SOVEREIGN OF BLOOD: The Emperor's Debt System

THE TREMBLING HANDS OF THE SAVIOR

The footsteps sounded hesitant, clashing with the hiss of fire from the husks of burning cars in the distance. Jakarta, once deafening with the roar of engines, now held only the static noise of destruction. Kirana, a final year medical student who should have been preparing for her clinical rotations, tightened her jacket, which was already stained with concrete dust and patches of drying blood.

Her mind was still haunted by the sights at Harmoni two hours ago. Her entire medical team, senior doctors, nurses, and colleagues, had vanished in an instant when a light from the sky struck their evacuation tent.

They didn't die by being buried under rubble. They dissolved into golden dust right before her eyes. Kirana had only survived because she was retrieving medical supplies from the basement of the adjacent building. Now, she walked aimlessly among the shadows of Sudirman's skyscrapers, trying to act like a ghost to avoid being spotted by the winged patrols in the sky.

As she passed a narrow alley wedged between two office buildings, a powerful, pungent scent hit her nose. It wasn't the smell of normal blood. There was a sharp tang of sulfur mixed with the scent of ozone that lingers after a lightning storm.

There, leaning against a pile of wet wooden pallets, she found a body.

"My God..." Kirana covered her mouth with a trembling hand.

The man looked as though he had just crawled out of the epicenter of a nuclear blast. His body was covered in a horrific black crust. The blood oozing from his wounds wasn't a fresh red, but pitch-black and thick, like motor oil. The man was Satria, but in his current state, he looked more like a heap of flesh held together by sheer rage.

Kirana hesitated. Logic told her to run. The creature before her might no longer be human. However, when she saw the man’s fingers twitch slightly, her medical instincts overrode her fear. She approached, kneeling in a pool of water contaminated by black blood, and pressed her trembling fingers against Satria’s neck.

There was a pulse, but it was bizarre. Thump... thump... thump... thump... The rhythm was erratic. Explosively fast, then slowing until it nearly stopped, as if the heart within was locked in a life and death, duel against something trying to tear his soul out.

"You’re alive... how can you still be alive with wounds like these?" Kirana whispered.

Kirana knew she couldn't leave him here. A Heavenly Vanguard patrol would find him soon. With what little strength she had left, she hoisted Satria’s body. He was far heavier than he looked, as if his bones were made of solid lead. With great effort, Kirana dragged him toward an abandoned underground clinic a few hundred meters away, a place that once served as a free medical post for the homeless.

The clinic was damp, musty, and lit only by an emergency oil lamp with a nearly spent wick. Yet, in this apocalyptic world, that basement felt like the safest fortress.

Kirana laid Satria on an old, rusted operating table. With hands still shaking, she took medical scissors and began cutting away the remnants of Satria’s clothes, which had fused with his skin. When the fabric came away, Kirana gasped, nearly dropping her scissors.

In Satria’s left chest, right over the heart, was a horrific through and through wound. It should have been a fatal injury that destroyed the lungs and aorta. Yet, inside the wound, Kirana saw something that defied every medical textbook she had ever studied. There was no massive hemorrhaging. Instead, there were thousands of fine black fibers, resembling microscopic tentacles or parasitic threads, moving actively. These fibers seemed to be stitching the flesh together, reconnecting blood vessels, and wrapping around broken ribs in a highly invasive manner.

"This isn't healing... it’s an invasion," Kirana muttered in horror.

She grabbed a bottle of makeshift alcohol. "Without anesthesia... you might not survive, but I have no choice. I have to clean this infection before that black mass takes over your entire body."

The moment the alcohol touched Satria’s open wound, the reaction was beyond anything she expected. Satria’s body buckled in a violent convulsion. His body temperature spiked so drastically that Kirana could see steam rising from his skin. When she tried to hold his shoulders down, it felt like touching a searing hot iron.

"Stay alive, please," Kirana sobbed. Tears rolled down her cheeks, falling onto Satria’s chest. She began suturing the smaller external wounds with what remained of her surgical needle and thread. Every time the needle pierced his skin, Satria let out a low moan that sounded more like the growl of a wild beast.

Kirana worked for three hours in a heavy silence, accompanied only by the erratic beat of Satria’s heart and the drip of water from the clinic ceiling. She did this not just because of her medical oath, but because she felt the need to save something, anything to prove that humanity hadn't been completely defeated.

Finally, the external wounds were closed. Kirana slumped onto the cold cement floor, staring at the still unconscious Satria. His breathing began to stabilize, though it remained heavy. Kirana was just about to close her eyes for a brief rest when the atmosphere in the room suddenly shifted.

The air, which had been warm from the heat of Satria’s body, turned ice cold. The oil lamp on the table flickered, its flame shrinking until it nearly died.

Satria’s eyes snapped wide open.

Kirana recoiled until her back hit the medicine cabinet. Those were not human eyes. There were no pupils, no irises, no familiar brown color. Satria’s eyes had turned a solid, stark white, emitting a cold, hollow glow.

Before the semi-conscious Satria, a system interface, visible only to him, flickered into existence, flashing an intense, blood, red hue.

[INITIAL LOAN GRACE PERIOD: EXPIRED.]

[DEBT STATUS: UNPAID (ACCRUING INTEREST).]

[STAGE 1 PENALTY EXECUTED: BONE MARROW PURGING.]

"What...? What’s happening to you?" Kirana screamed, trying to approach him again.

"Run... Go..." Satria tried to speak, but his voice was buried by the sound of bones cracking from within his own body.

"AAARRRGGGHHH!"

Satria howled. The scream was so powerful it shook the very foundations of the underground clinic. Dust fell from the ceiling. Beneath Satria’s skin, Kirana could see something moving like worms crawling along the length of his bones. Satria’s bone marrow was being "purged", forcibly replaced by the dark essence of the Blood Debt System.

The process was pure torture. Every inch of bone in Satria’s body felt as though it were being drilled into and filled with molten lead. Uncontrollable energy exploded from his body in waves of reddish-black shockwaves.

BOOM!

The iron operating table Satria lay on buckled and collapsed. Medical equipment, alcohol bottles, and stainless steel trays were hurled against the walls, shattering into pieces. Kirana was thrown into the corner of the room, her head hitting the wall until her vision blurred.

Satria rolled onto the floor covered in broken glass. He clawed at his own chest with nails that had grown black and razor-sharp, as if he wanted to rip his heart out just to stop the pain.

"Stop it! Please, stop it!" Kirana screamed amidst the chaos, but she couldn't get close. The air pressure around Satria was so immense it made it difficult to breathe.

In the remnants of his consciousness, nearly lost to the agony, Satria saw the cold system notification.

[BONE MARROW PURGING PROCESS: 15%... 30%...]

[WARNING: HUMAN BODY TOO WEAK. RISK OF HEART FAILURE: 85%.]

Satria slammed his fist into the cement floor, shattering it. He couldn't die. Not yet. There were still thousands of angels out there whose debts he hadn't collected. Amidst the torture, his hatred flared back to life, providing extra fuel for the parasitic system to continue its work.

Kirana watched from the corner of the room, tears of terror in her eyes. She realized one terrifying thing, she hadn't just saved a survivor. She had just midwifed the birth of something far more dangerous than anything she had ever imagined. The man before her was a weapon, and the system inside his body would not stop until there was nothing left to consume.