"Goddammit! What shitty ability is this?!" Kael screamed, his voice echoing hollowly through the sewer.
He glared at the lifeless form of his puppet—a mangled rat lying in a pool of blood. Its body twitched one last time before going still, its tentacle-like strings severed and curling into nothingness.
The fight had been brutal, a frantic scuffle against another, larger rat. Despite Kael's attempts to control his puppet with precision, the creature had been too clumsy, too weak. The opponent had ripped it apart with ease.
Kael hovered over the corpse, his translucent form flickering dangerously. He glanced at his hands—or what passed for them now—and noticed they were even dimmer than before. His once semi-solid appearance now looked more like a thin mist, barely holding together.
"Great. Just great," he muttered bitterly. "Not only do I lose the damn fight, but I'm losing myself too."
He sighed, the weight of his situation settling heavily over him. The world above was a nightmare—a place where the sun burned everything to ash and the moon froze anything in its light. The surface was teeming with chaos and monsters, yet here he was, stuck in the sewers, losing more of himself with each passing moment.
"But come to think of it…" Kael said, his tone softening as a thought struck him. "The world's gone to hell, and yet there are still animals out there surviving. Normal animals, not monsters."
He looked around the dim sewer tunnel, where mutated rats scurried in the shadows, their sharp claws clicking against the wet stone. They were grotesque and unnerving, but they weren't monstrous in the same way the Riftborn were.
"These creatures… they've learned to avoid the sun and moon," Kael continued, speaking to himself as his mind raced. "They've adapted to this world. Survived when everything else is falling apart."
The realization hit him like a punch to the gut.
"If they can adapt…" He paused, his gaze drifting down to his dim, ghostly hands. "Then I have to adapt too."
Kael clenched his jaw, a bitter smile spreading across his face. It wasn't a smile of joy or amusement, but one born out of grim determination.
"As a human—or whatever the hell I am now—I have to adapt to this shitty ability," he muttered. "Otherwise, I'll eventually die. Or fade. Or whatever it is that happens to ghosts who screw up."
He looked back at the rat's corpse, his mind already analyzing what went wrong. His control had been sloppy, his puppet too weak. He needed something stronger—something faster, more resilient. If he was going to survive, he couldn't rely on just any creature.
"I need to get better at this," Kael said, his tone hardening. "Stronger. Smarter. Faster."
He turned his attention to the larger rats lurking in the shadows, their glowing eyes watching him warily. They were bigger, meaner, and undoubtedly more difficult to control. But they were also more capable of surviving in this hellish world.
Kael's smile widened, taking on a sharper edge. "Alright then," he muttered. "Let's see what you've got."
...
Kael sighed, his frustration mounting as he failed yet again to connect his invisible threads to a larger rat.
No matter how much he willed it, the threads wouldn't latch onto the creature, slipping through as if he were trying to grab mist with bare hands.
He clenched his ghostly fists, watching as the rat scurried off, oblivious to his struggle. Damn it, he thought. If he couldn't control the stronger ones, then he had no choice—he'd have to look for smaller ones again.
With no time to waste, Kael resumed his search, drifting deeper into the sewers.
An hour passed.
Nothing.
Kael's frustration boiled into anger. His body had become even more transparent, his form barely holding together. He was losing himself, piece by piece. A cold dread settled over him as an instinct—some primal warning—screamed in his mind.
If I don't find something within the next thirty minutes… I'll die.
Or maybe not "die" in the conventional sense. He wasn't sure what would happen to a spirit that completely faded. Would he just vanish? Lose his sense of self? Become nothingness? The thought made his very essence tremble.
Panic creeping into his thoughts, Kael forced himself to move faster. He didn't care about the filth coating the walls or the rancid stench of rot and decay. The ground was a disgusting mix of spit, excrement, and grime, but he barely noticed anymore.
Survival was all that mattered.
Then, finally—he found one.
A rat, smaller than the others, scurried along the narrow tunnel. But something about this one was… different.
Its fur was pure white, with black spots scattered across its body. It didn't look sickly or mutated like the others—it looked unnatural, as if it didn't belong here.
Kael didn't hesitate. He couldn't afford to.
With what little strength he had left, he reached out, manipulating his spectral threads and forcing them toward the strange rat.
The process was harder this time, agonizingly slow. His fading form made it feel like trying to push against an invisible force, like trying to keep a door from slamming shut with a hand that no longer had weight. Was it because he was weaker now? Was his ability losing effectiveness?
Kael didn't know.
He didn't care.
He gritted his teeth and pushed everything he had into this one desperate attempt.
The white rat twitched violently, its tiny body spasming as the invisible strings latched onto its form. Kael felt the connection—faint, unsteady—but there. He held on as tightly as he could.
The rat stopped twitching.
It was dead... He couldn't control it.