The silence before a raid is a strange kind of quiet - too still, like the world is holding its breath.
Duran's eyes snapped open as the scent hit the air: iron, gunpowder, ozone. He scrambled from his cot, grabbing the old sensor rig on the wall. The green lens flickered to life and blinked - three pulses, then six.
"Kael—wake up. Now."..
Kael sat up groggily on the stone floor, still shaken from the vision the night before. "What is it?"
"Enforcers. Blood Reapers. They're sweeping the ruins."
Kael was on his feet in a second, adrenaline burning away fatigue. "They found us?"
Duran nodded grimly. "The flare you gave off yesterday wasn't subtle. Bloodline detection runes catch echoes. They'll have triangulated the pulse by now."
Footsteps echoed above. The crunch of armored boots against gravel. Then a low hiss—glass cracking. Smoke slipped down the stairwell, dark red and laced with chemical hexes.
"They're sealing the exits," Duran muttered, pulling Kael toward the back of the observatory. "There's a maintenance shaft—old, narrow, unstable. But it'll get us out."
They ran.
The observatory groaned as an explosive blast rocked the main level. Metal screamed. Kael glanced back—too late.
A Reaper dropped from the ceiling like a spider in black armor. Eyes glowing crimson. Voice hollow.
"Target acquired. Vyr-mark confirmed."
Kael froze as the soldier raised a blade-like device, humming with bloodline energy.
Instinct roared inside him.
His hand moved before his mind could catch up—grabbing a shard of broken pipe from the floor, he ducked under the blade and drove it upward into the Reaper's ribcage. The armor cracked with a hiss. The man staggered.
But something else happened.
The moment Kael's skin touched blood—warm, thick, alive—his veins lit up.
Power surged through him.
His vision blurred. His hearing exploded with detail—the heartbeat of the dying Reaper, the flicker of rune pulses in the air, Duran shouting from far away.
Then—he felt it.
The soldier's memories. His rank. His last mission. The last time he saw his sister. His fear.
Kael yanked his hand back, trembling. The Reaper slumped, unconscious.
"What did you just do?" Duran demanded as he pulled Kael away.
"I don't know," Kael breathed, shaking. "I took something."
More soldiers were coming. Two, maybe three. Their armor buzzed with detection energy.
"Through here!" Duran led them into a tight maintenance shaft, rusted and nearly collapsed. Kael ducked low, trying to steady his breathing.
But inside him, the Reaper's essence still burned.
He could feel it—muscle memory, reflexes, even a glimpse of trained combat discipline. His own body adjusted subtly—stance correcting, shoulders tensing, center of gravity shifting.
"What is this?" Kael whispered.
Duran looked at him, horrified. "You absorbed him."
Kael stared. "Is that what the Vyr could do?"
"No," Duran said. "Not like that. They could manipulate blood, yes—but direct absorption? Taking strength like that? It's closer to… mutation."
Kael touched his chest. The seal pulsed once, dark and red.
"I didn't mean to. I just—reacted."
The tunnel opened into a collapsed skybridge. The city's ruins stretched below them, the dying light of dusk casting deep shadows.
Duran was panting. "You'll have more of them after you now. What you did—that's not just a latent trait. That's a bloodbound assimilation. If word of this reaches the Inner Spires…"
"I'll be hunted."
"You already are. Now you're just more valuable."
Kael stood over the ledge, his body humming with unnatural calm. "He wasn't strong. But I felt what it could be. If I can absorb more…"
"Don't think like that," Duran snapped. "It's not a gift. It's a curse."
Kael turned toward the city. "A curse is something you can't control. I think this is something I'm meant to master."
They descended deeper into the ruins, vanishing into the alley veins of the Outskirts.
But far above them, on the black iron rooftops, a masked woman watched their trail vanish.
She whispered into her comm: "Vyr-blood confirmed. He's awakening faster than expected."
And then she vanished into shadow.