SILENT VEINS: THE BLOODBORN ASCENSION

The mop slapped against the linoleum floor. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Kaelen's arms burned. His shoulders screamed. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like angry wasps, flickering every few seconds like they couldn't decide whether to live or die. Kind of like him, honestly.

Two in the morning. Again.

He dragged the bucket closer, the wheels squeaking loud enough to make him wince. The medical research wing was supposed to be empty this time of night. That's why they gave him this shift. That's why they always gave him the shifts nobody wanted.

His stomach growled. When did he eat last? Morning, maybe. Yesterday morning. He couldn't remember anymore. The double shifts blurred together into one long nightmare of bleach fumes and aching muscles.

Just get through tonight. Just get through tonight and tomorrow you can sleep.

His hands trembled as he wrung out the mop. The shaking had gotten worse this week. Probably the lack of food. Probably the exhaustion. Probably the fact that his body was slowly giving up on him.

He leaned the mop against the wall and turned toward the supply closet. Just needed to grab more paper towels. Simple. Easy.

His foot caught on something.

The tray of glass beakers teetered on the edge of the shelf. Kaelen's hand shot out, but too slow, always too slow.

Crash!

Glass exploded across the floor like frozen rain. The sound echoed down the empty hallway, bouncing off the walls, making it sound like a hundred beakers had shattered instead of just six.

"No, no, no." Kaelen dropped to his knees, reaching for the larger pieces. "Please, not tonight."

A shard bit into his palm.

The pain was sharp. Clean. He jerked his hand back, watching the blood well up from the cut, dark and thick in the harsh fluorescent light.

One drop fell.

Two.

Three drops hit the white tile.

The lights exploded.

Every single one. Pop, pop, pop, pop, like fireworks going off in sequence down the entire hallway. Sparks rained down from the fixtures. The computers along the wall started smoking, their screens cracking with loud snaps. Monitors went black. Security cameras sparked and died. Even the vending machine at the end of the hall groaned and went silent.

Darkness swallowed everything.

Then the emergency generators kicked in, flooding the hallway with blood-red light. The alarm started screaming. High-pitched. Relentless. It felt like it was drilling straight into his skull.

Kaelen stared at his hand.

Black veins spread from the wound like cracks in ice, crawling up his palm, over his wrist, disappearing under his sleeve. They pulsed with each beat of his heart. Dark. Wrong. Cursed.

"No." His voice came out strangled. "No, no, no, not again."

He ripped his shirt off, wrapping it tight around his hand, squeezing until the fabric turned dark with blood. His heart hammered against his ribs. Too fast. Too loud. He could hear it over the alarm.

Clean it up. He had to clean it up. Before someone came. Before someone saw. Before they looked at him with those eyes. The ones that said monster. The ones that said get away from me. The ones that said Sister Mira was right about him all along.

His knees hit the floor. Glass crunched under his weight. He started grabbing pieces with his good hand, shoving them back onto the tray, but his fingers wouldn't work right. Everything was shaking. His hands. His arms. His entire body.

"Kaelen!!!"

Sister Mira's voice echoed in his head. Sharp. Angry. Terrified.

He was twelve again. Back in the basement of Saint Catherine's Orphanage. Back in the dark with nothing but his mother's journal and the sound of his own crying.

The knife pressed against his throat. Cold metal. Ryan's breath in his face, hot and sour.

"Freak," Ryan hissed. "You think you're better than us? You think just because Sister Mira lets you stay here, you're special?"

The blade bit into his skin. Just a nick. Just enough to draw blood.

The knife shattered.

Like it was made of sugar glass. Like it was nothing. The pieces flew backward, embedding themselves in Ryan's hands, his face, his chest. He screamed. High and piercing and full of a terror that Kaelen had never heard from anyone before.

Sister Mira found them like that. Ryan on the ground, bleeding and sobbing. Kaelen standing over him, blood on his neck, horror in his eyes.

"What did you do?" Sister Mira grabbed Kaelen by the arm, her fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "What did you do, you cursed child?"

"I didn't... I didn't mean to..."

"The basement. Now."

Three days in the dark. Three days with nothing but stale bread and water shoved through the door. Three days of Sister Mira's voice filtering down through the floorboards.

"Unnatural."

"Dangerous."

"Maybe we should call someone. Maybe he needs to be somewhere else. Somewhere that can handle... things like him."

Kaelen had curled up in the corner, his mother's journal clutched to his chest, tears streaming down his face. He'd written the same question over and over until his hand cramped.

What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me?

Footsteps.

Kaelen's head snapped up. Someone was coming. The alarm was still blaring. The red lights were still flashing. And he was kneeling in a pool of glass and sparks with his blood-soaked shirt wrapped around his hand.

A figure stepped out of the shadows at the end of the hallway.

Silver hair caught the emergency lights, almost glowing. Amber eyes fixed on him with an intensity that made his skin prickle. He knew her. Lira Ashwyn. Third-year medical student. He'd seen her around campus, always walking with that confident stride, always surrounded by other students who looked at her like she hung the moon.

She shouldn't be here. Not at two in the morning. Not in this wing.

She walked closer. Her eyes never left his hand.

The black veins were fading now. Slowly. The wound was already starting to close, skin knitting back together in a way that wasn't natural, wasn't normal, wasn't human. It would leave a scar. It always left a scar. His arms were covered in them, hidden under his sleeves. A roadmap of every time his blood had touched something. Every time the curse had taken over.

"You're bleeding." Her voice was soft. Strange. Almost like she was talking to something sacred instead of something broken.

Kaelen scrambled to his feet, hiding his hand behind his back. "I'm fine. You should go. This area is restricted after hours. I need to..."

"A Voidborn."

The word hit him like a punch to the gut.

Lira stepped closer. The red emergency lights made her amber eyes look like they were burning. "After all these years, an actual Voidborn."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Kaelen backed up. His heel hit the wall. Nowhere left to go. "I'm just... I'm just the janitor. I knocked over some beakers. That's all. The power surge was just a coincidence."

"Your blood destroyed every electronic device in a fifty-foot radius." She gestured at the smoking computers, the dead cameras. "That's not a coincidence.”

"You need to leave. Now."

"How long have you been hiding?"

"I said leave!"

The alarm changed. The pitch dropped, became something deeper, something that vibrated in his chest like a second heartbeat. It wasn't the fire alarm. It wasn't the security alarm. It was something else. Something that made every hair on his body stand on end.

Lira's face went white. "They're already here." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It's too late."

"What's too late? What are you..."

Poooohffdhhh!!

The wall exploded.

Chunks of concrete flew across the hallway. Dust filled the air, thick and choking. Kaelen threw his arms up, shielding his face as debris rained down around him.

Something crawled through the hole.

At first, Kaelen thought it was a student. The shape was right. Human. Female. He recognized the blonde hair, the blue jacket.

Amy. From the biology department. She always smiled at him when he cleaned the classrooms.

But her skin. God, her skin was gray. Ash gray. Like something dead. Like something that had been underground for too long. And her eyes. Her eyes were just... empty. Black pits where her eyes should be. Voids that seemed to swallow the light around them.

She opened her mouth.

It stretched too wide. Her jaw unhinged like a snake's, dropping low enough that it shouldn't have been possible, shouldn't have been real. The sound that came out wasn't human. It was metal scraping against metal. It was nails on a chalkboard amplified a thousand times.

Kaelen's legs stopped working.

Lira shoved him backward. Hard. He stumbled, fell against the wall. She stepped in front of him, her hand already glowing with a blue light so bright it hurt to look at.

"Stay back!" Her voice was steel now. Command. Authority.

The creature that used to be Amy lunged.

Lira thrust her hand forward. Water materialized out of nothing, pulling itself out of the air, forming into a blade of pressurized liquid that whistled as it cut through the space between them.

It should have sliced the creature in half. Should have ended this.

The creature moved. Faster than anything Kaelen had ever seen. One second it was in front of Lira, the next it was behind her, its gray hand swinging in a wide arc.

The hit connected with Lira's chest.

She flew backward. Her body hit the wall with a sickening crunch. She crumpled to the floor and didn't move.

The creature turned. Those empty black eyes fixed on Kaelen.

This can't be real. This can't be happening. This is a nightmare. He was going to wake up in his tiny apartment, alone, exhausted, but alive. This wasn't real.

The creature charged.

Kaelen's feet finally remembered how to work. He ran. Two steps. Three. His foot caught on debris. He went down hard, his chin cracking against the floor. Stars exploded across his vision.

The creature was on top of him. Straddling his chest. Its hand raised high, fingers elongated into claws, black and sharp and aimed straight at his throat.

Time stopped.

Kaelen could see his reflection in those empty eyes. See his own terror staring back at him. See the blood still dripping from his palm where the shirt had come loose.

"Your blood is not a curse, my darling."

His mother's handwriting filled his vision. The last page of her journal. The one he'd read a thousand times, trying to understand, trying to make sense of words that seemed impossible.

"It is a key. And one day, you will understand what door it opens."

Without thinking. Without planning. Without any idea what would happen.

Kaelen thrust his bleeding hand forward.

His palm connected with the creature's chest.

His blood touched its skin.

Everything. Went. Silent.

The alarm stopped. The red lights froze in mid-flicker. The air itself seemed to hold its breath.

The creature's mouth opened in a scream that made no sound.

And then Kaelen's world exploded in black fire.