The void's promise

chap 3 - A Starving God's First Breath 3

The deeper they walked into the alley, the thicker the shadows became. The ambient glow of the Sect's lanterns faded behind them, swallowed by the damp brick walls.

"Alright, rat, this is far enough," the bulky youth said, crossing his arms. He sneered, his spiritual aura flaring slightly—a pathetic display of the third level of Qi Condensation. "Where are the stones? If you make me dig through the mud for them, I'm going to break three of your fingers instead of one."

Dver stopped walking. He stood with his back to them, perfectly still.

"Did you hear me, trash?" The bulky youth took a heavy step forward, reaching out to grab Dver's shoulder.

In the span of a single heartbeat, the cowering, trembling boy ceased to exist.

Dver didn't turn around. He simply pivoted on his heel, dropping his center of gravity. As the bulky youth's hand reached out, Dver's hand shot up, his fingers clamping around the boy's wrist like an iron vice.

Before the bully could even register the movement, Dver violently twisted his hips and yanked the arm downward.

CRACK.

The sound of the elbow snapping backwards echoed like a dry branch breaking in the silent alley.

The bulky youth didn't even have time to scream. As his mouth opened, Dver's other hand shot forward, a rigid, flat-palmed strike that connected directly with the youth's throat. The cartilage of his windpipe crushed inward with a sickening crunch. The bully collapsed to his knees, his eyes bulging in absolute horror as he clutched his ruined throat, gagging on his own blood.

"What the—!" The second disciple stumbled back, his face draining of color. Panic hijacked his system. He frantically reached for the cheap iron sword strapped to his waist, channeling his Qi into his legs to retreat.

He was too slow.

Dver closed the distance with terrifying, unnatural speed. He didn't use Qi; he used the explosive muscle memory forged from dodging the snapping maws of demonic horrors in pitch darkness.

As the second boy drew his sword halfway from its scabbard, Dver stomped down hard on the boy's kneecap. The joint inverted with a wet pop. The disciple shrieked, his leg giving out. As he fell forward, Dver calmly grabbed the hilt of the half-drawn sword, forced it back down into the scabbard, and drove his knee directly into the boy's face.

The disciple's nose shattered, and he hit the cobblestone completely unconscious.

The fight had lasted exactly three seconds.

It wasn't a duel. It was the clinical butchering of livestock.

Dver stood over them, his breathing completely even. The heavy, agonizing pain in his chest was still there, a constant reminder of his failing, stolen body. But his eyes were empty. He looked down at the bulky youth, who was writhing on the ground, suffocating, staring up at Dver with a gaze of unadulterated terror. He didn't understand. This wasn't Dver. The Dver he knew cried. He begged.

"Beautiful," the Void God hissed in Dver's mind, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. "You break their shells so efficiently. But they are still breathing, Vessel. Let me out. I am starving."

"Eat," Dver whispered.

The temperature in the alley plummeted below freezing. The ambient light didn't just dim; it actively died.

From beneath Dver's feet, his shadow began to boil. It stretched and expanded, crawling up the brick walls like a living, viscous tar. The bulky youth, still choking on the ground, tried to scramble backward, weeping in pure terror as the darkness coiled around his ankles.

Dver raised his hand, his palm facing the two broken disciples.

A suffocating, ancient gravity erupted from his palm. It wasn't a suction of air; it was a suction of reality.

The shadows engulfed the two boys. Their muffled, agonizing screams were cut short as the Void did its work. It didn't just tear their flesh or drink their blood. It dissolved them. Their cultivation bases, their lifeforce, their memories, their very physical matter were stripped down to absolute nothingness and funneled directly into Dver's palm.

Dver threw his head back, gasping as a pure, condensed torrent of raw energy slammed into his fractured meridian channels.

It was absolute agony, followed immediately by euphoric relief. The black, abyssal energy surged through his stolen body, violently forcing the weak, cracked meridians of the original Dver to expand, thicken, and harden. His muscles tore and rebuilt themselves denser. His internal bleeding stopped.

The third level of Qi Condensation. The fourth. The fifth.

Dver clenched his fist, intentionally cutting off the breakthrough. If he advanced too high, the Sect Elders would sense the sudden spike in power. He forced the remaining energy deep into his core, hiding it within the Void.

When the darkness finally receded back into Dver's natural shadow, the alley was completely empty. There was no blood on the cobblestones. There were no bodies. There weren't even clothes. The two bullies had been completely erased from existence.

Except for one thing.

Lying on the ground, glowing faintly in the moonlight, was a small, black wooden token. It had survived the Void's digestion.

Dver crouched down and picked it up. It was a communication talisman, the kind used by Inner Sect disciples to issue secret orders to Outer Sect trash.

Dver turned it over. Carved into the back was a single character: Vane.

Dver's empty eyes narrowed. The original Dver hadn't just been bullied. These two had been paid to make sure he was dead.

"It seems," the Void God chuckled darkly, "the skin you stole comes with enemies."

"Good," Dver replied, his voice a flat, dead calm. "Enemies have cultivation. Cultivation is food."