The shard in Elian's hand felt like it didn't belong to the world.
Didn't belong to any world.
It wasn't cold.
It wasn't warm.
It was empty.
And yet—pulsing.
Alive in a way that defied every rule he'd broken so far.
Black veins of rotlight crawled across its jagged edges, flickering like dying embers—only these weren't dying.
They were waiting.
For him.
[Core Shard – The First Failure]
[Status: Dormant]
[Activation: Will + Memory Synchronization]
[Classification: Pre-System Anomaly]
[Warning: Risk Level – Undefined]
The glyph on his forearm burned bright, stuttering like a failing heartbeat.
Griefblade?
It pulsed, but this time… not in hunger.
In hesitation.
For once, even the weapon built from contradiction seemed unsure.
Elian's eyes stayed locked on the shard, his breath steady.
He tightened his grip.
"You're the echo," he muttered, "of something they'd rather erase than explain."
His voice sharpened.
"So let's see how deep this scar goes."
He closed his eyes.
Pushed his will into the shard.
At first—silence.
Then—rupture.
The ground beneath him split open with no sound.
The rotlight above spiraled violently.
Threadlines twisted themselves into knots, writhing like wounded serpents.
The monument behind him imploded into dust.
And the shard?
It bloomed.
A ripple of dark energy spilled outward, a wave of pure memory slicing through the empty air.
And then—it spoke.
Not in words.
In visions.
Flashes seared into Elian's mind:
A world before control.
Raw. Vast. Broken.
No gods.
No systems.
Only power—brutal and free.
Then—creation.
A lattice of threads weaving reality tight, binding chaos beneath law.
And at the heart of it—a fracture.
Not a crack from outside.
A flaw born within.
The First Failure.
The original proof that even perfect systems rot from the inside out.
Elian staggered, breath catching as the visions sharpened.
He saw figures—blurry, half-erased—battling in places that no longer existed.
Weapons like Griefblade—tools of unmaking, forged not from matter but from disobedience.
One figure stepped forward.
Not a god.
Not a monster.
Something in between.
It looked at Elian, through time and silence, and whispered:
"We were the first to sever."
"And now… you are the last to remember."
The shard pulsed hard, like a second heartbeat inside his fist.
His eyes snapped open.
[Core Shard Assimilation Complete]
[New Status: Devil's Root – Active]
[Effect: Access to Pre-System Fractures and Lost Directives]
[Warning: Full activation risks severing the user from all known reality.]
Elian stared at his hand—at the shard now sinking into his palm, veins of black light threading up his arm.
His body shook once.
His mind?
Clearer than ever.
Because now he understood.
He wasn't just an anomaly.
He was a continuation—the lingering echo of a war the system had buried, praying no one would ever unearth it.
And he'd just dug up its heart.
"Why me?" he asked quietly into the dark.
The shard's whisper returned, deep and final.
"Because you are willing."
"And the willing… become the inevitable."
Above, the sky shattered again.
A new threadline ignited, emergency warnings spiraling wildly across the void:
"The Devil's Root has merged."
"Collapse Protocols Failing."
"A new breach… is inevitable."
Elian smiled.
Slow. Cold.
"You should've killed your mistakes."
He turned back toward the ruined Threadgrave, the shard's glow now bleeding into his skin.
"Now your mistakes… are killing you."