Stories? Oh, everyone hauled one around like dead weight. Viper included. The rest of the crew clung to aliases like cheap bandages over gut wounds – a necessary cover. Him? Pointless. Why hide a name you'd already incinerated? He hadn't merely discarded his birthright; he'd spat on its ashes. Taboo, technically. Ancestors only acknowledge the name etched onto your soul at the first scream. The original brand. The one that counted.

Life, however, enjoys shoving people down unforeseen alleys. Viper got the nudge. That cursed name? He'd choke before uttering it again – not after what those maggot-ridden sons of bitches who named him did. For him, Viper wasn't a mask anymore; it was the raw flesh beneath. The only salvage left when he torched the rest. Just Viper now.

Funny thing was, the rest of the gang didn't stray far from that vibe either. Most of them were running—from something or someone. Made him snort sometimes, how consistent that was.

Except for her.

The drakkari girl.

Venam—Vyra called her that. Her real name? Still a mystery to Viper. But she wasn't running. No bruised past, no bloody trail behind her. Looked like the pampered type. Probably some noble's mistake or a merchant's spoiled secret. Whatever her story, she sure as hell didn't look like someone who knew what it meant to hide like your lungs depended on it. Protected, coddled, maybe even handed a silver toolkit to tinker her way to power.

Vyra suggested bitterness – sour grapes because she sprang from the Alchemy Tower. The very institution that slammed its gilded door in his face.

Wrong. He knew his own rot. Knew her type, or believed he did. She radiated "upper-district pity project." The sort who'd drift into the slums, gawk at the festering wounds of the world, and well up like it was some solvable equation needing her pristine solution.

It wasn't.

That kind of wide-eyed scrutiny? Down here, it's a liability. A beacon.

Heroes? Unwanted. Unneeded. Every time some shiny idealist tumbled down from the heights to 'fix' things, they inevitably trod on the wrong throat – or found their own slit over a shallow ditch. Worse, they'd crawl back up, leaving their shattered good intentions like broken glass for others to bleed on.

The lower district operated on its own brutal calculus. Harsh? Absolutely. But it functioned. It didn't require outsiders in spotless boots churning its carefully balanced muck.

Yet… despite the cold logic stacked like bricks, something about her… adhered.

Their first meeting wasn't exactly a grand event—but it carved itself into his memory anyway. His bound beast, Null, trembled in her presence. And that wasn't normal. At the time, he brushed it off. She was an alchemist, maybe she'd laced the air with some tremor-inducing toxin or phantasm powder—Iron was fighting her in his beast form, after all. Made enough sense to not overthink.

So when he heard she'd landed herself in another mess—biting off more than she could chew again—he didn't feel shocked. Just… tired. Maybe a little annoyed.Even Lysska had to go drag her out of that one. Personally.

Ridiculous.

At least, that was all he got from the quick relay chat with Lysska before linking up with Vyra. He didn't know exactly what had gone down in the middle district—just that there'd been an elven attack involving necromantic specters and, somehow, Venam ended up in deep shit again. Beyond that? Blank slate.

So… yeah. His doubts and distaste were perfectly valid.

But still—something about the golden-haired girl standing in front of him felt off. Not in a bad way. Just… off enough to annoy him. The real question was: how the hell did she even get in here?

Their little hideout had a barrier etched around it—nothing flashy, but solid enough. No signs of forced entry. No fizzles. No breach. She just strolled in. Opened the damn door from the inside like she lived here. Like the barrier didn't apply to her.

And she had stuff. A lot of stuff.Which brought up another big question: where the fuck was she carrying all that? As far as he knew, spatial rings—at least the ones people could actually get—had hard weight caps. Didn't matter how big the storage was; once it hit the weight threshold, it was dead space.

Even then—let's say, hypothetically, the weight limit was magically bypassed. That still didn't explain how she smuggled a living elf down to the lower district. You couldn't just shove a living creature into an enchanted pocket. That kind of storage was off-limits for anything breathing. Viper had never heard of a workaround. Not even rumors.

So… how? How did she slip a live elf past the entire lower district, all the way to their base, unnoticed?

He didn't ask. Just kept quiet. Vyra was already throwing all the wrong questions at the girl anyway.

And yet… Viper had to admit it—he was impressed. That phasing technique she used? Wildly impractical. It didn't work on clothing, for one. But when she phased right through Vyra's strike, cool as ever, he couldn't shake the feeling that even she wasn't sure what would happen to her outfit mid-phase.

It didn't look like some fresh, out-of-the-box power. Her timing was too precise. The way she moved, the way she set up the counter—it was clean, practiced. Which could only mean one thing.

She'd done it before. Phased through things. Probably a lot.Just… without clothes.

That uninvited image slapped into Viper's brain and made his scales burn an ugly green. He coughed once, then shook his head and locked his eyes forward, watching as Venam dove into interrogation mode.

Credit where due: her questions had teeth. Maybe not surgical steel, but sharp enough. Who was he to critique technique?

Still, Lysska's shadow fell across his thoughts—and Viper winced. Had she been running this show, the elf would've sung like a canary doused in turpentine before Venam even uncorked that noxious vial of truth serum.

It happened right after Jade asked her latest question.

The man sputtered—tried to speak—but nothing came out. And Viper recognized the signs immediately.

Images flickered through his mind—people strapped to chairs, their mouths foaming red, choking on their own blood. His mother's face, smiling with sadistic glee as she stood over them. They always claimed it was for the sake of scholarly research. Viper had always known better.

Soul Magic.

Not quite an affinity. More like a category. It manifested in strange ways—odd, floating screens, metaphysical bindings, and truths pried out with force. They'd claimed it was a path to "unlocking true potential." He knew it for what it was: a license to torture under an academic seal.

One of its more infamous tricks was the binding contract.

And what he was seeing now? He'd seen it before.

Vyra knew about Soul Magic too, though probably not quite to his depth. Viper's knowledge had been carved into him—force-fed and seared into memory. And it looked like Venam, for whatever reason, was no stranger to it either.

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His mind was already shifting gears, thinking of ways to skirt the binding. These contracts had holes—if you were sharp enough to find them. Soul bindings had to be painfully specific. Ambiguity meant opportunity.

Venam's question had been straightforward—asking for the name of whoever the elf was working under within Avalon Academy. A name was enough. Especially in this case.

Avalon was an institution with weight, and a very public stance on neutrality. If word ever got out that one of their own was secretly meddling in the politics—or scheming against a faction—well, Viper didn't envy that person's future. Just uttering the name lit the fuse. Proof could wait. Especially if Lysska caught the scent. A murmur from her could rouse the House heads like hounds.

That was her gravity.

A sect-level accusation against a gold-core adept? Even then—Avalon would investigate. Their reputation alone guaranteed seismic tremors.

But it all hinged on that name. And if this elf was soul-bound against speaking it—if the contract explicitly gagged him—then force was futile. Soul Magic cares nothing for necessity.

Then it curdled.

The elf convulsed. A cough, sharp and wet. Then a violent twitch.

Wrong.

Soul Magic doesn't punish. It prevents. It locks the jaw, scrambles the thought, erects an immovable wall. Pain is collateral, not the point.

It doesn't do this.

The man thrashed now, a puppet with snapped strings. Something cracked beneath his skin. Sharp. Distinct. Like dry kindling snapping. Once. Twice. Again. Ribs? Vertebrae? One after another.

Then the bloom.

Patches of his skin started splitting open—delicate, unnatural flora sprouting from the cracks. Creeping, spreading vines curling from his flesh like a grotesque garden trying to escape him from the inside out.

Viper felt something twist deep in his gut.

He didn't understand what he was seeing—not really—but his instincts screamed in primal horror. Red Core or not, his body reacted before his mind could make sense of it. The elf was still mutating—growing, changing, and Viper's gaze was drawn to him like a moth to flame.

And then he felt it.

His skin.

It itched. Burned. Hardened.

He glanced down—and froze.

The surface of his arms was darkening, roughening—turning to bark.

"Shit," he hissed, grabbing Vyra by the arm. Without a second thought, he lunged toward the door.

Behind him, Null uncoiled, hissing with a venomous snarl at the mutating elf, scales flaring wide.

"W-What's happening?!" Vyra gasped.

"Look at your damn arm!" Viper barked.

She did. "Oh," she said, too calmly. Her own forearm had taken on the same bark-like texture. Her voice trembled after. "That's… not good."

Only one of them hadn't moved.

Venam.

She stood still—unshaken, unbothered—as the elf's mutation spiraled further out of control. The bark effect didn't touch her. Not an inch of her was reacting to the corruption.

But her eyes—

Viper saw her eyes, and a shiver ran down his spine. There was something in them now. Something ancient. Predatory. Wrong.

It was part of why he'd grabbed only Vyra and bolted. Something about Venam had flared into a blazing danger. Whatever she was now… she wasn't entirely Venam anymore.

Then it happened—fast.

One moment she was across the room. The next, she was face to face with the mutating elf.

Her clothes were gone, left behind mid-motion. She'd phased again—but this time, what emerged wasn't the naked, vaguely clumsy girl from earlier.

This was her true form.

And it was terrifying.

Viper's eyes went wide. "She's—Red Core?!"

A towering beast loomed where Venam had stood—eleven feet tall and monstrous. A bipedal draconic creature, covered in shimmering golden scales that seemed to drink in the light. Golden tentacles lashed and curled behind her like sentient whips, and two enormous wings unfurled with a sound like tearing silk.

Her claws were jagged. Her head was reptilian and crowned in fin-like spines.She was majestic.

What she did next… wasn't.

With a brutal snap, she grabbed the elf by the throat.

And bit down.

Hard.

A single crunch was all it took. The head—if it could still be called that—was severed in an instant, torn free with a sickening sound. Strange eyes blinked across the twisted floral mass, and then they were gone.

But Venam wasn't done.

Her tentacles snapped forward like starving serpents. Her claws tore into the still-twitching body as if it were made of wet paper. Something inside the elf seemed to writhe, struggling to break free—but it never got the chance.

She ripped him apart.

And she ate him.

Not one scrap was spared. No limb, no fragment. She devoured him—maw snapping with practiced precision—until the twitching torso vanished between her jaws.

It took only moments.It felt like hours.

And when it was over, she stood still. Silent. Draconic form heaving with breath, jaw slick with remnants of what used to be a person.

Then her head turned.

Her eyes locked onto Viper.

Not Venam's usual calculating gaze. These were violet, feral, and deep.

There was something in them—something wrong.

Something that made Viper's heart seize like a fist-sized spasm, trying to claw its way out of his chest cavity.

***

I didn't know what took over me.

The sheer hatred I felt—it just kept building. Boiling over the longer I watched him mutate. Something inside me snapped. I didn't even read the mission screen that popped up; I accepted it blindly, dismissed it just as fast.

I needed this thing gone.Not just dead—erased.Whatever was trying to crawl out of his body, it couldn't be allowed to finish.

Biting off his head wasn't premeditated. It was instinct. The stench rolling off him—gods, I never would've dreamed of eating something like that. But once his blood hit my tongue, I understood: killing him wouldn't be enough.

And maybe that's my dragon biology talking.

I'm not like the old Drakkari. Not like humans either. I don't have an excretion system. Whatever I eat—it's gone. Fully consumed. No waste, no trace.

So when my gut roared, "Ingest it all," debate was obsolete.

No room for full draconic display—wrong place, wrong crowd. Walls, witnesses. So I executed Plan B: rendered him into manageable portions and swallowed each fragment with desperate speed.

And HOLY THALADOR.

I detest admitting this—by every god, I truly do—but beneath the putrid stink?

It tasted… divine.

Cloying. Unctuous. Exquisite. Like… contraband ambrosia cured in raw magic and existential dread. Savoring was a luxury denied—too busy ensuring zero spillage. Just chew, gulp, repeat until—

Gone.

A system ping ghosted at my peripheral vision—mission accomplished, likely.

Irrelevant.

The critical development occurred as I pivoted.

Painfully slow, understand.

And Viper's pet salamander? That insufferable reptile snagged him by the collar, smashed the door open with his face, and fled like the abyss itself gave chase.

Leaving only Vyra and me in the chamber.

Drenched in carnage.

Locked in mutual, shell-shocked silence.

...

What are the fucking chances, right?

The end of this day? After everything?

I swear to Thalador, if something else happens right now, I'm going to—

The wall of Lysska's office exploded.

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