Midnight in Ashveil smelled of rotting sage and blood-milk.
Cain stood at the edge of the shrine ruins, the broken statue now toppled and covered in ritual ash. The villagers were asleep—or pretending to be. The chants had stopped hours ago.
But the pulse beneath the ground had not.
[Quest Active – The Smile Beneath the Mask]Objective: Uncover the cult's source of power.Progress: 12%
He slid through the half-buried door behind the altar.
The stones groaned like they remembered war.
The catacombs were alive.
Roots clung to the ceilings like veins. Symbols older than the current calendar crawled across the walls—etched not in paint, but blood that never dried.
Each step Cain took echoed like it wasn't just heard—it was listened to.
"This place predates your Church," Nyx murmured. "And mine."
He found the first body not far in.
Mummified. Hands bound in front of its chest, throat sewn shut. The mask it wore had the same carved grin as the creature Cain fought the night before.
Only this one… was smiling underneath, too.
Cain moved deeper.
A library of bone lined the next chamber—spines, skulls, femurs arranged into crude shelves, each one holding scrolls of tanned hide and brittle parchment.
One glowed faintly.
[System Alert – Forbidden Memory Fragment Detected]"…The fusion was never meant to be controlled. The binders of old made pacts, not chains. And when the Veil thinned, the First Beast stepped through."
Cain's blood ran cold.
It wasn't just fusion. It was a contract.
And someone, long ago, had broken theirs.
At the end of the catacomb, he found the Husk Room.
A circle of dead binders, each one sitting upright, eyes gouged, beast sigils burned into their chests.
At the center—an obsidian pedestal, with a shard pulsing like a heartbeat.
[Beast Core Fragment – Unknown Class]Status: UnclaimedWarning: High corruption risk
Nyx snarled.
"Do not touch that.""It's part of me.""No. It's part of the one who came before me."
Cain hesitated.
Then reached forward.
The moment his fingers brushed the shard, the catacombs screamed.
Statues cracked. Blood ran backward up the walls. The corpses in the circle stood.
Not alive.
Not undead.
Just… reactivated.
[System Alert – Emergency Sequence Triggered]Shadow Seal InitiatedFusion Threshold – Spiked: 33%Passive Trait Gained: Feral Recall (Unstable)
Recall fragments of a forgotten beast through violent instinct. Cooldown: ???
Cain's head snapped back. Vision split.
For a moment, he saw through time—
A boy, chained in a pit.A god, bound in flesh.A monster with Cain's eyes devouring a battlefield in shadow-fire.
He collapsed, coughing blood.
"You weren't supposed to find that," said a voice from the doorway.
Cain looked up.
The masked cultist from the night before—no longer smiling.
This time, he wore a new mask: Cain's own face, carved in wood.
"You've opened the wrong door, boy. Now the One Below knows your name."
Cain barely escaped.
Bloodied. Mind fraying. Heart still echoing with a beast's roar.
He didn't remember reaching the surface.
Only the way the moon looked wrong—too close, too red.
And how the shadows around him now moved before he did.
[Quest Update – The Smile Beneath the Mask]Progress: 64%Status: AcceleratedConsequence: You've been marked.