Ren opened his eyes slowly, his pupils dilating to adjust to the bluish penumbra enveloping the space around him. He did not recognize the place: the walls, if they could even be called that, curved in organic shapes, as if the material itself —a translucent, viscous substance resembling molten glass— had been molded by gigantic, inhuman hands. The surface emitted a faint, pulsating glow, like the irregular heartbeat of something buried deep within the earth. The floor beneath his back was cold but not metallic; rather, it felt like lying on petrified algae, rough and damp to the touch. A sharp odor permeated the air —a mix of burnt ozone and rotting flesh— that made him instinctively wrinkle his nose.
Ren’s first thought was hazy, as if his mind were swimming in thick syrup. He remembered the pain. That tearing stab in his abdomen, the blood gushing between his fingers, the crystal tentacle writhing inside him like a poisoned serpent. He brought a trembling hand to his stomach, expecting to find the jagged hole and the sticky wetness of an open wound… but there was nothing. His work suit was intact, no tears or bloodstains. He pressed his fingers against his skin, searching for scars, bruises, any sign of what had happened. Nothing. His flesh was smooth, not even a mark from his fall onto the rusted pipes.
—?Is this… the afterlife? —he murmured, and his own voice sounded foreign, as if echoing through a long tunnel.
There was no answer. Only the constant, deep hum vibrating from the walls themselves. He struggled to sit up, feeling every muscle protest — not from the accumulated exhaustion of his shift in the Squad, but from a newfound stiffness, as if his body had been disassembled and reassembled with parts that didn’t quite fit. As he stood, he noticed a strange lightness in his movements, almost as if he were floating, though the uneven floor threatened to trip him with every step.
Then the voice erupted inside his skull. It did not come from outside; it was as if someone had inserted a speaker directly into his brain, modulating words in a mechanical tone devoid of human inflection:
?Anomaly confirmed: absorption ability active. Emergency protocol suspended. Welcome, User… unknown.?
Ren clutched his temples, stifling a scream. The echo of those words reverberated in his mind, mingling with a high-pitched ringing that hammered his eardrums.
—Who’s there? —he shouted, spinning around, searching for a source, a figure, anything that could explain the intrusion. But the place remained desolate — only him and the pulsating walls.
The voice did not respond. Instead, something shifted in his perception. A tingling sensation spread across his palms, intensifying into a stinging heat. He raised his hands to his face and held his breath: beneath his skin, like illuminated veins, bluish lines snaked, glowing with a faint yet unsettling light. The radiance expanded and contracted in rhythm with his pulse, as if something alive were thrashing beneath his flesh.
—What… what did you do to me? —he whispered, desperately rubbing his palms as if he could erase the anomaly. But the glow did not fade; instead, as he rubbed, he noticed a different texture on his skin — rough, almost scaly at the fingertips, as if fused with particles of crystal.
Without warning, a surge of energy shot through his right arm, from shoulder to fingertips. It was brief but violent, like a contained electric shock. Ren fell to his knees, gasping, as the sensation repeated, this time in his left leg. Each pulse was accompanied by a brighter blue flash, as if his body were being calibrated by an external force.
?Energy core synchronization: 47%... 63%... 89%...?
The mechanical voice returned, accompanied by numbers and percentages that projected before his eyes like distorted holograms. Ren blinked, rubbing his eyelids, but the figures remained, floating in the air half a meter from his face. They were not solid — rather, they seemed made of luminous smoke, flickering in cyan and violet hues. He tried to touch them, but his hand passed through without resistance.
<i>Am I hallucinating? Is this from blood loss?</i> he wondered, though a logical corner of his mind knew this was too vivid to be a dying fantasy.
<i>?Synchronization completed. Stability level: precarious. Recommendation: absorb compatible energy to prevent system collapse.?</i>
The mechanical words lacked emotion, but the warning was clear. Ren bit his lower lip, tasting the metallic tang of his own blood. <i>Absorb energy?</i>
A sudden crackle alerted him. To his left, one of the gelatinous walls split open like a cocoon, revealing a narrow tunnel. Beyond it, he glimpsed a yellowish glow, distinct from the chamber’s dim blue light. Without a second thought —<i>what other choice did he have?</i>— he entered the passage, noticing how the floor vibrated beneath his feet with each step. The texture had changed: now it was firmer, like frosted glass, and the air smelled burnt, like melting electrical cables.
The tunnel opened into a circular room lit by beams of light falling from cracks in a ceiling so high it vanished into darkness. At the center, atop a raised platform, was a structure that froze his blood: a nest of crystalline filaments, twisting like venomous roots, and within it, a pulsating mass of jet-black. Ren recognized the shape, though he’d never seen one so close — it was the core of a Crystal Shadow, identical to those the Squad extracted from monster corpses. But this one was alive, throbbing with a slow, ominous frequency.
<i>?Target located: low-level energy source. Initiating absorption process.?</i>
The voice was not a suggestion — it was an order. Ren stepped back, but his feet seemed rooted to the floor. The blue glow in his hands intensified to the point of pain, as if the crystal particles beneath his skin sought to escape. Suddenly, beyond his control, his right arm rose toward the core. A beam of blue light erupted from his palm, connecting with the black mass.
—?No! —he screamed, trying to resist, but his body no longer obeyed.
The Shadow’s core convulsed, emitting a shriek that pierced his eardrums. The crystalline filaments writhed, trying to protect their center, but the light beam disintegrated them on contact, reducing them to glittering dust. Ren felt something flow into him: a cold, thick current, as if mercury were being injected into his veins. The energy —if it could even be called that— pooled in his stomach, heavy, threatening to make him vomit.
<i>?Absorption completed: +10 energy units. User level: recalculating…?</i>
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The light beam vanished, and Ren regained control of his body, collapsing forward onto his hands. The Shadow’s core had disappeared; only a mound of dark, faintly glimmering sand remained. But what disturbed him most was what was happening inside him: that cold energy now shifted, adapting, integrating. He felt his muscles tense without reason, his vision sharpen, perceiving once-imperceptible nuances in the ambient light. Even the residual pain from his supposed death had vanished.
—What’s happening to me? —he asked aloud, hoping the mechanical voice would reply. But there was only silence.
As he stood, he noticed the blue glow in his hands had dimmed, though not entirely. When he concentrated, he could reactivate the luminous lines, lighting the room like lanterns embedded in his skin.
Reality shattered with a seismic shudder. A blinding radiance devoured the space in seconds, and before his eyelids finished blinking, Ren lay once more amid the ruins soaked in dark blood and visceral debris. The same moment he had sealed his pact with death, the universe spat him back, alive against all odds. Not a trace of lingering pain remained in his body. His flesh had been remade under some supernatural decree: even the ghastly hole torn by the monster’s tentacle in his abdomen was now sealed, covered by smooth, pale skin that shone like flawless tissue. The revelation came in three simultaneous flashes: first, the crystalline certainty of breathing; second, the glacial void where pain once burned; third, the river of chimeric vigor now pulsing in his veins. But it was the fourth discovery that paralyzed his reason: his right hand, clenched in a titan’s fist, gripped the crystal blade of the “Shadow Warrior.”
The shock was so great that Ren didn’t notice his skin transforming: from his pores emerged a liquid armor, a living mantle of black crystals that twisted light. The dark particles, more than mere minerals, pulsed with their own consciousness as they enveloped his fingers. The crystalline entity —half armor, half elegant parasite— fused with his flesh, shielding it from the homicidal edge of his foe’s blade. Raising his gaze, he perceived the monster’s surprise; though faceless, its posture wavered, as if everything unfolding before it inspired fear.
The young man did not waste the advantage. With a sudden motion, his clenched fist cut through the air, driven by animal instinct. The strike erupted from his core, an explosion of strength he hadn’t known he possessed. Moments before impact, the dark substance surged from his skin like serpents of living shadow, coiling around his hand into a bandage of black crystals that flickered with purple sparks.
The crash echoed as his armored knuckle collided with the beast’s armor. It was not a shield encasing his fist but a hammer forged in the depths: the monster’s crystalline carapace splintered into a web of cracks, while a reverse shockwave rattled the air like contained thunder. Ren felt the power coursing through his arm — a cold, voracious energy transforming his desperate strike into final judgment. He felt the dark power throbbing in his veins like a second heart. <i>What the hell?!</i> The question flashed through his mind as the black substance slithered beneath his skin. But the shrieks of nearby monsters drowned his thoughts. He clenched his teeth, focusing on the adrenal haze clouding his doubts. <i>No time to understand this — I just need to survive.</i>
The Crystal Sword Warrior rose.
—?This wasn’t part of the plan! —it roared, but Ren was already moving: the black crystal encased his legs like wings of liquid obsidian, propelling him in a leap that left scars of shadow in the air. His fist, now a meteor of clashing forces, aimed for the crack in the warrior’s armor as the world seemed to slow, granting him an eternal instant to fulfill his oath. But the beast mirrored his speed with sinister precision. Before Ren’s fist completed its lethal arc, the monster shifted sideways in a physics-defying motion. The strike missed by centimeters, hitting debris with a “BOOM” that pulverized column fragments into shards.
The forcewave kicked up a dust cloud glittering with black crystal shrapnel. Ren pivoted on his heels, his right arm still burning with remnants of the shadow energy. Across the haze, the silhouette of the Crystal Sword Warrior — now joined by the Crystal Void (which Ren had entirely forgotten) — reformed.
The monster raised its free hand in a ritualistic gesture. The air tore with the sound of glass breaking underwater, and before Ren’s eyes, a nightmare vortex emerged in the void: an Abyss. Its edges flickered with the light of a dying nebula, while its center was pure darkness devouring light. Ren held his breath. <i>Six years since the Eclipse Moon, six long years since the first Void attacks… this was the first Abyss of its kind — humanoid, capable of opening portals.</i>
The dark substance on his arm vibrated, as if recognizing the portal as its ancestral home.
The Crystal Sword Warrior adjusted its stance, turned its back to Ren, and vanished into the Abyss’ gloom, leaving behind a trail of glowing particles dissolving like starlight tears. The Crystal Void, obedient, began to slip into the rift, but Ren was already airborne, a human projectile.
The impact was a symphony of antagonistic forces: his right shoulder slammed into the Void’s crystalline torso, pinning it to the ground with a crunch that shook the foundations. The creature unleashed an ultrasonic screech, its energy claws scrabbling at the pavement as it struggled to break free. Ren, arms trembling with effort, felt the dark substance seething beneath his skin, spreading like obsidian veins to reinforce his grip. The portal throbbed menacingly meters away, its vortex roaring like slow-motion shattering glass, but now Ren dictated the chaos.
The Crystal Void twisted beneath him as Ren drove his knees into its luminous chest — if it could be called one. The dark substance on his right arm spread like roots of a sacred plague, anchoring the monster to the ground with chains of black crystal that creaked under the Void’s strength.
—?You won’t escape! —Ren roared, feeling the substance feed on his fury.
The Crystal Void screamed like fracturing dimensions, its bright body cracking where the dark crystal immobilized it. Ren’s fist plunged into its crystalline torso with the crunch of glass under a hydraulic press. His knuckles, sheathed in the now-pulsing black substance, pierced layers of alien geodes that shattered into iridescent shards. Upon contacting the creature’s core —a pulsating sphere of violet light holding a miniature galaxy— muscle memory betrayed him. <i>The vision!</i> he thought as his fingers closed around the energy heart.
The void between his cells flooded with cosmic cold. The core’s energy surged up his arm like a serpent of ice and fire, fracturing his reality: one part, the Ren silently screaming as eons of forbidden knowledge invaded his skull; the other, the monster dissolving into a swirl of black dust, its final opaque crystal fragments glowing like stellar ash before vanishing.
The portal silenced its roar with a sonic click, collapsing inward in an implosion that yanked Ren’s hair forward. Calm returned like a thief, leaving only the distant settling of rubble and the stench of burnt ozone. Ren collapsed to his knees, his right hand still smoking, his forearm veins marked with ephemeral violet energy tattoos that faded.
He stared at the mound of dark dust before him. Particles floated in hypnotic spirals. His chest burned. As he tried to rise, he noticed something worse: beneath his skin, the dark substance writhed autonomously, as if feasting on the stolen energy. An electric tingling crawled over his tongue, and for the first time, he tasted the Void’s fear at the moment of dissolution.
The silence now mocked him. Even the wind avoided grazing him. Ren raised a trembling palm to the full moon, indifferent to the scene, and between gasps, sighed as doubts swarmed his mind. Then the silence broke one last time. The robotic, feminine voice echoed in his head:
<i>Sistema reacondicionado…
Error corregido…
Rango de Usuario: 1
Nivel de Usuario: 1…</i>