The ditch reeked of iron and churned mud. A guttural shriek tore through the fog, followed by the wet thud of something heavy collapsing. Varis Korveng, pressed against the slick stone slab, tasted cold grease and another recruit's blood on his lips. His gaunt frame trembled, not from cold, but from the brutal humiliation of his predicament. His squad, what remained of them, were being flayed. The multi-legged beast stalked through knee-deep mire, six spindly appendages scuttling with nauseating speed. Each limb ended in a barbed hook, tearing through the thin carapace of even the toughest Vanguard armor. The monstrosity's head, a bulbous sac of carapace and writhing feelers, pulsed with sickly violet light, weaving threads of black gloom that crushed bone. "Scrap-stitcher! What are you waiting for? Patch us up, you worthless pile of gristle!" The voice, choked and ragged, came from the downed squad lead. The Vanguard elite lay broken, half-submerged in the red water. His armor, once gleaming, was now a mangled husk, a barbed hook protruding from his chest where his breath should have been. Varis flinched, the accusation a familiar lash. "I can't," he rasped, his own voice sounding thin against the stone. "The rank gives me no wards. Only scrap-welding and maintenance." He gestured weakly at the tattered, grease-stained fabric of his tunic. The grid had decreed it: baseline hands were meant for rivets, not blades. Another scream, cut short, echoed down the ditch. The stalker was methodical, harvesting rather than slaughtering. Fibrous lashes whipped out, ensnaring a thrashing cadet, hoisting him aloft like a puppet on gut-strings. A sickening *crack* followed, and the body dropped into the muck. The fallen officer coughed, crimson froth bubbling between cracked teeth. His single usable eye fixed on Varis. "Maintenance? Fix *this*, you gutter-spawn!" He tore a fist-sized sphere from his harness with rigid, shaking fingers. It pulsed with azure light, humming with concentrated resonance—a high-tier drake sphere. "Patch my cuirass, you parasite... now!" He shoved the glowing orb at Varis, a desperate, final command. Varis stared at the sphere, then at the pierced breastplate. His tier granted simple metal-bonding and seam-sealing, not reconstruction over crushed lungs. This was a direct, impossible command. [Mender Protocol 7.3: Prioritize Structural Integrity. Assess Core for Compatibility.] The interface words hovered behind his eyes, cold and dispassionate. Varis gritted his teeth, despising the parasitic mandate and the slave-caste badge stamped into his skin. But he’d been programmed, bound, humiliated. To disobey was to risk his very existence, to be flagged, purged. He took the core. Its warmth seeped into his palm, a potent thrum. He hovered the sphere near the jagged rents in the plate, his fingers stiffening. Protocol required channeling the charge into the metal's grain. But the sheer scale of the damage… [Skill: Inspect Lore activated.] [Lore Assimilated. The Vessel Expands. 1%] His vision swam, not with the fog, but with a sudden, overwhelming influx of archaic symbols, geometric patterns, and raw, searing power. The azure core, instead of transferring energy to the armor, dissolved into a torrent of light that surged *into* him, burning, twisting, reshaping. The pain was immediate, absolute. His arm, the one holding the core, spasmed. Black veins spiderwebbed across his skin, throbbing with an unholy light. "What in the hells are you doing?!" the officer shrieked, his voice thinning to a rattle. "My core! You’re… you’re absorbing it!" Varis couldn't speak. He could only writhe as the power surged. He felt something *shifting* within him, something ancient and hungry awakening. It bore none of the sterile, regulated hum of an artisan's kit. This was raw, untamed, *abyssal*. His right arm elongated, twisting, the flesh darkening, hardening. It wasn't his arm anymore. It became a slick, obsidian blade, wickedly curved, sharp as a razor. A sickle of solid night. Filaments thin as spider silk snaked from the weapon's edge, brushing the silt below. The bone-deep ache gave way to a chilling surge of power, a cold, predatory hunger. The crawler, having snapped the last recruit's spine, wheeled around. Its glowing appendages twitched, registering the sudden pressure shift in the channel. It screeched, a sound like grinding stone, and began to scuttle towards Varis, its six limbs churning the bloody water. "You fool! You'll be executed!" the dying man gasped. "The System… it will tear you apart!" Varis didn't hear him. He didn’t care. Years of contempt from highborn houses collapsed into icy malice. The bladed limb felt weightless, perfectly balanced. A dry, rasping snarl tore from his throat. He lunged. Gone was the clumsy hesitation of a pack-mule recruit; his stride landed clean and lethal. The dark sickle swung through the gloom, parting two barbed legs before the monstrosity could pivot. A spray of viscous, black ichor erupted. The beast shrieked in shrill confusion, backpedaling on shattered stumps. Varis closed the gap, hacking down in rhythmic strokes. Shell shattered. Feelers were sheared off. The violet glow within its skull dimmed. A horizontal sweep sheared the bulbous skull from its torso. The carcass collapsed, twitching once before settling into the mire. Silence descended, broken only by the lapping of the water and Varis’s ragged breathing. He stood over the kill, the crescent arm dripping black fluid onto the stones. The pain was still there, a dull throb beneath the surge of power, but it was distant. The shame was gone, replaced by a cold, burning triumph. He looked at his arm, the obsidian blade already beginning to retract, receding back into his flesh, leaving only the faint, dark veins beneath his skin. High on the basalt rubble above the trench, a scout crouched behind a shattered parapet, fingers clamped to a wrist-blade. She had watched the strike fall. The discarded noble's son had just dismantled an abomination that butchered an armored vanguard unit. Her visor shifted from the dying officer in the mud to Varis, tracking the dark smoke curling from his reshaped arm. [Anomaly detected. Quarantine protocols initiating.]

The Hollow-Weaver's Gift