C05-R10-3448 A.E. — Afternoon
Blackrow District

By mid-afternoon, Kael and Malik had become a blur of motion—clockwork efficient, methodical, unstoppable.

They were on their sixth job, the outer edge of SW-5, a collapsed tenement complex once known as Sinker’s Rest. Now it was just another scarred corpse in the slum’s landscape, flattened under the weight of whatever beast had torn through the night.

So far today, they’d made nearly ₥30,000 in disaster relief pay. Kael had devoured over 50,000 Aquals of low-grade mass—steel beams, rebar, stone, insulation, brick, shattered furniture, half-melted fixtures, synthetic flooring. His body felt heavier and lighter at once, saturated with power. His strength had steadily grown, his muscles subtly knitting tighter, denser, more reactive. His skin was harder, like stone beneath flesh. His vision sharper. His instincts clearer.

And the hunger had become almost second nature.

“Two more trapped on the lower level!” Malik called out, halfway inside a crumpled stairwell. “Maybe alive!”

Kael nodded, bent low beside the next slab of debris, and opened his mouth. The familiar shudder passed through him, like something uncoiling inside. A ripple of darkness spilled forth and enveloped the concrete. With a crackling slurp, it vanished into his trait.

Kael reached out to grab the next slab—and then everything happened at once.

A blur of black fur and muscle shot from the exposed gap.

GrrRAWWWRR!

Kael barely saw it before it was on him, claws flashing, fangs gnashing.

The beast slammed into his torso with all its monstrous speed and weight. The world snapped in slow motion for an instant. The blow should’ve launched him across the street—but instead, the kinetic energy simply… vanished. Absorbed. Disassembled.

Its claws raked his chest and side, scraping against skin that felt more like armor than flesh. A few shallow cuts, little more than surface grazes, blood beading up like condensation.

Kael’s eyes locked with the beast’s.

A feral. Large, canine-like, with jagged black fur, a head like a wolf, and shoulders rippling with violent tension. No intelligence in its eyes. No restraint.

Just pure, primal force.

He was faster.

Kael moved on instinct. He opened his mouth—not with a scream, but with intent—and the shadow came again, tendrils of null-space that expanded like wings before snapping shut.

The beast didn’t even have time to yelp.

One second it was snarling. The next it was gone, devoured whole in front of a dozen bystanders.

Silence rippled across the block. A low hush, like someone had covered the world with a velvet cloth.

A mother standing beside her injured son gasped, clutching the boy to her chest. A responder dropped the tool in his hand. The pedicab driver from earlier, who’d stayed to watch Kael work, dropped his cigarette.

Malik stumbled out of the stairwell, blinking. “Kael?”

Kael staggered for half a second, holding his ribs. The wounds were shallow… and then they were gone. Just gone. He could feel the beast's energy funneling through him—burning, raw, beautiful.

Then, it came.

A floating window blinked into his vision—subconscious interface, ArkSeal-style.

[System Interface: Trait-Linked Update]
Trait: Inner Universe Creation [XXX-Rank]
Talent: Advanced Digestion [E-Rank]
Linkage Status: Stable | Conversion Active

Mass Devoured: 50,202.63 Aquals
Current Conversion Efficiency: 12.7%

— New Source Consumed —
• Target: Feral Beast [Canid-Type]
• Conversion Log:
‣ Physical Matter → Aura [+1.23]
‣ Beast Aura → Aura [+11.77]
‣ Beast Spirit → Ki [+1.10]
‣ Mental Echoes → Force [+0.088]
‣ Core Chakra → Chakra [+0.100]

Notes:
• [Classification: Feral Beast] – Non-intelligent, no talent, awakened physiology.
• [Essence Processing Complete.]

<<End Transmission>>

Kael blinked. “...What the hell?” he whispered.

His hands trembled faintly. Not from fear—but awe.

Ki. Force. Chakra. They weren’t just terms. They were real. He’d absorbed them. Digested them. The beast hadn’t just become food—it had become fuel.

The buzzing screen faded as soon as his thoughts quieted.

“Kael,” Malik said again, approaching slowly. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “Yeah. Just a little surprised.”

“You ate that thing.”

“I had to.”

“...You ate it.”

Kael turned, wiped blood off his chest with the edge of his shirt, then pointed toward the stairwell.

“You said two people still down there?”

Malik shook his head in disbelief—then grinned. “Yeah. Let’s finish the job.”

As they got back to work, the crowd was larger now. Word had spread. Not just about how quickly this crew cleaned up sites, but about the boy who ate buildings—and beasts.

A man whose power was strange, terrifying… and maybe exactly what the slums needed.

The pedicab rolled down the cracked edge of the Grays with a methodic clink of the driver's almost mechanical peddling, the slant-orange sky bleeding into lavender as the sun dipped behind the spires of Ashport. Inside the cab, the mood was high.

Kael leaned back in his seat, breathing hard but content, sweat-dried grime streaking the sides of his neck and jaw. Across from him, Malik sat with his legs stretched out and his arms folded behind his head, staring at the evening sky like he’d just walked out of a dream. Their driver cracked open a bottle of lemon soda and took a swig.

“You boys… you blew my damn mind today,” said the driver, a wiry man with a bronze-brown complexion, tightly braided hair, and silver rings on all ten fingers. He wore a pair of worn gloves with the fingertips cut off and a driver’s badge pinned to his shoulder. “Twelve full demo sites in a single day? I don’t even see teams of ten pulling that off.”

“What’s your name again?” Kael asked.

“Name’s Brogan Veshti,” the man said with a grin. “Been haulin’ people around the city for damn near fifteen years. First time I’ve seen something like that. I mean, you—” he pointed to Kael “—are a literal nightmare wrapped in muscle and fire. And you—” he nudged Malik “—slingin’ bodies outta rubble like a war medic. Hell, I saw one kid hugging you like you were her dad.”

Malik chuckled. “She wouldn’t let go.”

Kael smiled faintly but said nothing.

He was quiet—staring out the window, not at the buildings, but at the day itself. Twelve jobs. Nearly ₥70,000 in the bank. City pay. Bulk contracts. Bonuses for efficiency and humanitarian aid. Aura devoured, ki extracted, chakra pulled. And more than all that… progress.

This was no longer survival.

This was dominion.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Kael finally said. “I thought it would take at least a halfmoon just to get one decent job.”

“Waste work’s different in Brinewatch,” Malik said. “But demolition? Disaster cleanup? That’s city-scale. Whole different market.”

Kael nodded. “This is… something else. I don’t think I can go back. Not to petty junk hauling or cleaning up spilled barrels behind grocers.”

“So, you quittin' that job with that blacksmith you told me about?” Malik asked.

Kael shook his head, firm. “Never. Garrick’s the foundation. What I can build there... money can’t buy that. Not yet, at least.”

Brogan let out a long whistle. “Well, if you two keep this up, you're gonna take over the disaster cleanup game in no time. You’ll be rich enough to buy the Grays inside of a season.”

He turned into their street and tapped the console. “Here’s your stop.”

The cab slowed to a halt in front of Kael’s building. The lamps flickered on above the walkway, casting long shadows on the stone steps.

“You need a personal driver,” Brogan added as Kael reached for the door. “You got it. Just ping me. You want ground cars, hovervans, dual-rig haulers—I’ve got the licenses. Even the ones you gotta pay to renew every quarter.”

Kael blinked. “You serious?”

“Dead. I like working with people who move. You don’t waste time.”

Kael extended a hand. “Then it’s a deal.”

Brogan grinned and clasped it. “Call me tomorrow.”

Inside, the apartment was warm and bright, full of savory smells. Elira opened the door before they could knock. She took one look at the two filthy boys and raised an eyebrow.

“Shoes off. To the shower. Now.” she said.

“Mom, come on—” Kael began.

“No bed. No couch. No dinner. Shower. First.”

Kael laughed and dragged Malik by the arm. “You heard the general.”

Later, the two sat at the table, hair damp and skin pink from the scrub-down. Sera chattered nonstop about her new schoolbooks and the "kawaii" little hairclip she'd picked out at the bookstore.

“You should’ve seen Kael!” she told Malik. “He was humming that Ascension song in the hallway this morning!”

"Ascension song? You mean that 'All I want for Ascension' song—the one playin' nonstop in all the shops?"

Elira laughed. Kael groaned. Malik clapped the table.

“No way! You?”

“I didn’t even know I was doing it, alright?!”

The table was full. Rice, grilled feral chicken slices, steamed roots, sliced eggfruit. Elira had gone all out, and the mood was easy, full of laughter, soft music, the scent of hot food and warm light.

By the time dishes were done and bellies were full, the sun had long dipped beneath the horizon.

“You stayin' the night,” Kael told Malik, tossing him a blanket. “We’ll get your ArkSeal done tomorrow, hit the jobs early. And now you get to feel what it’s like to live like a human for once.”

Malik caught the blanket. “The couch is human?”

“It's not the floor.”

“Fair.”

That night, as Malik stretched out on the couch and drifted into an exhausted sleep, Kael stepped into his bedroom and shut the door. The dim lamplight buzzed above him. His hands still tingled. His mind pulsed with numbers, energy, and terminology.

Ki. Force. Chakra. Conversion rates. Stored aura.

He sat on the floor, closed his eyes… and let the system rise behind his eyes like the memory of a dream.

It was time to test how of this thing inside him worked.

Whatever it was—it had woken up again.

And Kael meant to understand it.