The chamber hung suspended above the arena, a crypt of shadows and seething magic. Twelve figures ringed the obsidian table, their robes bleeding into the gloom—crimson, bone-white, the void-black of starless skies. Eyes like smoldering coals tracked the duel below through a scrying pool, its waters rippling with Reinhard's stolen flames.
"Devour Magic," hissed the woman in crimson, her voice a blade drawn across stone.
The words curdled the air.
To her right, a man with a face carved from granite leaned forward. "The Luxor boy shouldn't exist, let alone wield that curse."
At the table's head, the eldest magus steepled skeletal fingers. "House Luxor was purged. Their grimoires were ash. Their bloodline ended."
The scrying pool flickered, replaying Reinhard's hand clamping Cedric's wrist, mana hemorrhaging into his grasp.
"Yet here he stands," murmured a hooded figure, "gnawing at the chains we locked."
Centuries ago, House Luxor had been keepers of the Abyss—guardians who walked the razor-edge between magic and oblivion. They'd been necessary. Until they weren't.
The Council's coup had been elegant. Whispers in the right ears. A staged betrayal. Luxor estates burning under a moonless sky. Their name became a heresy, their legacy a footnote in the Council's sanitized histories.
But bloodlines are patient things.
Magus Valtheris's fist struck the obsidian table, veins bulging like roots beneath his parchment skin. "The Luxor boy is a tumor. Cut him out before he metastasizes."
The council members murmured in assent. Only Claudius Grimwald sat still, fingers tented, eyes reflecting the scrying pool's glow. Reinhard's duel replayed—the fire swallowing Cedric.
"A tumor?" Claudius's voice slithered through the chamber. "Or a scalpel?"
Valtheris's glare could flay flesh. "You defend him?"
"I study him." Claudius leaned forward, the scrying pool's light carving shadows into his smirk. "The boy's not just devouring magic. He's evolving it. Imagine that power… harnessed."
The council stilled.
Harnessed. Controlled.
***
Reinhard felt the gaze first—a needle between his shoulders. Not the gawking nobles. Not Seraphina's venomous stares.
Deeper. Higher.
He glanced upward, where the Academy's spires pierced the clouds. Somewhere in that labyrinth of stone and spite, ancient eyes dissected him.
Good. Let them pick him apart. Let them find the rot festering in his marrow.
Orion's voice cut through his thoughts. "You're playing a dangerous game, Luxor."
Reinhard didn't turn. "Games imply rules. I'm rewriting them."
A beat. Then—Orion's retreating footsteps, colder than his magic.
Midnight draped the arena in silence. Nobles slept in gilded beds. Commoners huddled in alleys.
Reinhard walked.
The Abyssal Grounds breathed beneath Astravalion's polished façade—a necropolis of sealed ruins, webbed with corridors the Empire had tried to murder. Dust choked the air, thick with the rot of forbidden magics.
He'd paid well for whispers of the Catacombs. For the location of a place that burned its visitors.
His Phantom Cloak blurred his silhouette, but the dark felt him.
A presence coiled in the blackness ahead. Not human. Not anymore.
"Who trespasses?"
The voice gnawed at his mind, serrated and chorus-thick.
Reinhard halted.
Shadows convulsed. A figure emerged—hooded, runes bleeding crimson across its robes.
Cultist. Abyssal devout.
"You stink of hunger," it hissed, tongues overlapping. "Not Empire. Not Abyss. What. Are. You."
Reinhard bared teeth. "Dinner."
The cultist's hands flared. A sigil burned—Blood Convergence.
Tendrils of liquid night erupted, ravenous.
Reinhard inhaled.
[Devour Magic]
The spell unraveled mid-lunge, siphoned into his core. The cultist staggered as Reinhard's veins lit crimson.
[Crimson Dominion – Rare Rank]
He flexed. The cultist's blood froze, his tendons locking. "P-please—"
Reinhard flicked a wrist. The man's veins tore upward through his skin, like marionette strings.
"Thank you," Reinhard murmured, palm pressed to the cultist's chest.
[Devour]
The body crumbled to ash. Secrets flooded him—blood sigils, sacrificial rites, the sweet rot of forbidden craft.
He stared into the Catacombs' gullet, eyes reflecting the abyss.
Somewhere in the dark, something ancient stirred.
Hungry. Like him.
But as Reinhard disappeared into the catacombs, a pair of eyes watched. From the shadows of the High Arcana, a hooded figure stood, their presence concealed behind layers of illusion magic.
And they had witnessed everything. "So…The last heir of Luxor has inherited more than just a name."
Frigid wind passed through the empty halls.
And for the first time in centuries, the Grand Arcane Academy had something dangerous within its walls. Something that even the Empire itself might not be able to control.
***
Beneath Astravalion's glittering spires, the catacombs breathed. It was a sepulcher of crumbling stone and rot. Reinhard's boots echoed as he descended, the air clotting with ancient magic. Not the sterile mana of the Academy, but something feral, left to curdle in the dark.
His veins still hummed with the stolen power. Crimson Dominion slithered under his skin, restless.
The chamber loomed—a dilapidated shrine, the walls scabbed with half-eroded runes. Bloodstains older than empires blackened the floor. Here, the Blood Mages had once knelt. Now, only dust thrived. And him.
A cultist twitched in the corner, guts spilling from a gash in his side. His breath hitched as Reinhard approached.
"M-monster—"
Reinhard crouched, tilting the man's chin. "You worship the Abyss," he said softly. "Yet you fear me?"
[Crimson Dominion]
The cultist's blood jolted, seizing his limbs. His arm wrenched backward, bones snapping. He screamed.
Reinhard watched, clinical. Control strengthens with spilled blood. The more wounds…
He flicked a finger. The man's legs contorted, tendons screaming. …the more dominion.
The cultist's whimpers crescendoed. Reinhard clenched his fist.
[Devour Magic]
The man's essence ripped free—a flood of secrets.
[Bloodforged Renewal Acquired]
Power surged. Wounds knitted. Muscle reforged. Reinhard exhaled, euphoric. Blood to flesh. Flesh to power.
He flexed, watching a gash on his arm seal itself. Magic wasn't a birthright. It was a butcher's game. And his blade was sharpening.
He smiled into the gloom, eyes reflecting the shrine's dying runes. The Abyss didn't breed monsters, he thought. It bowed to them.
Reinhard stood in the bloodstained shrine, the power thrumming in his veins—until the air shifted.
Something stirred in the dark. Not human. Not mortal. A presence older than empires, hungrier than the void.
He grinned.
Deeper he descended. The catacombs warped. The walls bent like broken ribs, the corridors slithered. Magic here was alive. Malignant.
And it watched.
The final chamber swallowed light. Torches died. The weight of centuries pressed down.
"You… are not like the others." The voice carved itself into his skull, fractal-sharp.
Reinhard turned.
At the room's center hung a figure in blackened chains—a thing of smoke and shifting sinew. Violet eyes burned through him. "Your soul bears no Empire stench. Yet you reek of… appetite."
Reinhard's pulse quickened. It knows.
"Who are you?"
The thing's laugh cracked stone. "Abyssborne. Last of the Devourers."
Devourer. The word echoed in his bones. His system's word.
The entity's form rippled. "You do not kneel?" Shadows convulsed. "Then learn fear."
Darkness detonated. Reality screamed.
Reinhard's blood roared as abyssal energy tore toward him—a tidal wave of oblivion. He bared his teeth.
It slammed him into the chamber wall.
Stone cracked. Dust rained.
[Warning: Corruption Detected]
He spat blood, crimson mingling with the glyphs underfoot. The Abyssborne loomed—a silhouette of liquid void, violet eyes burning like dying stars.
"Pathetic," it hissed, voice shredding his mind. "You wield stolen trinkets against the Abyss?"
Reinhard pushed upright, ribs knitting via [Bloodforged Renewal]. "Stolen?" He grinned, teeth red. "I earned this."
The entity blurred. A clawed hand speared toward his heart.
[Crimson Dominion]
Reinhard's blood erupted—a lattice of razor-wires slicing the air. The Abyssborne laughed, passing through unscathed.
"Flesh-magic? Child's play."
The backhand strike flung Reinhard across the chamber. He rolled, bones snapping, healing, adapting.
No blood. No flesh. It's… beyond.
The answer came in a synapse-snap.
[Devour Magic]
He lunged, palm slamming the entity's chest.
The world inverted.
Voices flooded him—older than language, hungrier than time.
THE FIRST FLAME WAS A LIE.
WE ARE THE END THAT CHEWS.
Reinhard's veins blackened. His vision fractured.
[System Overload]
The Abyssborne leaned close, smoke-fingers caressing his jaw. "You see now? You're just a fledgling…"
Then—gone.
Void-black blood dripped from Reinhard's lips as he rose. The chamber spun, but his grin didn't waver.
[Abyss-Touched Title Activated]
Corruption writhed under his skin—not a wound, but a conduit.
The Abyssborne watched from the shadows, its form flickering. "You… persist?"
Reinhard flexed his hand. Obsidian tendrils snaked from his fingertips—their power, now his.
[Devourer's Grasp]
The entity hissed as Reinhard's newfound void-magic clawed at its essence. "You dare—"
"Dare?" Reinhard laughed, raw and jagged. "I consume."
He surged forward, the abyss in his veins singing.
Their collision shattered the chamber. Stone vaporized. Reality buckled.
The Abyssborne roared, unraveling as Reinhard's grasp siphoned its core. "You are not worthy!
"Worth," Reinhard snarled, "is a lie told by the full to the hungry."
[Devour Magic: Critical Mass]
The entity fragmented—a scream trapped between worlds—as Reinhard drank its ancient, starless power.
Silence.
Dust settled. Reinhard stood alone, breathing the Abyss like oxygen. His shadow stretched wrong—too many angles, too many teeth.
[Devourer's Grasp Mastered]
[System Integration: 27%]
He stared at his hands, now veined with void. The cultists' blood-magic still hummed beneath, but this… this was deeper.
The catacombs shuddered. Somewhere above, the Grand Magus Council's alarms would be blaring.
Reinhard climbed toward the surface, each step etching abyssal runes into the stone.
The game had changed. He wasn't just a player now. He was the board.