Chapter 3 System of the Damned

Darius woke trapped in darkness and rot.

Weight crushed him from every side. Dead flesh pressed against his mouth and nose. He tried to suck in air, but nothing happened. No breath filled his lungs. No heartbeat pounded in his ears. Only silence inside his chest. Cold, dead silence.

Panic exploded through him. He thrashed hard, fingers clawing into soft, decaying meat. A corpse shifted above him, but more weight slid down to take its place. His legs were pinned. Something slimy slid across his cheek.

“Move! I have to move!”

He dug frantically, nails ripping through cloth, armor, and cold skin. A low, rattling groan escaped his throat. It didn’t sound like him. It sounded like something broken.

[Necromancer System activated.]

The words slammed into his mind, clear and sharp.

[Host detected: Darius Voss. Status: Deceased. Rebinding in progress.]

Deceased? The word sent fresh terror racing through him. He wasn’t dead. He was awake. He was fighting. But his heart... it refused to beat. His lungs refused to work.

[Hollow King Protocol initiated. Soul core stabilizing.]

“Get out!” he tried to shout, but only a dry rasp came out. He kept clawing upward, pushing aside limp arms and broken bodies. One corpse rolled off his shoulder. He shoved another away from his face and kept digging.

[Warning: Host body undergoing Hollow transformation. Emotional erosion at 12%.]

The messages kept coming, flooding his thoughts. Darius growled and pushed harder. His fingers finally punched through the top of the pile. Cold night air touched his skin. He grabbed a handful of mud and hauled himself up, bodies tumbling off him with wet, heavy sounds.

He crawled free and collapsed onto the blood-soaked ground, chest heaving even though no air moved inside it. The battlefield stretched around him under moonlight, nothing but mountains of the dead.

Darius sat up slowly. His hands looked pale and wrong, veins dark like dried ink under paper-thin skin. He pressed a palm to his chest. Nothing. No thump. No warmth. Just empty cold.

“What am I?” he whispered. His voice came out rough and hollow, like wind through old bones.

[You are the first Hollow. Bound to the Necromancer System. Every fallen soul is yours to claim.]

“Shut up,” Darius snarled, clutching his head. The voice didn’t belong there. None of this did.

He forced himself to stand. His legs felt stiff, joints creaking. Pain from his wounds was still there, but distant and dull, as if it belonged to someone else. The deep gashes on his side and thigh no longer bled. They looked black and dry.

He spotted Rhen’s body a few feet away, eyes open and empty. Darius stumbled over and dropped to one knee beside his lieutenant.

“Rhen... I’m sorry,” he muttered. “You deserved better than this.”

Memories crashed in. Harlan’s last words. Lord Merrick stepping over him. The order to pile the corpses. Elyra. They had taken everything from him.

Rage flickered in the hollow place where his heart used to be. It felt colder than before. Hungrier.

He needed to see what he had become.

A broken shield lay half-buried in the mud nearby, its polished inner surface catching the moonlight. Darius dragged himself toward it, every step sending strange echoes through his changed body. He picked up the shield and angled it until he could see his reflection.

The face staring back stopped him cold.

Empty eye sockets glowed with sickly green light. No eyes. Just burning hollow pits set in a skull-like face. His cheeks had sunk deep, skin stretched tight over bone. His mouth was a lipless slash. The man who once led armies looked like a walking corpse.

Darius touched his face with trembling fingers. The skin felt cold and leathery. “No... this isn’t me.”

[Integration complete. Hollow Commander path unlocked.]

The System’s voice returned, calm and merciless.

[FIRST SOUL REQUIRED.]

The words hung in his mind like a death sentence.

Darius stared at the glowing sockets in the shield, horror twisting through him as the truth sank in. He was no longer the man he had been. And whatever he had become was only just beginning to wake up.