Chapter 15
The forest had changed.
It breathed in unnatural rhythms now, roots coiling like veins, leaves whispering secrets that had no tongue. Kiro moved through the overgrowth with quiet purpose, his Core still humming from its awakening. Blood Venom rested against his back in a fluid sheath, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
The System was silent. Not gone. Watching.
Listening.
He could feel it... a pull. Like gravity, but deeper. Not of mass, but of memory.
The deeper he went into the untamed wilds, the more the world twisted around him—trees hollowed into shapes of humanoid sorrow, fungal growths shaped like ancient symbols, and moss that clung to stone like language.
At first, he thought it was madness. Then, he heard it again.
A voice.
Not the Blood God. Not the cold, commanding presence that had once flooded his veins.
This was... different. Fractured. Weary.
"You walk the corpse of a god, child. And you are not the first."