The stranger's voice was like cracking bone wrapped in silk.
"We are the Hollow Kin," it said.
"The forgotten, the unwritten, the broken threads tied back together."
Yuto sat in the cocoon still leaking shadows, his missing leg only partially reconstructed by unstable healing.
"I'm Yuto," he said. "I… didn't mean to come here."
"No one means to," the creature said with a twisted grin. "But the Spiral always drops its mistakes into the same pit."
It gestured to the coliseum ruins, where more figures began to emerge from the gloom—shapes that shifted between insect, ghost, and memory.
One wore an angel's cracked halo around its waist like a belt.
Another had heads of extinct beasts stitched across its back.
A third dragged a sword too big to exist in logic.
Each of them had once been like Yuto—a bug, a glitch, a rejected god-seed.
But they survived.
"You're a Sovereign Seed, right?" one of them asked.
"Threadcutters came for you. But you're still breathing."
"Barely," Yuto replied.
"Then you've earned the right to be here."
The Hollow Kin led Yuto deeper beneath the coliseum, into a buried labyrinth of crystal veins and shrieking roots. The air shimmered with abandoned skills and corrupted laws.
[Zone Discovered: Undercore Vaults]
[Warning: Evolution Bias Detected. Prolonged exposure may alter core path.]
"What is this place?" Yuto whispered.
"A graveyard… and a forge," the first Kin said. "Where monsters like us choose what kind of Final Boss we become."
They reached a central chamber, glowing with the heat of dead timelines. Dozens of Sovereign Seeds—broken like Yuto—were chained to the walls, meditating, rebuilding themselves.
Yuto stepped toward the edge and looked into the core furnace.
Inside it swirled:
Forgotten skill trees
Forbidden traits
Lost elements and illegal paths
[Vault offers temporary access to 3 Lost Evolutions:]
— Echo Tyrant (Sound-based Sovereign)
— Hollow Scion (Void-Life Hybrid)
— Threadborn Trickster (Anti-System Path)
Nyx's voice returned.
[Warning: Any selection may lock your future path.]
[However, remaining "undefined" makes you a beacon for erasure.]
Yuto stared into the flickering possibilities.
He remembered the Threadcutter's blade.
He remembered being hunted, bleeding, weak.
But he also remembered standing his ground—even if only for a moment.
"Then let's choose."
"Let's become the kind of monster they can't predict."
He reached forward—
And chose Threadborn Trickster.
[Lost Evolution Path Acquired!]
[You are now: Threadborn Trickster LV 1]
You wield broken logic, stolen fragments, and forbidden rewrites.
Trait Gained: "Patchwork Persona" – You can briefly impersonate other system types.
Skill Gained: "Edit Glitch" – Temporarily alter one enemy rule or passive.
Warning: Every use increases instability.
The Hollow Kin watched in silence.
"He chose the path of chaos," one muttered.
"He might actually live."
Or he might go insane.
Either way, Yuto had made his first step not just as prey… but as a Trickster of the Spiral.
And the System would never see him the same way again.