Darkness.
It wasn't the type that came with the night or the shade of a moonless sky. No, this was deeper—a void without light, without warmth, without hope. And in that nothingness, I awoke.
Pain was the first thing I felt. Like a thousand hooks dragging my soul through fire, tearing memories from my mind like pages ripped from a book.
My name?
Gone.
My past?
Fragments. Flashes of a world with soft skies, gentle winds, and buildings that touched the heavens. But they were useless here. This place—this world—was primal, predatory. A land devoured by monsters and ruled by the law of the fang.
A notification blinked into existence before my eyes, burning with a crimson glow:
[Abyssal Devourer System Online]
Welcome, Host. Evolution begins now.
I didn't know whether to laugh or scream.
Before I could think, the world came crashing down.
The sky split with a roar, vomiting forth a behemoth stitched from shadows and bone. Its maw opened wide enough to swallow mountains. A city in the distance vanished beneath its hunger.
"Move!" someone screamed, shoving me to the side as a claw the size of a bus crashed down.
The ground quaked. Screams tore through the air. People—or what remained of them—scattered in every direction. My heart thundered. My legs moved. Not because I wanted them to, but because fear had hijacked my body.
Then came the whisper.
[Target: Lesser Voidbeast detected.]
[Devourable.]
Slay to Consume?
I didn't understand. But as the beast turned toward me, its voidlit eyes burning with contempt, something inside me stirred. Hunger.
It wasn't mine. It was older. Deeper. An ancient craving woven into my very soul.
And it wanted to feed.
I rolled to avoid the beast's lunge and grabbed a jagged shard of debris. No weapon. No training. Just instinct. But as I plunged the shard into the creature's eye, the System responded.
[Voidbeast slain.]
[Skill: Shadow Pulse acquired.]
A black current surged through me. My veins lit up like night stars, burning with alien power. I didn't feel pain anymore. I felt—alive. Hungry.
The body of the beast dissolved into smoke, sucked into my chest like water into a drain. My breath came in ragged gasps. Around me, the world still burned. But something had changed.
I had changed.
Consume the strong to grow stronger.
Evolve or be devoured.
If this was my new reality, then I would not run.
I would devour.
I would conquer.
Let this world tremble.
For I am the Omnivore Overlord.
And the feast has just begun.
The ruins of what once might have been a city smoldered around me. Twisted metal curled like dying flowers in the streets. Ash and blood painted every surface, and the air reeked of ozone and decay. I stumbled forward, guided more by instinct than sense.
Others had survived. I saw them—scattered figures, hollow-eyed and gaunt, staring at the sky like it might open up and finish what it had started. Maybe it would.
I stopped by a crumbled convenience store and scavenged through the wreckage. Most of the shelves were empty, looted or incinerated. I found half a protein bar, scorched but edible, and stuffed it into my mouth.
The moment it touched my tongue, I gagged.
It tasted like ash.
Not because it was burnt.
Because something inside me had changed. My body rejected the food. I wasn't human anymore. Not fully.
[Host's physiology incompatible with base organic matter.]
Craving: Vital Essence.
"What the hell does that mean?" I muttered.
No answer. Just the lingering hunger. A gnawing, bottomless pit in my gut.
Then I heard it. A low, rattling breath.
Behind me.
I spun just in time to see a creature crawling from beneath a collapsed wall. It was smaller than the behemoth, but still monstrous—six-legged, its hide pulsing with veins of liquid darkness.
Its gaze locked onto mine.
[Target: Abyss Crawler]
[Rank: F+]
[Devourable. Slay to Consume?]
I didn't hesitate.
The shard in my hand flared with black light. My body moved as if possessed. I ducked under its pounce, sliced across its throat, and watched as it writhed and gurgled. The System drank in its death.
[Abyss Crawler slain.]
[Skill: Adaptive Carapace (Lv. 1) acquired.]
My skin rippled. For a heartbeat, I thought I'd explode. But then it settled, and a thin sheen of organic armor formed across my arms.
I stood there, breathing hard.
Stronger.
I was getting stronger. Faster. More deadly.
And the hunger didn't fade.
I wandered for what felt like hours through the ruin-scape. Every time I encountered a beast, I fought. I killed. I devoured. With each one, new powers awakened within me:
[Skill: Echo Step] — a short-range teleportation burst.
[Skill: Abyssal Fangs] — a biting strike that ignored armor.
[Skill: Blood Echo] — the ability to mimic the last skill used on me.
It wasn't long before I stopped fearing the monsters.
I started hunting them.
By nightfall, I reached the outskirts of what had once been a fortress-city. The walls were cracked but mostly intact. Fires burned within. Survivors, maybe. Or worse.
I crept close and listened.
Voices. Human.
"Another one out there. You see him?"
"No. Doesn't matter. If he's not part of the fold, he's prey."
A pause.
"But what if he's like... one of those freaks?"
"You mean the Devoured?"
"Yeah. Marked by the System. Tainted."
I touched my chest where the system's core pulsed faintly beneath my skin. A faint black glyph shimmered there, etched into me like a brand.
Devoured.
Is that what I was now?
It didn't matter.
I wasn't here to beg for food or shelter. I was here to evolve. To rise.
I stood tall, and as the guards aimed their weapons at me, I activated Shadow Pulse. Darkness rippled from me, cutting the air like a blade. Screams followed.
[Skill: Kinetic Rend acquired.]
Their bodies fell. My hunger deepened.
Let them call me monster.
Let them fear me.
Because I would consume everything.
Even the gods above.
This was no longer their world.
It was mine.
And I was just getting started.
Blood still clung to my hands as I stepped over the smoldering remains of the fortress-city's outer guards. Their weapons lay scattered in the dust, obsolete in the face of my evolving might. The scent of scorched flesh mingled with the iron tang of blood, but it no longer turned my stomach. If anything, it stirred something deeper.
The glyph on my chest pulsed faintly, reacting to the violence I had just unleashed. The System was pleased.
[Vital Essence Absorbed: 4 Units]
[Skill Progression: Shadow Pulse (Lv. 2)]
The system was more than just a tool. It was a living hunger, whispering in my mind, pushing me to slay, consume, evolve. I could feel its satisfaction, like a cat purring beneath my skin.
The outer gate creaked open. A group of survivors had gathered beyond it, weapons raised in shaking hands. Makeshift spears, rusted blades, repurposed tech. None of it would save them.
But I didn't move.
Not yet.
One among them stepped forward—a woman in battered armor, missing an eye, her left arm bound in writhing black threads that pulsed like veins. A Devoured. Like me.
"I am Commander Lysara of the Fold of Thorns," she said, voice rough with battle and smoke. "You have strength. The System marks you. Will you fight with us, or fall like the rest?"
I eyed the others behind her. Afraid. Desperate. Human.
But her? She had tasted power. Survived it.
"I fight for no one," I said. "I devour. I evolve. That is all."
Lysara gave a crooked smile. "Then you'll fit right in."
The Fold of Thorns wasn't a city. It was a wound—stitched together from bones, scrap, and desperation. Hidden beneath the ruined fortress, it crawled like a hive of the broken and the mad. Yet among them, power simmered.
System-marked. Devoured. Evolvers.
Survivors who, like me, had touched the abyss and clawed their way back hungrier than ever.
They called themselves the Fold because they had folded the world's death into a blade, turned extinction into warcraft. Every member had slain monsters. Every one had fed on them.
A boy no older than ten had wings of glass and a gaze that pierced like steel. A woman with molten skin moved like liquid death. And in the center of it all, a throne of living bone where Lysara sat.
She called it the Spireheart.
"It grows with each kill," she told me. "We feed it. It feeds us. The Fold survives because we give the Abyss purpose."
I wasn't sure I believed in purpose. But I understood survival.
And I understood hunger.
They put me to the test that same night.
"Down below," Lysara said, tossing me a black-bladed spear. "Something's stirring in the Maw Tunnels. Something old."
I didn't need the spear. My body was a weapon now. But I took it. Symbols etched along its shaft shimmered in the dark. Abyssal tech. Forged from the remains of devoured gods, they said.
The tunnels were worse than I imagined.
Dark. Narrow. Alive.
The walls pulsed. The air reeked of birth and death. And deep inside, the thing waited.
Not a monster.
A predator.
[Target: Abyssal Herald]
[Rank: C]
[Devourable. Warning: Skill Mutation possible.]
It spoke to me before it struck. Not in words, but in thought.
Little shadow. Do you hunger? So do I.
It lunged. I countered.
Spear met claw. Flesh met void.
Pain flared—but so did power.
I loosed Shadow Pulse, followed by Echo Step, warping behind it mid-attack and driving the spear through its back. It shrieked, voice laced with centuries of starvation. Black ichor sprayed like blood from a broken star.
But it didn't die easy.
It split.
Two heads. Four arms. A shrieking maw in its chest.
My skin hardened. Adaptive Carapace held.
I matched it blow for blow. Slash for slash.
Then I struck with Blood Echo, mimicking its splitting shriek and hurling it back with its own force.
It fell.
I devoured.
[Abyssal Herald slain.]
[Skill: Abyssal Split acquired.]
[Skill Mutation Detected: Blood Echo → Blood Twin (Lv. 1)]
Blood Twin. I could make a copy of myself—brief, unstable, but deadly.
I emerged from the tunnels not as a survivor.
As an Apex.
The Fold watched me in silence as I returned, ichor-soaked and burning with power. Lysara met my gaze and nodded.
"You're not just one of us," she said. "You're something worse."
"No," I replied.
"Something better."
She smiled.
And far above, something ancient stirred in the sky, watching.
The gods.
They had felt it too.
The birth of their devourer.
The night sky above the Fold shimmered with cracks—rifts in the fabric of reality where the heavens bled light. I stood atop the Spireheart, gazing into those fractures. The stars beyond them were wrong. Hungry. Watching.
Something was coming.
Lysara joined me, her footsteps silent on the bone-like platform. "You feel it, don't you?" she asked. "The thinning between realms."
I didn't answer. I didn't need to.
My Abyssal Devourer System had shifted again, pulsing with quiet warning.
[New Phase Detected: Astral Convergence Imminent]
[Tier Advancement Challenge: Approaching]
Challenge. A test. Not just of strength—but of dominance.
"What is the Astral Convergence?" I asked, watching one of the sky's cracks widen. A thread of violet flame bled through it, burning the clouds.
"It's the curtain tearing," Lysara said grimly. "The boundary between our world and the astral domains. When it opens fully, things pour through—monsters, fragments of dead gods, system anomalies. And sometimes..." Her voice darkened. "Hunters."
System Hunters. I'd heard whispers from the Fold—rogues created by forgotten Systems to eliminate unstable evolvers. To purge threats.
People like me.
The Fold went on high alert. Barricades were reinforced, tunnels sealed. Evolvers who had gone rogue before were now conscripted. Even the children trained.
But I didn't prepare with them.
I descended.
Beneath the Fold, deeper than the Maw Tunnels, lay the Umbral Root—a cavern laced with living stone, black tendrils, and echoes of things long dead. It was where the Spireheart fed. Where the Fold had once devoured a godling's heart.
And it called to me.
The glyph on my chest pulsed faster as I entered.
[Hidden Zone: Umbral Root Discovered]
[Exclusive Evolution Opportunity Available]
At the center of the root was a corpse—no longer human, no longer divine. Twisted. Majestic. Its ribcage was cracked open like a flower, and something pulsed within.
A shard.
I reached for it.
[Warning: Consuming this fragment will trigger a Tier Evolution Trial]
[Proceed?]
Yes.
The shard melted into me like liquid starlight.
Agony. Pure and unfiltered.
I screamed as my body split apart and reformed. Muscles tore. Bones realigned. My mind stretched across dimensions. I saw the Systems—their origins, their hunger, their war.
And I saw Them.
The Primordials.
Ancient beings who had once ruled the cosmos—not as gods, but as devourers of Systems themselves.
And they saw me.
[Tier Advancement Trial Initiated: Abyssborn Ascension]
[Objective: Defeat the Echo Warden]
When I awoke, I was in a different realm. Empty. Gray. Echoing.
A figure stood across from me. Armored in flowing obsidian, faceless, with a blade made of compressed memories.
The Echo Warden.
It moved like thought. Struck like inevitability.
I fought back with everything—Blood Twin, Abyssal Split, Shadow Pulse—but it adapted. It learned.
Until I stopped fighting like a man.
And started fighting like a hunger.
I unmade it—not with blade or skill, but by consuming its core. Its essence. Its memory.
[Echo Warden Devoured]
[Tier Advancement Achieved: Abyssborn Rank]
[New Ability: Devour Identity]
I could now consume not just skills, but names. Histories. Purposes.
I returned to the Fold changed.
Taller. Shadows clung to me like a second skin. My voice carried weight. My presence bent lesser creatures to stillness.
And when Lysara saw me, she dropped to one knee.
"You're no longer just an Apex," she whispered. "You're a herald."
"No," I said, eyes rising to the broken sky.
"I am the predator of predators."
Above us, the heavens screamed.
The Astral Convergence had begun.