It wasn't heat.
Heat was too simple, too mundane a word for what Kazimir felt.
It was like swallowing a star.
The drop of blood didn't slide down his throat—it burned through it like acid, like plasma, like the core of a sun compressed into a single droplet. It hit his stomach and exploded, sending tendrils of liquid fire racing through every vein, every artery, every capillary in his body.
Kazimir's body arched off the pile of bones, his back bowing at an impossible angle.
CRACK.
His spine snapped back into place.
Not gently. Not with the careful precision of a healer's magic. The shattered vertebrae were forced together by an invisible hand, grinding against each other, fusing with a speed that defied nature.
Kazimir's scream went up an octave.
His vision exploded with light. Not the warm golden light of the sun or the cool blue of healing magic.
This was a system interface, but wrong. Corrupted.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
│ [SYSTEM INTERFACE] │
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[STATUS]: SYSTEM ERROR — FOREIGN ADMIN ACCESS DETECTED
[SOURCE]: ■■■■■■■■ EMPRESS
[OVERRIDING SECURITY PROTOCOLS...]
[IMPERIAL RESONANCE REGISTRY]: DENIED
[CONTINENTAL MAGE ASSOCIATION]: ACCESS DENIED
[BLOODLINE VERIFICATION]: FAILED
[ATTEMPTING ALTERNATIVE AUTHENTICATION...]
[WARNING]: UNREGISTERED DIVINE SIGNATURE DETECTED
[PROTOCOL]: FORCED EVOLUTION INITIATED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The blue text boxes flickered and glitched in his vision, the font distorting like reality itself was trying to reject what was happening.
Kazimir thrashed, his heels drumming against the skulls beneath him. He clawed at his throat, tearing skin, trying to get the fire out. His fingers left bloody furrows down his neck.
"Endure it!"
Zarya's voice cut through the screaming in his head. She placed a heavy boot on his chest, pinning him down with casual strength.
"Do not faint! If you lose consciousness during the reconstruction, the process will fail and you'll be a pile of sentient sludge!"
The fire reached his mana channels.
For twenty-three years, three Primal Frequencies had been at war inside Kazimir's body.
Steel Resonance from his father's side—aggressive, orderly, demanding structure and control. It wanted to harden his bones, reinforce his muscles, turn him into an immovable fortress.
Frost Resonance from his mother's side—chaotic, invasive, craving freedom and change. It wanted to freeze his core, slow his time, make him untouchable and ethereal.
Solar Resonance from his grandfather's bloodline—explosive, consuming, burning with the need to create and destroy. It wanted to ignite his soul, flood him with infinite energy, make him burn like a living star.
They'd been locked in a three-way stalemate, tearing his body apart from the inside.
Zarya's blood didn't negotiate with them.
It conquered them.
The black-and-gold liquid surged into the knotted channels like an invading army. Where the three frequencies had created blockages—places where Steel met Frost and both refused to yield—the foreign blood dissolved the obstruction with brutal efficiency.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
│ [BLOODLINE STATUS] │
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[STATUS]: BLOODLINE CONFLICT DETECTED
[STEEL RESONANCE]: 31% PURITY
[FROST RESONANCE]: 28% PURITY
[SOLAR RESONANCE]: 23% PURITY
[TOTAL COHERENCE]: 0.03%
[SUBJECT VIABILITY]: CRITICAL
[INITIATING FORCED HARMONIC CONVERGENCE...]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Kazimir felt it happening inside him. The Steel frequency was being compressed, forced to condense into his skeletal structure. His bones darkened, became denser, harder than they'd ever been. He could feel them becoming less like calcium and more like iron.
The Frost frequency was being redirected, channeled into his nervous system and brain. His synapses fired faster, colder, with crystalline precision. His thoughts became clearer even as his body burned.
The Solar frequency was being ignited, pumped directly into his cardiovascular system. His heart—which had stopped beating—suddenly contracted with the force of a hydraulic press.
THUD-THUD.
THUD-THUD.
It wasn't a normal heartbeat. It was too powerful, too fast, too alive. Each beat sent a shockwave through his chest.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
│ [FORCED RESONANCE INTEGRATION] │
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[STATUS]: FORCING RESONANCE INTEGRATION...
[STEEL]: OSSIFICATION COMPLETE — 87%
[FROST]: NEURAL SYNCHRONIZATION — 91%
[SOLAR]: CARDIOVASCULAR IGNITION — 94%
[CONVERGENCE STABILITY]: RISING...
[WARNING]: SUBJECT EXPERIENCING EXTREME PAIN
[PAIN THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]: 847%
[CALCULATING OVERFLOW...]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Steam began to rise from Kazimir's skin. His clothes—the tattered remnants of his noble coat, the shirt soaked with blood—began to smoke and char from the heat radiating off his body.
The scars on his wrists from three years of extraction vanished, the skin knitting together seamlessly. The bruises from Viktor's boots faded. His punctured lung inflated with a wet pop, the holes sealing themselves.
But it wasn't healing.
It was reconstruction.
His body was being taken apart and put back together according to a new blueprint.
The pain transcended the physical. It tore at his mind.
Kazimir saw things that weren't his memories.
A city made of glass, burning under a sky that had cracked open like an egg.
A throne room filled with corpses, and Zarya sitting alone, covered in blood that wasn't hers.
A loop. The same events, over and over. Different faces, same ending.
Zarya dying on a throne of ice.
Zarya dying in a pit of fire.
Zarya dying with a sword through her heart.
Zarya dying, dying, dying, dying—
"FOCUS ON THE HATE!"
Zarya's command snapped him back. She grabbed his shoulder, her fingers digging deep enough to draw blood, anchoring him to reality.
"Use it as an anchor! Remember their faces! Remember what they did to you!"
Kazimir gritted his teeth so hard they cracked. Then they regrew, sharper than before.
Elara.
Her face, beautiful and cruel, looking down at him with casual contempt.
You were a battery.
Viktor.
His boot, descending toward Kazimir's chest.
You are a mistake.
The laughter.
The entire court, tittering behind their fans, entertained by his suffering.
The trash.
Being dragged across the crystal floor, leaving a smear of blood, treated like waste.
Kazimir grabbed onto those images. He wrapped his consciousness around them like a drowning man grabbing a rope. He held on as the fire consumed him, as his body was torn apart and rebuilt, as reality itself seemed to bend around the transformation.
The screaming stopped.
The convulsions ceased.
Kazimir lay panting on the pile of bones, steam rolling off his body in thick grey waves. His heart was beating with a slow, heavy rhythm now.
Thud-thud.
Pause.
Thud-thud.
Like a war drum in the distance.
A new interface appeared in his vision. This one wasn't the standard blue of the Imperial System. It was deep crimson, bordered in gold, and it felt wrong—like it was overlaid on top of reality rather than part of it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
│ [FORCED EVOLUTION] │
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[STATUS]: FORCED EVOLUTION — COMPLETE
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION]: SUCCESSFUL
[REGISTERING NEW ENTITY...]
NAME: Kazimir Ahn-Ra
RACE: Human (Variant: Chimera-Class)
[BLOODLINE STATUS]
├─ Steel Resonance: 31% → OSSIFIED
├─ Frost Resonance: 28% → NEURALIZED
└─ Solar Resonance: 23% → CARDIOVASCULAR
[TOTAL INTEGRATION]: 82%
[CHIMERA THRESHOLD]: ACHIEVED
[CLASS]
├─ Assigned: The Empress's Hound
├─ Active Class: Chimera Vanguard
└─ Status: LOCKED
[CULTIVATION STAGE]: Spark (Forced)
[SOUL CORE INTEGRITY]: 82% (STABLE — ANOMALOUS)
[ATTRIBUTES]
├─ Strength: 15 [prev: 3]
├─ Agility: 12 [prev: 2]
├─ Endurance: 25 [prev: 1]
├─ Resonance Power: 8 [prev: 0]
└─ Soul Cohesion: 82% [prev: <1%]
[UNIQUE TRAIT ACQUIRED]: PAIN CONVERSION
TYPE: Passive/Active Feedback Loop
DESCRIPTION: You are a vessel of suffering forged in the Abyss. Pain is your fuel.
EFFECTS:
├─ Damage taken → temporary Mana
├─ Suffering → temporary stat buffs
├─ Critical injuries → permanent EXP
└─ The more you hurt, the stronger you become
[WARNING]: Prolonged activation may result in addiction to pain stimulus.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Kazimir stared at the words floating in the darkness.
Pain Conversion.
It was a mockery. A cruel cosmic joke. His entire life had been pain, and now his power was... more pain?
"Stand up."
Zarya's voice cut through his thoughts. It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a command.
It was a statement of fact. He would stand up.
Kazimir placed his hands on the bone pile. He pushed.
He flew upward.
He'd intended to simply stand, but his new body didn't understand "gently" yet. He used too much force, his enhanced strength launching him to his feet so fast he stumbled forward, catching himself before face-planting into a ribcage.
He looked down at his hands.
They were no longer pale and trembling. The skin looked tougher now, like cured leather. His fingernails had darkened to a charcoal grey—a hint of the monster's blood now flowing through him. He flexed his fingers, and the movement was smooth, powerful, controlled.
He took a deep breath.
His lungs expanded fully, painlessly, drinking in the sulfurous air of The Maw. He felt... full. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel the hollow ache of mana deficiency. He felt like a weapon that had just been loaded.
He looked up at Zarya.
She was watching him with a critical eye, scanning him from head to toe like a blacksmith examining a newly forged sword.
She nodded, seemingly satisfied.
"You're ugly," she stated flatly. "But functional. The fusion held."
Kazimir ran a hand through his hair. It was matted with sweat and blood, but it felt thicker now, coarser. He looked at Zarya—the woman who had just tortured him back to life.
He felt a strange connection now. A tether. It hummed in his blood, resonating with hers like two tuning forks pitched to the same frequency.
"What..." Kazimir's voice came out rough but steady. "What are you?"
Zarya turned away from him, her cape of liquid silver swirling. She began walking toward the sheer cliff wall of The Maw, where a narrow, treacherous path wound upward into the shadows.
"I am the ending of the story," she said, her voice echoing in the gloom. "The final chapter that keeps getting rewritten."
She paused, looking back over her shoulder. Her glowing red eyes pierced the darkness.
"And you, little mongrel, are the plot twist."
She gestured to the path.
"Walk. We have an Empire to burn."
Kazimir looked down at the system window still floating in his vision.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[PAIN CONVERSION]: INACTIVE
[DAMAGE RECEIVED]: 0%
[MANA RESERVES]: STABLE
[RAGE LEVEL]: OVERFLOWING
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He clenched his fists, feeling power surge through his forearms. The sensation was intoxicating. Alien. Wrong.
But it was his.
He looked up toward the distant, unseen ceiling of The Maw—toward the castle, toward the ballroom, toward them.
"Yes, my Empress," Kazimir whispered.
He took his first step. The bones crunched beneath his feet with a satisfying crack.
He followed Zarya into the darkness, toward whatever fresh hell awaited.
But this time, he was the monster.