Renji didn't let go of the book. His fingers were cramping, the knuckles turning a pale, sickly gray under the strain of the old man's pull. The friction of the leather spine was digging into his palm.
"You've got to be kidding me. Who the hell are you, old man?"
Renji spat the words through grit teeth. The stranger didn't answer. Instead, the man's single red eye seemed to thicken with a dull, internal heat. It wasn't a glow; it was a physical pressure that made Renji's vision blur and his head throb. The light hurt. It felt like a hot needle behind his sockets. Renji hissed and let go. The sudden release sent him stumbling back, his injured leg giving out as he hit the floor with a heavy, ungraceful thud.
He stayed there for a second, staring at a small, dried ink stain on the stone floor. He wondered if his sister had ever seen a library this big. Probably not. The thought was a dull ache, quieter than his leg, but heavier.
He forced himself up. His knee popped—a sound like a dry twig breaking.
"Hey, stop!" a librarian yelled from three aisles over.
The old man was moving. He didn't glide; he scrambled through the stacks with a frantic, limping gait, knocking books off the shelves as he went. The heavy volumes hit the floor with wet, slapping sounds, creating a messy barricade of paper and leather. People began to scatter, their sandals slapping against the polished stone, voices rising in a jagged, panicked chorus.
Renji ignored the pain. He lunged forward. His new gray body felt brittle, like unbaked clay. He felt every ounce of the gravity in this dimension.
The old man didn't look back. He just reached behind his shoulder and opened his palm. A thin, red line of heat shot out. It didn't whistle. It hissed. The beam caught Renji in the shoulder, tearing through the stolen hoodie and the meat of his arm.
Renji was thrown back. He hit a shelf, the wood splintering against his spine. He groaned, the sound caught in a throat that felt like it was filled with sawdust. He looked at his shoulder. The blood was dark, soaking the black fabric instantly.
"Am I really this weak?"
He stood up, his breath coming in ragged, uneven hitches. He felt a sudden, irrational spike of anger—not at the man, but at the fact that he couldn't remember where he'd put his old boots. He glared at the retreating figure. He thought of his family, the way the Abyss Lord had turned his life into a pile of cold ash. He didn't want to think about his parents, but the memory of his mother's kitchen—the smell of cheap detergent—hit him and made his eyes sting.
"I'm going to find them," Renji growled, his voice cracking. "I'll find every last one of you."
He didn't make a speech. He just ran. He misjudged the distance, his foot slipping on a fallen scroll, but he corrected with a desperate, lunging jump. He pounced, his weight slamming into the old man's back.
They hit the floor together. It was a messy, bone-jarring impact that sent a dozen books flying into the dark. They rolled over the hard tiles, Renji's elbow barking against the stone.
"You brat," Renji wheezed. He pinned the man's shoulder and pulled back his fist. His hand was shaking from the loss of blood, the muscles in his forearm twitching uncontrollably.
He swung.
It was a heavy, wide blow. The old man didn't panic. He just tilted his head an inch to the left, a small, mocking twitch of his mouth visible in the shadows. Renji's fist missed, slamming into the stone tile with a sound that made his wrist ache all the way to the shoulder. He yelled, the pain blinding him for a split second.
The old man didn't wait. He drove his forehead upward, a brutal, bone-on-bone headbutt that caught Renji right between the eyes.
Renji was thrown off, his head bouncing against the floor. His vision swam. He could hear the librarians whispering from the safety of the archways.
"That man... he's a killer. Look at his skin. He isn't Vermilion."
"He looks like a hybrid. A mix. A Jade and a Vermilion."
The whispers spread, a low, buzzing noise that made Renji want to vomit. He forced himself to his feet again, his legs shaking like he was standing on a boat in a storm. He lunged again—a horrible, clumsy attack born of pure spite.
The old man caught him with a side-kick to the ribs. Renji felt the air leave his body, his lungs flat and useless. He hit the tiles hard, his face sliding across the polished stone until he stopped, a bloody smear marking his path. He lay there, staring at a loose thread on the man's sandal, wondering why he was still trying to get up.
The old man tucked the heavy book under his armpit. He walked toward Renji, his boots making a wet, sticky sound on the tiles. The librarians tried to move in—three of them, shouting something about regulations—but the man didn't even look at them. He just backhanded the air, and they went flying into the reading tables. One hit a chair leg with a sickening thud.
He reached down and grabbed Renji's collar. The fabric of the stolen hoodie bunched up, choking Renji's throat. The man's fist came down. Hard. Renji's nose didn't just bleed; it flattened, the cartilage giving way with a crunch he felt in his back teeth. Blood sprayed his own lips, warm and tasting of pennies. The man hit him again. Same spot. Renji's head bounced off the stone. He felt the gray skin of his avatar flickering, becoming thin and translucent like wet paper.
If this body failed, he'd be standing there as himself. A corpse-king in a world of gray people. He'd be dead in minutes.
Renji reached up and gripped the man's wrist. His fingers were slippery with his own gore. He looked up at the ceiling, one eye swollen shut, the other tracking a small spiderweb in the rafters. He didn't want to do this. It was a bad idea.
"Spare me... the rot," he wheezed.
He reached deep into the void where his real self was buried. It felt like sticking his hand into a freezing, jagged hole.
"Ignition of the Pale Pyre."
The room didn't just go quiet; the sound died. The air became thick, like he was underwater. The dust motes in the light stopped moving. Renji felt a cold, green heat crawl out of his marrow. It wasn't a pretty flame. It was an oily, putrid fire that smelled like a landfill. He lashed out with a kick, his boot catching the old man's jaw. The green fire jumped, clinging to the man's skin, bubbling the gray flesh until it turned to black ash.
Renji slumped. The transfer of energy from his main body to this brittle avatar was too much. It felt like his veins were being filled with hot lead. He let the technique drop, his lungs burning. He thought he'd won. He actually thought it was over.
The man stood up. Half his face was gone, the bone underneath scorched and yellowed, but he was still moving. It was a stupid, impossible sight. Renji stared, refusing to believe it for a second too long.
The man opened his palm. A blade formed there—not a clean sword, but a long, rusted piece of iron that looked like it had been pulled from a shipwreck. He hurled it.
Renji couldn't move. His legs were heavy, unresponsive. The iron bar tore through his chest, the force of it lifting him off the floor and pinning him to a heavy oak shelf behind him. The wood groaned and splintered.
Renji screamed. It wasn't a heroic roar. It was a high, thin sound of pure physical agony. His vision started to dim, the edges of the room turning gray and then black. He could hear people screaming, the sound of the old man's boots approaching again. Someone tried to stop him—a student, maybe—but there was a dull thud and the sound of a body hitting a wall.
The man reached him. He didn't say a word. He just raised a boot and kicked Renji square in the face.
Renji's eyes shut. Everything went black.
In the dark of his mind, he saw three wisps of smoke—red, blue, and green—twisting around each other like snakes. He remembered he hadn't finished that grocery list back in the real world.
A blue light flickered in the void.
* CRITICAL FAILURE: AVATAR DESTROYED.
* CONSTRAINTS BROKEN.
* DOMAIN UNLOCKING.
* MAIN BODY AWAKENING.
The library floor began to vibrate. Not a shake, but a deep, tectonic hum that made the books on the high shelves start to slide toward the edge.