The first thing Matthew felt was weight.
Heavy and dense. It was like waking up underwater. His chest rose with effort, his breath ragged. Then there ca the pain. Not sharp, but lingering, dull. Like the pressure of sothing massive had sat on him for too long.
His eyes snapped open.
He was in a room—his room, it seed. Dimly lit, curtains drawn halfway, a faint breeze wafting through the cracked window. There was a strange warmth in the air, like soone had recently left, yet it didn’t feel empty.
A voice broke the silence.
"Welco back, young master."
Matthew turned his head sharply.
Cristoff stood near the doorway, arms clasped behind his back, expression as unreadable as ever but Matthew noticed the faint crease in his brow.
"Cristoff...?" His throat was dry. His voice rasped. "How am I here?"
Cristoff stepped forward with a bottle of water. He opened its cap and handed it to Matthew.
Matthew accepted it as Cristoff answered. "Because we brought you back. Your orders were to watch from a distance, to intervene only if necessary. Once the energy spike faded and the pressure began to settle... we found you just outside the building’s periter. You were unconscious."
Matthew blinked. Energy spike? How did he notice that spike? His thoughts were slow at first, scattered. Then the mories returned. He rembered running, the way the creature chased him, the exact mont he slashed at it. He rembered its scream. And then, it slowly started to dissolve.
"Cristoff," he said slowly. "What happened to the others? Teddy? Ottep?"
"They’re safe." Cristoff’s voice was calm. "Rescued shortly after you left that place. The official story is that they were kidnapped by gang mbers who mistook them for soone else. The police accepted it quickly, given the Blood Moon chaos and the shutdown in that area."
Matthew exhaled, shoulders dropping. "Good."
"Young Master..." Cristoff paused, watching him. "You did well."
Matthew didn’t reply. He knew Cristoff had questions. Perhaps the old man was waiting for his explanation.
He swung his legs off the bed, wincing as the pain settled deep into his joints. His muscles ached—tight, sore, worn down in ways he hadn’t felt before. Even breathing felt like effort. He glanced at his hands. They were shaking. Unsteady.
There was no injury, no visible wound. But sothing was wrong.
He felt empty.
Not tired. Just... hollow.
As if sothing had been pulled out of him and hadn’t co back.
He steadied his breath. He needed to replenish his strength, get sothing in his system before his body collapsed for real.
"Cristoff," he said quietly. "Can you give a mont?"
"Of course," the man replied without hesitation. "I will bring you food when you’re ready."
Matthew nodded.
Cristoff left with silent steps, the door shutting gently behind him.
Matthew let the silence settle. Then he turned his gaze inward.
His core.
He closed his eyes again, extended his Reader sense inward. His spiritual network flared softly, like thin threads woven into every inch of his being. The pressure was different now. Stable and denser.
"I really did it..." he muttered. He is currently in Initiate state.
The creature’s final scream echoed in his mory. The mont he slashed its heart, the surge of resistance—the implosion of energy. He could recall the way it... vanished into thin air. Like it had never belonged in this world in the first place.
And then, the core.
He had grabbed it. He rembered the burning heat in his palm as it pulsed violently, trying to escape. He rembered running—staggering—toward the exit. But his strength gave out before he could even reach the courtyard.
Matthew stood up. His limbs protested, but he moved anyway. His gaze shifted toward the table.
A simple, worn-out black backpack sat there. His storage space!
He stepped toward it slowly. Then, with careful fingers, he opened it.
There it was.
The core.
Nestled in layers of cloth and reinforced runes, it still pulsed faintly. Like a dying ember refusing to be extinguished.
The thing looked almost liquid, like swirling smoke trapped in a crystallized shell. Every few seconds, a vein of red light slithered across its surface, then faded again.
Matthew stared. "This thing... isn’t dead yet." It pulsed again—weak, slow, but undeniably alive.
And with that pulse ca... mory.
Dr. Muni called this creature a Spiritual Entity.
The term echoed in his mind, and suddenly... he knew.
What he had fought and killed—if it could be called killing—was a Remnant. A spiritual parasite. Leftover from a Wraithborn that once lived, possibly centuries ago, long forgotten, its anchor lost. Remnants like these were rare. But not extinct.
And far from harmless.
They were the bottom-feeders of the spiritual realm. Stripped of identity, of sanity, of logic. All that remained was instinct. Hunger. Their only goal was to find spiritual energy—a core—and devour it. Nexians were ideal prey. Even humans weren’t spared in the right conditions.
Matthew blinked as more knowledge unraveled—gifted to him by Dr. Muni days ago, encoded into his Reader ability like compressed data.
Only Readers could sense Remnants.
That much was crucial.
Shapers couldn’t see them. Not unless the creature chose to manifest, and even then, they only saw its effects, never the thing itself. Which explained the massacre. Viper’s squad fought blind. They couldn’t defend themselves. They couldn’t even comprehend what was killing them.
But it wasn’t just the fighting.
Remnants corrupted the environnt around them. Their very existence destabilized spiritual fields and anchor zones. Worse—they weren’t limited to harming Nexians. Humans exposed for long enough suffered too. Illness. Bleeding. Madness. Unnatural deaths that couldn’t be traced.
They were walking contagions.
The Council labeled them as Class B Threats for a reason. Any sign of one and an entire area could be sealed off within the hour. Containnt squads sent in. Cleansing rituals ordered. And anyone caught harboring one—dead or alive—would face execution.
He didn’t touch it—but he could feel it. The energy inside was faint, distant, like the last breath of a fire that refused to go out.
It pulsed again.
Not with life exactly. Sadly, he couldn’t really explain what it was.
All he knew was that this thing hadn’t simply collapsed or vanished the way normal entities did when destroyed. No. This one had been transferred. Bound, sohow. Still lingering. And it wasn’t just existing near him—it was linked to him.
He could feel the tether, buried deep within his spiritual network, thin as a thread but undeniable. A connection ford not by accident, but by the mont he struck it down and took its core into his own hands.
And the longer he stared, the more that buried knowledge whispered: "Not all Remnants are dead things. So... are beginnings. Seeds. If left unpurged, they grow. Change. Fuse. Rare. Forbidden. But possible."
Matthew swallowed hard.
He knew what he held wasn’t just dangerous, it was illegal. The council or any Nexian who knew about this would probably kill him just to get this thing. But at the sa ti, it was sothing more. Sothing... useful.
But only if it didn’t kill him first.
"What would happen if I absorb it?" Matthew mumbled.
He already knew the answer.
Or rather, the answer ca—not from logic, not from experience—but from that residual echo of Dr. Muni’s imprint.
Absorbing a Remnant’s core is not a path.
It’s a gamble.
Matthew stared at the pulsing orb. The swirling mass of semi-liquid smoke and dormant wrath. It flickered, as if sensing his hesitation. Not alive, but aware. The way a fire senses oxygen.
Remnant cores were unstable. Corrupt by design. They weren’t ant to be taken. Not ant to be touched. A Nexian who dared to absorb one... could gain sothing. An edge. A boost in power. A temporary amplification of their Reader sense, reflexes, sotis even unique mutations—abilities that ca from the dying essence of the Wraithborn it once belonged to.
But the risk?
The risk was never just spiritual backlash.
Matthew’s jaw clenched as the rest of the knowledge unfurled. The real consequences.
Core Fusion. This was the most common outco. The core integrates with yours... but not cleanly. Instead of enhancing it, it roots. Burrows. Like a parasite in a host. It rewrites the pattern of your network. Replaces the stable flow with sothing erratic. You don’t just get stronger—you beco less you. The core develops. Expands. Feeds. And it demands food. Spiritual food. You start with supplents. You upgrade to energy stones. Eventually, you want Nexian cores. Then human ones. Then—anything.
Uncontrollable hunger.
Unquenchable.
ntal Bleed. So remnants retain mory fragnts. Echoes of the Wraithborn that birthed them. If fused, those echoes don’t stay quiet. They whisper. They gnaw. Sotis, they scream. You hear things no one else does. Feel rage that isn’t yours. Guilt. Terror. Euphoria. Entire lifetis of emotion compressed into you until your identity fractures. So Nexians—those foolish enough to survive absorption—end up talking to themselves. Others... forget their own na.
Physical Mutation. Matthew flinched involuntarily as the image surfaced. A Council case file. A Nexian who tried to absorb a juvenile remnant core. Survived three days. Then his body rejected the mutation. His veins turned black—literally. They pulsed under the skin like worms. His eyes glowed red under full moonlight, and he scread for seven hours before his jaw unhinged. When they found him, half his torso had morphed. No bones. Just spiritual flesh twisting into sothing not human. They had to burn the entire floor to kill him.
And then there was Core Implosion. This was rare, but possible. The foreign pressure overtakes the host. Replaces their core entirely. The Nexian dies in less than five minutes. No body. Just dust. As if they never existed.
Matthew exhaled slowly.
He could feel a part of himself already leaning forward. Tempted, curious.
Then Dr. Muni’s final note rang louder now. "The foolish seek power. The desperate take it. But those who survive... are the ones who prepare to beco sothing else."
Matthew stepped back from the table.
The core flickered once.
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