Chapter 1: The Final Molt
787 Words
"Vane, give up the Ouroboros Symbiote and we’ll grant you a swift death!"
"Vane, you wretched fiend! Don’t even think about resisting. The Sanctum’s High Paladins have surrounded this entire spire. You have nowhere to run!"
"You slaughtered millions to cultivate that Chronos-class parasite! Your crimes are written in blood and bile, unforgivable by the Laws of the Union!"
"Demon! Three hundred years ago, you defiled my family’s bloodline, stole our ancestral gene-seed, and burned our estate to the ground. Since that day, I have dreamed of nothing but tearing the flesh from your bones! Today, you pay!"
Vane stood at the edge of the broken spire, his dark green bio-mesh robes tattered and soaked in ichor. His hair was loose, matted with gore, whipping in the mountain wind like a dead man’s shroud.
He looked around.
The wind howled, flapping his ruined robes with a sound like snapping banners.
Blood—thick, dark red human blood mixed with the shimmering green fluid of ruptured symbiotes—flowed from hundreds of wounds on his body. He had only been standing there for a moment, yet a pool of crimson had already gathered beneath his boots.
Enemies were everywhere. There was no escape.
The outcome was decided. Today was the day he died.
Vane saw the situation with absolute clarity. Yet, facing imminent annihilation, his expression remained flat. There was no fear, no regret. Just the calm of a stagnant pond, deep and unreadable.
The "Heroes" of the Sanctum and the Union surrounded him. Some were elders of prestigious Bio-Arcane Academies; others were rising stars famous across the continent. Now, they completely encircled him.
Some roared in self-righteous fury. Some sneered, imagining the rewards on his head. Others narrowed their eyes, scanners active, wary of a trap. And a few clutched their own wounds, looking at him with undisguised terror.
They didn’t attack immediately. They were terrified of what a Cornered Wolf—a Tier 6 Bio-Warlord—might do in his final moments.
The standoff lasted for six hours.
The sun began to set. The dying light ignited the clouds on the horizon, painting the sky in violent shades of bruised purple and burning gold.
Vane, who had been as still as a statue, finally moved. He slowly turned around.
The grey stone beneath Vane’s feet was now stained black with dried blood. His face, pale from massive blood loss, suddenly seemed to glow under the sunset’s caress. It was a strange, haunting vitality—the last flare of a dying star.
Looking at the jagged peaks of the Spire and the dying sun, Vane chuckled softly.
"Obsidian peaks, blood-red sun... The wheel turns, winter frost and summer rot. Kings become dust at twilight; victory and ruin, all meaning lost in a final breath."
As he spoke, memories of his previous life on Earth surfaced.
He was once a scholar in China, dragged into this nightmare world by chance. He had struggled for three hundred years, dominated the world for two hundred more. Five hundred years of time, slipping away like sand through fingers.
Buried memories, long forgotten, suddenly became vivid.
*I failed in the end,* Vane thought. There was a sigh in his heart, a touch of emotion, but no regret.
He had foreseen this outcome long ago. When he chose the Path of the Demon, he had prepared himself for this.
To be a Demon is to be ruthless. To abandon morality. To kill, to burn, to seize. To be an enemy of the world. And yet, to live freely.
"If this Ouroboros Symbiote works... then in the next life, I will still be a Demon!"
With that thought, Vane threw his head back and laughed. A wild, manic sound that echoed off the cliff face.
"Old Devil, what are you laughing at?"
"Careful! The fiend is planning something!"
"Kill him! Take the Symbiote!"
The heroes charged, spells and bio-weapons charging up in a dazzling display of lights.
*Bang!*
Vane didn't fight back. Instead, he detonated his own Ether Core.
The massive surge of energy didn't go outward—it went inward, feeding the tiny, clockwork-like larva nesting in his pineal gland.
The Ouroboros Grubs. Rank 6. The literal embodiment of the River of Time.
*Eat,* Vane commanded silently. *Eat my body, eat my cultivation, eat my soul.*
The world turned white.
...
"Clan Moonblood... is this five hundred years ago?"
Vane blinked. The pain was gone. The blood was gone.
He was standing by a window, the smell of rain and damp wood filling his nose. He looked down at his hands—young, pale, unscarred.
His eyes, deep and dark, reflected the image of a young man in the glass.
"The Ouroboros worked..."
- Writer
