The Forgotten were faster than Kael expected.
They moved in ragged bursts, like puppets yanked by invisible strings, their bony limbs scraping against the stone staircase with shrill, mind-breaking shrieks.
Kael's chest heaved. Every instinct screamed at him to run.
But running would only delay the inevitable.
"Fight or die."
The choice was simple.
He tore a chunk of broken stone from the edge of the staircase sharp, heavy, jagged.
It would have to be enough.
The first Forgotten lunged at him a twisted thing with empty eye sockets and a jaw split down the middle like a rotting flower.
Kael swung wildly.
The stone connected with a sickening crunch, shattering the creature's brittle skull.
It collapsed instantly, a cloud of gray dust exploding from its body.
Kael stumbled back, heart pounding.
He waited for the others to hesitate, to flinch.
They didn't.
They came faster.
But so did something else.
Before Kael's eyes, the dust that had once been the creature twisted into a glowing shard of silver light.
It hovered in the air pulsing, beckoning then shot straight into his chest.
Kael screamed, doubling over as white-hot fire seared through his veins.
[First Shard Absorbed.]
[Ability: Echo Step (Lv. 1) unlocked.]
A flood of information poured into his mind.
Echo Step a sudden burst of speed, a flicker through space like a broken memory skipping forward.
Kael didn't understand it he felt it.
The next Forgotten reached for him, bony fingers closing around empty air.
Kael moved faster than thought a blur of motion that left a faint shimmer where he had stood.
He reappeared several meters up the stairs, gasping, the jagged stone still gripped in his hand.
"I can… move like them."
His shock lasted only a moment.
The others were still coming dozens of them their hunger vibrating through the ash-choked sky.
Kael gritted his teeth.
The rules had changed.
He wasn't just prey anymore.
Kael fought like a cornered animal, swinging, dodging, striking.
Every kill ripped another shard into the air and every shard tore more pain through his body when he absorbed it.
But each time he grew faster, sharper.
His muscles, once weak from hunger, crackled with a new, savage energy.
By the time he reached the fiftieth step, the staircase behind him was littered with crumbling bones and fading dust.
Kael dropped to one knee, panting hard.
The world tilted and swam before his eyes.
[Current Status:]
> - Echo Step: Lv. 2
> - Strength (Temporary Boost): +2
> - Reflex (Temporary Boost): +1
The silence that followed was unnatural.
Wrong.
Kael looked up and froze.
Something stood at the next landing.
Not a Forgotten.
Not human.
It was tall, robed in black wrappings, its face hidden behind a cracked, white mask.
It watched him with a tilt of its head, as if examining a broken toy.
And then it spoke, not with words, but with a thought pressed directly into Kael's mind:
> "Little Ascendant... how far will you climb before you break?"
Kael's fingers tightened around his bloodied stone.
The real trial, he realized, had just begun.