Prologue IV

Kai came back to his apartment in a rush. He sprinted faster than he had ever done in his life, but he did not know exactly why. Well, he could figure a few reasons. Police. More gang members showing up. Things like that. But most of all, he wanted to get out of there.

The whole thing felt a little surreal. He knew that he lived in a dangerous place, but he had adapted by never seeking it out. Always sniffing trouble out before it happened and knowing how to avoid it. Throwing himself headfirst into it was something entirely new, and it shook him in a way he could not quite describe.

Or maybe it was just the adrenaline still in his veins. He did not know.

What he did know was that as he ran up the three dirt caked floors in his apartment building, that he had to do something about his mother. He clutched at the medicine bottle in his pocket as his feet glided over several more steps.

What should he do? There was a chance that the Ghosts would just leave Kai alone, but there was a chance, a much bigger chance, that they would not take the fact that they had their own bloodied and beaten up in the streets lightly.

Jason knew where Kai lived. They used to be friends, after all, but now that once childhood friendship had become a deadly poison. Kai should have killed Jason right there and all his dumbass goons. He almost did – the thought did flash through his head, and he did reach for the knife. But-

Kai shook his head as he got to the third floor, heading like clockwork past a row of scratched up doors to the one that read 306. He would not want his mother to have her son come home to her a killer who carved up four men. She had wanted him to be better than the violence and hopelessness around him.

No, even if maybe, just maybe, he could have done it, he would not have let himself do it for her.

And for a second time that night, Kai froze again.

The door to his apartment was open. Smashed open, rather, blown nigh completely off its hinges in a thin block of caved in, teetering wood. Not a single moment of hesitation passed before he was through the shattered door, stepping past a sea of splinters into the confines of his dingy apartment.

His mind raced a million miles a minute as he passed the living room and tiny kitchen with the stew still on low heat to his mother's room.

Was it the Ghosts? No, they were a gang, sure, but at the base level they were just a bunch of disillusioned guys wanting to look tough. They could not have organized anything remotely close to breaking into Kai's apartment mere minutes after he left Jason beaten.

But then again, what or who else could it be? Nobody else had issues with Kai nor his mother. They had kept their heads low and lived quiet lives, so who?

The answer hit Kai as soon as he opened the door to his mother's room, and at first, he had no idea what to make of it.

There was someone, or rather, more like something looming over his mother's bed. A humanoid entity completely wrapped up in black cloth that Kai quickly realized was a full body straitjacket that bound his all his limbs tight until he was more like a shadowy stick.

Restraints covered the thing's head, too, and as it turned around to meet Kai, he shuddered as he saw that its mouth and eyes were uncovered.

"Oh…there you are," said the thing with an impossibly wide smile that seemed to stretch from ear to ear. It did not have a human mouth, only what could be best described as jaws. Thin black lips outlining countless red stained teeth.

Several sets of them, some human, some sharp, some jagged, some needly, like all the teeth of the animal kingdom were crammed into one grinning maw.

Beady yellow eyes devoid of pupils tracked onto Kai, and he swallowed down an immediate gut reaction to run. Whatever this thing was, it made his body recoil in danger. A sweat built up on his neck as he took a step back, knowing this thing would kill him in an instant.

"Oh…do not be afraid," came the thing's voice. It grated harshly to Kai's ears in a way that no human voice could, and it elicited the same reaction as hearing metal screeching. "I am here to save you."

The thing stepped towards Kai, revealing the bed behind it.

Kai took another step back but then stopped. His eyes had traced the red stained teeth and noticed that the red did not come naturally. It was blood. And blood trailed from the thing's mouth, dripping, leaving a trail that –

His vision blurred as he saw his mother staring blankly up at the ceiling. Her eyes were wide and glazed over, the life torn from them, leaking out in a pool of blood that streamed from her exposed throat. His mind froze, the image in front of him boring into his brain, taking deep root into the recesses of his heart as the realization hit.

She was dead.

"Oh…," said the thing in wonder. It looked back to Kai's mother. "Her. Poor thing, her suffering. But I saved her."

The thing turned around to look back at Kai and met a punch square to its face.

Kai reeled back for a half second as the punch connected and left his fingers broken. It was like hitting a brick wall. Solid, sturdy mass.

But he did not care. He did not think much at all. All he wanted to do right now was to beat this thing down into a bloody pulp, and he would not let his body breaking stop him. He thrust his other hand out to the thing's face, aiming to jab into its eyes with his hands.

The thing swiveled away from his hit with astounding speed, almost like it was disappearing, a flash of moving darkness.

Then, before Kai knew it, he felt a huge impact crush into his sternum, sending him flying through the room door and into the kitchen, slamming into a cabinet and breaking apart the fragile wood.

A cupboard door above him opened up at the sudden impact, spilling plates and utensils that fell on him, crashing into the floor into snowy white shards. His mother's favorite set of porcelain plates and cups. Gifts her parents had given to her when they sent her to this country so very many years ago.

Kai felt his vision blur in pain as warmth flowered in his chest, blood pooling from a stab wound. Did the thing have a knife?

No, the thing stared at him through the doorway, a sharp tendril of darkness rising from its feet. It seemed to float on a wriggling mass of fleshy black, its fused feet ending into a disgusting amalgamation of tentacles and arachnid legs.

Kai willed himself to heal, to get back on his feet to fight and fight until the thing in front of him was gone. He pushed away fear. He pushed away survival instinct. He pushed away everything except the hate and the fight in front of him.

>>>

Host restoration initiated. Biomass consumed.

Current stock: 75/100

>>>

Because he knew the moment he stopped thinking about fighting, stopped letting the anger flow through him, he would be left alone with nothing but his mother's death, and he would prefer dying fighting than that.

And yet, he could not move. No matter how much he willed his body to move, to surge onwards, it would not listen.

"Oh…you still resist me," said the thing. "This should calm you. Soon you will know better. Learn to thank me. Will take you to where you belong. To where you should be."

It turned around, leaving its back to Kai, and a lavender light flashed at its forehead. It began chanting in a language that Kai had never heard before, something that sounded like countless sinister whispers molding together in a quiet yet deeply alien cacophony.

Purple sparks cracked in front of the thing, and then a glowing, circular outline formed. Within that outline, a wavy mass of darkness formed, flickering as it focused into an image. Of pillars standing atop rocks floating in what looked like the void of space.

A portal. The damned thing was going to run.

>>>

Sensing toxins within host…

Neutralizing…

Toxin neutralized and stored. Biomass of toxin analyzed.

Magical energy found.

Bloodline found.

[Blood of Zahhak] obtained.

System compatibility increased.

System level increased from 0 to 1

>>>

"Now to lead you to your new home," said the thing. It started to turn, and as it did so, Kai quickly shifted his leg under a fallen kitchen knife. He sat still, looking down, pretending to be limp, waiting for the thing to approach. He felt tendrils gather around his body, ready to carry him, but they did not tighten their hold on him.

"Oh… are you dead? That would be sad. Not good." The thing craned its body down, bringing its head near to Kai to check.

Kai shifted his weight again, revealing the knife. He grabbed it and thrust upwards, towards the thing's eye. Thick, viscous, pus-like ooze spurted from the punctured eye, and the thing loosed a harrowing scream so loud that it rattled the confines of the apartment.

Kai drowned out the scream and dislodged the knife from the thing's eye with a squelch, aiming to try and take out the other one. He knew from the way the thing moved, how it decided to take his punch to the face but dodge backwards when he wanted to gouge its eye that its eyes were far softer than its body.

But the thing tightened the tendrils around Kai, greatly restricting his movements and throwing him around wildly as the thing thrashed around in pain.

"Oh, it hurts! It hurts!" stammered the thing as it began to make its way to the portal. The portal looked unstable, the circular outline wobbling and the image within it breaking up in static. "But he is here. Go. Must go. Cannot fail again."

Kai could only try to keep his sight trained on the thing as he crashed into every part of the kitchen, the tendrils swinging him along like a pinball. He could not break free from them, and stabbing at them did nothing, like stabbing into slime.

The thing got close to the portal and brought Kai close to it, keeping his limbs bound this time, but it did not immediately toss Kai in. Instead, it scrunched its remaining eye, and facing forwards, Kai could see where the lavender light on its head came from.

Between its eyes was carved a complicated purple circle filled with sigils and marks that Kai had no idea what to make of, but as the thing concentrated, the circle glowed, and the portal's unstable outline began to even out.

Until fast footsteps rushed into the apartment, then a split second later, Kai saw a golden light emerge from the thing's chest. Light that formed into the outline of what looked like a sword, and it had skewered right through the thing's body.

With another scream, the thing thrashed again, and this time, it let go of Kai, throwing him in the portal as it grew blurry again.

As he sunk into the dimensional void, he got one last glimpse of the room, the place he had spent his whole life growing up at, how damaged it was, at the screaming creature writhing by his mother's corpse, and a glimpse of another face stepping into the doorway before the void swallowed him and his vision, smothering his senses into nothingness.