Chapter 3 FORTY-EIGHT HOURS

I shoved off the cold metal of the collapsed overpass, legs already burning as I slipped into the shadows. “Keep moving, Chen. Just keep moving,” I whispered to myself, voice rough. Patrol lights swept the ruins behind me, too close. “They’ve got my name. Bastards move fast.”

The whisper in my head stayed quiet for now, but I could feel it watching. Waiting. I pushed harder, ducking through a gap in a vine-choked wall where an old shopping center used to stand. Every scavenger trick I knew came rushing back, smear mud and spirit sap on my clothes to kill my scent, crawl through drainage pipes half-filled with glowing sludge, double back twice to mess up my trail.

I paused at a cracked fountain, breathing hard. “Alright, you glowing pain in my ass. Show me what else you can do.” I focused, willing that new sense to kick in.

A faint blue window flickered at the edge of my sight.

[Vein Sense: Passive.]

Thin golden lines appeared in my vision, pulsing through the ground and walls. Most were weak, dying. One small vein throbbed brighter under a pile of rubble twenty paces ahead. “There,” I muttered. “Mine.”

I dropped to my knees and dug with my knife, scraping away concrete and roots. My fingers found the vein, a thin glowing thread no thicker than a finger. “Come on. Just enough to keep me going.” I pulled.

Energy trickled into my palm, warm and sharp. My tired muscles eased a bit. The constant ache in my back from years of hauling corpses faded.

[Minor Vein Fragment Absorbed.]

[Strength + Minor Boost.]

“Not bad,” I said under my breath, grinning despite everything. “Better than stale bread and bruises.”

I kept moving, always north toward the deeper wastes where patrols hated going. Hours blurred. I talked to myself to stay sharp. “They’re coming. Iron Fang doesn’t forget. Probably put a price on my head already. What do you think, voice? Worth it yet?”

No answer. Good. Maybe the thing inside me was sleeping.

But then the flashes started.

I was crawling through a narrow alley when grief slammed into me again. Not mine. A woman’s face, my mother? No. Someone else’s. She screamed as flames ate her home. I tasted ash on my tongue. My hands shook so bad I nearly dropped my knife. “Stop it,” I hissed. “That’s not me. I never had a mother like that.”

Another flash. Rage this time. A man, older, scarred, being stabbed in the back by his own brother over a spirit stone. Betrayal burned so hot my vision went red for a second. I punched a rusted door, denting it. “Get out of my head! I’ve got enough problems without your ghosts!”

A distant horn answered me. Trackers. Closer.

“Shit.” I broke into a run again, lungs burning. I spotted movement on a rooftop, two silhouettes with glowing talismans. “There he is! The system rat!”

I dove behind an overturned truck as arrows whistled overhead. “You people don’t sleep?” I shouted, voice cracking with wild energy. “Go chase some real beasts instead of one starving scavenger!”

One of them laughed. “Starving? After what you pulled? The clans are offering twenty spirit stones for your heart alive. Come quiet and maybe we split it nice.”

“Twenty?” I peeked out, then bolted for better cover. “That’s all I’m worth? Cheap bastards!”

I used the new strength to leap over a collapsed wall, landing harder than I meant to. The ground cracked under my boots. I kept testing the system as I ran, pulling tiny veins from dying spirit plants along the way. Each one gave me a little more edge. Faster. Sharper eyes in the dark.

By the time the sun started bleeding across the horizon, I’d shaken most of them. Forty-eight hours of this hell. My body felt stronger than it had any right to, but my mind was fraying at the edges. Every memory flash made me wonder which thoughts were really mine.

I found a decent hiding spot in the basement of a half-sunken office tower, overgrown with thick spirit moss that hid my heat. A mid-grade spirit beast, a hulking boar-thing with crystalline tusks, had claimed the corner as its den. Perfect.

“Alright, big guy,” I whispered, creeping closer with my knife ready. “You and me. Let’s make this quick.”

The boar charged with a roar that shook dust from the ceiling. I dodged, faster than before, and slammed my palm against its side where the strongest vein pulsed bright in my vision.

“Extract!” I growled.

Power surged. The beast screamed as golden energy ripped out of it and into me. Its movements slowed. I laughed through the strain, riding the high. “That’s right! Give it all to me!”

[Mid-Grade Beast Vein Extracted.]

[Power Surge Detected.]

Strength flooded every part of me. My cuts healed. My vision sharpened. I felt unstoppable, like I could tear down an entire clan outpost if I wanted.

The rush was so strong I threw my head back and shouted, “Yes! This is what I’ve been missing my whole damn life!”

Then time slipped.

~~~~

I blinked.

Blood covered my hands. Warm. Sticky. Not mine.

Four bodies lay around me in a small hunter’s camp I didn’t remember finding. Three men in ragged clan leathers, one woman with an Iron Fang badge still pinned to her chest. Their eyes stared empty at the night sky. Weapons scattered. A small fire still crackled, meat burning on a spit.

My knife dripped in my grip.

“What… what happened?” I whispered, voice breaking. My legs felt weak. I staggered back, nearly tripping over one of the corpses. “I was in the basement. The boar. How did I…”

The deep, calm voice spoke clearly in my mind for the first time since the tunnel. Warm. Approving. Sounding exactly like me if I’d lived a thousand years.

“You did well.”

Four minutes. The system window flashed the cold truth.

[Blackout Duration: 4 minutes.]

[Dragon Emperor Resonance: 2.4%]

[Soul Fragments Absorbed: 4]

I dropped to my knees in the blood, chest tight, tears mixing with the mess on my face. “No. No, I didn’t do this. I don’t even remember…” My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The foreign grief from their deaths mixed with my own terror until I couldn’t breathe right.

Shouts echoed in the distance. More patrols drawn by the noise. Horns blaring again.

I was still the most wanted man in the region, and now I had blood on my hands that I couldn’t explain.

The voice whispered once more, gentle and terrible, “We are only getting started, Chen.”

I forced myself up, wiping the knife on my pants, and ran into the night again. But this time, part of me wondered if I was running from the clans… or from whatever was waking up inside me.