As soon as my fingers brushed the surface of the golden orb, warmth surged through me, gentle at first, like sunlight touching skin. But then… it changed.

My throat tightened. My chest felt like it was caving in.

And before I could even understand what was happening, I was crying.

Tears spilled down my face in torrents hot, heavy, endless. It wasn't like before, when pain or exhaustion brought it on. This wasn't physical. This was something deeper, something that clawed straight through the walls I didn't even know I'd built.

I gasped for air, but the tears just kept coming. My vision blurred, the meadow melting into shimmering gold and shadow. I wanted to stop. Gods, I wanted to stop. But I couldn't. My hands trembled as I tried to wipe my face, but more kept falling like a river that had forgotten how to end.

There wasn't even a clear reason. No trigger, no thought I could grasp onto. Just this sorrow. Raw, ancient, endless sorrow. It wasn't mine, and yet it felt so real that my heart hurt with every beat.

I fell to my knees, the flowers around me swaying in silence. Every breath hitched like it would break me apart.

I didn't understand it, why I was crying so hard, why my body ached like I was mourning something I couldn't even name. The emotions weren't coming from me; they were entering me, seeping into my veins like liquid grief.

It felt like I was holding the pain of thousands.

Regret. Loneliness. Fear. Hope. All tangled together in a storm of feeling too big for any one soul to contain.

My fingers dug into the ground, clutching at the earth as if it could anchor me. "Wh-what… is this…" I choked out between ragged breaths, but the words died in my throat.

No answer came, just the echo of my sobs in the vast, golden meadow.

I don't know how long I stayed like that seconds, minutes, maybe hours. But the tears didn't stop.

And somewhere deep in that ocean of sorrow…I started to realize that maybe, just maybe this was what existence truly felt like.

The air around me trembled. The moment I felt it, really felt it, I understood.

The emotions weren't just invading me. They were calling to me.

They wanted me to accept them. To take them in.

And as if to confirm that truth, a faint hum filled the meadow, followed by the familiar chime of a system notification.

[System Message: The first of three locks on your bloodline are breaking.]

[Progress: 1%]

The glowing text hung before my tear-stained eyes, golden and terrible. My breath hitched as I stared at it, the words sinking into my chest like daggers.

I didn't need the system to explain the rest. Somehow instinctively, I knew what it meant. If I kept absorbing these emotions, if I let them in completely, I would awaken my bloodline. The very thing that had slept within me since birth, waiting for a moment like this.

But at what cost?

The emotions flooding me weren't human. They weren't even mortal. They belonged to something vast and ancient, something that had lived and suffered for longer than I could possibly imagine.

If I accepted them… I would inherit not just their strength, but their grief. Their rage. Their despair. The weight of eons of agony would become mine.

A single tear fell from my chin, splashing against the glowing earth below.

"...So that's the price," I whispered to no one.

Part of me, the arrogant, hungry part, wanted to laugh. To take it all. Power like that? Enough to rival gods? It was intoxicating. I could tear through anyone, anything, reshape fate itself.

But another part… a quieter part… trembled. Because I knew if I took this step, if I accepted it, I would never be the same. The me that existed now, the one who could still laugh, still feel warmth, still care might disappear forever.

My fingers curled into fists. The golden light of the orb pulsed brighter, as if urging me to decide.

One choice. Two paths.

If I let go now, I could remain myself weak, human, flawed. If I accepted it… I could ascend, but at the cost of everything that made me Sebastian Nekros.

The tears had stopped now. My face was calm, but my heart was a battlefield.

The world around me seemed to hold its breath. Even the wind went still, waiting patiently and unblinking for my decision.

What should I do?

The golden light pulsed one last time beneath my palm gentle, almost pleading.

And then… I pulled my hand away.

The orb flickered weakly, as if disappointed, before bursting into a blinding flash that consumed everything sky, meadow, light, and thought.

The world collapsed.

For an instant, I felt my soul being ripped backward, pulled through an endless tunnel of light and sound, until the familiar weight of flesh and bone returned.

I woke up.

My body jerked violently, the sheets of the infirmary tangling around me as air flooded my lungs in a desperate gasp. My heart pounded like a war drum. The ceiling above me swam in and out of focus.

And then, without warning, the tears came again.

Hot, uncontrollable, endless.

I didn't even understand why I had taken my hand off the orb. My body shook with quiet, broken sobs, my chest heaving as something inside me screamed for release. It wasn't my pain, it was someone else's. Ancient. Endless. The echoes of a grief that had existed since time itself began.

The tiny fragment of those emotions I had absorbed… it was too much. It clawed at the walls of my mind, digging, gnawing, trying to hollow me out and make space for itself.

I pressed my trembling hands to my face, but the tears wouldn't stop.

I wanted to laugh it off, to curse, to shout, to act like I was fine, but I couldn't. My soul burned. Every breath felt like drowning in sorrow that wasn't mine.

And I knew, with a terrifying clarity, that if I didn't see someone right now, if I didn't anchor myself to something real, then the last pieces of who I was would begin to fade.

My hand reached out instinctively toward the door. My voice cracked, barely a whisper—

"...Someone... please—"

The tears kept falling. And for the first time in a long time…Sebastian Nekros felt small.

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