Chapter 1085: The Thief of Seven Faces
Ti didn’t flow linearly in the Records. It jumped, skipping the months of hiding and scavenging, landing squarely in the middle of the next pivot point.
Three years had passed in the mory.
Tenebria wasn’t a child in rags anymore. She was a teenager, clad in scavenged, blackened composite armor. She stood on the precipice of a Sector 7 neon-tower, watching the traffic below.
She had changed. The Gift of Gluttony thrumd within her chest. It wasn’t just a healing factor; it was an engine of consumption. It allowed her to eat anything—tal, Miasma, organic matter—and convert it into raw mass and energy. She had grown denser, her muscles compacted like hydraulic pistons.
But she was still a rat in a city of lions.
“Target sighted,” she whispered.
I followed her gaze.
Hovering below on a personal gravity-skiff was a demon draped in shimring, holographic silks. He was tall, spindly, with four eyes that moved independently.
Viscount Vex.
In the Abyss hierarchy, a Viscount wasn’t just a noble title; it was a asurent of reality-warping density. A Viscount was far superior to a Baron.
Vex was an Envy Demon. And like most elites, he held two Gifts.
The Sin Gift of Envy: The Authority to covet and replicate.
The Minor Gift of Phasing: The ability to turn intangible for short bursts.
He was a nightmare matchup for a brawler like Tenebria. But she wasn’t hunting him for food. She was hunting him for parts.
Tenebria dropped.
She didn’t use magic to slow her fall. She used the Gift of Gluttony to eat the kinetic energy of the impact as she landed on the skiff. The tal deck buckled, not from her weight, but because she instantly consud the structural integrity of the alloy beneath her boots.
“Unblessed filth!” Vex screeched, spinning around.
His four eyes locked onto her. The Gift of Envy flared—a sickly green light.
It wasn’t a speed boost. It was a conceptual attack.
“I covet your stability.”
The reality around Tenebria warped. The sure footing she had on the skiff was stolen, transferred instantly to Vex. She stumbled, gravity suddenly feeling wrong, while Vex moved with impossible grace.
He lunged, a monofilant whip flashing in his hand. Tenebria tried to block, but Vex triggered his second gift, Phasing. The whip passed harmlessly through her armor, then solidified inside her ribcage.
It was a kill shot.
Or it should have been.
Tenebria didn’t scream. She gritted her teeth, her eyes flashing orange.
Authority of Gluttony: Devour.
She didn’t heal the wound; she ate the whip.
Her chest muscles clamped down, teeth manifested internally within her flesh, grinding the high-tech weapon into scrap tal and absorbing it.
Vex yanked his hand back, horrified, holding a severed handle. “What… what are you? That’s a Baron-tier regeneration! How does a gutter-rat have a Gift?!”
“I took it,” Tenebria snarled, lunging forward.
“You lie!” Vex hissed. “Gifts are birthrights! You cannot transfer a soul-anchor!”
He activated Envy again. “I covet your strength.”
I watched the exchange with widened eyes. A visible stream of red energy leaked from Tenebria, flowing into Vex. Her muscles atrophied slightly; his bulged. He was draining her stats in real-ti. This was the true terror of Envy—not just wanting, but taking.
Vex laughed, drunk on the stolen power. “You are nothing! I am a Viscount! I see your power, and now it is mine!”
He grew faster, stronger, mirroring her movents perfectly. He unleashed a flurry of strikes, battering Tenebria against the railing of the skiff.
She was losing. She was a Baron by pure stats, fighting a Viscount who could steal those stats and turn intangible.
But Tenebria wasn’t trying to out-fight him.
She waited for him to get close, drunk on his arrogance.
Vex went for the throat, his hand phasing to bypass her armor. “Die, knowing your power serves better.”
Tenebria didn’t dodge. She opened her mouth.
It wasn’t a scream. It was a vacuum.
She reversed the polarity of the Gluttony Gift. Instead of consuming matter to heal, she turned her body into a black hole of hunger.
She didn’t target him. She targeted the Miasma fueling his Phasing Gift.
Vex froze. His intangibility flickered and failed. He had been drained dry of the fuel needed to maintain the state.
“You—”
Tenebria headbutted him.
CRACK.
It was a brutal, ugly hit. With Vex solid, she tackled him off the skiff.
They fell fifty stories.
Mid-air, Vex tried to fly, but Tenebria had her arms locked around him, her legs wrapped around his waist. She was eating him alive—not flesh, but energy. She was draining his aura to cushion her own fall.
They slamd into a lower-deck walkway. Tenebria took the impact, her bones shattering and instantly re-knitting as she consud the last of Vex’s stolen strength.
Vex lay there, broken, his spine severed. He looked up at her, his four eyes wide with confusion.
“You… you can’t…” he wheezed. “Two Gifts… the resonance… it will kill you…”
Tenebria stood over him. She placed her hand on his chest.
“I’m not like you, Viscount,” she whispered. “My cup isn’t full. It’s bottomless.”
She ripped it out.
The Gift of Envy—a swirling, green constellation of jagged, jealous light—erged from his dying core.
Vex died screaming as his very concept of self was harvested.
Tenebria held the green light in one hand and felt the orange light of Gluttony burning in her chest.
In normal demon biology, this was suicide. A Gift of Consumption (Gluttony) and a Gift of Covetousness (Envy) were philosophically opposed. One wanted to destroy; the other wanted to possess. Putting them in the sa soul typically caused a resonance cascade that detonated the host.
Tenebria didn’t hesitate. She slamd the green light into her chest.
I braced myself for the explosion.
It didn’t co.
Tenebria gasped, arching her back. Her veins pulsed—orange on the left, green on the right. For a mont, they warred. The hunger fought the jealousy.
But then, they found their places. Because she had no soul-shape of her own to get in the way, the two Gifts simply… docked. They slotted into the emptiness like puzzle pieces.
Tenebria opened her eyes. The left was the orange of a furnace; the right was the toxic green of envy.
She looked at a passing drone.
Instantly, her body blurred. She didn’t just move fast; she envied the drone’s position. The universe corrected the discrepancy, snapping her to the location she coveted.
She appeared mid-air, grabbed the drone, and crushed it with the crushing grip of Gluttony.
She landed, holding the scrap.
“Consumption… and Coveting,” she murmured, a terrifying smile spreading across her face. “I can take… and I can keep.”
I watched, cold realization settling in my gut.
She wasn’t just collecting superpowers. She was building a circuit.
Most demons were limited by their tier. A Viscount was stronger than a Baron. A Count was stronger than a Viscount.
But Tenebria? She had just bypassed the tier system entirely. She was a Baron with the toolkit of two separate bloodlines.
And she still had five empty slots left.
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