Dawn of the 10th Rotation of the Vore Cycle, 3448 A.E.
Kael's Home

Kael woke to the whisper of a breeze and the faint hum of city traffic in the distance. A far cry from the brine-stained chaos of Brinewatch. Morning light spilled through the apartment’s shuttered windows, casting slats of gold across the polished wood floor.

He stretched, bleary-eyed, and reached into the back of his mind to open his ArkSeal.

And paused.

Requests: 17

Notifications: 63

Job Offers: 11 PENDING — 3 VERIFIED

“What the hell…”

He sat up, blinking away sleep. The flood of activity didn’t make sense—he’d only posted his first Arknet ad last night. It had barely cost him anything. No reviews. No track record. No connections. Yet here it was: a digital landslide.

His curiosity surged. He pulled up the trending alerts and public safety bulletins.

That’s when he saw the headlines:

Overnight Beast Wave Strikes Southwestern Perimeter — Two Districts Ravaged

256 Confirmed Dead Thousands More Unaccounted For In Recent Mini Beast Wave

Two Predabeasts Confirmed Among Rampaging Horde

Civil Recovery Crews Mobilized — Public Assistance Requested

The map expanded in his mind, highlighting SW-4 and SW-5. While designated SW, they're really NW. SW denotes the direction from the North. Districts SW-4 and SW-5 were the districts four and five districts north of Brinewatch.

Flattened streets. Collapsed tenements. Emergency cleanup teams already deployed.

Kael sat back, heart pounding. “This… this is real.”

He tapped through the requests. Most were general labor contracts: rubble clearing, corpse disposal, building tear-downs. Several tagged high urgency with hazard pay attached. All of them were within reach.

Kael almost had a seizure when he saw the contract rates. Just one contract started at 1,000 DM. Many varied, but could reach even tens of thousands of Marks depending on the final body count, tonnage and danger, as much was still unknown.

He accepted the nearest job on the southern edge of SW-5—demolition and cleanup of a collapsed storehouse.

Kael bolted out of bed, throwing on work clothes. As he stepped into the kitchen, the smell of eggs, sweet pepper hash, and leftover bacon hit him like a dream.

Elira stood at the stove, already dressed, apron cinched, hair braided over one shoulder. “Morning, love. Hungry?”

“Smells amazin', but—” He grabbed a plate, loaded it hastily. “—there was a beast wave last night. Two predabeasts. I’ve already got a cleanup job.”

Her expression tightened. “Brinewatch?”

He shook his head.

Elira's face relaxed a bit. “Be careful. If it happened last night, then those areas aren’t cleared yet. There could still be stray beasts hiding or stuck under the rubble.”

“I will,” he promised, stepping toward the door. “Tell Sera I’ll be back before nightfall.”

Just as he opened the door, a familiar voice called out.

“Yo!”

Malik stood at the entrance, dressed in his usual patched gear, one hand raised in a lazy wave, the other holding a sack of street pastries. “You weren’t gonna ghost me, were you? I came for that ArkSeal you promised.”

Kael grinned despite the chaos. “You’ve got good timing.”

“It's my talent.”

“There was a beast wave last night—two predabeasts. I’ve got a cleanup contract. Come with me?”

Malik blinked. “Cleanup? Like… dragging rubble and guts?”

“I’ll pay you. 100 DM or 200 drips. You choose.”

Malik raised a brow. “Now you’re speakin' my language.”

Kael slapped his shoulder. “Let’s go, then. We’ll catch up on the ride. You can get your ArkSeal after we finish.”

Malik smirked. “Only if you’re buyin' lunch too.”

Kael chuckled and nodded, already calling the pedicab.

As they stepped out towards the street, Kael felt it—not the dread of another uphill battle, but the momentum of something real. His first job. His first employee. His first step into the city not as a survivor… but as someone building something lasting.

And this time, he wasn’t doing it alone.

****

The pedicab rolled quietly as it drifted down the winding streets that marked the edge of the Grays. Beyond the Outer Walls, the exterior roads devolved into rough patches of gravel and hardened dirt. The deeper they went, the more the buildings looked wounded—scarred by claw marks, scorched by fire, broken by stampeding limbs.

Kael leaned back in the padded seat, one arm resting on the window ledge, his eyes distant.

Malik watched him for a moment, chewing on a half-bitten pastry. “So… you gonna tell me what happened? One day I’m dragging your unconscious ass out of an alley, the next you’re living in the Grays, dressed like a noble and hiring me for monster cleanup.”

Kael smirked faintly. “It’s been a quartermoon.”

“Exactly. A quartermoon.”

Kael sighed, eyes still on the battered skyline. “A blacksmith called Garrick helped me upgrade. Gave me a good payin' job. And the stuff he had me eat for him supercharged my talent.”

Malik raised an eyebrow. “Supercharged? You mean your talent actually evolved? That’s rare, man.”

Kael shook his head. “Nah. That’s the thing. I thought it had, but when I got retested… it was still E-rank.”

Malik blinked. “Wait—what?”

“It’s officially E-rank,” Kael said, voice low. “But it behaves like somethin' else. Something stronger. During the beast rampage a few days ago… I was attacked by the predabeast. It ambushed me, broke my spine, ripped my arm off and almost ate me alive. But I got the last lick in and killed it before it could finish. I ate that motherfucker alive. Then healed.”

“…Ate it?”

“Literally. My trait lets me devour things. Matter. Energy. It’s not just digestion—it’s like the world dissolves when I want it to. That’s how I healed. That’s how I survived. I was basically a floating head before I ate that bastard. Look at me now—good as new!”

Malik stared at him for a long beat. “Kael, that’s not an E-rank talent.”

“Exactly,” Kael muttered.

The driver glanced back in the mirror, eyes wide. “You… killed a predabeast?”

Kael didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The driver’s eyes lingered, unsure whether he should be grateful or afraid.

Suddenly, the cab jerked to a halt.

“Road’s blocked,” the driver said. “Debris.”

They all leaned forward. A chunk of collapsed building had spilled across the dirt path—steel and stone twisted into a tangled barricade. It looked like part of a fallen storage warehouse. Easily over an aqual (mass of 1 cubic Elon of pure liquid water).

“Can’t go around,” the driver added. “And I’m not risking the tires over that.”

Kael opened the door and stepped out. The air here was sharp with the scent of blood and scorched ash. Malik followed.

“You gonna move that?” Malik asked, eyes squinting against the late morning sun. “We don’t exactly have a crane.”

“Don’t need one,” Kael said simply.

He walked up to the heap and laid a hand on it. Cold. Dense. Reinforced concrete and metal. His fingers flexed, and he focused—not just on eating it, but on the feeling from before. That moment of desperation. Of hunger. Of death circling just beyond his reach.

He remembered how it felt to sink his teeth into the beast’s hide. How the darkness surged out of him, like a flood released from an ancient gate.

He opened his mouth.

The air trembled.

A ripple, like heat over stone, passed through the space. From his throat, a darkness poured forth—not smoke, not shadow, but something deeper. It coated the debris in an instant, spreading like ink across a page.

Malik stumbled back. “What the hell—”

The cab driver gasped.

And in the next moment, the entire obstacle—stone, steel, and all—vanished. Not crushed. Not disintegrated. Gone.

Kael stood still, his hand falling to his side, the last wisps of shadow slipping back into his mouth like a tide receding into a black sea.

[Linkage Status Update]
Trait: XXX-Rank – Inner Universe Creation
Talent: E-Rank – Advanced Digestion
Status: Linkage Complete. Functional Integration Achieved.
Function: Mass-to-Energy Conversion Active

Mass Ingested: 1.22 Aquals
Composition: Low-Quality | Simple Structure
Conversion Type: Aura
Aura Gained: +0.421
Conversion Efficiency: 7.03%

A chime echoed in his mind’s eye as the system updated.

Kael staggered a half-step back as the translucent screen blinked into existence, hovering before his eyes like a ghost conjured from the ether. He blinked once—twice—but it remained there, a sterile arrangement of sharp-edged symbols and glowing text that pulsed faintly with each beat of his heart.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

No noise. No hum. No flicker of light from his ArkSeal. But the interface… it looked so familiar—clean, compact, just like the heads-up displays in Throne Wars 2. Just like his ArkSeal’s dashboard. Yet he knew with a crawling certainty: this wasn’t from the ArkSeal. This wasn’t from any device.

His heart thundered in his chest.

What is this thing?

Why now?

He tore his gaze from the screen—but it followed. Hovering persistently like it belonged in his vision.

Behind him, Malik’s voice cracked. “You really ate it.”

Kael exhaled slowly and nodded, too preoccupied with trying to close the screen hugging his vision to say anything.

“…You’re a damn monster.”

Kael smiled faintly. “Yeah.”

Malik clapped a hand on his shoulder. “A monster that's about to get ya boy paid! You should have told me you can do shit like that earlier! How much can you eat? If you can do that regularly, I'm ready to quit my job at the Saltpier and follow you for good, lil bro. Shit, I mean Big Bro!”

The driver, still amazed, slowly turned the wheel and pedaled the pedicab forward along the now-clear path.

Kael climbed back in, Malik close behind, the silence thick with awe.

In the distance, the devastation of SW-5 waited for them.

But Kael had to figure out how to control, or at least close, this screen in his vision before they reached their destination.