Chapter Two: Wolves in Human Skin
The sun never rose.
Not really. Aether clouds choked the sky—veins of glowing color that pulsed through the atmosphere like a disease. Daylight had become a filtered haze, casting long, unnatural shadows across the wreckage of Houston.
Kael moved through it like a ghost, his footsteps silent, Reaver Slash pulsing faintly beneath his skin.
He hadn’t seen another living soul since the card-killer.
Until now.
Gunfire crackled in the distance. Close.
Kael sprinted toward it, weaving through overturned cars and burned-out storefronts. He crept to the edge of a collapsed parking garage and climbed the side, boots scraping concrete. At the top, he saw them:
A group of survivors—six of them—encircled, backs to a barricade of cars.
Surrounding them: three monsters. Scythefangs—quadrupedal things with bone-blades for tails and armor-plated skulls. One was already down, twitching, oozing blue ichor.
Another survivor screamed—dragged to the ground by one of the beasts. Blood sprayed high.
“Shit.”
Kael didn’t hesitate.
He leapt from the garage. Rolled on impact. Drew the blade from the card.
It burned into existence in his hand—Reaver Slash, flickering and unstable but real. He charged, letting the instinct the card gave him take over.
SLASH.
He caught the Scythefang mid-pounce, carving a burning gash across its flank. It shrieked, flailed—and then another survivor finished it off with a Relic weapon: a chained hammer made of black obsidian, crackling with runes.
The last beast lunged at Kael.
He dodged left, rolled, and drove the blade upward into its gut. The creature convulsed—and exploded into mist.
The street fell silent.
Cards rained down.
Kael stood there, panting, covered in ichor, the blade fading from his grip.
And six guns turned toward him.
“Drop your shit,” someone barked. “Now.”
Kael didn’t move. “Not looking for trouble.”
“That so?” A woman stepped forward, face smeared with ash, eyes cold and hard. “'Cause trouble usually shows up wielding a cipher blade and no team.”
She wore body armor—half-melted. Her badge was scorched, but he could still read it: Lieutenant Kara Voss.
HPD. Or what was left of it.
Kael slowly raised his hands. “Detective Mercer. Homicide. Badge number three-one-three—”
“Save it,” she snapped. “You don’t get to throw titles in this world.”
Another survivor, younger, blood on his cheek, stepped closer. “He just saved our asses, Kara.”
“Or he led them here,” she spat.
“I didn’t,” Kael said. “I heard gunfire. I ran toward it.”
“Yeah? That makes you the dumbest bastard alive. Or the most dangerous.”
She stepped forward and stared him down.
Kael didn’t flinch.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Finally, she lowered her weapon—barely. “You’re with us. For now. But if you so much as blink wrong, I’ll gut you and feed you to whatever’s still breathing out there. Got it?”
Kael nodded once. “Fair enough.”
They moved out fast—no time for bonding. The group scavenged the monster corpses for drops, fusing low-tier cards on the go. Kael watched them sacrifice ten Uncommons into one Rare. The air shimmered, and the new card blinked into the leader’s deck.
Kara saw him watching.
“You get it yet?” she asked.
Kael stayed silent.
She sneered. “The monsters aren’t the threat. They’re just the fuel.”
Another survivor laughed—too loud. Too long.
“You wanna live, Detective? You better get real comfortable watching people die for your power.”
Kael looked at the card in his hand. At the empty slots waiting to be filled.
The group moved forward.
And Kael followed—into the city’s corpse. Into the system’s rules.
But inside, something twisted. Something ancient. His summon pulsed faintly in the back of his mind.
And for a moment, it felt like something else was watching.
Not the monsters. Not the survivors.
Something beneath it all.
***
The survivor convoy moved like a hunted pack—tight formation, weapons drawn, eyes scanning every alley, every rooftop. The sun was still choked behind clouds of bleeding light, and the air smelled like ozone and rot.
Kael kept his distance.
He didn’t belong here. Not really.
He should’ve been searching.
Nolan. Liora. Isla. Ember. Their names echoed with every step he took.
But Houston was too big. Too broken. And right now, staying alive was the only way to find them.
“You’re quiet,” said the younger man beside him—early twenties, buzzed hair, a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Name’s Wren.”
“Kael.”
“You saved my ass back there. Appreciate it.” He glanced around, lowered his voice. “Kara’s not as cold as she seems. She’s just trying to hold this together. We lost seven people yesterday. One of ’em was her brother.”
Kael nodded once. He understood loss. He was breathing it.
They reached a makeshift camp in the ruins of an old hotel. The lobby was half-collapsed, reeking of mold and blood, but it had walls—and in this world, walls meant life.
As the group settled, Kara barked orders.
“Card check. Aether count. Fusion priority to anyone still Tier Zero.”
Kael raised a brow. “Tier Zero?”
“Means you’ve got jack shit,” Wren muttered. “No fused cards. No Aether pool. Barely human, according to the system.”
Kael’s hand twitched. The Reaver Slash was still his only equipped card—and his summon hadn’t returned since the fight.
He was Tier Zero.
Kara pointed at him. “You. New guy. System’s clocking you as ‘anomaly.’ That true?”
Kael didn’t answer.
She stepped closer, eyes sharp. “The system said you’ve got a summon. But no deck. No pool. The system doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“Neither do I,” Kael said. “It comes when it wants. When I’m about to die.”
“Sounds like a curse,” she muttered. “Or a cheat code.”
Kael looked at the card embedded in his palm. “Can you help me unlock the pool?”
Wren nodded. “There’s a way. Painful, but fast.”
“How?”
“You bleed Aether from death,” Kara said flatly. “But monsters don’t give enough.”
Her eyes locked with his.
“You want your power? You take it the way this world was designed.”
Kael’s blood ran cold.
She meant player-kill.
“No,” he said, jaw tight.
Kara shrugged. “Then stay weak.”
Suddenly, a scream rang out from the far stairwell.
Everyone froze.
“Perimeter!” Kara snapped.
Kael bolted ahead before the others reacted, following the sound up the ruined stairs to the second floor.
He found the source.
A girl. No older than Isla. Fifteen. Maybe sixteen. Clothes torn. Covered in dust and blood. She was crying—shaking—cornered by one of the survivors. A big man. Muscles like concrete. Eyes empty.
He had his card out. It pulsed with greedy light.
“No,” Kael said.
The man turned slowly. Smiling.
“She’s nothing. Only one card, no real power. System won’t even notice.”
“Step away.”
“I need my next tier,” the man hissed. “You think I care about some stray?”
Kael stepped forward. “I won’t let you touch her.”
The man laughed—and drew his card.
A crackling bolt of fire formed in his hand.
Kael raised Reaver Slash.
They clashed.
The fire bolt missed wide. Kael moved like a phantom, instincts from the cipher flowing through his veins. He dodged, closed the gap, and cut deep. The man screamed as his arm tore open—his card vanishing mid-charge.
Then Kael saw it.
The system reacted.
[AETHER POOL UNLOCKED – INITIALIZED FROM PLAYER INTERVENTION]
Aether Level: 100/100
Not from a kill.
From saving.
The system recognized it.
Kael’s eyes widened. He stood over the groaning man, Reaver Slash fading from his grip. The girl sobbed behind him.
Wren arrived seconds later. Stared at the scene. At Kael.
“Jesus.”
Kara followed—gun raised. She saw the wound, the girl, the bleeding survivor.
“What the hell happened?”
Kael looked up, breathing hard.
“He was going to kill her. For a drop.”
Kara stared at the man. Then at the girl. Then back at Kael.
She didn’t lower the gun.
“He was one of ours.”
Kael’s grip tightened. “Not anymore.”
Kara’s face twitched. “You disobeyed my command. You picked a stranger over your squad.”
Kael took a step forward.
“I picked humanity.”
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Kara lowered the weapon.
“You just made enemies.”
Kael turned to Wren. “I already had them.”
That night, Kael sat alone in the shadows of the hotel ruins.
The girl—named Evie—was safe now, curled beside a broken vending machine.
And in his hand, Reaver Slash pulsed stronger. Aether swirled beneath his skin for the first time. Power, earned not through slaughter—but resistance.
He didn’t know what he was.
But he was not a player-killer.
And if this system hated that?
Then let it hate him.
He would burn it down to find his family.
Even if he had to fight every living soul left on Earth to do it.
