The voice did not echo through the chamber.
It echoed inside Drake.
At last…
a living vessel.
The words slipped through his mind like cold fingers dragging across exposed bone.
Drake stumbled backward, his breath trapped in his throat as the crimson eyes stared at him from the darkness behind the tomb.
They did not blink.
They did not waver.
They watched him with the quiet patience of something that had waited far longer than any human mind could understand.
The enormous underground chamber trembled.
At first, it was only a faint vibration beneath his boots.
Then the black stone floor began to hum.
The rivers of liquid mana that flowed silently through the carved channels brightened one after another, their pale blue glow shifting into a violent crimson.
Power surged through the chamber like blood rushing through veins.
Drake tried to move, but his legs refused to obey him.
Every instinct screamed that he was standing before something impossible.
Not merely a monster.
Not merely a relic.
Something older than dungeons, older than Guilds, older than the noble bloodlines that ruled the world above.
The statues around the tomb began to crack.
A dragon’s stone wing shifted.
A serpent’s jaw opened by a fraction.
A titan’s bowed head lifted just enough for dust to spill from its neck.
Drake’s eyes widened in horror.
There were thousands of them, each carved in the shape of a beast that could have destroyed cities, and all of them were kneeling before the tomb as if even death had not freed them from worship.
Then the tomb opened.
A single crack split across its surface, leaking crimson light into the chamber.
The symbols carved into the black stone awakened in sequence, burning like living stars.
Something moved inside, slow and deliberate, as if stretching after an endless sleep.
Drake took one step back.
Then another.
“No…” His voice sounded small in the vast chamber.
The crack widened.
From within the tomb, a mass of black and crimson threads rose into the air.
It was no larger than a human hand, yet the moment it appeared, the pressure in the chamber became unbearable.
The thing twisted and folded over itself, its surface shifting between metal, flesh, liquid, and shadow.
It had no eyes, no mouth, no limbs, but Drake felt its attention lock onto him with terrifying clarity.
It was looking at him.
Not his body.
Not his face.
Something deeper.
His mana.
His blood.
His soul.
Drake turned and ran.
He did not care where.
He did not care if there was no exit.
Panic took control of his body, forcing strength into his broken legs.
His boots struck the black stone floor as he sprinted away from the tomb, away from the crimson light, away from the thing that had awakened because of him.
He made it five steps.
The relic moved.
It crossed the distance in silence.
Drake barely saw it before it struck.
A sharp impact hit the back of his right hand.
For one heartbeat, there was no pain.
Only a strange coldness spreading across his skin.
Then agony exploded through his arm.
Drake screamed and collapsed to his knees.
The black organism spread across his hand like living ink, its crimson threads stabbing into his flesh.
He clawed at it with his left hand, nails tearing at his own skin, but there was nothing to grab.
The thing was already sinking beneath the surface.
“Get off!” His voice cracked.
“Get off me!” The relic ignored him.
Thousands of microscopic tendrils pushed into his veins.
Drake felt them crawling beneath his skin, spreading through his wrist, his forearm, his shoulder.
It was not like being cut.
It was worse.
It felt as if something was reading him from the inside, peeling open every part of his body without permission.
Black lines crawled up his arm.
Crimson light pulsed beneath them.
Drake’s body convulsed.
His forehead struck the stone floor, but he barely felt it through the pain.
Mana erupted inside him, wild and unstable.
He had never awakened, never possessed a profession, never controlled even the smallest spell, yet now a foreign power was forcing its way through pathways that should not have existed.
Then the voice returned.
Host contact established.
Drake froze.
The words were cold.
Emotionless.
Not spoken, but transmitted directly into his mind.
Biological structure: human.
Mana capacity: deficient.
Mana circulation: damaged.
Soul stability: acceptable.
Compatibility…
unstable.
Drake gritted his teeth so hard he tasted blood.
“What are you?” There was no answer.
Only more pain.
The black veins reached his chest.
His heartbeat faltered.
For a terrifying second, Drake thought he was dying.
His vision dimmed at the edges, and his body grew cold.
The relic had entered him too quickly, too violently, as though it did not understand how fragile humans were.
Then another command sounded in his mind.
Emergency preservation protocol initiated.
The crimson light surged.
Drake’s heart slammed back to life.
He gasped, arching off the ground as mana flooded through him.
The power was not gentle.
It tore through his damaged circuits, burning away blockages and forcing open channels that had never awakened during his ceremony.
Every nerve in his body lit up at once.
Images crashed into his mind.
A wolf larger than a fortress howling beneath a blood-red moon.
A dragon with seven horns tearing through clouds of ash.
A serpent coiled around the ruins of a fallen kingdom.
A bird of blue fire dying and being reborn above a sea of corpses.
An army of monsters kneeling before a shadowed throne.
The memories were not his.
They were too old, too vast, too savage.
Drake screamed again as the visions poured through him.
His human mind could not contain them.
He saw wars fought before modern nations existed.
He saw beasts devour entire armies.
He saw a hand wrapped in black living armor reaching toward a roaring monster.
Then he saw hunger.
Endless hunger.
Not for food.
For forms.
For blood.
For power.
For evolution.
The relic was not merely attaching to him.
It was measuring him.
Judging him.
Deciding whether he was worth keeping alive.
Drake thought of Luna.
Her sleeping face appeared inside the storm of visions, fragile and pale beneath hospital light.
The image steadied him more than courage ever could.
No.
He could not die here.
Not in this forgotten grave.
Not as food for some ancient thing.
Drake forced his left hand against the floor and tried to rise.
His body shook violently, but he pushed anyway.
“I don’t know what you are,” he rasped, “but if you’re going to kill me…” His fingers curled against the stone.
“Then do it after I save my sister.” For the first time, the relic went silent.
The pain did not vanish, but it paused, as if the thing inside him had turned its attention toward those words.
A strange sensation brushed against Drake’s thoughts.
Cold.
Curious.
Inhuman.
Then the voice spoke again.
Primary emotional anchor detected.
Survival directive intensified.
Host rejection probability reduced.
The black lines stopped spreading.
Slowly, they retreated from his chest, shoulder, and forearm, crawling back toward his right hand.
The crimson glow condensed there, gathering beneath the skin until it formed a circular mark on the back of his hand.
The symbol resembled countless beasts devouring each other’s tails.
A dragon biting a serpent.
A wolf tearing into a bird.
A horned creature swallowing a clawed beast.
All of them connected in a perfect ring around a dark center.
Drake stared at it through blurred eyes.
“What… did you do to me?” The symbol pulsed once.
His entire body went numb.
Symbiotic binding incomplete.
Host consciousness unstable.
Entering dormant integration state.
Drake’s vision swayed.
The chamber tilted around him.
The tomb, the statues, the glowing mana rivers, all of it blurred into streaks of crimson and blue.
His body finally reached its limit.
The fear, the pain, the exhaustion, the injuries from the chase—everything crashed over him at once.
He heard something above.
Voices.
Distant, but real.
“Did you hear that scream?” “He fell somewhere below!” “Find a way down.
Young Master Leon wants proof.” Drake tried to move.
His fingers twitched, but that was all.
The mark on his hand faded beneath his skin, leaving no visible trace.
The black veins disappeared.
The crimson light vanished.
From the outside, his hand looked ordinary again.
But inside him, something remained.
Something awake.
Something watching.
Drake’s last thought was of Luna.
Then darkness swallowed him.
He collapsed fully onto the cold stone floor, unconscious before the majestic tomb of kneeling beasts.
The chamber became silent once more.
The tomb sealed itself.
The statues bowed their heads.
And deep within Drake’s sleeping mind, the living relic whispered its final command.
Integrating host.
Preserving life.
Awaiting first prey.