The book flipped to a new page. One he’d never seen.
Node Sixteen: Forfeit Identity. Cost: Everything. Reward: The Old King rises.
Way of Corruption -v0.24- has been deleted. Press any key to begin again.
By node four ( Twist Flesh ), he could reshape his own sinew into blades. By node seven ( Aura of Despair ), lesser criminals groveled at his feet. By node ten, he had carved out a territory in the Warrens. They called him the Shadow Blade now—not just his moniker, but what he’d become. A living knife.
“You never walked the Way of Corruption,” she said in a voice like a tomb’s echo. “The Way walked you. You were just the last patch before the final version.”
The first node on the talent web was easy: Siphon Vitality . Kaelen drained a dying mongrel and felt his own cracked ribs knit. No price. Just gain.
Kaelen laughed. The sound came out like grinding stone.
Kaelen tried to drop the book. His hands—no longer quite hands—wouldn’t let go. Vesper stood behind him, her dead lips moving. She wasn’t speaking to him. She was speaking for it .
In his last moment of self, Kaelen understood: There was no balance. There was only the feast. And he had delivered himself, course by course, node by node, straight into the belly of the dark.
The second node, Shadowstep , cost him the memory of his mother’s face. He didn’t notice at first. He only knew, one morning, that the lullaby in his head had no singer.
And the Shadow Blade walked on.
Kaelen smiled. It felt wrong on his face. “Change is power.”
He’d been a street blade in the Lower Sprawl, one of the un-chosen, the un-blessed. When the shadow-taint first whispered to him—a sliver of obsidian magic that slid into his blood after a near-fatal wound—he’d welcomed it. Power, at last. A way up.
Vesper begged him to stop. “The Tome is tricking you. You’re not gaining power. You’re feeding it.”
“You’re changing,” whispered Vesper, his only friend—a rogue who still carried a child’s hope. “Your eyes. They’re like holes in the world.”