Hessa screamed, a raw and immediate sound torn from the deepest parts of her soul. She surged forward heedlessly, prayers already spilling from her lips in broken, frantic syllables. Light bloomed at her fingertips, a soft gold marred by the tremor in her hands, but it wouldn’t matter; I could already tell Jessel was gone. It wouldn't matter for long, but I knew their grief well.

  Syla snarled, a vicious, guttural thing, and hurled herself into the nearest cluster of Tricksters. Her daggers flashed, blurring in tight arcs, slick with fresh blood before the first goblin had even hit the ground. One dropped, then another, and then another, their throats split and bellies opened. She didn’t stop or speak or blink, just kept carving forward, her mouth set in a silent snarl, eyes burning.

  Tovin’s next spell cracked mid-gesture. His shaky, misaligned rune fractured in the air and detonated with a concussive pop. A wild arc of flame spiraled sideways, missing its mark and flinging straight past Halver’s shoulder. The big man ducked, snarling, while smoke curled from his cloak where the fire had grazed him. The stink of singed flesh mingled with the coppery reek of blood and bile already thick in the air.

  “Focus!” I shouted, my voice rising above the chaos, but no one was listening.

  We’d been holding, though barely. Jessel’s death hadn’t just shaken them; it had unmade something, pulling a thread loose in all of them. If only I had better clarified the lack of real risk. But it would be easier for them to see it, not just hear it. The formation collapsed, not from pressure or tactics, but from the sudden vacuum of pain.

  And then, of course, my turn came around.

  A Trickster near the edge of the plaza cocked its head and then let out a high, chittering laugh: a sound that grated like broken glass in a tin cup, sharp and senseless, echoing through the blood-slick stones as if Jessel’s death were the punchline to some private joke.

  I didn’t feel grief yet; grief was slow and heavy, and I didn’t have the luxury for it. What I had was something cleaner and sharper. The space where sorrow should have been was already burning, filling with a furious clarity that tasted like metal and left no room for doubt.

  I reached past the fatigue, past the fear, past the ache still smoldering behind my ribs, like a blade reaching for a sheath, knowing there would be no more chances and no more names. My hand moved before thought could catch up, before hesitation could take root, before the scream I hadn’t let myself voice could crawl up my throat and wreck me. There was no pause and no pity, just the cold, precise rhythm of rage disguised as ritual.

  The glyph answered. Lines of burning light carved themselves into the air, each one etched with brutal certainty, showing no wasted motion and no slant out of place. The summoning circle unfolded like a machine: mechanical, inevitable, and cruel, its glow lighting the blood under my nails and casting shadows like daggers on the ground. I wasn’t improvising or asking; I was executing.

  A new thought occurred to me as I dismissed my summoned pets. I was a summoner now, so how did I summon higher-level pets? And as if the information should have come to my mind earlier, the new spell appeared.

  {You have unlocked the skill "Call" This ability allows the summoner to call up to 3 tier 2 pets from a chosen list. More pets unlock as certain conditions or death boons are spent. Currently unlocked:

  Phantom Wolf

  Blaze Ants

  Wraith Lizard

  Frost Bull

  Flame Hyena

  Lightning Sparrow

  Posion Platypus}

  I blinked at the list of summons. It was kind of surreal that, after all this time, a skill I had wasn't random. With confidence, I summoned the first pet on the list.

  “Phantom Wolf.” The air warped and hummed before tearing like silk. Heat and vapor spilled outward as the creature stepped through the veil: lean, silver-pale, and stitched from mist and sinew. Its fur bristled in pulsing waves of smoke, its eyes twin moons of cold intent. It padded forward without looking at me, teeth bared, an extension of my fury, my will incarnate.

  Next, I summoned “Blaze Ants.” Twelve glyphs cracked into existence around me in a ring, each sparking to life with a violent hiss as fire bloomed outward like a crown of embers. The stone shattered beneath the weight of their emergence: tiny, molten-bodied monstrosities clawing their way into being, their legs scraping the ground with a rhythmic ticking sound, mandibles snapping, sparks arcing between them like a living current. They didn’t need a target, only direction.

  Then, I spoke the name “Wraith Lizard,” a word that coiled on my tongue like venom: bitter, ancient, and final. From the heart of the summoning ring came a low hiss as something slithered free of the shadow, its body slick with midnight sheen, each scale catching the light like a blade’s edge. It moved low to the ground, sinuous and deliberate, its eyes hollow voids. It wound around my ankles in a slow, possessive spiral, its tongue flicking once, then vanished, phasing into the nearest wall of shadow like a rumor never meant to be seen.

  A shadow peeled itself from the plaza wall and took form: long and low, moving with a serpent’s grace, its scales gleaming black and glassy, like obsidian dipped in oil, reflecting slivers of firelight and blood. The Wraith Lizard’s tongue flicked once, testing the air, then it hissed low, like a secret being told, and vanished into motion, a blur sliding just above the stone. I didn’t even need to point; they knew.

  The Phantom Wolf launched first, bounding forward in complete silence, a streak of silver and smoke. A Trickster was circling toward Syla’s exposed flank, its blade raised, but it was too late. The wolf struck like a falling star, its jaws clamping down on the goblin’s chest. Bone crunched and flesh folded inward until there wasn’t a chest anymore. The goblin’s torso crumpled, crushed in a single motion, and the wolf tossed the remains aside like kindling.

  The Blaze Ants surged next, a ripple of flame pouring across the plaza as they swarmed in jagged formation, their bodies crackling with kinetic energy. Their target, a wide-eyed Trickster caught mid-turn, screamed as the first ant landed on its leg. It swatted wildly, panicking, but the fire stuck, eating through cloth and skin with crackling heat. One ant latched onto its face, its mandibles searing into flesh, and the others followed, crawling and biting. When the flames died, there was nothing left but smoke and meat.

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  The Wraith Lizard reappeared beneath a fleeing Trickster. Without warning, its tail whipped upward with impossible force. A crack echoed as the goblin’s spine bent the wrong way. It convulsed in midair, its back arched like a bow, then hit the ground in four separate pieces.

  Three dead. Fast and clean. Coordinated like muscle memory.

  But one still ran. I caught sight of it darting between the broken market stalls. It was smaller than the rest, limping, and trailing blood. Smart enough to run, but not fast enough to vanish.

  I raised my hand. Light surged to my palm, pale and sharp, brighter than fire, colder than sunlight in winter. I didn’t chant or warn; I just released it. The bolt tore across the plaza in a single, burning streak, striking the Trickster in the shoulder with a crack, spinning it sideways. It hit the ground hard, rolled, and clawed desperately at the dirt, trying to rise.

  And then something shifted.

  A pile of splintered wood and torn canvas near the plaza’s edge twitched once, then again. From beneath the charred remains of a shattered fruit cart, a shape dragged itself upright, one limb at a time. It moved like a thing that shouldn’t be alive, its body smoking, cracked, and broken open in half a dozen places: the Flame Beetle, still alive and still burning.

  Its carapace was blackened, warped from heat and impact, split down the spine where one of Syla’s daggers had struck true. Viscous fluid leaked between the plates, hissing as it hit the scorched ground. One leg dragged uselessly behind it, melted at the joint, but it moved. Steam hissed from the gaps in its armor as it rose, its six remaining legs lifting it in staggered, stuttering rhythm. Its mandibles clicked once, then again, sharp, serrated, and glowing faintly orange with the residual heat of its last charge. It wasn’t roaring anymore, just breathing heavily and mechanically, fueled by spite and instinct.

  The wounded Trickster was still crawling, bleeding from the shoulder where my bolt had struck, trying to drag itself through the rubble with eyes wide, mouth slack, lips whispering something I didn’t care to hear.

  The beetle turned toward the sound and screeched, a raw, warping sound of metal scraping bone, heat made audible. It hurled itself forward in a burst of horrible momentum, kicking up ash and dust as it closed the distance in seconds. The Trickster looked up just in time to see its death, frozen in the moment before the crunch. The beetle slammed into the goblin’s chest with a shattering force as bone split and skin tore. The impact folded the Trickster in half with a wet snap, and both bodies tumbled into the dust cloud, limbs tangled, their screams lost.

  When the dust settled, only one shape moved. The beetle twitched once, then stilled.

  Silence followed.

  It was not peace or relief, just the awful, unnatural stillness that comes after violence has wrung the air dry. It was the kind of silence that feels too loud, where the ringing in your ears becomes the only sound left and where the weight of every heartbeat feels like a hammer blow.

  Ash drifted down in lazy spirals, clinging to blood, to skin, to the cracks in the stone beneath us. Smoke still curled from the fallen carts, twisting around the torn banner that fluttered weakly on its bent pole, the sigil half-burned and unrecognizable.

  The heat hadn’t faded, nor had the tension. My heartbeat didn’t slow, my chest barely rose with breath, and my fingers still crackled faintly with the last embers of summoned magic, a dull light flickering across scraped knuckles and singed cuffs. My mouth was dry, my tongue like ash. My vision narrowed, not from fatigue, but from the sudden, hollow silence now screaming between every breath.

  The fight was over, but nothing inside me felt finished, only emptier. It was like the magic had taken something when it left, something I couldn’t name that wouldn’t come back, as if part of me had gone with Jessel, and the rest was just trying not to notice.

  The silence that followed wasn’t calm; it was the kind that waited, like breath held between heartbeats. I barely heard Hessa’s choked prayers or Syla’s dagger slicing into meat while Halver stood tense, fists shaking at his sides, the Phantom Wolf still between us like a drawn blade. My focus was already drifting.

  I said nothing to Halver, Hessa, or anyone, not until I saw it. Above the cracked fountain at the plaza’s center, suspended in the drifting haze, hung an Aerlyntium shard, whole and turning slowly in place. It pulsed with a faint golden glow, warm against the ash-heavy air; it was not dull, dim, or dead. It hadn’t rejected her yet.

  I stepped forward, one foot after another, my boots scraping through blood and scorched grit, past Hessa’s trembling form, past Halver’s fury, and past the silence. The shard beat gently, rhythmically, like a heart, as if it recognized me, or maybe it was waiting, listening.

  I reached out, my hand hovering near its surface, fingers tingling, the air thick with heat and memory. And then I closed my hand around it.

  The reaction was instant. Light exploded outward, flooding my vision in a flash that wasn’t just brightness, but presence, pouring into my palm, up my arm, across my chest, warm and searing, like I’d grabbed a star made of history and sorrow. But it didn’t hurt the way fire hurts; it remembered. I felt it in my bones and in my breath, a pull, deep and wordless, something inside me catching flame: not my skin, but something older, something forgotten.

  Moonlit Courtyard Tree – Ah. The centerpiece. Behold: the Moonlit Courtyard Tree. Pale blue leaves, flickering in wind that doesn't exist—much like your sense of timing, Rod. Once, it was the heart of the courtyard. Now it's just another relic pretending to matter. Much like you.

  Saint Eliane’s Shrine – Still pristine. Untouched by ash, time, or tragedy. Unlike your companions. A flawless altar of white stone and honeyed crystal, surrounded by offerings that still believe in miracles. They were not made for you. But go on—pray. Let’s see what that gets you.

  Veloran’s Spice Stall – Ah yes, the fragrant delusion of normalcy. Carefully arranged jars. Cheerful cloth. Saffron and clove and denial, still clinging to the air like it hasn’t realized everything is already lost. Much like your plan, if you had one. Did you think survival would smell like gingerbread?

  Banner of the Watch – Still waving. Still proud. Still utterly irrelevant. The sigil stands unmarred, as if order could be conjured by thread alone. Funny, isn’t it? How a piece of cloth has withstood more than you have. Perhaps you should try being stitched together instead of constantly falling apart.

  Captain Edrin, Patrol Guard of the Plaza – A monument to misplaced faith. Look at him—perfect posture, polished steel, breath slow and heroic. Too bad he couldn’t lift a finger when it counted. But don’t worry, Rod. He’ll fit right in with your collection of failures and statuesque regrets.

  Adventurer Jessel, Preserved – And here lies your friend. Again. Perfectly posed, untouched by the death you allowed. But don’t despair—not too much. This is Aerlyntium’s gift, after all: death that lingers, consequence on layaway. You can bring her back.

  …You just have to live with the knowledge that you let her fall first.

  The light died, and the world held its breath.

  Then there was a sound: a cough, followed by a gasp.

  I turned. Near the withered tree, where her body had vanished, she was there, curled on her side in the dust, her fingers twitching. Ash clung to her skin, painting her lashes and lips in pale smears, and her cloak was half-burned, but her chest rose, shallow and ragged. She was breathing.

  “…Rod?” The word barely made it out of her mouth, a rasp, a ghost of her voice. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and glassy, but alive.

  ? OMNIPLEX ?

  Science Fantasy ? Death Game ? LitRPG

  The Omniplex—the key to ruling the universe. But who will unravel it first?

  But when the aliens come, the past doesn't matter. Only survival does.

  Abducted. Injected. Thrown into a cosmic bloodsport.

  But the real battle isn't just against his enemies, it's against the thing inside him.

  Because every fight drags him closer to a terrifying revelation:

  The more he kills, the more he becomes who he was always meant to be.