Chapter 5
The blood didn't stain for long.
That was the first thing Kiro noticed.
It soaked into the forest floor quickly—too quickly, as if the earth of Gaeth-9 was thirsty for it. The moss hissed softly beneath the hunter's corpse, swallowing the red like water in a desert. The wind shifted. It no longer carried the scent of prey. It carried him.
Kiro Varn.
No longer just a slave. No longer just a man.
He felt it humming in his chest, in his limbs, in the marrow of his bones—the System. Alive, pulsing with quiet hunger. Not like a parasite. More like a companion. A god that shared his breath and whispered from behind his thoughts. It had taken his pain, his wound, and turned it into strength. He had killed. Not for rage, not even for freedom.
For survival. For purpose.
He crouched beside the corpse and pressed his hand to the visor. The hunter's eyes, wide and dim, stared at nothing. Kiro didn't flinch. He wasn't the boy who'd been chained beneath the ore mines anymore.
He was learning.
The neuro-lance wasn't compatible with his collarless system—it short-circuited the moment he picked it up. But the arcblade, forged from Kargali steel and shaped like a crescent fang, responded. He gripped it. Let its weight settle into his hand. It didn't feel foreign.
It felt like something he'd always been meant to wield.