Chapter 9: What Remains of Me

Two years.

That was how long Ren had been trapped in the depths.

Time meant nothing inside this place. There was no sun. No sky. Just a churning black void beneath the stone floor, and whispering walls that echoed his name in voices that weren't his.

He had stopped counting the days after the first hundred. Stopped speaking after the first thousand screams. The only thing that remained was instinct. Feed. Survive. Devour. Repeat.

His body changed. Taller. Leaner. Hardened like obsidian. His eyes had turned a shade of crimson that pulsed in the dark. The black veins no longer pulsed—they thrived. The mark on his chest had spread, a lattice of red runes crawling up his neck, down his spine.

He had become something monstrous. Something feared.

And for a long time, he forgot why he ever feared it.

But tonight, something stirred. A flicker in the void of his thoughts.

A memory.

Yui.

Her laughter. Her tiny hands tugging on his sleeve, asking for stories. Asking if monsters had mommies too. Asking if daddy would come back one day.

Then Kaede. Stern and sharp, but kind beneath the surface. Always watching his back. Always trying to keep him human.

What would they think if he never returned?

What if Yui waited at the window every day, hoping to see his shadow walking up the road?

What if Kaede blamed herself?

The thought hit him harder than any creature had in years. Harder than any pain he'd endured. It cut deeper than claws, more savagely than hunger.

He dropped to his knees in the dark.

"I'm still here," he whispered.

The darkness screamed around him, furious.

"I'm still Ren."

He forced the memories forward. His mother's smile. The warmth of their cramped kitchen. Kaede's voice calling his name.

The hunger twisted inside him, resisting. But for the first time, he resisted back.

He stood slowly, trembling with effort. Around him, the shadows writhed. The masked entity that had once tested him now watched silently from the edge of the black.

"You want me to forget who I was," Ren growled, "but that boy—the one who scavenged to feed his family, who had nothing but kept going—he's still in here."

The dungeon howled.

Ren clenched his fists. "I'm not done yet."

And from somewhere deep in the dungeon, something cracked.

A path opened.

And Ren—broken, monstrous, and more determined than ever—walked forward.