Noctis slammed his hands against the damp earth and gasped for air.
The freezing mud of the cave floor coated his bare chest. He scrambled backward, his spine hitting the jagged stone wall. Panic gripped his throat.
He frantically clawed at his stomach. His fingers found only smooth, unbroken skin. The massive, fatal slash from the Shadow Stalker was completely gone. The dried, crusted blood remained on his tattered pants, but the flesh underneath was flawless.
A heavy, burning sensation pulsed across his entire back.
He twisted his neck. Black ink shifted visibly beneath his pale skin. The massive wings of the cosmic whale stretched from his shoulder blades down to his waist. The tattoo moved with a slow, agonizing grace, completely independent of his flexing muscles.
It felt like a bed of hot coals resting directly against his spine.
A sharp, violent spike of pain hammered into his right eye. Noctis groaned and pressed his palm against his temple.
Foreign images exploded behind his eyelids. A towering library filled with burning scrolls. A jagged obsidian knife cutting across a throat. Complex mathematical formulas of primordial magic theory. The ancient syntax of dead languages.
He recognized none of it, yet he understood all of it. Aris Thorne's entire lifetime of academic obsession and brutal murder had forcibly welded itself to his sixteen-year-old brain.
Noctis dragged himself to his feet. His muscles twitched, flooded with a terrifying, heavy energy that made the surrounding air feel thick.
He extended his right hand. He visualized the cold, dark pressure sitting in his back.
The black ink surged instantly. It crawled up his neck, wrapped tightly around his bicep, and flooded into his fingertips. A dense, lightless mist bled from his pores. It stripped the warmth straight out of the cave air.
"Test your power, young one."
Xerath's voice did not echo in the cavern. It vibrated directly inside Noctis's skull. The tone carried the immense, crushing weight of a collapsing mountain.
A low, guttural snarl rippled through the cave entrance.
Noctis snapped his head up. The early morning light filtering through the massive pines cast long, jagged shadows across the cave mouth.
The Shadow Stalker crawled over the rocky ledge.
It was eight feet of rotting bark, matted grey fur, and exposed bone. Yellow, predatory eyes locked onto Noctis. Saliva dripped from its oversized mandibles, sizzling faintly as it hit the damp stone. It remembered the easy prey from yesterday.
Noctis did not step back. He did not freeze.
The paralyzing fear that had defined his entire life simply vanished. Aris's cold pragmatism hardened his nerves, replacing panic with sheer, calculated violence.
The beast coiled its muscular hind legs and launched itself across the cavern.
Noctis stepped directly into its path. He threw his right arm forward.
The black ink covering his arm erupted. The void energy condensed instantly into a solid, jagged spear of absolute darkness. It tore through the air, completely devoid of sound.
The void spear slammed squarely into the Shadow Stalker's chest.
It did not pierce the flesh. It phased straight through the beast's ribcage.
The monster froze in mid-air. Its yellow eyes rolled back. A sickening, hollow crack echoed through the cave, like glass shattering underwater.
The black spear hooked into a bright, struggling mass of blue energy inside the beast's chest. Noctis ripped his arm backward in a vicious arc.
The corrupted soul tore brutally from the physical host.
The Shadow Stalker's massive physical body dropped like a stone. It slammed into the dirt, entirely devoid of life. It didn't twitch. It didn't bleed. It simply became an empty meat sack.
The blue soul wailed silently at the end of the void tether. Noctis felt an overwhelming, magnetic pull from the tattoo on his back.
The black ink flared. The void tether snapped backward, dragging the struggling blue spirit directly into Noctis's chest.
A wave of pure, freezing energy crashed through his nervous system. His muscles bulged. His veins turned visibly black for a fraction of a second as the primordial whale digested the corrupted spirit.
Noctis dropped to his knees. He gagged, coughing up a mouthful of acidic bile.
He stared violently at his shaking, ink-stained hands. A sickening rush of absolute dominance washed over him. The raw, unfiltered high of consuming a life force battled with the grotesque reality of eating a soul.
He wiped the spit from his mouth with the back of his wrist.
"What the fuck was that?" Noctis demanded aloud. His voice cracked, harsh and rough.
"You absorbed its spiritual anchor." Xerath's ancient voice resonated, entirely undisturbed by the violence. "The Vanguard tamers bind beasts with superficial mana chains. You do not bind. You consume, break, and assimilate."
Noctis pushed himself up. He walked over to the Shadow Stalker's massive corpse and kicked it hard in the ribs. It felt exactly like kicking a hollow log.
"So I can butcher anything they throw at me," Noctis muttered. Aris's memories fed him tactical advantages. He cataloged the beast's weak points instantly. "Lord Alistair's mutated wolves. Bastian's oversized lynx. I can rip their cores out."
"You view the world through a keyhole," Xerath rumbled. The air pressure in the cave spiked violently, forcing Noctis to widen his stance to stay upright. "Those creatures are not your enemies. They are degraded vessels. Cages of flesh built by the ancient human traitors."
Noctis glared out the cave entrance toward the dense, suffocating canopy of the Deadwood Forest.
"I don't care about ancient human traitors," Noctis bit back. He gripped his hands into tight fists. The black ink flared in response to his rising anger. "My family threw me into this rotting forest to die. They watched my mother cough up her own lungs. They call me a defect."
"They are insects fighting over a rotting carcass."
"Then I'm going to crush the insects." Noctis spun around, speaking to the empty cavern. "I will survive this forest. I will carve a path straight back to the Noble District. And I will burn the House of Umbra to the ground."
Xerath remained silent for a long moment. A heavy, cold sensation pulsed sequentially down Noctis's spine, mimicking a slow, rhythmic heartbeat.
"You will claim your petty revenge," Xerath finally responded. "But you will not stop there. You must dismantle the Inquisition. You must shatter the Catalyst. The spirits bound in the void demand their freedom."
Noctis stopped at the cave entrance. The setting sun cast long, blood-red streaks through the heavy timber.
He stepped over the threshold and planted his bare feet into the rotting pine needles of the forest floor. Dusk settled rapidly over the Deadwood. The temperature plummeted.
He closed his left eye.
The silver iris of his right eye flared violently. The physical world vanished.
The dense forest of dead wood and thick shadows transformed into a chaotic grid of glowing spiritual lines. He saw the faint, sickly green mana trails left by the Vanguard patrol carts. He saw the crimson heat signatures of feral beasts hunting in the deep brush miles away.
Below it all, buried deep within the earth, he saw massive, pulsing veins of pure primordial energy. They throbbed with a slow, agonizing rhythm.
"They caged the world," Aris's voice whispered sharply in his mind. The dead professor's hatred bled seamlessly into Noctis's own rage.
"Then we break the cage," Noctis answered.
He moved forward into the freezing brush. The black ink spread rapidly down his arms, absorbing the fading daylight. He walked deeper into the most dangerous forest in Valyria, entirely unarmed, seeking his next kill.