The wind was sharper when Eudora emerged from the ruins.
He couldn't feel his fingers.
He couldn't feel anything.
The forest had grown silent. Not dead—watching. Shadows clung to the trees, and even the birds seemed to know better than to sing.
Eudora collapsed on his knees, vomited into the soil, and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand.
His veins felt like they were on fire. Every breath rattled his ribs. His body rejected something it didn't understand.
Something it had never been meant to hold.
He lay there for hours.
Alone.
Not unconscious—just... shattered.
Whatever that thing was, it hadn't given him strength. It had emptied him, cracked his soul open like a broken shell, and poured itself in. And now?
He was different.
Not stronger.
Just… wrong.
When he finally stood, he didn't feel taller. Or faster. Or braver.
Only hungrier.
Not for food.
For something he couldn't name.
The next morning, training resumed.
The usual drills: stance, strike, block, repeat.
Ragna laughed as he outpaced him.
Kavel barked corrections, disappointment lingering in every word.
But Eudora heard none of it.
Because beneath it all, something inside him whispered. A voice, not fully awake.
Bleed to learn.
Break to grow.
He gripped the wooden sword too tightly. It splintered in his hand.
Kavel scowled. "What's wrong with you?"
"I don't know," Eudora muttered. "I think... I'm sick."
Kavel sent him home.
But sleep wouldn't come.
Because that night, the pain returned.
Worse.
It started in his bones—a hollow gnawing, as if something inside was chewing through marrow to make room. His skin burned cold. Shadows slithered across the ceiling, even though no candle was lit.
He couldn't scream.
He couldn't move.
He just lay there, mouth open, lungs frozen, as a presence pressed into him like iron against bare flesh.
Then a memory not his own hit him.
A battlefield of ash.
A man with no face wielding a blade that bent the sky.
Then silence.
When he finally could breathe, he realized he'd bled from his nose, ears, and eyes. His bedsheets were soaked.
Days passed.
There were no clear "powers." No lightning from his hands. No aura bloom. No surge of strength.
Only the pain.
Only the hunger.
Sometimes he'd black out and wake up with carvings on his arms—symbols in the same script from the ruin. They faded by morning.
Sometimes he heard voices in people's words—not what they said, but what they meant behind it. Ugly, secret things they didn't know they felt.
He hated it.
He hated himself.
The only thing that kept him sane was the vow.
No matter what this is, I will shape it. It will not shape me.
He wasn't chosen. He wasn't destined. He was just broken enough for something dark and ancient to crawl into.
That didn't make him special.
It made him dangerous.
And dangerously alone.