"Don't look at me like that, Kael. It’s just business," Silas said. His voice was smooth, like he was ordering a coffee and not pushing his best friend into a literal hellhole.
I didn't have time to look. My wrists were locked in mana-suppressing cuffs that bit into my skin, and Silas’s boot was currently planted firmly on my chest, pinning me to the edge of the Abyss Gate. The wind howling up from the pit smelled like old blood and ozone.
"Business?" I spat, coughing up a mouthful of red. "We had a pact, Silas. We split the divine core. That was the deal."
Silas leaned down, his face twisting into a smirk that didn't reach his eyes. He looked exactly like the man I’d trusted for ten years, which made the betrayal taste like battery acid. "The deal was for people who could actually keep up. You're too strong, Kael. Too loud. You're a liability to the brand."
"The brand? You son of a—"
He didn't let me finish. He stepped forward, putting his full weight on my sternum. I heard a rib snap—a sharp, wet sound that echoed in the silence of the plateau. I gasped, my lungs seizing, but Silas just leaned closer, whispering in my ear.
"Thanks for clearing the path. I'll make sure your name is mentioned in the footnotes of my legend."
Then he kicked.
One hard, precise strike to the solar plexus. I flew backward, the world tilting as I crossed the threshold of the Gate. For a second, there was nothing but the screaming wind and the sight of Silas turning his back on me without even checking if I was still screaming.
Then the darkness swallowed me whole.
It wasn't a fall. It was a shredding. I felt my skin peel away in layers, my muscles unraveling like old yarn. I tried to scream, but I had no throat. I tried to fight, but I had no arms. I was just a conscious spark of rage floating in a sea of crushing pressure.
*I'll kill him,* I thought. *I'll crawl out of this pit and rip his heart out through his throat.*
That thought was the only thing that didn't get shredded. It became a knot, a hard core of hate that refused to dissolve.
Suddenly, the pressure stopped. I hit something hard. Not ground—something sticky. Something cold.
I tried to move. I couldn't. I wasn't a man anymore. I didn't feel fingers or toes. I felt... fluid. I was a smudge of black ink on a grey stone floor. A puddle of nothing.
"What the hell is this?"
The voice was female, sharp, and sounded like it belonged to someone who had seen too many things they hated. I felt a vibration in the floor—footsteps. Heavy boots.
I tried to lash out, to jump, to do anything. I managed to twitch. Just a tiny, pathetic ripple in my shadow-body.
"A Shadow Seed?" the voice said. I heard the metallic *shink* of a blade being drawn. "I thought these were extinct in the Lower Tiers. Just trash mobs that die if you breathe on them."
I focused every ounce of my will. *I am not trash. I am Kael. I am a Hunter.*
I lunged. It wasn't a jump; it was a slide. I threw my entire liquid mass toward the boot I saw in my peripheral vision. I didn't have a sword, so I tried to wrap around her ankle, to squeeze, to choke her through her leather boot.
*Clang!*
She didn't even flinch. She just stepped back and slammed a heavy iron heel right into the center of my mass.
"Feisty little parasite, aren't you?" she muttered.
It hurt. God, it hurt. Not like a punch, but like my entire existence was being erased by a hot iron. I felt myself splitting, my shadow-form tearing into three jagged pieces.
"Wait," I tried to say. It came out as a pathetic, wet hiss. "Help..."
"It can talk?" The girl paused. I could see her now—blonde hair tied back in a messy knot, eyes like flint, wearing armor that had seen better decades. She looked down at me with a mix of disgust and genuine curiosity. "Or is it just mimicking sound to lure me in?"
"I'm... not... a monster," I hissed, the words bubbling out of my ink-like body.
"Wrong answer," she said. She raised the blade. It wasn't a normal knife; it glowed with a pale, holy light that made my shadow-skin sizzle. "Everything in the Abyss is a monster. The only difference is whether they're useful or not."