Cardo let out a long, raspy exhale, watching the last wisps of the F-Rank rat's ash scatter into the humid night breeze. The dull, cloudy Aether core rested on the wooden planks of the porch—a quiet testament to what he had just accomplished.
He had done it. He had held the line.
His entire body was trembling, a volatile cocktail of adrenaline, exhaustion, and relief flooding in his mind. He knelt down, fingers still shaking slightly, and scooped up the core. It felt warm against his calloused palm. He slipped it into his jacket pocket, a brief, exhausted smile touching his lips. He was an E-rank—but his training foundation was real. Uncle Jun's grueling regimen had actually worked.
He turned toward the front door.
"Uncle Jun," he called, his voice hoarse but steady. "It's clear. I got it."
He waited for the deadbolt to slide back. He waited for the door to open.
It didn't.
Instead, an unnatural chill swept over the porch. Not a drop in the weather—a profound, suffocating drop in ambient aether pressure. The hair on the back of Cardo's neck stood straight up. His breath plumed white in the warm night air. A primal, instinctive alarm detonated in the back of his skull.
Above me.
He didn't even have an opportunity to look up.
A massive shadow detached from the roof overhang, dropping with the silent, eerie manner of an apex predator. It wasn't another rat.
It was an E-rank void hound.
The creature was a monstrous canine abomination — easily the size of a full-grown lion. Its body was a mass of bulging, unnatural muscle beneath sleek, obsidian-black fur that seemed to swallow the ambient light. Corrosive drool dripped from its massive jaws, sizzling as it hit the wooden floorboards.
Cardo was completely caught off guard. His Aether pool was nearly empty, his muscles cramping from the previous fight, his stance loose and unready.
The Void-Hound lunged.
It moved with an explosive, fluid speed the F-rank rat couldn't have dreamed of, aimed straight for Cardo's throat. His eyes widened. He tried to raise his arms, tried to force his exhausted mind to manifest a clone, but his body was simply too slow. Too drained. The half-second delay that had been a manageable rhythm moments ago was now a fatal flaw. He was going to die on his balcony.
'BANG.
The heavy front door exploded outward in a shower of splintered oak and brass.
Uncle Jun didn't step through—he launched himself through the ruined doorway, moving with a desperate, reckless speed that entirely ignored the limitations of his metal prosthetic.
"Move!"
He shoved Cardo's shoulder hard, sending the teenager crashing into the porch railing.
In that fraction of a second, the Void-Hound's jaws snapped shut on empty air where Cardo's throat had been. But its momentum carried it forward—and its razor-sharp front claws swept through the space Uncle Jun now occupied.
Squelch.
"Gah!" Uncle Jun choked.
The claws tore through Jun's chest and shoulder, shredding his white undershirt and ripping deep gashes across his collarbone. Blood—bright red and jarring—sprayed across the porch. The force of the blow threw Jun backward into the exterior wall. The Benelli M4 slipped from his grip, clattering across the floorboards out of reach.
"Uncle Jun!" Cardo screamed.
The void hound landed heavily on all fours, the porch groaning under its weight. It let out a low, resonant growl, glowing crimson eyes sliding from the bleeding older man back to the teenager. It could smell its weakness. It could taste the fear.
Cardo's shock evaporated instantly, replaced by a frantic, desperate rage. The foundational training in his muscles completely bypassed conscious thought.
"Manifest!" he roared, forcing every remaining drop of ambient Aether to the surface.
The mark on his wrist didn't bleed outward—it erupted. Clone One tore itself from the darkness and planted itself between the Void-Hound and Uncle Jun's bleeding body.
The beast didn't hesitate. It lunged, swiping its massive paw in a brutal arc.
Cardo forced the clone into the attack, using the void-energy construct as a living shield. The claws connected, tearing straight through the shadow's torso.
The feedback hit him instantly.
A blinding, white-hot phantom pain ripped across his chest, driving him to his knees. The air was punched clean from his lungs. He coughed up a speck of blood, vision blurring at the edges. The clone destabilized and burst into black smoke.
Cardo refused to stay down. He bit the inside of his cheek, using the sharp copper taste to anchor his fading consciousness. He clawed his way upright, gripping the thin, depleted thread of his Aether. He didn't have enough energy for another full clone. He had to use his own body.
The Void-Hound shook off the smoke, swung its massive head toward him, and charged.
Cardo dropped his center of gravity. He synced his ragged breathing with the last spark of Aether buried deep in his core, executed the footwork Uncle Jun had drilled into his bones, pivoted his hips, channeled the force up through his shoulder, and threw a desperate Body Tempering Aether Fist directly into the charging beast's snout.
His knuckles connected with a solid, sickening thud.
It was like punching a steel plate wrapped in Kevlar.
The Aether pulsed cleanly—but the Void-Hound's hide was simply too dense. The kinetic shockwave washed over its reinforced skull. Two of Cardo's knuckles cracked under the pressure.
The beast barely flinched.
It whipped its head sideways, swatting Cardo's fist away, then rammed its shoulder directly into his chest.
Cardo was launched off his feet. He crashed onto the floorboards, the back of his head bouncing against the wood. Pain detonated behind his eyes. His ribs screamed—undoubtedly cracked from the impact.
It was a completely one-sided fight. All of his technique, all of his perfect form, meant nothing without the raw Aether capacity to back it up. The E-Rank Void-Hound was simply too strong, too fast, and far too durable for where he was right now.
He tried to scramble backward. His sneakers scraped uselessly against the blood-slicked wood. The Hound was already on top of him.
The beast pinned him to the floorboards, its weight crushing the remaining breath from his lungs. Corrosive drool sizzled through his jacket, burning small smoking holes in the cheap fabric. It opened its jaws wide, aimed at his face, and prepared to end it.
Cardo acted on pure survival instinct. He thrust his right arm upward and pressed his open palm flat against the center of the beast's chest, right over its sternum, straining to hold those jaws back by inches.
And then something unexpected happened.
The dark mark on his right wrist began to burn.
Not the familiar, hollow pull of expelling Aether to manifest a shadow. This was the exact opposite. This was a vacuum.
Cardo's eyes flew wide as a terrifying, starving hunger erupted from the tattoo. The mark throbbed against his skin like an empty, bottomless void that had been violently ripped open inside his veins. Through his palm, he could suddenly feel it—the dense, concentrated E-rank Aether core pulsing deep inside the hound's chest cavity.
The mark didn't want to clone the beast.
It wanted to eat it.
The hunger surged up his arm, a primal, overwhelming instinct to extract and absorb the dense energy resting just beneath his fingertips. For a split second, Cardo's vision inverted—the dark porch flashing a brilliant, blinding negative. He could feel the beast's raw aether straining toward the surface of its body, magnetically drawn to the void waiting inside his wrist.
The Void-Hound sensed it immediately.
Its crimson eyes widened in genuine, animalistic panic. It stopped trying to bite him and desperately wrenched itself backward, releasing a confused, frightened whine as the Aether in its chest was disrupted.
Cardo was frozen — paralyzed by the sheer, overwhelming sensation of something inside him trying to wake up. He didn't know how to control it. He didn't even know what it was. He just felt the hunger clawing at the edge of his consciousness, reaching for the core—
CHK-CHK.
The sharp, unmistakable sound of a shotgun being racked cut through the air.
"Get away from my nephew, you ugly bastard," a blood-choked voice rasped.
The Void-Hound snapped its head up just as Uncle Jun shoved the scarred barrel of the Benelli M4 directly into its open mouth. Jun had dragged himself across the bloody floorboards, fighting through the agony of his shredded shoulder, waiting for the precise moment the beast reared back to expose the soft, unarmored tissue inside its jaws.
He pulled the trigger without hesitation.
BOOM.
The shotgun's roar shattered the night. A concentrated blast of Aether-infused buckshot erupted inside the beast's mouth, bypassing its reinforced outer hide entirely. The force blew out the back of the Void-Hound's skull.
The monster went rigid for one long, suspended second—crimson eyes flickering and dying to black. Then the crushing weight pinning Cardo to the floorboards went completely limp.
The beast collapsed sideways, its massive body dissolving into a pile of thick, foul-smelling black ash. A larger, noticeably brighter E-Rank Aether-core clattered against the wooden planks and rolled slowly until it bumped against Cardo's sneaker.
Silence returned to the porch, broken only by the distant wail of the city sirens and the ragged panting of two battered, bleeding men.
Cardo lay flat on his back, staring up at the dark porch roof. His chest heaved. His right hand was trembling, the skin around his wrist still burning, the starving hunger slowly fading back to a quiet, dormant whisper.
What the hell was that? he thought, his heart hammering against his cracked ribs. That wasn't a shadow clone. That was... stealing.
He didn't have time to process it. He forced himself upright, groaning, and crawled over to his uncle.
Uncle Jun was slumped against the exterior wall, breathing shallowly, his left hand pressed against his shredded shoulder. The shotgun rested across his lap.
"Uncle Jun." Cardo tore a strip of fabric from the bottom of his ruined jacket and pressed it firmly against the gashes. "Hold still. Keep the pressure on."
Jun let out a weak, pained chuckle that turned into a cough.
"I'm fine, kid. I've survived far worse in the Dead Zones. That was just a scratch to keep things interesting."
"You took the hit for me," Cardo said, his voice thick. "You shouldn't have done that."
"You're my family, Cardo," Jun said, meeting his nephew's eyes. "I will always take the hit."
Cardo swallowed hard, blinking against the burning sting of tears. He tightened the makeshift bandage, relieved to see the bleeding already slowing. Jun's dormant minor fortification skill had likely blunted the worst of it—saved his collarbone from being shattered outright.
A loud, aggressive squeaking erupted from inside the house.
The living room couch groaned sideways across the floor. The trapdoor flew open and slammed against the floorboards.
A tiny, furious figure climbed out of the bunker.
Clarissa marched through the ruined front doorway, completely ignoring the pile of black ash blanketing the porch. She was still in her bright yellow pajamas, wielding the cast-iron frying pan over her shoulder like a battle axe, and coated head-to-toe in concrete dust from the crawlspace.
She stopped in front of the two battered, bleeding men, planted a free hand on her hip, and looked at the large E-rank Aether core by Cardo's sneaker. Then she looked at Cardo with absolute, unshakeable arrogance.
"You're welcome," Clarissa announced.
Cardo paused his first aid. "I'm sorry — what?"
"You're welcome," she repeated slowly, as though addressing someone of questionable intelligence. She pointed the frying pan at the ash. "I could see you struggling with that giant ugly dog through the cracks in the floorboards. So I used my glaring technique. I glared at it so hard from the bunker that it got distracted — which is obviously why Uncle Jun was able to shoot it. I basically scared it to death."
Uncle Jun let out a genuine laugh that immediately collapsed into a pained, hacking cough.
Cardo stared at her. His ribs were cracked. He was covered in toxic monster drool. And somewhere beneath the dark mark on his wrist, something ancient and starving had just stirred for the first time.
But looking at his sister's proud, imperious little face, the crushing weight of the night finally cracked.
He let out a tired, breathy laugh and leaned back against the railing. He reached out and tapped the cast-iron pan with his bruised knuckles.
"Thank you, Clarissa," he said, a genuine smile spreading across his battered face. "Your glaring was absolutely terrifying. You saved us."
"Obviously," she scoffed, adjusting her pajamas with a smug nod. "Now get inside before you bleed on my clean floors, big brother. I'll get the good bandages."
She marched back inside.
Cardo reached over and picked up the dense, shiny E-Rank core, slipping it into his pocket alongside the F-Rank one. Then he looked down at the mark on his right wrist. It was quiet now—looking, as it always had, like a simple, useless mistake of an awakening mark.
But Cardo knew the truth. He wasn't just a low-rank shadow puppeteer. There was something else inside him — something hungry, something hollow, something that didn't clone the world around it.
Something that consumed it.
And he was going to find out exactly what it was.