The pain never spiked.
It didn't need to.
It stayed—sharp and constant—lodged deep in my abdomen, a quiet, relentless reminder that I was still alive. No blood leaked from the wound, but that didn't mean it was healing. I could feel the Hellhide shifting, tightening and hardening around the damage, adapting in its own way. The sensation burned, like something beneath my skin was learning how I broke.
My head rang with a dull, ceaseless hum. Sound came late, if it came at all. My vision swam, colors bleeding together, but the pale glare overhead cut through the haze.
Daytime.
How long I'd been unconscious didn't matter. The forest didn't measure time the way I did.
I forced my eyes upward.
My shadow stood nearby, still as stone, watching the treeline. There was a faint curve to his mouth—not comfort. Not amusement. Just awareness. As if he already knew what would come next.
I tried to return the expression. My face wouldn't listen.
Breathing hurt. Talking hurt more. Still, I pushed the word out, my voice scraping raw from my throat.
"Thank you."
It felt insufficient. But it was true.
Dark spots crept in at the edges of my vision again, and with them came the certainty that we couldn't stay. Stillness meant being noticed. Being noticed meant dying.
And dying meant this promise would be worthless.
"Guide us…" I swallowed, forcing air into my lungs. "…through the forest."
He turned and raised his hands, slow, deliberate movements meant to show a path. Warnings, maybe. Distances. I couldn't tell. My eyes refused to focus long enough to understand.
After a moment, he stepped closer.
His hand closed around my shoulder.
Solid. Real.
I flinched—not from fear, but from the thought that followed, settling in with cold clarity.
I could touch him.
He could touch me.
And he could touch the world.
But the world…
could not touch him.
The imbalance pressed down on me heavier than the pain.
We walked.
I stayed behind him, following the jagged outline of his form as it slipped between the trees. The forest pressed in from all sides—dense, suffocating. Branches scraped against each other overhead, strangling the light until it broke apart in dull, uneven shards. My vision still hadn't fully recovered, but it didn't matter. I could sense the space around me—the pull of roots beneath the soil, the weight of trunks, the hollow gaps where something could hide.
Each step felt measured. Controlled. Survival reduced to motion.
As we moved, something tugged at the back of my mind.
A pressure.
I turned inward, instinctively, reaching toward my core—toward the place where rewards surfaced after a kill. The moment I touched it, the sensation sharpened, like fingers pressing into an open wound.
Information unfolded.
Not gently.
Four Soul Shards.
Four—
Death Shards.
The words didn't feel observed. They felt imposed.
4 / 1000.
My stride faltered.
The soul shards registered first—familiar, expected. Every chosen earned them. They were currency. Growth. Power measured and controlled.
But the other—
What the hell are Death Shards?
The thought slammed through me, sharp and panicked, sending a spike of nausea through my gut. I'd never heard of them. Not once. Not in lessons, not in warnings, not even in half-mad survivor stories whispered in the dark.
And yet the system didn't ask for confirmation.
Didn't wait to be claimed.
They were already there.
Already counted.
Already woven into my soul, as if something had decided—without asking—that I had earned them simply by surviving.
The pressure didn't fade.
It lingered.
Watching.
My shadow grabbed me and wrenched me back to consciousness.
The world snapped into focus too fast—pain flaring, breath catching hard in my chest. I stumbled, boots scraping against the forest floor as my senses scrambled to catch up.
Something was in front of us.
A beast.
It took a moment to register what I was seeing. My body was still lagging behind my mind, weighed down by exhaustion and the remnants of the last fight. Its shape blurred at the edges, muscle layered over muscle, standing nearly six feet tall. Claws flexed against the dirt. Breath steamed from its mouth.
Whatever it was, it wasn't the same nightmare as before.
That didn't mean it wasn't lethal.
My limbs felt heavy. My core burned. Every movement reminded me how close I was to collapsing. I didn't have the strength for another drawn-out fight.
A thought surfaced—slow, desperate, dangerous.
If my shadow could touch the world while manifested…
Could it fight for me?
The beast lunged.
There was no time to hesitate. No time to doubt the idea. I reached for the shadow instinctively, not with words, but with intent.
Move.
He dipped into the surrounding darkness, melting into the forest's shadows as if they had been waiting for him. An instant later, he erupted from beneath the beast, his form surging upward.
The punch landed hard.
Too hard.
The impact lifted the creature off its feet, snapping its momentum and hurling it backward through the undergrowth. It crashed into the trees with a wet, cracking sound and didn't rise immediately.
I stood there, breathing ragged, heart pounding—not in triumph, but in quiet, creeping realization.
I hadn't struck the beast.
My shadow had.
And I wasn't sure which of us that made more dangerous.
As I watched, my vision began to knit itself back together. The blur retreated slowly, leaving behind only the persistent ringing in my head and pain washing through my body in dull, relentless waves. Every breath hurt. Every movement reminded me how close I was to giving out.
But I could see again.
And if I could see, I could still help.
Moving on instinct alone, I reached inward and summoned the katana taken from the other beast. The weapon answered immediately, weight settling into my hand as if it had never been anywhere else.
I hadn't checked its description.
Hadn't listened to whatever explanation the voice had tried to give.
I only knew its name.
Midnight.
I slid the sheath into place at my side and drew the blade.
The steel was pure black—no reflection, no sheen. It didn't shine in the broken daylight filtering through the forest canopy. Instead, it seemed to drink it in, swallowing every stray ray that touched its surface. The blade looked less like metal and more like a cut torn into the world itself.
Holding it sent a chill up my arm.
It felt… empty.
Not light. Not heavy. Just final. As if weight no longer mattered. As if consequence had already been decided.
In my grip, Midnight wasn't a weapon meant to wound.
It was a remover of life.
And the thought that unsettled me most wasn't fear—
It was how natural it felt to hold it.
The beast got up again.
It didn't hesitate this time.
It charged—faster than before, claws tearing through leaves and dirt as it closed the distance in a blink. My body refused to keep up. Pain locked my muscles, dragging every movement half a second behind my intent.
So I didn't move.
I sent my shadow down.
He slipped into the ground, flowing through the darkness beneath the leaves, riding the fractured shade cast by the canopy. To anyone else it would have been nothing but a blur—too fast, too indistinct to follow.
But I tracked him.
Perfectly.
I knew where he would emerge before he did.
The shadow burst upward as the beast lunged, colliding with it midair. The impact knocked the breath from the creature's chest as they crashed together, momentum stolen, bodies slamming into the forest floor.
The shadow pinned it there.
I stepped forward.
My arm moved before I thought to command it, Midnight already rising as if the motion had been carved into my body long ago. The blade felt inevitable in my hand.
One motion.
Clean. Final.
The head left the body before the sound of the impact finished echoing through the trees.
The corpse collapsed, twitching once before going still.
Then the voice spoke—flat, uncaring.
Hollowfang — Killed
Rank: Feral
Soul Shard Acquired: 1
Nothing else followed.
No acknowledgment of the struggle.
No recognition of how close I'd been to dying.
Just the count increasing.