2026-02-16 05:24:54He drove what remained of his knife into the creature's eye.
The light went out. The soldier slumped. Didn't move. Didn't breathe. Dead. Actually dead. Rome stood over it. Chest heaving. Blood dripping from his face, his hands, his everywhere. He raised the broken knife above his head. I won. Holy shit, I actually won. Screaming. Someone was screaming. Not cheering. Not celebration. Terror. Pure terror. Kiona's voice. "Rome! YOUR ARM!" His arm? He looked down. Oh. Oh. Where his left arm should have been, there was nothing. Just a ragged stump below the elbow. Just bone and meat and blood pumping out in rhythmic spurts. Huh. That's... that's not great. When did that happen? Was that when it grabbed me? Must have been when it grabbed me. I should probably be more concerned about this. The world tilted sideways. Rome's knees buckled. He was falling. Had been falling for a while, maybe. Hard to tell. Time was doing something weird. Stretching and compressing like taffy. He hit the sand. Soft. That's nice. The arena ceiling spun above him. Dark and distant and full of shadows. A sound. Grinding. Stone on stone. The archways. The doors. They were opening. "THE EXITS!" Someone shouted. Not Reyes. One of the others. "THEY'RE OPEN! RUN!" Movement. Footsteps. The thunder of boots on sand. Rome turned his head. It took enormous effort. Like his skull weighed a thousand pounds. Hunters ran for the exits. Eight of them. Maybe nine. Sprinting with everything they had. One tripped over Patterson's body. Went down. Scrambled up. Kept running. Another shoved past Kiona. Her broken leg twisted beneath her. She screamed. They didn't stop. They didn't look back. They just ran. Cowards. Running while Kiona screams. Running over the people who can't. We were a team. We were supposed to be a team. The first hunter reached an archway. Plunged into the darkness beyond. A wet sound. A thud. Something rolled back out into the torchlight. A head. The second hunter tried to stop. Too late. He crossed the threshold. Another wet sound. Another thud. Oh. The doors weren't an exit. They were a trap. We were never meant to leave. The knights emerged from the archways. Eight of them. One for each hunter who'd tried to run. Their black swords dripped red. The remaining runners tried to turn back. Too late. Too slow. Rome watched them die. One by one. Cut down like wheat. Eight hunters who'd been alive thirty seconds ago. Eight people with families, with dreams, with reasons to fight. Gone. Ha. The laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep. Somewhere broken. Ha ha. They're all gonna die. We're all gonna die. I cut off my own arm to kill one soldier and there's still twelve more plus that giant and we're all gonna die in this stupid hole. This is so dumb. This is so incredibly dumb. I just wanted to buy Calypso a car. His vision was going dark at the edges. The blood loss, probably. Hard to think about blood when so much of it was outside his body. Kiona was crawling toward him. Dragging her broken leg. Tears on her face. "Rome. Rome, stay with me. STAY WITH ME." I'm trying. I'm really trying. But I'm so tired. And the sand is so soft. And Calypso's gonna be so mad at me. The darkness crept closer. The last thing Rome saw was Kiona's face above him. Those sharp eyes filled with something he'd never seen before. Fear. Not for herself. For him. Huh. That's... that's kind of nice. Dinner. I still owe her dinner. Can't die before... Before...
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17 | The Plausible Narrative
"That's vague as hell."『Specificity will come with progress. For now, you should focus on recovery and understanding your basic capabilities.』Rome walked to the window of his hospital room. Outside, the sky was dark. Night time. How long had he been here?Then another thought struck him."Wait. If you restored my 'vessel' or whatever, why am I in a hospital? Shouldn't I be completely healed?"『External healing was necessary to stabilize your condition until our covenant could be fully established. Additionally, sudden miraculous recovery tends to raise questions. This provides a plausible narrative for your survival.』"So I'm still supposed to be injured?"『You were in critical condition when admitted. Multiple fractures, severe blood loss, internal injuries, and a severed limb. Your survival was considered medically improbable. Your current state would be... suspicious.』"Great." Rome sighed. "So I have to pretend to still be injured?"『For now, yes. Though your recovery can be exp
16 | Grow
A window appeared in the air before him. Glowing green text on a translucent background, hovering impossibly in the empty space above his hospital bed.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Host Status — Authenticated 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Rome D'AngeloAscension Rank: 1━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Vessel Metrics 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━VIT ·········· 10FOR ·········· 10REF ·········· 10RES ·········· 20 ← UnusualINT ·········· 10Available Points: 0━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 S.E.E.D.S」 ☆ 0 / 2━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━· · ·· ☆ ·· · ·━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━「 Inherited Arts 」━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━No Arts Acquired.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Rome stared at the window with his mouth hanging open."What... is this?"『This is your status screen. It displays your current attributes, abilities, and progress within the Ancestral Resonance Cultivation Ascension Nexus system.』"The... what
15 | Where I Have Always Been
Wheat rustled around Rome, golden stalks swaying in a gentle breeze that carried the scent of soil and sunshine. He pushed himself up to sitting, his head foggy like he'd slept for a thousand years."What the actual hell?" The sky stretched above him in impossible shades of purple and blue, colors that had no business being natural. Clouds drifted lazily, white puffs against a backdrop that looked like someone had spilled watercolors across the horizon.Rome patted himself down, feeling his chest, his legs, his—"My arm." He stared at his left hand, turning it palm up, then down. Flexing the fingers. "I still have my arm."The hand looked real. Felt real. He pinched the skin and winced at the sharp pain.*Okay, so either I'm dead, or I'm hallucinating. Great options.*He stood, wheat parting around him as he turned in a slow circle. Nothing but golden fields in every direction except—A hill rose in the distance, and atop it sat a small farmhouse with a peaked roof and wraparound por
14 | Tempus Finitum
The giant didn't respond.Kiona made it out.That's what matters.She'll find help. She'll tell someone. She'll...She'll be okay.His thoughts drifted. Scattered like leaves in the wind.Calypso.Her face swam up from the darkness. Sixteen years old. That smile she got when she thought she'd fooled him. The way she pretended not to care about things she cared about more than anything.I'm sorry.Your big brother wasn't strong enough.I wanted to give you everything. College. A house. A car. A life where you didn't have to worry about bills or groceries or whether the heat would work this winter.I wanted to be the kind of brother you deserved.But I guess...I guess this is as far as I go.His eyes drifted to the wall. To that pillar with the Roman numerals.The shadow crept across the stone.IV.Almost at V.Huh. Guess time's almost up anyway.The giant raised its sword. That massive black blade that could cleave him in half without effort."TEMPUS FINITUM." Its voice echoed through
13 | Concessum Est
"Pro... victoria mea..." Rome's voice was a rasp. "Peto... salvum conductum... pro ea."For my victory. I ask safe passage. For her.The arena went silent.The giant statue turned its massive head. Those burning eyes fixed on Rome. On the broken hunter lying in a pool of his own blood beside the corpse of its soldier.Seconds stretched into eternities."INSOLENS." The giant's voice rumbled like thunder. "SED... IUSTUS."Insolent. But... fair."UNUS VICTOR. UNUS SALVUS."One victor. One saved."CONCESSUM EST."It is granted.Rome let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.She's safe.Kiona's safe.That's... that's enough.He fumbled at his pocket. His remaining hand, his only hand now, was clumsy. Numb. The essence stones he'd collected earlier spilled across the sand. Eight of them. Maybe more."Kiona."She was still beside him. Still crying. Her hands pressed against his stump like she could somehow put him back together through sheer force of will."Kiona. Take them.""What?
12 | Not Dead Yet
He drove what remained of his knife into the creature's eye.The light went out.The soldier slumped.Didn't move.Didn't breathe.Dead. Actually dead.Rome stood over it. Chest heaving. Blood dripping from his face, his hands, his everywhere.He raised the broken knife above his head.I won.Holy shit, I actually won.Screaming.Someone was screaming.Not cheering. Not celebration. Terror. Pure terror.Kiona's voice."Rome! YOUR ARM!"His arm?He looked down.Oh.Oh.Where his left arm should have been, there was nothing.Just a ragged stump below the elbow.Just bone and meat and blood pumping out in rhythmic spurts.Huh.That's... that's not great.When did that happen?Was that when it grabbed me? Must have been when it grabbed me.I should probably be more concerned about this.The world tilted sideways.Rome's knees buckled.He was falling. Had been falling for a while, maybe. Hard to tell. Time was doing something weird. Stretching and compressing like taffy.He hit the sand.S
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