Every breath scraped Kael's throat raw, and the dank, fetid air clawed at his lungs like a burden of guilt. He pressed forward in the sewer—a maze of dripping concrete and rusting steel—his every step a reminder of the curse he'd chosen. The Shard, lodged deep in his ribs, pulsed like a dying heartbeat. Its venom slithered through his veins, turning once promising power into a slow, vicious decay.
Kael's left arm burned with black corruption. The skin was charred, as if the bone marrow had turned to ash. "Fucking hell, why didn't I just die in that blasted refinery?" he hissed to himself as he forced his aching body onward. His thoughts were jagged, raw. The promise of power had tasted sweet, but now each labored breath was a bitter reminder of his mistake.
The tunnels reeked of decay and stale bile. He could almost taste the rot. Shadows shifted around him—flashes of movement that weren't there, or maybe just his mind playing tricks. He thought of Jarek, that bastard, and felt a surge of anger. "Jarek. Damn it, if you hadn't left me behind, maybe I wouldn't be this wretched mess!" The venom in his blood made his words drip with both defiance and self-loathing.
The silence was punctured by the metallic howl of strange, mechanized hounds. Their sound was a cold promise of pursuit—reminding him that death hunted him relentlessly, from every dark corner. But there was no time to wallow. He staggered past a broken pipe where moss glowed with sickly light, an accidental reminder of life still clinging to the darkness. Every scar on his body screamed the price of becoming a Shardbearer. His pulse throbbed painfully, and with each agonizing step, he could feel the slow burn of corruption creeping further, a silent countdown.
In a narrow corridor, Kael came upon a gallery of fallen Shardbearers—the husks of men who had once wielded powers and died under the relentless strain of their bonds. Their bodies, twisted by corruption, stared out as mute warnings. Driven by a mix of survival instinct and bitter resolve, Kael let a weak burst of his own venom lash out in a spray of acidic fury. It erased the face of one mimic in a flash, and he coughed up the price in bitter black bile. The act was brief, brutal, and left him even more raw-edged and haunted.
Finally, as the feeble light of dawn seeped through a cracked ceiling far above, Kael clambered into the ruins of the Galloway Refinery—a sprawling graveyard of rusted walkways, shattered glass, and forgotten machinery. Here, the air reeked of oil, ozone, and the sick sweet decay of dead power. Collapsing behind a battered conveyor belt, he slumped into a pit of temporary solace. His Shard pulsed weakly in his chest, its once-vibrant promise now a dull throb against his failing heart.
With vision blurring from exhaustion and pain, he tugged at his torn sleeve and caught a glimpse of his left arm—a canvas of spreading black rot. Every inch of it was a testament to the slow murder raging inside him. "Fucking kill me already," he muttered between ragged breaths. But he couldn't let go. Not yet. Death, it seemed, was as distant as an enemy still to come.
In the collapsing dusk of his fading awareness, Kael's mind swirled with half-formed memories—of ambition, betrayal, and a cruel destiny—and then the darkness closed in.