Dante "the Fox" Hollow was nobody.
Nobody remembered his parents. Nobody cared that he lived in the gutter behind the Harvester's Guild. And nobody, least of all him, was stupid enough to believe that would ever change.
He was a scavenger, a bottom-feeder, the kind of rat that picked at leftovers after the real Harvesters—men and women strong enough to drink god-blood without bursting apart—had had their fill.
God-blood was power, madness, hunger. The lifeblood of dead deities, extracted from Harvest Sites—sacred places where gods had died. These sites were like dungeons, filled with lingering echoes of the divine, dangerous creatures, and cursed relics.
For the strong, it was glory.
For Dante, it was picking up scraps like a street dog.
A Fox Among Wolves
The Harbingers—those who had reached Hunger III, elite among Harvesters—made sure he never forgot his place.
"Look at the little rat."
"Still crawling in the dirt, Hollow?"
Dante wiped the blood from his lip, grinning through the pain. He always grinned. Always acted like he didn't care when they shoved him into the mud or knocked over his tiny harvest.
He was fast. Too fast to catch, usually. But speed didn't matter when they caught you in a dead-end.
A fist slammed into his gut. He doubled over, coughing.
"You're not even worth the blood you steal," the leader sneered, a hulking bastard named Orik. "Scavengers like you? You drink a god's blood, and the only thing that happens is you drop dead foaming at the mouth."
Dante groaned, rolling onto his side. "Then why don't you let me try, huh?" he wheezed. "If I die, at least I won't have to listen to your ugly face anymore."
That earned him another kick. Then the Harbingers left, laughing.
Dante lay there, spitting out dirt and blood. One day. One day, he'd have the last laugh.
But for now, he had to survive.
The Harvest That Changed Everything
That night, he heard the rumors.
An abandoned Harvest Site—a place where a god had died long ago—was being burned at dawn. It was too dangerous, they said. The remaining god-blood was cursed, the echoes of divinity too unstable.
No Harvester wanted to touch it.
Dante wasn't a Harvester.
He was just desperate enough to try.
Under the cover of night, he broke into the site. The ruins of a forgotten battlefield. The ground was cracked, veins of shimmering, golden-red ichor pulsing beneath the surface. God's blood.
Most Harvest Sites were picked clean by the strong, but this one? Untouched.
A graveyard of divinity. A feast waiting for the starving.
He worked fast, bottling everything he could—every shimmering drop, every pulsing fragment. His hands trembled, heart pounding. This much blood could buy him a life beyond the gutters.
Then, at the center of the site, he found it.
A cup, sitting on a stone altar. Not golden, not jeweled—just a simple, battered thing. But inside it…
The richest, blackest god-blood he had ever seen.
Dante hesitated. Then, licking his lips, he took a sip.
And the world exploded.
The Hunger Awakens
Pain tore through his body. Fire in his veins, lightning in his bones. He collapsed, clutching his skull as whispers flooded his mind—a voice, smooth and wicked, laughing like it had been waiting for him.
"Oh? What do we have here? A little fox who thinks he can steal from me?"
Dante gasped, his vision splitting, twisting, breaking. He saw flashes of a trickster's grin, a god's laughter, a world falling to chaos.
Then—darkness.
By Morning, the World Had Changed
Dante woke with the sun on his face. He was alive.
But something was wrong.
He could feel it in his skin, in the way the air bent around him. His fingers twitched, and shadows coiled at his touch.
A whisper echoed in his skull. "You stole from me, little fox. Now, let's see what you do with it."
Dante sat up, heart pounding. He wasn't just some scavenger anymore.
He had harvested a god.
And for the first time in his life, he wasn't laughing because he was bluffing.
He was laughing because he finally had power.
And the real fun was just beginning.
Dante woke up feeling wrong.
Not the kind of wrong that came from sleeping on cold stone, though that was a daily occurrence. This was something else. His limbs felt too light, his breath too steady. His mind buzzed, sharp and alert like he'd been awake for hours.
He sat up, rubbing his hands together. Even that felt different. His skin tingled, his fingers moved too smoothly, like every joint had been oiled in something more than just sweat and blood.
Then he remembered.
The harvest site. The blood. The way he had tipped the cup back and let the Trickster's essence slide down his throat. Just a sip. Just enough to test it.
Dante stood, crossing the small, cracked mirror nailed to the wall of his hideout. His own reflection stared back at him—dark hair a mess, a cocky grin just barely forming as he leaned in closer.
"You have trickery. Use it wisely."
The Trickster's final words echoed in his skull.
Dante's grin widened. He focused—not even sure what he was trying to do, just something.
His reflection rippled.
His own face twisted, stretched, and in the blink of an eye, someone else stared back at him.
Golden eyes. White hair. A scar cutting down the left side of his jaw.
Dante jolted back. The reflection flickered—for a second, a dozen different faces flashed through the mirror, shifting like smoke. A woman with cruel, sharp eyes. A man with jagged teeth. A child grinning with something ancient lurking behind his pupils.
Then, just as fast as it had started, the mirror snapped back to normal.
Dante's face stared back at him again.
A breathless chuckle left his lips.
"Oh, this… this is gonna be fun."
Dante stepped out into the market streets, his usual spot among the bottom-feeders. The petty Harvesters. The nobodies who scraped up scraps from the real monsters who tore into god-corpses.
But today, something was different.
He walked past a fruit stand, flicking his wrist.
An apple vanished from the crate, reappearing in his palm a moment later. The vendor didn't even notice.
Dante tossed it into the air, watching as it blurred for half a second—then split into three identical copies, hovering in place before tumbling back down. He caught one, the others blinked out of existence.
A simple trick. But it was real.
He snorted.
Hunger I. Only the beginning.
Then someone shoved him.
The apple tumbled from his grip as he stumbled forward, barely catching himself before hitting the ground.
Laughter.
Orik and his gang.
Dante rolled his eyes before even turning around.
"Didn't see you there, Hollow," Orik sneered, crossing his arms. "Must be getting even smaller these days."
Dante dusted himself off, smirking. "Or maybe you're just getting slower. Nearly knocked me over, and yet—here I am. Still standing."
Orik's brow twitched. The other Harbingers behind him—three of them, all stronger than Dante had been yesterday—shifted, waiting.
"Still running your mouth, even as a pathetic little scavenger."
"Not my fault you've got nothing better to do than pick fights with me," Dante said lazily. He turned slightly, just enough to let his shadow move ahead of him.
It worked.
Orik punched where Dante should have been.
His fist met air.
The moment of confusion was all Dante needed. He sidestepped, letting Orik stumble, then snapped his fingers.
For half a second, Orik's world flipped.
He blinked, and suddenly, he was throwing a punch at his own guy.
The crunch of knuckles meeting flesh was beautiful.
One of Orik's lackeys yelped, stumbling back, holding his face. Orik froze, eyes wide in shock.
Dante grinned.
Trickery.
Orik shook off the disorientation, glaring at Dante with something closer to real anger now. "What the hell was that?"
Dante simply spread his arms. "Maybe you're just clumsier than you thought."
_____
That should've been the end of it. Just another day of Dante causing trouble.
But news traveled fast.
By midday, the Guild knew about the abandoned harvest site. Someone had drained it completely before the fires could purge it.
Someone had stolen a god's power and walked away.
And now, they were looking for him.
The problem?
Some Harvesters could sense god-blood in a person.
And Dante, newly marked by the Trickster, was practically glowing like a damn lighthouse.
By nightfall, a Harvester Captain had arrived.
Dante was running out of time.