Unholy Player

A massive surge of energy flowed out of Adyr, and his translucent aura coiled around the two Mindrake bodies in his hands. While he observed the procedure with clinical focus, each Spark’s flesh unraveled, slowly disintegrating into shimmering particles that merged with his own energy and streamed into his body.

Up to this point, everything resembled the evolution he had performed with Dawn Raven, only smoother. Back then, he had sensed a faint resistance, but now, perhaps because the Mindrakes hovered on the brink of death, there was none. Their forms broke apart without protest, mixed with his essence, and vanished inside him.

The moment the final particle disappeared, the true ordeal began.

A sudden, brutal pain roared through his skull. It wasn’t the dull throb of a migraine or the sharp sting of a blow; it felt as if someone had bored a hole into his cranium and forced air into the cavity, creating relentless internal pressure.

Blood welled in his eyes, and the veins across his neck and face swelled, bulging under the strain of an overworked heart. Yet his expression remained calm. With blank, unblinking eyes, he watched candlelight flicker across the walls, absorbing every nuance of agony without so much as a twitch.

Then the pain in his head was joined by a wave of bodily rebellion.

Small spasms rippled through his limbs, gradually intensifying until the muscles beneath his skin began to writhe with a will of their own. It felt as if his flesh had turned against him, twisting, tightening, and surging upward in chaotic waves, straining to burst through his skin like a violent sea trapped just beneath the surface.

The sounds that followed were far worse than the sensation itself—wet, shifting, organic noises that scraped at the nerves. He could feel the muscle fibers detaching from bone, pressing against his inner skin, while the slick, nauseating squelch of movement echoed across the room. As with his previous evolution, his body began secreting fluids from every pore, thick, foul-smelling substances in unnatural colors that soaked the mattress beneath him and filled the room with a pungent stench.

Adyr remained perfectly still, looking completely unbothered, as if the pain coursing through his body was nothing more than a distant observation.

If anything, there was a quiet acceptance in him—an almost satisfied stillness. He knew this pain served a purpose. This change was rewriting his physical structure. Mindrake’s potent regeneration, both physical and mental, was already carving itself into his genetic code.

And that was only the beginning.