Chapter 6 · Bloody Baptism

"Get your filth off me, you freak!" The Captain screamed, but his voice cracked. He wasn't looking at my face. He was staring at the glowing, jagged mark etched into the small of my back—the Royal Crest of the Abyss.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. My body felt like it was being rewritten from the inside out. The glitch in my system was screaming, a high-pitched digital whine that only I could hear. I wasn't a blob anymore. I wasn't even a monster. I was something... wrong. My skin was a matte, midnight black, shifting like liquid smoke, and my claws were digging into the stone floor, leaving deep, molten grooves.

"It can't be," the Captain stammered, backing away so fast he tripped over his own cape. "The Old Lord was erased. The throne is empty! You're just a—"

"A what?" I spat. My voice sounded like two grinding tectonic plates. I stepped forward, the movement too fast for human eyes. I was in his space in a heartbeat, my hand clamped around his throat, lifting him off the ground. "Finish the sentence. I want to hear how you describe me before I rip your tongue out.