Vikram stood still, eyes narrowing as he scanned the village around him. The silence wasn't peace. It was wrong. It was the kind of silence that echoed with things left unsaid, with things that should not be. Every corner of the ruined hamlet reeked of something ancient and dead, like the aftermath of a massacre where the blood had long since dried but the screams still lingered in the dust.
His boots crunched softly over the dirt path as he moved forward, nerves stretched taut. Then, up ahead, something caught his eye. A small shape curled on the roadside.
He stopped.
At first, it looked like nothing more than discarded rags. Another piece of debris scattered by time and decay. But as he crept closer, the shape began to tremble. It was not a lump. It was a child. A small one, curled up tightly, rocking with the kind of quiet sobbing that made the air feel colder.
The child's clothes were threadbare and filth stained, blending so perfectly into the ground that it was a wonder he had noticed it at all. Vikram's breath caught. But even as a flicker of concern stirred in his chest, another part of him, colder and more practical, hardened.
This wasn't right. Nothing here was.
He narrowed his eyes and shook his head, gripping the handle of his axe. He wasn't naïve. He had seen enough movies, games, and late night horror streams to know where this was going. A crying child in a ghost town? That was never just a child.
Still, he stepped forward, muscles coiled with tension.
The sobbing ceased.
A low chill slithered down his spine.
Above the child's head, a glowing line of text appeared:
[Neurotic Halfling]
Vikram's stomach sank. He exhaled, slow and steady, but the sound felt unnaturally loud. As if on cue, the child lifted its head.
And Vikram froze.
The face that stared back at him was not one that belonged to the living.
Its eye sockets were hollow pits of crawling blackness. Depthless and wrong. Where its mouth should have been was a melted, ragged horror, incapable of forming words, incapable of forming anything but a silent scream. The skin hung off its bones like wet cloth, and the air around it felt... off. Like reality itself hesitated to acknowledge its presence.
His knuckles whitened around his axe.
But he hesitated.
Once, it had been a child.
That moment of pause was all it took.
[You have been slain.]
[Please select a respawn point.]
[The Cave has been selected.]
Darkness.
Then the damp, cold silence of the cave returned. Vikram sat cross legged, heart pounding in his ears, his hands still shaking as the adrenaline faded. He clenched his fists and tried to center himself.
He hadn't died because the halfling was faster. He had died because he had faltered.
Because he had hesitated.
He replayed it in his mind. The jerky, inhuman speed of the halfling as it lunged forward. The glint of rusted metal. The sharp, wet pain as the blade found his throat. And the terrifying truth was that he hadn't even tried to block it.
Because for one foolish moment, he had thought it was still human.
If this had been the real world… he would be dead. No second chances. No respawn. No cave.
Just an anonymous corpse left to rot, unmarked and forgotten. No story. No legacy.
And that terrified him more than the monster ever could.
He didn't want to vanish into obscurity. He didn't want to be a footnote. He wanted to matter. To leave something behind. To be known. And dying like that, quietly and stupidly, was the exact opposite of everything he fought for.
Vikram stood up, a fire now lighting his veins. He hefted his axe and moved like a storm through the undead, cleaving through rot and bile until he reached the clearing again.
This time, the statue awaited him.
[Level: 1]
[Realm: Nil]
[Blood Primal]+
[Souls: 200]
Vikram just spammed the souls that he had gotten into the Blood Primal, and instantly, he felt the change happening in his body. His body was being constantly washed with the Blood Primal, and the constant enhancement made his entire body fill with pain.
Vikram's veins felt like hot springs bubbling beneath his skin, each pulse sending waves of heat through his arms. He swallowed against the fire in his throat—this was the same surge he'd known before, the one that had gutted his fear and left him feeling reborn. Colors snapped into focus, every distant sound rang clear, and his muscles hummed with a power he'd never dared imagine.
He pushed open the rickety gate of Adthal Village, throat tight at the memory of how this halfling had beaten him once. Embarrassment lingered like a bitter taste—how had he let himself be outmatched by something so small?
He found the creature crouched by a shattered well, its crooked smile almost smug. Vikram raised his sword out of habit, but the blow needed only a flick of his wrist. The halfling's health flickered and died before his blade even warmed.
He let the sword lower, muscles unclenching—then the laughter began. Soft at first, like a child at play, then gathering into a high, mad chorus that wrapped around his spine with icy fingers.
He froze, breath caught in his chest. Everywhere he looked, broken hands and pale faces pressed through the rubble, eyes empty and grinning. Their giggles wove through the air like thorns.
His heart thundered. A cold dread slipped under his skin. He tasted sweat and dust as he forced his shoulders back, jaw clenched so hard his teeth bit into his cheek.
Vikram gulped and gritted his teeth, and shouted to the skies to shake out his fear.
Silence snapped through the giggling, and for a heartbeat, Vikram's own fear fell away.
What came instead was a thundering heartbeat.