Mag Beast Leveling

Vincent let out a scream that shattered the silence.

It wasn't just rage. It was something deeper.

A sound came, torn from the bottom of his heart the primal wail of grief, of loss, of failure.

Vira was dead.

Her weightlessness in his embrace, her skin too pale, too cold.

Her light her essence had shattered.

The last of the life left in her had departed.

And Vincent had nothing else to give.

His claws dug into her shoulders, rattling her.

"Vira!" His voice was raw, hoarse, about to crack.

"Wake up, dammit!"

Nothing.

Not even a breath.

His stomach twisted, his heart choked, a crack crept open and split into his mind as it ripped apart.

He had done everything.

He had fought. He had killed.

He had devoured Xandros.

And it still wasn't enough.

A cold recognition ran down his spine, digging into his flesh like barbed wire.

He had won.

But he had lost everything.

His vision blurred. His body trembled.

Out there, everything fell into a black hole of blood and oblivion.

Then—

A whisper.

Faint. Fragile.

Not a voice. Not words.

Something else.

Something is calling him.

Vincent raised his head, blood-slicked fingers still coiled over Vira's skin.

The castle the royal place of death was still now.

From the depths came a sound.

A heartbeat.

Slow. Deep.

And it was coming from…

Vincent's own chest.

He froze.

Then pain.

A burning, white-hot pain tore across his ribs, as if something in him had kicked into wakefulness and wanted out.

It was a catch of breath from Vincent, a gasp.

His vision smeared, black veins creeping slowly up his arms, his skin wrinkling, vibrating.

And then

His body convulsed.

The Transformation

His spine arched.

His claws raked the stone floor, his teeth gnashing against one another.

Out of his mouth dribbled black ichor; something stirred inside him, coiling, writhing.

Xandros.

No.

Something worse.

Something far older.

Vincent's own veins swelled, writhing like living snakes under his skin. The whispers became roars, hisses, chants, and screams.

He wasn't alone.

Not anymore.

And then crack open his ribs.

Wide.

Like a second mouth opening, a grotesque yawn of a big mouth in his own chest.

And within it.

Something was moving.

It was crawling up his throat.

Vincent choked, his own fingers tearing into his flesh, but it was too late.

Tangled and out of sight, what lay inside him pushed outside.

Sorry, you are about to break a no-sex destructive of human society. KAWAAAAMMMM! And a horrible, turgid, wet SHRRRIP!, it burst out a writhing tangle of darkness and muscle, a chitinous monster of snaking filaments and shimmering, alien eyes.

It wheezed, sucking its first puff of air.

Then it laughed.

It is a deep, guttural, primeval sound.

Vincent pitched forward, blood spraying as he coughed.

His head spun, his vision blurring.

And when he finally looked up.

The thing looked back at him.

It was tall, monstrous, a skeletal figure enveloped in black sinews and dripping, thumping veins.

Its face was nearly human nearly except for its too-wide mouth, the jagged teeth within, and the empty pits where its eyes should be.

It grinned.

"Good job, Vincent," the creature hissed.

"You gave me a body again."

Vincent's stomach dropped.

This wasn't Xandros.

It was what Xandros hadn't wanted to happen.

The thing that lingers in the dark.

The true nightmare.

And Vincent had just blown his top."

The Bargain

The beast turned to look at him.

It inched closer, its shape writhing with unholy power.

"Don't look so horrified," it mused.

"This was always your fate."

Vincent's jaw clenched.

"The f*ck are you?"

The thing chuckled. "Names are for the weak. For the bound.

I was many people, with many names.

A god.

A demon.

A sickness.

A whisper in the dark."

It leaned closer.

"And now, Vincent, I am within you."

Vincent tensed.

The power still thrummed in his veins.

His body hungered for additional destruction, more violence.

And the thing knew it.

"You can feel it, can't you?" it murmured. "

The hunger.

The need.

You were never born to just be a man.

And that is what Xandros was after you for. EightVira, he liked you and kept saying it.

Vincent felt a knot in his chest at the mention of Vira.

It sighed, taking in her corpse.

"Ah, yes. The girl." It bent down, pressed one hooked finger to her forehead. "She's not gone all the way, you know.

Vincent froze.

"What?"

The creature's grin widened.

"She's still here," it mused. "A spirit broken, trying to hold on to the pieces. But it won't last. She will fade, unless…"

It left the word in the air.

Vincent's fists clenched. "Unless what?"

The creature crouched down beside him, its voice a whisper.

"Unless you take her back."

Vincent's breath hitched. "Take her back?"

The thing's many eyes burned.

"You absorbed Xandros. You drank his power, pulled his essence into you." It gestured toward Vira. "Do the same to her."

Vincent stared. His body felt cold.

"Devour her soul," said the thing, silk-smooth.

"Bind her to you. Let her occupy your being, be part of you. She won't be the same. But she won't be gone."

The words writhed in his head, curling around him like shackles.

This was wrong.

It was monstrous.

But…

Vira was dead.

She was gone.

Unless.

Unless he did this.

His hands quivered as he brought them to her.

Her body was still and empty and waiting.

Vincent's breath was shaky.

His heart pounded.

And then.

He made his choice.

Vincent's hands shook over a lifeless Vira.

His fingers shook, wet with blood some hers, some his, some of the abominations he had butch­ered.

The creature the thing that had slithered out from within his own ribs, the thing that he'd willingly freed from his own cage gazed down at him with those abyssal eyes.

"What's wrong?" it said with a playful laugh. "You have already torn yourself apart for her. Why hesitate now?"

Vincent's jaw clenched.

He knew what this was.

A test. A temptation.

He had already devoured Xandros whole. Let something dark sink its roots into his soul.

And now, it was a decision he had to make.

But if he held Vira's spirit inside him, then she wasn't lost. She wouldn't fade.

But she wouldn't be the same.

Neither would he.

The creature leaned closer. "Tick, tock, Vincent. She doesn't have much time."

Vincent's breath was ragged. His heart pounded.

Then he made his choice.

His fingers scrabbled into the fucking hole where Vira's chest used to be.

And he pulled.

A Soul Devoured

The moment he seized her soul, a piercing pain tore through his entire body.

And I felt something on the inside ripping him apart shredding his soul, shredding every human part of him.

A hurricane of memories, of voices, of screams, slammed into his head in one go.

Vira's first kill.

Vira's nightmares, the terror she had never dared to articulate.

The way she had always been turned on in the light of him, even when he frightened her.

The moment she died, when she looked at him, wondering if he would save her.

Vincent gurgled, the back of his throat aflame. His vision whited out.

Vira's soul mingling with his.

Her fear, her fury, her desire.

All of it was becoming his.

And he was becoming hers.

Vincent's back exploded in an arc.

His veins blackened. His bones cracked, moved, spread, and expanded.

And finally, when his eyes opened wide.

They weren't his anymore.

Rebirth in Darkness

Vincent staggered, gasping.

His body felt wrong stretched, twisted, plumped with something other.

The creature smiled in front of him.

"Good," it whispered.

Vincent's breath came ragged.

His hands trembled.

He could feel Vira in him, scraping against the edges of his consciousness, shrieking.

Not in pain.

In rage.

Then his body convulsed.

A violent surge of power erupted from inside him, splintering cracks through the blood drenched ground.

His skin split.

Two jagged, grotesque wings crested from his back half bloody bone, half shadow, black ichor pooled around their anchored bone.

His nails had become long and wicked claws, really.

He had a mouth, but it was distorted into something not human, teeth jagged now, more suited to rending flesh.

But the worst part.

His voice.

When he inhaled, two voices inhaled together.

His.

And Vira's.

"What have you done?"

Its study completed, the creature laughed and stepped back.

"Oh, Vincent," it purred. "You don't know how beautiful you've become."

Vincent grasped his head and shook it.

His brain was fracturing, splintering into something that was not itself.

Vira was there underneath him integrated, not gone but not whole.

He had saved her.

But at what cost?

Then, he felt it

A pulse.

Not from him.

From her.

The First Kill Together

The creature tilted its head.

"How do you feel?"

Vincent's breath hitched. His claws twitched.

He was consumed by something new, something raw, and his body quaked.

He slowly turned to face the being.

It had helped him.

It had guided him.

And now

He wanted to rip it apart.

The thing didn't quite seem to catch on to this a moment too late.

Vincent was too fast for it to have been possible, his body a blur of black tendril and hunger.

His claws raked across the creature's breast, penetrating deep, gripping something vital.

Its face twisted in shock.

"Vincent"

He tore it out.

With one twisting tug, he extracted its heart, the pulsating black clump held tightly in his talonlike palm.

It writhed, its body failing it as you watched the once-formed muscle fall to a circular puddle of shadow.

Vincent didn't hesitate.

He bit and swallowed the heart.

A New Monster is Born

The air split.

Something inside him howled.

The castle shook.

And as Vincent gazed upward, the light in his eyes was beyond human comprehension.

He had eaten a god.

He had consumed the thing that had tried to control him.

He had attached Vira to himself, so she was alive but not herself.

And now he had transformed into something else.

Something beyond human.

Something worse than Xandros.

The last remnant of the shape of the creature melted away.

Vincent was the only one left, panting in the broken hall. His talons oozed black blood.

And in his mind, it said: Vira.

Not in anger.

Not in horror.

But with satisfaction.

"Now we are the same."

Vincent took a breath; the exhalation rose in circles, like smoke.

Then he walked away, never looking back.

He had a new path to carve.

A new throne to take.

And it would be made of the bodies of those who had made him a monster.