The Blood God System

Chapter One

The Dog They Buried

They called my name like a curse.

"Draven Kane. Murderer of the Kalu Clan. Defiler of their women. Enemy of Voldimore."

The elder's voice carried across the execution ground and the crowd took it in the way crowds take

things when they have already decided how to feel.

Hundreds of faces. One expression.

My chains were pointless and everyone knew it. Three days in a windowless room had stripped my

qi and drained my blood essence until there was nothing left worth taking.

What knelt in this dirt was just a body. Twenty-seven years old. Waiting.

I found Elara without looking for her.

Front row. White dress. Hands folded at her waist like she was attending something she had

organised.

Her hazel gold eyes were on me the way someone watches a fire they started. Present. Patient.

Already thinking about something else.

She wore white. Of everything she could have worn, she wore white.

The elder gestured. In Voldimore the betrothed of a condemned man gets final words. Old law.

Nobody had bothered to change it because nobody had expected it to matter.

"Lady Elara. You may speak."

She stepped forward. No hesitation. Chin level, back straight, and those hazel gold eyes came to

mine across the ground between us.

She let the silence sit for a moment.

Then she used it."He deserves worse than death."

Stepped back. Fixed a crease in her dress that was not there. Done with me.

The crowd went loud and I laughed. One short honest sound.

Because what else. Nine years. A blade through my side at Morden Pass for her father, and she was

standing ten metres away in a white dress watching them prepare to cut my head off.

I laughed because grief had finished and what was left was just the absurdity of it.

In Voldimore a traitor of rank does not get beheaded. That is for common criminals.

A former Crimson Knight receives the Sovereign Blade. One ceremonial thrust through the chest,

delivered on one knee. The way a soldier receives honour, except this was the opposite of every part

of that.

I kept my eyes on Elara while they prepared it. She looked away before the blade fell.

That was the last thing I saw.

Then nothing.

Then heat. Something underneath the dark pulling at me like current under water, and inside it

voices I knew. Uncle Bren. Cousin Sora. All forty-one of them, layered and overlapping, calling my

name from somewhere with no direction.

Then nothing again.

Face down in dirt. Night. They had left me where I fell.

I pushed up and stood. The pain was total and I filed it somewhere it could not slow me down,

because standing was what mattered and standing happened.

"Why am I breathing."

Not a question. Just words that needed to land in real air.Then my chest detonated from the inside. Pressure moving up through my ribs until something vast

and old and wrong settled behind my eyes like it had always lived there and was only now choosing

to wake.

Text bled into my vision that did not belong to this world.

[BLOOD GOD SYSTEM — AWAKENED]

"They buried you like a dog."

"Gods do not stay buried."

"Every enemy you drain grows you permanently."

"Their strength. Their techniques. Their life. All yours."

"Take too much too fast and your body turns on you."

"You will purge through your skin."

"Your clan will go silent."

"Feed wisely. Or feed everything."

"Your clan cries from the void."

"Do you accept?"

I thought about Elara in her white dress.

I thought about forty-one voices in the dark.

"Yes," I said.

[CONTRACT ACCEPTED]

Blood Strength — 1 / Blood Affinity — 1 / Vessel Integrity — 3 / Corruption — 0/10

[First Target Detected — 40 metres north]

"Now get up."

At the far edge of the ground where the torchlight ended, a figure stood watching me. Still. Patient.

Sent to confirm the body was cold.

Elara always did underestimate me.I walked toward it.

"Tell her I said hello."