Cain didn't answer.
He stared at the crown of chains. At the Warden's motionless form. At the woman who claimed to know him.
Then he smiled.
"You want a beastbinder who kneels?""You came to the wrong forest."
Nyx surged inside him, cold and coiled.
"You always were the fun one."
System Override Detected
[Skill: Veilstep – Unstable]Shadow Sync: 73%Core Corruption: 5.2%Cooldown Disabled (⚠️ High Risk)
Cain blurred into motion.
One step, then none.
The world shivered as he folded through the shadows and vanished.
Alarms in the Sanctuary weren't bells or horns.
They were beasts.
Dozens of them.
Bound to the ruins. Half-fused. Half-broken. Their minds leashed to the woman in robes—a Binder-Sovereign, crowned by whispers.
They screamed into the sky.
Cain dove deeper into the Sanctuary's undercroft, through forgotten passageways, following memory and instinct.
Undercroft – The Forbidden Wing
Here the walls bled.
Literally.
Flesh-stone fused with bone. Ancient diagrams etched in flame, forgotten languages that writhed if stared at too long.
And in the center of a sealed vault, behind three glyph-locked rings:
A codex.
Bound in living hide. Screaming in Cain's voice. And wrapped in a spiral of shadow chains.
[System Alert – Artifact Detected]📖 Name: Codex Umbra: Volume I – The Origin of FusionTier: Forbidden RelicAccess Condition: Beast Core Injection
Cain gritted his teeth.
"I'm not fusing again. Not here."
Nyx whispered.
"Then bleed. Use mine."
Cain raised his clawed hand.
Cut deep.
Pressed it to the seal.
The vault screamed open.
The Codex didn't whisper like Nyx.
It roared.
A thousand voices. Some his. Some older.
"Three gods made the bond.""One tore it apart.""And one still walks, hiding in a human form."
Cain saw images burned into his mind:
A city of bone rising above the clouds
A girl with fire for eyes tearing apart the Church's High Tower
A beast god, bound in the form of a child, walking alone into the forest
And at the heart of it—
A single word:
"Moonlink."
Cain didn't have time to process it.
The Warden's chains snapped through the floor above.
The woman's voice echoed:
"If he reads the Codex, we lose the Gate. Kill him before it finishes the sync!"
Cain grabbed the tome, blood still dripping down his arms.
[Codex Umbra: Sync Initiated – 12% Complete]Estimated Time: 3 minutesExtraction Risk: Extreme
Nyx growled.
"We fight."
Escape Sequence
The Warden descended like judgment, his whip screaming fire
The beasts in the halls began to warp, fusing with each other into a crawling amalgam
Cain triggered three unstable Veilsteps, tearing holes in the Sanctuary floor
The Codex screamed with every move, burning his flesh as it synced
Cain's vision blurred.
His body barely held together.
But he reached the outer circle.
And then—he ran.
Exit
He burst through the black-antler gate, breathing smoke.
The forest welcomed him with silence.
Behind him, the Sanctuary groaned. Not collapsing—sealing.
[Codex Sync: 61% – Portable Mode Enabled]➤ New Passive: Forbidden Memory – Random glimpses of ancient fusion knowledge trigger during combat➤ New Questline: The Beast-God's Grave➤ Alignment Shift: ??? (Hidden)
Cain collapsed beneath a dead pine.
His body trembled.
His blood sang.
His soul felt split—part of it still chained in that ruin… part of it freer than it had ever been.
"You good?" he muttered to Nyx.
"You just stole the secrets of a dead civilization and pissed off a half-god cult queen."
"I'm excellent."
In the trees, something watched him.
Not a beast.
Not a man.
But a girl with eyes of black fire, and a mark on her forehead—the Moonlink spiral.
She didn't speak.
She just turned, slowly, and vanished into the mist.
Cain followed.