Rain slithered through cracks in the sewer grate above, its acidic stink searing Jake's nostrils as he pressed deeper into the tunnels. The Vorpal Edge hung heavy at his hip. Somewhere behind him, the Abyssal Hive's shrieks had faded to a dull roar—Elysium's problem now.
Third vent shaft on the left. Then the old maintenance ladder.
Memories. In his first run—the one where he'd died a withered husk in a Syndicate work camp—he'd mapped these tunnels during a riot. Now, the rusted rungs felt familiar under his rotting palm.
Rebirth.
The word tasted like a scam. Waking up here, in the garage tomb, hadn't been some divine do-over. No—it was a glitch. A wrinkle in the Chrono-Wheel's so-called "random" spin.
Jake's boot slipped on a moss-slick step. He caught himself, the Edge's hilt digging into his ribs. Pain flared, sharp and clean. Better than the Rot's itch.
The Rot.
He rolled up his sleeve. Black veins spiderwebbed from the Vorpal Edge's fusion point at his wrist, creeping toward his elbow.
Surely this isn't that bad?
Or was he lying to himself? In his first life, he'd seen men succumb to cursed relics—their bodies crumbling like ash statues mid-scream. But this time, he had the Edge.
A draft carried voices from the tunnel below. Syndicate enforcers. Jake froze, his breath fogging in the green-tinged dark.
"—found another Parasite nest under the arcade. Spun three wheels before we put them down."
"Any good loot?"
"White-tier garbage. Moldy bread, a rusted scalpel. Boss says incinerate the bodies. No witnesses."
Jake's jaw tightened. Witnesses to what? The Syndicate's entire empire was built on witnesses—on desperate souls trading years for the slim chance of a longevity payout. Parasites spun wheels, the Syndicate skimmed 90% of the winnings, and the elite sipped champagne laced with century-old lifespan vials.
Economic model of the damned.
He waited until the enforcers' footsteps faded before descending into a vaulted chamber. The walls here bore the scars of old spin terminals—scorch marks from wheel malfunctions, bloodstains from jackpot disputes. A lone Parasite crouched in the corner, skeletal fingers clawing at a deactivated white-tier wheel.
"Out… out of years…" the man rasped, his eyes milky with starvation. "Just… one spin…"
Jake stepped over him. The man didn't look up.
This was him. Once.
In his first run, Jake had licked algae off these walls. Had traded six months of his life for a white-tier spin that gave him a festering bandage. Had watched Elena rise through the Syndicate ranks, her smile growing colder with each stolen elixir.
She'd cried when he gave her that fern.
The memory ambushed him.
"It's beautiful," she'd whispered.
"It'd change our lives." Jake was ecstatic.
She'd kissed him anyway.
Now, the taste of that kiss turned to bile in his throat. The fern was ash. And Elena? She'd built her throne atop the corpse of their dream.
The Longevity Elixir.
Every Parasite's holy grail. A single vial could add a year to your lifespan—no spinning, no Russian roulette with death tiers. The Syndicate hoarded the formula like dragons, rationing drips to their inner circle. But they had it. Jake had it.
In another life.
The memory unfolded like a knife twist:
Elena's hands trembling as Jake had his luckiest spin ever. The purple-tier wheel flashing gold. The formula materializing—a fractal helix glowing between them. Her eyes reflecting its light, sharp and hungry.
"We'll be gods," she'd breathed.
He should've seen it then—the split second before her thumb brushed the panic pendant. Before Syndicate stun drones burst through the vents. Before she'd looked at him, really looked at him, and chosen survival.
Always survival.
Jake's fist clenched. The Vorpal Edge's corruption pulsed, Rot creeping past his elbow.
Focus.
He emerged into a service corridor lined with flickering lumen strips. Syndicate propaganda posters plastered the walls: SPIN TO WIN! YOUR FUTURE IS A WHEEL TURN! The dates were fresh—proof he'd been thrown back to the early days of his ordeal. Back when Elena still pretended to care.
A whimper echoed ahead. Jake flattened against the wall as a pack of Scab Dogs dragged a Parasite into the light. The woman's legs were already gone, chewed to stumps, but her hands clawed at a white-tier wheel embedded in the floor.
"Spin… spin…" she gurgled.
The lead dog—a mutated mastiff with exposed ribs and six milky eyes—crunched her skull like a sugar egg.
Jake's fingers twitched toward the Edge.
Don't. Noise draws patrols.
The Scab Dog's muzzle snapped inches from Jake's boot, rancid drool splattering concrete as he pressed deeper into the tunnel's shadows. His rotting arm throbbed in time with the beast's guttural growls—a sick metronome counting down the Rot's advance.
Three centimeters since the hive.
He catalogued the decay. The black veins now resembled cracked porcelain beneath his skin, tendrils of necrosis branching toward his shoulder. Every flex of his fingers sent jagged needles racing up to the collarbone. A Class-D medkit could've stalled it. A green-tier elixir might've reversed it. But in the Syndicate's gutters, mercy came pre-packaged as rat poison.
The dogs lost interest, their six-legged forms slinking off to stalk easier prey. Jake exhaled, the Vorpal Edge's hilt slick in his grip. This wasn't his first dance with relic corruption. In his last life, he'd watched a Gloom Market enforcer crumble to ash after overusing a cursed pistol—skin flaking away mid-sentence as the weapon drank his potential futures.
Or his condemnation.
He trudged past a derelict spin terminal, its white-tier wheel frozen on [Rat Poison]. The holographic skull leered, a monument to desperation. Chrono-Wheels—Syndicate-engineered roulette tables where hope went to die. Spin the wheel, wager years of your lifespan, pray the house doesn't rig the odds. Which it always did. Parasites like Jake were human casinos, their flesh ATMs doling out time instead of cash. The algorithm was quite simple, really:
1. Syndicate installs chrono-wheels in slums, promises of longevity.
2. Starving masses spin, wagering months or years.
3. 99% get useless trash or death.
4. Syndicate confiscates the 1% actual prizes as "tax."
5. Repeat until the maggots are drained husks.
An economic miracle. A genocide.
The smell of fermented algae stung his nostrils. He'd tasted that particular swill in his first run, back when hope still had flavor.
"To living forever," she'd grinned, a glass raised.
"To living free," he'd corrected.
They'd both been liars.
The memory curdled as Jake passed a corpse fused to a green-tier console, the dead man's fingers still clawing at the spin lever. This was the truth of wheels—a systemic rot worse than anything festering in his arm. The Syndicate's entire empire balanced on a simple equation: desperation ÷ greed = control. And at the equation's center sat the Longevity Elixir, the only thing that could break the cycle.
Her face flashed in the gloom—Elena standing atop Elysium Tower, a golden vial raised to adoring crowds. "A new era!"
The Elixir-formula was a nuclear weapon. Whoever controlled it didn't just sell time—they sold POWER itself. Time to scheme. Time to conquer. Time to ensure no one else could ever spin a wheel again. Jake had held that power once, briefly.
Before Elena's tranquilizer kiss stole it away.
A skittering noise echoed ahead. Jake melted into a maintenance alcove as a Syndicate patrol marched past, their armor glowing with fresh blue-tier enhancements. One enforcer dragged a sobbing Parasite by the hair, the man's lifespan counter flickering on his forehead like a brand: [0.2 Years].
"Please… one more spin…"
The enforcer chuckled. "Spin this." His boot crunched the Parasite's wrist.
Jake's rotting fingers twitched toward the Edge.
Not worth it.
He'd learned that lesson in blood. Saving one changed nothing. The system remained. The wheels kept spinning. Elena kept winning.
The Rot chose that moment to surge, black veins squirming beneath his skin like agitated worms. Jake bit back a groan.
This is why she took the formula.
The realization burned colder than the Rot. Elena hadn't just betrayed him for power—she'd done it to escape this. The grime, the decay, the endless calculus of survival. While Jake licked moss off walls, she'd been sipping century-old vials in climate-controlled suites, her skin unblemished by relic scars.
A drip of black fluid fell from his elbow, sizzling against the concrete. The Rot was accelerating.
Need to move.
He pushed onward, the Vorpal Edge's whispers merging with the tunnel's ambient growls. The corridors grew narrower, walls scarred by decades of claw marks and desperation. This was the path he'd taken in his first death—a frantic sprint through Syndicate territory after spinning a gold-tier wheel without enough lifespan to pay the debt.
Gold-Tier Wheel #9. Third corridor on the right. The one that started it all.
The memory unfolded like a cursed hologram:
First Run Jake, gaunt and bleeding, slamming his palm on the gold console. The wheel demanding 1,000 years he didn't have. The Syndicate enforcers closing in. Elena's voice over the PA system, icy and final: "Put down the relic, Jake. It's over."
The wheel landing on [Rebirth].
The light.
The pain.
Waking up here, in this hell, with secondhand memories of a life not yet lived and a Rot-stained blade fused to his bones.