Chapter One: Blood and Cards
Downtown Houston
August 5th, 2040 — Day One After the Draw
The city was burning.
Kael Mercer moved through the wreckage like a ghost—eyes sharp, footsteps silent, Glock empty at his side. The streets he once patrolled were unrecognizable. Ash rained like snow. Fire licked the bones of buildings. A toppled bus lay on its side, blood smeared across the shattered windshield.
The world hadn’t just ended.
It had been rewritten.
“Isla… Ember…” he whispered, voice hoarse. “Please be alive.”
Then he heard it—skittering. Fast. Too fast.
Kael ducked behind a crushed sedan just as something barreled across the intersection. Long limbs. Pale exoskeleton. A nightmare shaped like a spider and a corpse had a child. It sniffed the air with a split-open face, lips peeled back from needle-teeth.
Monster. Class: Raker. Tier: Uncommon.
The card embedded in Kael’s hand glowed. Information pulsed across his mind like a HUD overlay.
He wasn’t ready.
He only had one summon—the glitched thing from yesterday—and it hadn’t returned. No deck. No equipment. No backup.
All he had was a broken badge, an empty gun, and the will to fight.
The creature snapped its head toward him.
Kael ran.
Boots slamming against concrete. Adrenaline screaming. He dodged left, dove through the broken window of a pawn shop, and rolled behind a counter just as the beast crashed through the glass behind him.
The card in his hand pulsed violently.
“Summon denied. Entity unstable. System override in progress.”
“Not now,” Kael growled, slamming the glowing card against the counter. “Come on! COME ON!”
The monster shrieked—too close. Claws scraped tile.
And then—
BZZZT.
The air screamed. A distortion peeled open in front of him.
The glitched summon returned.
It didn’t walk. It unfolded, like data from a corrupted file spilling into reality. Its form warped constantly—no shape, no face, just a blur of blades and shadow stitched together by code and rage.
It charged.
Kael watched, wide-eyed, as the summon collided with the Raker. Claws met corruption. Blood sprayed the ceiling. The Raker hissed, striking fast—only to lose two legs in a blink.
The summon twisted—ripped it in half.
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Kael stood slowly, chest heaving.
A light flickered above the monster’s corpse.
A card.
Glowing. Real.
He reached out—hand trembling—and grabbed it.
[Card Acquired: REAVER SLASH – Uncommon | Cipher Type]
Effect: Delivers a medium-speed, armor-piercing strike. Consumes 10 Aether.
His mind reeled. The knowledge burned into him, like muscle memory being written instantly.
I can use this, he thought. This is how they fight now. How they survive.
The glitched summon turned its head toward him. Or maybe it didn’t. Hard to tell. It didn’t speak, but something brushed against Kael’s mind—cold, sharp, mechanical.
“Kill. Fuse. Ascend.”
Then it vanished again.
Silence returned.
Kael stood in the broken shop, heart pounding, staring down at the glowing card in his palm.
He didn’t know how to fuse. Didn’t know what “Aether” was.
Didn’t know what came next.
But he knew one thing:
This wasn’t a game.
This was a war.
And the only way to survive…
Was to play.
***
Kael stared down at the card in his hand.
REAVER SLASH.
It glowed faintly in the dim light, pulsing with a rhythm that felt alive—like it had a heartbeat. Or worse… like it was syncing with his.
“What the hell are you?” he muttered.
No one answered. The glitched summon was gone, and the Raker’s corpse was dissolving into black mist, the way everything did now after death—efficient, clinical, final.
Kael stepped over the remains and exited the pawn shop.
The streets were quieter now. The fires still burned, but the screaming had stopped.
Too quiet.
He turned a corner and found shelter—a collapsed gas station, its roof caved in, but the walls still standing. He slipped inside and found an old breakroom, half-buried in debris. Safe enough. For now.
He sat down.
Then the pain hit.
A spike through his skull—raw data tearing into his thoughts. Lines of glyphs and runes scrolled across his vision, searing themselves into his memory like hot iron. Kael groaned, gripping his temples.
Then—clarity.
A new voice. Not like the one that Bound him. This one was colder. Inhuman. Systemic.
AETHERBIND SYSTEM ACTIVE.
ONE CARD EQUIPPED. FOUR SLOTS AVAILABLE.
NO DECK BONUSES DETECTED.
NO ARMOR. NO COMPANIONS. NO PASSIVES.
STATUS: WEAK. VULNERABLE. LIKELY DEAD SOON.
Kael let out a bitter laugh. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
Then, more data.
Card Types: — Summon | Cipher | Relic | Event
Card Limit: 5 Equipped
Aether Pool: [Locked]
Deck Fusion: UNLOCKED
— 10 Common → 1 Uncommon
— 10 Uncommon → 1 Rare
— 10 Rare → 1 Epic
— 10 Epic → 1 Legendary
— 10 Legendary → 1 Mythbound
Note: Player-kill drops bypass rarity evolution. High-tier guaranteed.
Kael’s mouth went dry.
It spelled it out so casually. So cold. Like murder was just another mechanic.
He leaned back against the cracked wall, mind racing.
He’d spent fifteen years enforcing the law. Chasing killers. Chasing monsters.
Now the system rewarded them.
He held up the Reaver Slash card again. It shimmered, waiting to be equipped.
A choice.
He pressed it to his chest. It vanished in a pulse of light, and suddenly the knowledge was there—where to stand, how to move, how to swing. The cipher move etched into his body.
[REAVER SLASH equipped in Slot 1]
Aether Cost: 10 | Aether Pool: [Still Locked]
Locked, Kael thought. Figures. I can swing a ghost sword, but I’ve got no juice to swing it with.
He needed more cards. More kills.
And that terrified him.
Because if the only way to level up was to kill monsters—or people—then this system wasn’t just testing survival.
It was testing humanity.
He remembered the man he'd interrogated, just before it all began. A murderer. Unrepentant. Smiling in chains.
That man would thrive in this world.
Kael?
He wasn’t so sure.
Suddenly, movement outside.
Kael rose instantly, peering through the broken frame of the window.
Two figures. Human. Armed. Talking low.
Then one of them laughed—and shoved the other to the ground.
A flash of steel. Blood sprayed.
Kael’s heart sank.
The killer picked up something glowing from the corpse. A card. Slipped it into his deck like it was nothing.
He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t afraid.
He was farming.
Kael stepped back, fists clenched.
This was the new world.
Cards were currency. Power. Survival.
And killing people was the shortcut.
He looked at his single equipped card. Then at the empty slots beside it.
Four more to go.
The system whispered again, low and hungry:
Kill. Fuse. Ascend.
Kael Mercer holstered his empty Glock. Then he drew the card’s power into his hand and felt the blade form—half-real, jagged and pulsing with alien fire.
He didn’t know what he was yet.
But he wasn’t going down easy.
Not for the system.
Not for the monsters.
And not for the bastards playing god in this broken game.
