Date: October 31st, 2005
Time: 2:17 A.M.
Location: Abandoned Subway Platform, Lower Manhattan
---
The child was not born into the world.
He was discarded into it.
No hospital record. No certificate. No waiting arms or whispered promises. Only cold air, brick walls, and the distant rattle of subway trains echoing off steel tunnels.
It was Halloween night in Manhattan. Costumes still clung to alley fences. A Batman mask floated in a puddle. Candy wrappers skittered like rats between shadows.
And somewhere in Alphabet City — beneath a shattered streetlight, between the heat vents behind a Chinese takeout place and the rusting bones of a payphone — a newborn screamed into the night.
He was wrapped in a secondhand coat that smelled of gasoline and mildew. The lining was torn. His skin, blue with cold. The grocery bag beneath him had soaked through with rainwater and afterbirth.
His first breath tasted like oil and rat urine.
No name.
No mother waiting nearby.
No father watching from the shadows.
Only a scrap of damp paper safety-pinned to the coat's collar. Half-torn. Smudged in marker. Faded, but legible in the flicker of the streetlamp:
"C. Venmorr."
No one knew what it meant. A name. A fake. A final cruelty. The city didn't ask questions. And it didn't care.
The wind picked up.
Steam hissed from a nearby grate, curling around the crying infant like ghost breath.
And then — quiet.
Not peace.
Silence.
The kind that says: no one is coming.
---
He survived that night because of two things.
The first was a passing stray dog, half-blind and bone-thin, who curled beside the child for warmth and then died before dawn.
The second was the city's heat vent — a cracked, corroded pipe that exhaled just enough warmth to stop his lungs from freezing.
He didn't remember any of this. But the cold stayed in him.
Buried deep.
Waiting.
---
He learned early what it meant to be invisible.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
People looked through him. Past him. Around him.
By age four, he could slip between crowds without brushing a sleeve. He learned where to find warm air, where to hide when men came too close, where to sleep without being kicked.
By five, he had a burn scar on his arm from falling against a steam pipe.
By six, he had watched a man overdose on the third rail — eyes wide, mouth open like he was trying to scream but forgot how.
And by seven?
He had forgotten how to cry.
Because tears were loud.
And loud things were prey.
---
He lived between walls.
Subway tunnels. Storage rooms. Burned-out laundromats. Places that didn't get inspected, didn't get cleaned, didn't get visited.
Sometimes the older kids found him. Sometimes the men with bad teeth and slower footsteps tried to grab his coat. He learned to be fast. Learned not to sleep deeply. Learned that if you made eye contact, they remembered you.
So he became forgettable.
A shadow in a hoodie. A blur beneath a stairwell. A thing that moved only when the noise was loud enough to hide his motion.
He stole food. Not from stores — too risky. From bags left behind. From trash bins outside fast-food chains. From the hands of kids with slower reflexes.
He didn't eat to enjoy.
He ate to keep his muscles moving.
But sometimes, that wasn't enough.
Sometimes, there was no bag to steal from. No half-eaten burger still warm in its wrapper.
Sometimes, the rats got to it first.
And so, one night, when his stomach had been growling for two days and the fever was setting in behind his eyes, he stopped pretending he was still human.
He crawled under a rusted stairwell in an abandoned subway platform.
And waited.
---
It came sniffing out of the dark — big, sleek, the kind of rat that ruled nests. Scar across one ear. Yellow teeth. Eyes like cold marbles.
Chad didn't hesitate.
He didn't scream.
He grabbed it by the tail, slammed it against the cement, and crushed its skull with a broken shoe heel.
The crack echoed.
His breath came in ragged bursts.
And then—
A flicker.
Not in the air.
In his mind.
> [+0.25 XP]
[Soul Detected: Rodent – Value: 1 SP]
[+1 Soul]
[Soul Counter: 1]
He froze.
His fingers still dug into wet fur.
But everything inside him stilled.
Something had answered.
Something had seen.
> Me?
The voice — if you could call it that — wasn't loud.
It was silence with purpose. A hum behind the eyes. A weight between breaths.
Then the interface came.
Not all at once. Just a shimmer, like breath fogging the inside of his skull.
A menu.
No colors. No music. Just function.
[CLASS SELECT UNLOCKED]
---
He stared at it, not understanding.
He had never played a game. Never seen a computer that wasn't behind glass.
But he understood structure.
Instinctively.
It made sense to him.
The way alley corners made sense. The way escape routes made sense.
Rules.
The System had rules.
And the first was this:
Choose what you are.
He looked at the options.
He didn't read them all.
He didn't have to.
One word stood out like a heartbeat in the dark:
Rogue.
He chose it.
[Class Selected: ROGUE – Level 1 Activated]
[Skills Unlocked: Stealth (Passive), Backstab (Active), Evasion (Active)]
The change wasn't explosive. It was precise. Like something sharp had slid into alignment inside his chest.
His breath slowed. His heart didn't race — it balanced. His limbs no longer felt like things attached to his body. They felt integrated. Quiet. Ready.
He turned his head slightly and could already sense the difference.
A loose bottlecap fell down a slope twenty feet behind him. He heard it before it bounced.
The air current around his ankles shifted when a rat crawled through the pipe across the tunnel. He didn't see it. But he knew it was there.
His foot planted—barely made a sound. His center of gravity adjusted. His shoulders sloped lower, automatically hunched. His breathing fell into rhythm with the wind and the street above.
It wasn't power.
Not yet.
It was competence.
The kind that told him: you can live through this. You can hide. You can move. You can strike. And you can disappear.
Then another flicker.
A heavier screen. No icons. Just pressure. Presence.
[Bloodlines Available – Tier 0]
Most were locked.
But one glowed faintly green.
[Greenskin – FREE]
Warning: May cause psychological drift. Behavioral change likely. Minor mutation probable.
He accepted without hesitation.
[Bloodline Acquired: GREENSKIN – Tier 0 – Level 1 Active]
This time, the change was biological.
No pain.
But heat.
Pressure in the chest. A quiet throb in his spine. His fingers flexed involuntarily.
He crouched—without realizing it. The posture felt natural. Better than standing.
His legs coiled tighter. His fingers grew rougher at the knuckles. A dull ache rolled through his jaw—like something was grinding inside the bone.
His sense of smell sharpened.
He caught the copper tang of blood on old cement. The acidic scent of decay behind a pipe. The burned rubber of some long-dead cable buried in the wall.
His pupils shifted. Light no longer blinded him. Darkness no longer scared him.
But the animals noticed.
The rats scattered without warning. One squeaked and fell as it tried to leap over a broken pipe. The rest vanished into holes.
A bird nesting in a beam above flapped out into the open, fleeing into the cold air.
They didn't know why.
But they knew something new had just been born.
Something not human.
And for the first time since he'd been discarded into the world…
Chad didn't feel weak.
He didn't feel afraid.
He didn't feel like prey.
He felt seen.
And something else—something deeper—had finally opened its eyes with him.
---****
CHAPTER ONE – ASCENSION IN THE WRECKAGE
Scene: The First Bloom Date: November 2nd, 2007
Time: 4:01 A.M.
Location: Lower Manhattan – Abandoned Access Tunnel
---
The spore-scent hit first.
It smelled like mushrooms grown in a battlefield. Damp rot. Metal. Old blood. Sweat from bodies that had never known showers, only violence.
The ground hissed.
Flesh bubbled in the cracks of the concrete. A line of green-gray sludge wormed its way through broken tile. Where Chad had pressed his hand into the dirt minutes before, the spores pulsed.
The floor bulged.
Once. Twice.
Then tore open.
The first thing to rise was small.
Maybe two feet tall, more fungus than flesh, a creature of greasy limbs and needlelike fingers. It blinked its lidless eyes in the darkness and shrieked—not in fear, but in existence. As if being born was something to be angry about.
A Snotling.
It hissed and slapped its own belly, then gnawed on a nail already black with rot. It didn't see Chad immediately. Its tiny nostrils flared, and it skittered to the side of the tunnel like a cockroach under a light.
Then came another.
Then two more.
Within seconds, the tunnel floor birthed five Snotlings, each more frantic than the last—gibbering, clawing at rubble, smashing small stones with manic enthusiasm.
They didn't ask why they existed. They didn't look for a mother. They just moved — fast, erratic, alive in a world that hadn't made room for them.
Then the next wave hit.
The wall cracked. A lump of something meatier, broader, clawed its way out of a ruptured cocoon that had formed on the bricks.
A Feral Goblin.
Its teeth were already bared—jagged, yellow, mismatched. Its eyes gleamed with hunger. Its tongue flicked the air like it could taste nearby blood. It didn't shriek.
It listened.
Then it turned.
And saw Chad.
Not as a creator.
Not as a master.
As an intruder.
It snarled.
A second Goblin was already slithering from a fleshy mound nearby, pulling a sharpened bone from its hip and crouching low.
They both began to circle.
The Snotlings followed, mimicking, watching like vermin drawn to a fire — not understanding, but compelled.
Chad stood still.
Not by plan.
By instinct.
Because something in his brain — still only eight years old, still poorly educated, still twisted by trauma — didn't know how to process what was happening.
They had come from him.
He had spawned them. Like a god—or a disease.
But they didn't see that.
He was something in between. Kin-tainted, not kin.
And then — something moved in the dark behind them.
The air shifted.
The back wall pulsed.
A figure emerged. Smaller. Thinner. Wrapped in bone talismans and strands of sewer grime braided like hair. It carried no weapon. It needed none.
Goblin Shaman.
It chattered in a language made of broken consonants and tongue-clicks, chanting not words, but code — blood memory passed through fungus and pain.
It smeared a glyph on the wall in black bile.
And all the others froze.
The Snotlings began to screech in rhythm. The goblins hissed and crouched, their eyes not leaving Chad.
The Shaman looked at him.
And tilted its head.
It didn't recognize him.
But it sensed something.
Familiar rot. Shared blood.
And then it hissed.
The others hissed with it.
Chad's heart thudded.
He didn't move. Not because he was brave. But because he was frozen. Caught between awe and terror.
He wasn't ready for this.
He'd never been taught science. Or biology. Or magic. He didn't even know the word "spore" until the System whispered it.
And now he'd brought life into the world.
Life that didn't love him.
Didn't thank him.
Didn't kneel.
They saw him as something to test.
Something to kill.
Unless he ran.
Or proved himself.
He backed up a step.
The goblins followed.
The snotlings scattered to the walls, their hands clawing at dirt, their mouths foaming.
The Shaman raised a finger — not in attack. But in warning.
Not yet.
Chad exhaled, slow and shallow.
And stepped back into the dark.
The tunnel closed behind him like a door never meant to be opened.
He didn't feel relief.
He didn't feel triumph.
He felt weight.
Because whatever he'd just created wasn't a weapon.
It was a beginning.
A heartbeat in the underworld.
A fire beneath the skin of a city that didn't know it was dying.
And Chad — tired, dirty, uneducated, unloved — had just become its first priest.
---
At first, he thought it was a hallucination.
The cold. The hunger. The fever.
He told himself the flickers were just the last sparks of a dying brain — a starving child's fractured imagination. His body was failing, and this was what the end looked like.
But the System didn't fade.
It didn't blink out like a fever dream.
It watched.
And more importantly — it responded.
The next night, crouched behind a broken stairwell, he killed again.
Two rats. Caught under a snapped wire he'd scavenged from an old toaster. He pinned them down, one after the other. No hesitation.
He didn't need the meat.
He needed to see.
> [+0.25 XP]
[+0.25 XP]
[+2 Souls Earned]
[Soul Counter: 3]
[Soul Points Available: 2 SP]
He stared at the bodies. The way the lightless system flickered in the back of his mind, like a second set of thoughts breathing just beneath his own.
And then — it opened.
> [SYSTEM: SHOP ACCESS GRANTED]
It unfolded like a silent ledger behind his eyes. No fanfare. No sound.
Just options.
A list. Categorized. Brutal in its simplicity.
---
Categories:
• Tools
• Weapons
• Gear
• Food
• Shelter (LOCKED)
• Summons (LOCKED)
• Bloodlines (View Only)
---
He didn't recognize any brand names. There were no glowing swords, no flashy icons. Just black text on gray panels.
He hovered over Tools.
Then over Food.
And for the first time in his life — the world offered him something without threatening to take something else away.
Not through luck.
Not through pity.
But through blood.
---
There it was.
A small image. Faded and pixelated.
[Canned Protein Loaf – 1 SP]
• High-calorie survival blend
• Heats on contact with air
• Expires: Never
• Taste: "Neutral"
• Contents: 3200 calories
He blinked.
Focused harder.
> Buy it.
> [Purchase Confirmed – -1 SP]
A pressure hit the center of his chest.
A weight behind his eyes.
And then — warmth in his hoodie pocket.
Real.
He reached in.
His fingers found it: a square, sealed container. Metal. Slightly warm.
He tore it open with his teeth.
The smell wasn't good. But it wasn't rot.
And the taste?
Dry. Dense. Savory in a way his tongue didn't know how to interpret.
But it filled him.
Filled the hole inside his stomach.
He ate all of it in silence.
Licked the lid clean.
Then sat back against the subway wall and stared at nothing for a very long time.
---
The next day, he bought a knife.
[Rusty Shiv – 1 SP]
He could've waited for something better. Saved for something longer. But the voice inside him — not the System, but something older, something real — said he might not get another soul for days.
He needed a weapon.
Even a bad one.
So he bought it.
When it appeared in his pocket, his fingers wrapped around it like it belonged there.
It was dull. Chipped. Probably infected with something.
But it was his.
> I can do more with this.
> I can earn more.
---
He experimented.
But not like a child playing pretend.
Like a wolf testing its territory.
He moved through the alleys of the Lower East Side like something only half-seen. Every wall was cover. Every shadow a hunting ground. He didn't train. He adapted.
He learned how to walk without a sound — not quiet for a child, but quiet for a threat.
His Stealth wasn't a skill anymore. It was a language. A rhythm synced to the breath of the city. Garbage trucks. Police sirens. Footsteps. Conversations. He moved between them.
He hunted pigeons for practice.
Used Backstab not because it was easy — but because it was honest. It taught him angles. Pressure. Weak points. The twitch of a dying neck. The silence that followed.
He dodged a thrown bottle from a homeless man like he'd done it a hundred times. Slipped a wild swing from a junkie and rolled between dumpsters without touching either one.
Evasion had become instinct. The System responded to danger before his nerves did.
---
CHAD – LIVE STATS SNAPSHOT
Strength: 11 → Bench ~90kg, punch = broken ribs
Agility: 16 → 4.3s sprint / reflex under 0.2s
Stamina: 15 → Can fight, run, and climb in sequence
Stealth: +20% → Noise profile lower than a cat
Backstab: Can instantly kill small animals, cripple unaware adults
Evasion: 15% dodge boost triggers automatically when surprised
---
He didn't fight to survive anymore.
He fought to learn.
He wasn't afraid of blood.
He was afraid of being forgettable.
And every time the System rewarded him — even 0.25 XP at a time — it told him:
You're not forgotten.
You're being watched.
You're being measured.
And slowly — you are becoming worthy.
---
By the time winter came, he had over 1,200 kills.
But almost none of them mattered.
Bugs. Rats. Roaches. Mice.
Small things.
Vermin.
Things that ran when they saw him, not because he was loud — but because he wasn't.
They sensed it now. The shift.
He didn't hunt like a boy. He didn't flinch when the teeth came out, didn't hesitate when claws raked or wings snapped.
He moved faster than them. Stronger than them. More deliberate.
A rat could barely turn before his hand closed around its spine. His grip could crack ribs. His feet moved faster than their twitch-reflex. He didn't use traps anymore — he was the trap.
Sometimes he let them run, just to test how far they'd get.
The answer was: not far.
---
The Soul Counter ticked up like a hidden scoreboard — glowing faintly behind his eyes.
But the Soul Points barely moved.
Because the System wasn't sentimental.
It didn't care about volume.
It cared about value.
And vermin — no matter how many he ground into the dirt — weren't worth much.
> [+0.01 XP]
[+0.25 XP]
[+1 Soul]
[+1 SP]
Not enough.
Never enough.
---
But still — he hunted.
Because the System kept watching.
And so did Chad.
Because every kill, even the worthless ones, whispered the same truth:
> You're getting better.
You're evolving.
And one day, the thing you kill will matter.
And when that day came?
He wouldn't hesitate.
He'd be ready.
---