cave now. The Chasm will seep in within hours."

He met Leo's eyes. "You can't stay here. And I can't stay with you. Not with that inside you. You're a walking bomb."

Leo nodded, the weight of it all crushing him. He had saved them from the Wisp, but he had destroyed their refuge and damned himself in the process. "I know. I have to go deeper."

"Deeper?" Elias barked a laugh that turned into a cough. "Deeper is death. The core of the Chasm... the energy there would make that Wisp look like a candle. It would shred what's left of you."

"Not if I control this first," Leo said, pushing himself up and out of the pool. He stood, dripping. He felt different. Not just heavy. He felt... powerful in a way that scared him.

The chaotic energy pulsed with every heartbeat, a second, darker rhythm alongside his own. "I need a place with no people. Where if I explode, I only take the monsters with me."

Elias studied him for a long moment, then sighed, a sound of utter defeat. He pointed a trembling finger toward the back of the chamber, past the ruined pool, to a narrow crack in the rock they hadn't noticed before. A faint, sickly purple glow emanated from it.

"There's a downward path. I've never taken it. The pull from it is... wrong. It leads to the pit. The source of the Chasm's madness, I think." He looked at Leo. "If you're determined to die, that's the quickest way."

Leo walked to the crack. The air from it was cold and smelled of ozone and old blood. The pull was immense. The chaotic energy in his bones stirred, reaching for it like a plant towards the sun.

This was it. His only path forward was down, into the belly of the beast.

He turned back to Elias. "Thank you. For the sanctuary. I'm sorry I broke it."

The old hermit just shook his head, looking old and tired. "Go. And may whatever gods are left have mercy on your soul, boy. You'll need it."

Leo didn't look back. He squeezed into the narrow, glowing crack and began to climb down.

The rock was warm and vibrated with a deep, subsonic hum. The purple light grew brighter. The air grew so thick with wild energy it was like swimming.

After a descent that felt both endless and instantaneous, the tunnel opened up.

He emerged onto a ledge overlooking a sight that stole his breath.

It was a vast, underground cavern, so huge the ceiling was lost in glowing purple mist. Below him, the ground wasn't rock. It was a seething, bubbling lake of raw, liquid chaotic energy purple, black, and crimson, swirling in a slow, massive vortex.

Jagged spines of corrupted crystal grew from its shores. In the air, fragments of solidified madness, like dark glass, floated and chimed together.

This was the source. The wound in the world.

And in the very center of the swirling lake, he saw it.

A structure. It was broken, ancient, made of a black stone that drank the light. It looked like a temple or a tower, half-sunk in the liquid chaos.

It was impossibly old, from a time before the Revival, maybe before recorded history.

And it was not of the Chasm. The chaotic energy flowed around it but didn't touch it. It was an island of stillness in the storm.

The System flared to life, its messages frantic, shocked.

[ANOMALY DETECTED.]

[ARCHITECTURE DOES NOT MATCH ANY KNOWN HUMAN DESIGN.]

[MATERIAL ANALYSIS: UNKNOWN. ENERGY SIGNATURE: NULL. ABSORBS ALL AMBIENT SCANS.]

[HYPOTHESIS: THIS STRUCTURE IS NOT A PRODUCT OF THE CHAOS. IT IS THE SOURCE OF THE CHASM.]

The cliffhanger wasn't the deadly energy or the ticking clock in his bones.

It was the temple.

The System’s final message burned in his vision, a truth more terrifying than any beast.

[THE CHAOTIC ENERGY ASSIMILATED BY THE HOST... IT BEARS 99.7% STRUCTURAL SIMILARITY TO THE ENERGY EMANATING FROM THE CENTRAL STRUCTURE.]

Leo wasn't just carrying a poison inside him.

He was carrying a key.