The shadow chuckled again—low and guttural, like ice cracking beneath a frozen lake.
"Maybe she'll try to kill you the first time you meet," it whispered. "Maybe her blade will taste your blood before her lips do."
It leaned closer, the mirror warping around its face.
"Maybe she'll be more demon than woman… more curse than bride."
"But you'll understand her. Because she, too, was made by hate. Shaped by betrayal. Forged in fire. Just like you."
Dante stared. Breathless. Distant. The flickering torchlight cast his reflection alongside the monster's, the lines between them blurring.
"You're saying... I won't be alone?"
"No," the shadow said. "You'll never be alone again."
"You'll have me."
"You'll have her—the beast-queen who will tear apart the heavens beside you."
"You'll have armies. You'll have fear. You'll have the gods on their knees."
Dante's lips parted, but no sound came out.
There was nothing left to say.
Only to decide.
His gaze dropped to his hand.
Still trembling. Still uncertain.
But then… something changed.
The air thickened. The room seemed to inhale. The staff in his grip pulsed, not with resistance—but readiness.
He lifted his eyes to the mirror.
To himself.
The version that had been broken… reforged… and made whole only through ruin.
He stepped forward.
One step.
Then another.
Until only inches separated their hands.
"…I accept," Dante said.
His voice didn't shake this time.
"I accept the darkness. The curse. The monster in me."
The mirror didn't shatter.
It breathed.
A deep, hungry breath—like the void itself had just awakened.
And the shadow smiled one last time.
"Good," it said.
Then its hand pierced the glass—not breaking it, but merging through it like black oil through water—and clasped Dante's.
The pain was instant.
Fire. Ice. Lightning. Screaming voices. Countless souls clawing through his veins. Every regret, every scream, every death—rushing through him all at once.
He collapsed to his knees.
The staff burned in his grip, runes lighting up like wildfire.
[System Alert: Forbidden Path Chosen.] [Dark Contract Sealed.]
[Title Unlocked: Heir of Hollow Flame] [Mutation: Wendigo Soul Imprint – Stage 1] [Class Awakening: Archon of Ruin]
And then—
Silence.
Not peace.
Not calm.
But purpose.
The mirror was empty now. The room cold and still. His hand still outstretched—but holding nothing.
Except everything.
---
Dante stood slowly.
And when he looked in the mirror again…
He didn't see a boy.
He didn't see a monster.
He saw a king in the making.
One born not from light—but shadow.
One who would make the gods bleed.
A breeze swept through the ruined room, though no windows stood open. The torchlight flickered violently, then extinguished—snuffed out by something unseen. Only the faint, pulsing glow of the staff remained, humming with dark fire, casting jagged shadows across the cold stone.
Dante stood motionless.
Breathing.
Feeling.
His knees still burned where they'd hit the floor. His hand still throbbed from the contact. And his veins—his very soul—felt altered.
The mirror was empty now. The shadow, the wendigo, the voice… gone.
But its touch remained.
Not as chains.
Not as control.
As a scar.
A reminder.
Something that had stirred what already existed inside him.
[System Notification: Forbidden Path Chosen.]
[Dark Contract Sealed.]
[Title Unlocked: Heir of Hollow Flame]
[Mutation: Wendigo Soul Imprint – Stage 1]
[Class Awakening: Archon of Ruin]
[System Note: External Entity No Longer Present – Influence Dormant]
He raised the staff.
And for the first time in seven years… it obeyed.
No flicker.
No rejection.
The runes carved by his ancestors shimmered faintly—silver at first, then black. Not corrupted.
Evolved.
Rewritten.
Made his.
He took a breath.
And cast.
No chant. No circle. No element.
Just will.
A pulse of energy rippled from the staff—dark, controlled, quiet. A nearby chunk of rubble vibrated, lifted, cracked… and turned to dust.
He watched it fall like ashes.
He didn't smile.
He didn't tremble.
He simply accepted it.
This was power. His power.
Not borrowed from flame or river or sky.
Born of ruin.
"Finally," he whispered, voice low, steady. "No more begging."
He turned to the broken stairs leading out of the ruins. Each step creaked as he climbed, but none collapsed.
Behind him, the mirror remained fractured—splintered like a history that no longer mattered.
He stepped out into the cold.
The sky above was moonless now. Just clouds and silence.
But he felt no fear.
Because now… he was the storm.
--------
The mirror no longer spoke.
No whispers.
No shadow.
Just Dante—and the quiet throb of darkness beneath his skin.
---
By the time he returned to the town, the moon had sunk behind clouds, and frost kissed the cobblestones. He moved through back alleys like a ghost, his cloak damp from the fog, the old leather of his father's staff wrapped in cloth and strapped to his back.
The gates creaked as he passed through them, ignored by the bored town guards. Just the orphan boy again. Just the broken heir.
Let them think that.
Let them keep thinking that.
---
His uncle's house stood tall and regal in the noble quarter—white stone, glass windows, a brass sigil of House Caelum etched above the door like a lie carved in gold.
Dante slipped in through the servant's entrance. He didn't want another conversation.
But fate was cruel.
Michael Caelum stood in the hallway, arms crossed, his sharp gray eyes like scalpels.
"You went to the ashes again," Michael said, voice smooth and unreadable.
Dante didn't answer.
"Do you enjoy digging through ghosts?"
Dante met his gaze. "Someone should."
Michael stepped forward, his polished boots silent on the marble. "That place is cursed. Your father's legacy is cursed. You cling to a name that's already been burned out of the books."
"I haven't forgotten it," Dante said quietly.
Michael's lip curled, ever so slightly. "That's your weakness."
---
Dinner was silence and silver. Roasted meat. Bitter wine. The servants didn't look him in the eye.
Michael cut his food with surgical precision, like he was dissecting something.
"I hear strange things," he said casually. "About a boy sneaking into the crypts. About blood rites drawn in soot. About animals going missing."
Dante looked up from his plate. "Is that what the nobles are whispering now? Ghost stories?"
Michael's eyes never left him. "They whisper because they're afraid. And when fear lingers too long… someone always burns."
Dante didn't blink. "Let them try."
---
That night, in the quiet of his room, Dante stared at his reflection.
No mirror monster.
Just him.
But the feeling was still there. A hum beneath his skin. A second heartbeat behind his own. His veins pulsed with it—raw, ancient, hungry.
[System Notification: Darkness Level Stabilized – Cloak of Hollow Flame Active]
[Current Humanity: +1]
[Dark Affinity: Veiled – Hidden from Divine Scrying]
[Trait Progressing: "Soul Mutation – Wendigo Seed"]
He peeled the bandages from his palm.
Black veins curled up his wrist like ink drawn by a mad god.
He pressed his hand to the stone wall.
It cracked.
Not with strength—but rot. The stone blackened and splintered like it had aged a thousand years in a second.
Dante yanked his hand back. Breathing shallow.
Then—he smiled.
---
The next day, the local priest died in his sleep.
His eyes had melted.
---
Dante said nothing.
He walked through the town with a cloak over his shoulders and a calm face. The nobles ignored him. The peasants looked away. The divine wards on the cathedral pulsed faintly when he passed—but didn't scream.
Not yet.
[System Alert: Passive Corruption Radius Expanded – 2.4 Meters]
[Note: Divine Beings Within Range Will Begin to Feel Unease]
---
At night, he trained beneath the manor, in the catacombs Michael didn't know about. Or pretended not to.
He drew blood sigils in silence.
He read from the nameless book.
And in the dark, the whisper sometimes returned.
Not often.
Not teaching.
Just watching.
Approving.
"You're learning to hide. Good."
"They must never know—until it's too late."
"When the gods come looking… smile at them. Shake their hands."
"And when they trust you…"
"…tear out their throats."
The moon was nothing more than a sickle carved into the obsidian sky, thin and sharp, like the blade of a butcher preparing for the next cut. The wind whispered secrets through the cracked window panes of Michael Caelum's house—secrets Dante was no longer afraid to hear.
The room was cold. Always was.
Dante sat on the wooden floor, legs folded, spine unnaturally straight. In front of him, seven black candles burned without flame—just cold smoke curling like serpents toward the ceiling. No light. Just void.
And in the center of the circle they formed, etched in dried blood, was a symbol not written in any book his uncle owned. He had learned it from the skin-book—the one that pulsed when touched, the one that whispered when left alone.
The sigil looked alive.
So did his eyes.
Glowing faintly violet, veined with black cracks spidering outward like glass under pressure, Dante was not the same boy who had cried over his father's grave. That boy was dead. This one had murdered him.
His fingertips hovered above the sigil.
He spoke a single word.
Not in any human tongue.
The air split.
A shriek like metal on bone filled the room—but only for him. The house itself didn't creak, didn't stir. Uncle Michael, asleep in the adjacent room, would hear nothing. This magic existed between ticks of the clock. Between heartbeats. Between reality and whatever waited outside of it.
The candles dimmed.
The sigil hissed.
And Dante's body convulsed—once, then steadied.
[System Notification: Forbidden Sigil 'Null Root' Activated.]
[Warning: Mental Fortitude Test In Progress.]
[Status Effect: Minor Madness Acquired.]
He didn't flinch. Madness was becoming a second language.
He focused.
"Show me the anatomy of death," he whispered, voice a blade gliding across silk.
A skeletal form rose from the blood—half real, half thought. An incomplete corpse, hovering, twitching, its skull turning with broken clicks to meet his gaze.
It was beautiful.
Each training session had become less about learning and more about becoming. This wasn't school. This wasn't spell formulas and mana counts. This was evolution.
There were no witnesses.
Only him. The dead thing. The system. And the growing echo of something ancient pressing at the edges of his awareness.
---
Hours passed.
He dissected the phantom cadaver piece by piece, not with scalpel but with thought. Magic peeled away the flesh like an artist stripping paint to find the first brushstroke. He traced the memory of suffering in the bones. The trauma locked in the ribcage. The fear still clinging to its blackened heart.
His mind recorded everything.
And improved it.
Every time the corpse writhed or screamed, he corrected its error. Rewired the nerve lines. Rebuilt the circulatory system with obsidian threads of dark mana instead of veins. Removed the stomach. Replaced it with a soul-battery. What need had his creations for digestion when hunger could be fed with screams?
He wasn't building soldiers.
He was building art.
---
At midnight, he switched focus.
Two rats, trapped earlier in the cellar, now floated above the circle, paralyzed. Their eyes darted wildly. Their bodies twitched in protest.
Dante didn't blink.
"Let's begin transmutation protocol."
He extended a finger, slicing the air with a precise vertical line.
Black energy surged.
The rats melted—skin to fur, organs to pulp—but didn't die. Not yet. Not until he learned what he needed. Their molecules screamed as they were twisted into a new shape. Something not rat. Not beast. Not entirely physical.
When the screaming stopped, something else breathed in their place.
A low gurgle.
It had seven legs. No mouth. Its eyes were stitched into its back. It blinked once, then tried to speak.
Dante silenced it with a gesture.
[System Notification: Hybrid Aberration Created – "Vorlusk Wretchling"]
[Note: Stability - Low | Mana Efficiency - High | Containment Protocol Required]
He smiled. A fraction of one. The closest thing he gave to joy anymore.
He looked down at his notes, scribbled across dozens of pages stolen from Uncle Michael's old spellbooks. Except now those pages were overwritten—layered in his own handwriting, calculations written in blood, and symbols that made Michael's runes look like children's scrawl.
Dante was smarter than anyone in this town. That much had become obvious.
But intelligence was never enough.
He wanted more.
He wanted perfect control.
He whispered to the system, "Show me the knowledge locked behind Level 3 Mental Threshold."
[System Warning: Accessing this knowledge may result in partial ego fracture.]
Proceed? [Y/N]
"Yes."
[Confirmed.]
[Unsealing Cognitive Layer: Hekaton Vein - Fragment 1.]
[Infodump incoming: Neural Firewall Engaged.]
Pain unlike anything he had known wracked through him. His nose bled. His gums split. He bit through his own tongue and tasted iron.
But he endured.
He memorized every symbol, every pattern, every law the system screamed into his brain like a god carving commandments into a broken stone.
Then the whispers came again.
Not the system this time.
The Shadow.
It spoke only sometimes. When he was weakest. Or strongest. Or most unstable. It never explained.
But this time… it was amused.
"You learn fast, little king," it said, voice like silk over razors. "Are you ready to make them scream yet?"
Dante didn't respond.
He didn't have to.
His silence was permission enough.
---
The sun was hours from rising.
He stood now, arms covered in runic scars from self-inflicted incisions. Each one calculated. Each one necessary.
He had been feeding the staff again—his father's staff—black mana drawn from pain and blood. It hummed in his hand now, a heartbeat that wasn't his.
He pointed it at the floating Wretchling.
"Obey."
It snarled, writhing.
"Obey."
The thing stilled.
Dante's eyes glowed violet again, full now. No cracks. No hesitation.
"Good."
He turned away from it and drew a new circle. This one larger. Complex beyond any mortal mage's understanding.
A teleportation sigil—but not to a place.
To a realm.
One between.
The system flared.
[System Alert: You are attempting unauthorized realm breaching.]
[Proceeding will alert higher entities.]
[Risk Level: Critical.]
Proceed?
He hesitated.
Then, "Yes."
The circle lit up—no light, only absence. The candles extinguished, replaced by absolute silence.
And then he heard it.
A scream.
Not of pain.
But of recognition.
The darkness on the other side knew his name.
And that's when Uncle Michael's voice broke through the door.
"Dante?" a gruff voice called. "Why is your door glowing?"
Dante's body didn't move, but his eyes flicked toward the door.
He whispered a sigil.
The glow vanished.
The aberration dissolved.
The teleportation gate folded into nothingness like a page turning back.
By the time Michael pushed open the door, the room was dark. Normal. Cold. A boy sitting in the corner, eyes dull, journal open, candles melted.
Michael frowned.
"You haven't slept again."
"I'm fine," Dante replied, voice flat.
"You're going to make yourself sick."
"No," Dante said, standing slowly, hiding the blood on his palms behind his back. "I'm going to make myself powerful."
Michael said nothing to that.
Just sighed.
"Breakfast in ten. Don't be late."
The door shut again.
Dante stared at the empty space where the portal had almost opened.
He wasn't ready.
Yet.
But soon.
Very soon.
---
When the sun finally broke over the horizon, casting golden light over the town of Kareth Hollow, Dante stepped outside with a blank expression, his eyes unreadable.
To the villagers, he was just a quiet boy.
Polite. Reserved. Maybe a bit strange.
But nothing more.
No one knew that just hours ago, he had torn open the edge of reality.
No one knew he had created a new form of life, bound to his will.
No one knew that when the time came… he would burn this world and every god above it to ash.