Kiro stepped past the broken threshold, where once-proud walls had stood in defiance of stars and empires alike. The ruined temple breathed a silence too deep to belong to the living. His every footfall was absorbed by ash and ancient dust. The air was cold. Not the kind of cold that came from weather or time.

This was deeper.

It settled into the marrow, spoke to the bones, whispered through the blood.

He stood at the center of the circular altar, his gaze drawn to the fractured obelisk that rose like a crooked fang from the earth. It still pulsed with that same red light—heartbeat slow, patient. A rhythm that matched his own.

The System responded.

The air rippled as unseen glyphs lit the ground beneath him—lines of crimson, wrapping the altar in jagged patterns that spun and intersected like veins.

The voice returned.

Not words. Not exactly.

But sensation.

Understanding.

A presence unfurling around him like the wings of something vast and long-forgotten. The Blood God was not a figure—not a man. It was not flesh. Not even spirit. It was will. Will sharpened by rage, tempered in death, and now returned through Kiro's blood.

Pain struck without warning.

He collapsed to his knees as something tore through him—not physically, but at the level of essence. It felt like his soul was being unraveled thread by thread, then rewoven with molten steel and crimson fire.

The System was changing him.

No—unveiling him.

All the years of slavery, the branding, the beatings, the silence… they had buried what he truly was. Now, that self clawed free.

RITE OF AWAKENING — INITIATED

Blood Resonance: 13.7%

Warning: Core capacity unstable

Warning: Soul structure adapting…

Beginning Phase I Mutation…

Kiro screamed.

Not from pain—though it was there, bright and merciless—but from clarity.

He saw the memory not with his eyes but with his spirit: a war fought across dying stars, a god in chains carved from comet-bone, betrayers robed in golden light. He saw how the Blood God had been sealed—not destroyed. Because gods of hunger cannot die. They can only sleep.

And they had feared him.

Feared what he offered. Freedom, yes. Power, yes. But more than anything—choice.

The kind that tore through false empires like wildfire through silk.

Kiro’s veins burned black for a moment before settling back into crimson. The glyphs around the altar dimmed, absorbed back into the stone. His breath came ragged, steam rising from his lips. He collapsed onto his side, sweat-soaked, heart pounding.

And then—stillness.

Followed by a sound.

Breathing.

But not his.

He rose slowly, eyes adjusting to the dark.

Standing at the edge of the temple’s inner sanctum, where light couldn’t reach, was a figure. Not fully formed. Smoke and shadow. Wearing the shape of something once human. Tall. Bare-chested. Eyes glowing red, too deep to measure. When it spoke, the voice echoed in every direction at once.

“You bleed. You burned. You broke. And you stood. Good.”

Kiro’s mouth was dry. “You’re… him.”

The figure tilted its head. Not quite nodding. “I am what they tried to erase. The hunger that remembers. The will that endures. You are my echo, now.”

“I didn’t choose this,” Kiro said.

“No one does. Not at first.”

Silence stretched between them.

Then the Blood God’s presence darkened, tightening like a fist.

“They will come for you, little shard,” it said. “The masters. The Watchers. The Apostates. The Ones Who Remember. And the ones who tried to forget.”

Kiro stood.

The pain had faded. In its place was something else—like steel cooling into shape after the forge. His eyes gleamed with faint red light. Beneath his skin, the System whispered new truths.

Let them come, he thought.

He was no longer just prey.

No longer just a slave.

He was the first of something old.

The first Apostle reborn.

And the galaxy would bleed for it.