MY DEVOURER SYSTEM

“Try not to die this time, Ren.”

Corbin Reyes didn't bother hiding the smile in his voice.

A few students laughed.

Ren Kestrel adjusted the cracked wrist display on his arm and looked toward the violet Gate hanging over the ruined parking structure.

“Thanks,” he said. “I'll put it on my list.”

Corbin snorted. "You should. It's probably the most useful advice anyone's given you in two years."

Another laugh.

The Dungeon Gate hung above the collapsed training structure, violet light pulsing slow and steady, the way it had in every sanctioned exam Ren Kestrel had sat through for the past two years. Routine. Contained. Exactly the kind of breach a squad of second-years could be trusted to clear without an instructor standing over their shoulders.

"Field exam begins in sixty seconds," Sergeant Griff's voice crackled across the comm-band. He sounded bored. He always sounded bored, every exam, like the words had worn a groove in him years ago. "Anyone not in position fails automatically."

Ren was in position. Rear guard. Same as every exam for two years, because that's where the Academy put its lowest-ranked student when it needed a warm body to fill a slot and didn't expect much else from it. He'd stopped minding it, mostly. Rear guard meant less chance of getting hit by something that mattered.

The students were already moving into position when Ren noticed the looks.

They weren't staring openly. Most of them had learned better than that. Instead, the whispers travelled through the group in low voices, quiet enough that the instructors could ignore them and loud enough for Ren to hear every word.

"He's rear guard again?"

"Where else would they put him?"

"I heard he failed the last three practical assessments."

"Four."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Thirty's got to be the worst student Caldris has had in years."

Ren kept his eyes on the Gate. He'd heard worse.

"Don't let him near the front this time," someone whispered. "Last exam he froze when that crawler came through."

"I thought he just tripped."

A few people laughed.

Ren adjusted the strap around his wrist again and pretended not to hear them.

It was easier that way.

If he turned around, they'd know they'd gotten to him. If he answered, the conversation would become a show. So he did what he'd done for the past two years.

Nothing.

"Seat Thirty's on the left flank," Corbin Reyes said, not bothering to lower his voice. "Try not to die before we clear the objective. Some of us are actually trying to get a passing grade."

A ripple of laughter answered him. Ren didn't take the bait. Two years had taught him that answering just gave people something to work with.

His wrist display flickered.

[WARNING: Anomalous Pulse Rate Detected — Gate Stability: 61% and Falling]

His stomach dropped. "Griff, the Gate's destabilizing."

"Seat Thirty's nervous again," Corbin cut in. "Somebody get this man a participation trophy before he wets himself."

The number kept sliding. Fifty-eight. Fifty-four.

"I'm serious. Look at the readout—"

Nobody looked. Corbin shoved past him toward the front of the formation, close enough that his shoulder caught Ren's on the way. “What's wrong is Seat Thirty trying to ruin another exam. Maybe the Gate's finally realized who's standing in front of it.”

The mocking laughter came again.

Ren caught his arm. "The Gate's not stable. Listen to me for once."

Corbin turned fast, and for one second the whole squad went quiet.

The whispers started again.

"Did he seriously just grab Corbin?"

"He's got a death wish."

"Maybe being Seat Thirty finally broke him."

Ren heard them. He chose not to care.

Corbin stepped closer. "You're really going to blame another failure on the Gate?”

A faint kinetic glow gathered around his knuckles, the same ability that had put three students in the infirmary during sparring drills last month.

“Take your filthy hand off me!” Corbin clenched his fist, “You piece of crap. When are you going to learn that you don't matter in this world?”

For a moment, it almost looked as though he was simply going to throw an ordinary punch.

Then his foot slammed into the floor. The concrete cracked beneath his heel. Corbin twisted his waist and drove his right fist forward.

Ren managed to bring both arms up in front of his chest, but the moment Corbin's fist struck, the impact travelled straight through his guard. It felt as though a vehicle had crashed into him at full speed.

His feet left the ground.

Ren was thrown several metres backward before his back slammed into the concrete wall with a heavy crack. The force knocked the air from his lungs, and when he opened his mouth to breathe, blood spilled from the corner of his lips.

Corbin's jaw was tight, "You know your problem, Kestrel? You've convinced yourself that being weak makes you harmless."

Ren looked down at his trembling arms. They were already beginning to ache from the impact.

Corbin was already walking towards him, again, something dangerous still humming under his skin.

"Corbin." Ren nodded past him, toward the Gate, and for a second neither of them moved.

Corbin looked.

The rift gate pulsed once. Twice. Then the whole training ground shook.

The concrete under Ren's feet split down the middle, and the floor was gone before either of them could move, or even register what had just happened.

Ren's stomach lurched as he fell, hands scrabbling for anything solid. His fingers caught a jagged lip of broken concrete, and for one impossible second he hung there, boots kicking at open air, the drop beneath him swallowed in violet light and darkness.

Faces appeared above the edge. Priya, already shouting his name. Griff, frozen mid-command. Corbin, closest of all, dropping to his knees and reaching down with the same hand that had been glowing with kinetic charge a second earlier.

"Grab on!"

Ren's fingers slipped.

Corbin's hand closed on empty air where he had been a half-second before. For just a moment, before the dark closed over him completely, Ren caught Corbin's face – not triumph, not mockery, just a wicked, sinister grin.

Corbin had only been pretending to save him.

He hadn't actually expected to reach fast enough to matter, and it showed.

Then the dark took him whole.

One second he was standing with his sentence half-finished. The next, the ground was gone, and he was falling through violet light into a dark that didn't smell like any training exam he knew.

He hit something hard enough to knock the air out of him. And that something cracked beneath his weight — rock, or bone, he couldn't tell yet, and didn't have the breath to find out.

No concrete here. No Academy. Wet stone, and a smell underneath it he didn't have a name for, and something breathing in the darkness close enough that he could hear it. The walls he could half-see rushing past on the way down hadn't been concrete either. Older. Rougher. Unshaped by anything human.

Words appeared in front of his eyes, glowing faint violet. It didn't attack. It arrived. A pressure behind his eyes. Old. Hungry.

<Host found.>

<Compatibility: unprecedented.>

<Bloodline dormant - eleven thousand years; awakening.>

Ren tried to scream. No air came.

Something moved in the dark. Closer.

<Ravener Bloodline — awakening.>

Ren tried to push himself backward. There was nowhere to go.

<Installing: RAVENER SYSTEM>

<Warning: This process cannot be reversed. Host will not sur—>

His body seized. The pain wasn't like any injury he had a name for — not a burn, not a break. It was like something had reached into his chest and pried open a door that had been locked for a very long time.

Ren screamed.

Somewhere in the dark, close enough to touch, something screamed with him.

Above him, getting farther away, he could still hear the comm.

Corbin, laughing.

Priya, asking if anyone actually saw him fall.

Griff moving the roll call along without him.

They were already writing him off. They hadn't even finished the sentence.

The dark and the pain kept pulling him past the daylight. Past the sound of the exam still going above him, like nothing had happened. To them, probably, nothing had. Seat Thirty fell through the floor. Stuff like that happened to him. Nobody would come looking until the roll call came up one name short, and by then it wouldn't matter — he was already somewhere the daylight couldn't follow.

<Evolution beginning.>

<Warning: Host survival probability — 3%.>

The last thing Ren saw before the dark closed over him was a line of text, cut off mid-sentence,

<Congratulations, Host. You have been gran—>

Then nothing. Not even the sound of his own scream.