Lurking Soul: The Eldritch System
In a grim, low-tech medieval world, power belongs only to iron-fisted lords and the high priests who wield the miracles of the Holy Church. For five-year-old Leo, life was simple: stay close, stay quiet, and trust his father's blade to keep the dark at bay.
Until the night the shadows bled his father dry.
Left alone in the jaws of a monster twice his size, Leo's dying instinct claws open something ancient, alien, and forbidden. Cold runes of light burn themselves into his soul — inherited, uninvited, unstoppable.
It is not a blessing. It is not godhood.
It is an SSS-Rank curse that calls itself a "System." And it doesn't care that its host is five years old.
No prophecy. No chosen one. Just one primal mandate whispered in blood: Hunt. Evolve. Survive.
Every spark of power Leo claws from the brink of death drags him further from humanity and deeper into a truth the world calls demonic. Villages will burn him at the stake for what grows inside him. Witches will want to own it. And somewhere in the dark, something far older than either is beginning to notice him back.
The System feeds on the lives he takes.
The question is how much of the boy will be left to feed it.