This certainly wasn’t how Ace had pictured the afterlife.

  He stood in the center of the arena, staring at something he couldn’t fully comprehend. Whatever this thing was, he had no frame of reference for it, except perhaps as some mutated lovechild of a skinwalker and Slenderman.

  When the monstrosity fully extracted itself from the shadows, the utter wrongness of it struck Ace worst of all. Evolution had forgotten to finish this thing’s face. No mouth, no nose, just a blank canvas of twitching skin where features should have been.

  Rachel took a step backward. “What the ever-loving fuck is that?”

  Before anyone could tell her to shut up, the Fleshstitcher's head snapped toward her. Its frame contorted with liquid grace, razor-edged limbs uncoiling as it dropped into a hunter's crouch. The creature's pale flesh rippled, muscles and tendons sliding beneath translucent skin as it prepared to strike.

  Gone was the calculating observer. In its place coiled something that had evolved beyond the simple act of killing into something closer to biological art. Every movement promised swift, silent dismemberment. Each twitch of its bladed limbs left afterimages in Ace's vision, like watching death itself practice its stroke.

  And behind it, the shadows birthed dozens more.

  The arena erupted into chaos. The perfect silence shattered into a symphony of clicking bones and whispered death. These weren't just monsters—they were living weapons, honed by whatever sadistic intelligence guided the System's evolution protocols.

  And they were coming for blood.

  The tunnel vomited them into the arena like a nightmare given flesh. In seconds, roughly forty of the clawed bastards filled the ring. They moved with that distinctive start-stop rhythm that marked them as something fundamentally wrong—like watching a glitch in reality's code try to process organic movement. Each limb carved precise arcs through the air, their edges so sharp they left momentary distortions in their wake. The sound of their advance was all wrong too: a whisper-quiet chorus of clicking bones and softly scraping edges that promised silent, efficient dismemberment.

  Two collided in their forward rush, a ballet of lethal limbs that sent one stumbling. It caught itself on a fallen wolf's corpse, and its serrated hand cut clean through the beast’s body. No resistance. No tearing. The wolf's body split perfectly in two, steam rising from the perfectly cauterized edges. Internal organs spilled onto the sand with wet, meaty thuds.

  That had been a glancing touch. An accident.

  Ace wasn’t sure he wanted to know what would happen if they actually tried to kill something.

  The pack spread out in lawless clumps, with no clear direction or guidance. There was no alpha here, no order. Each scrambled toward Ace and his team with desperate hunger, ignorant to the other Fleshstitchers around it.

  These weren't just monsters. They were living nightmares—and these were just the babies. The unfinished products. He could only imagine what a full-grown one was like.

  Behind the gathered survivors in the arena, the dragon shifter's transformation continued its cosmic light show. Beams of light slithered across the ground, but Ace couldn't tear his eyes from the advancing horrors. He tried to calculate angles of attack or even escape routes, but he came up empty.

  This wouldn’t end well.

  Ace flexed his new claws, and his enhanced vision sharpened as they neared. The first Fleshstitcher to reach him launched itself forward, moving so fast it left afterimages.

  But Ace's combat-enhanced senses had already mapped the killing field, his new reflexes launching him into that split-second gap between the creature's tell and its strike. His claws still burning with fresh evolution from the wolf kills punched through translucent flesh with military precision. Black fluid pulsed once through alien veins as his fingers found what passed for a kill zone in this thing's twisted anatomy.

  The kill was clean. Clinical. Almost disappointing in its simplicity.

  Still, the moment held a certain brutal poetry, like watching death itself learn a new trick. But to Ace, it was just another target eliminated, another hostile neutralized. The System might have turned him into a monster, but at least it hadn't managed to override his training.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Then the EXP Solute hit, and Ace discovered what real evolution felt like.

  It started in his forearms. His veins burned, as though molten metal were replacing his blood. His muscles stretched like taffy pulled over a metal hook. His bones cracked as they realigned, each nerve ending screaming as it forged new pathways through his changing body. The world around him stretched into slow motion, perfectly clear.

  Even as he evolved, however, the waves of Fleshstitchers never slowed. The monsters’ movements clacked and chittered, a symphony of broken bones and clicking tongues.

  "Holy shit," Ace breathed as he flexed his fingers. New muscle memory wrote itself into his already honed battleworn instinct, turning his arms into precision instruments that could match these bastards edge for edge.

  The System's voice chimed in his head, sweet as cyanide-laced candy. “Think you can kill them all without losing any of your team, Sergeant?”

  To be honest, he didn’t know if he could—but he would sure as hell try.

  Three more Fleshstitchers rushed him, their translucent forms rippling with murderous intent. But where seconds ago they'd been death machines—moving so fast they were mostly just blurs—now Ace could track every micro-movement in high definition clarity.

  The closest Fleshstitchers lunged in unison, their bladed limbs threatening swift dismemberment. But to Ace's enhanced senses, they might as well have been moving through molasses. They wanted to eat him alive, and it was clear that they would rip him apart if he gave them the chance.

  Fine.

  Ace was ready.

  Instead of waiting for them to come like the rest of his makeshift team, he charged. His body blurred through the arena as he met them head-on.

  Fifty feet away.

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  He growled, the rumble low and deep in his chest, already lost in what he knew he had to do.

  Thirty feet.

  The beasts scrambled toward him, racing over each other as they quickly closed the gap.

  Ten feet.

  Rational thought was gone. His human half went quiet, and all that remained was the hunger.

  For blood.

  For murder.

  For death.

  When he reached the serrated bastards, he swiped with his good hand, and the world dissolved into pure predatory instinct.

  His claws ripped through the first Fleshstitcher's throat in a spray of black blood that painted the ground. His hunger only rose, vast and ancient, drowning out everything but the need for more.

  More blood.

  More power.

  More violence.

  The second creature's bladed limbs sang through the air, but Ace's body was already moving, vampire-fast and hunger-driven. He caught the killing stroke on his forearm, and a brief glint of crystalline scales erupted across his skin upon impact. They blocked the blow with an eerie twang. The creature's blank face leaned away, as if it were horrified of what had just happened, but Ace never faltered. His newly evolved claws punched clear through its chest, until he grabbed whatever passed for a heart in these things and ripped it from the damn thing’s body.

  More black blood. More of the EXP Solutes burning through his system. More hunger drowning out the last whispers of humanity.

  All he saw was the blur of semi-translucent bodies, and all he felt was rage.

  The third Fleshstitcher tried to retreat, its awkward legs faltering as it tried to escape. He caught it mid-stride, his good hand digging deep into the soft spot on its neck. He grabbed something that felt like bone and twisted, ripping its spine out from where it met the skull.

  The kill was messy. Primal. Nothing like his earlier clinical efficiency. Black blood ran down his arms, and the vampire within him snarled with pleasure.

  Rachel's voice came from somewhere far away, her tone tinged with panic, but a thick fog swirled through Ace’s head. He could only see the horde of prey-things advancing through the arena sand, their movements promising fresh blood, fresh evolution.

  The human part of him—the part that still remembered rules of engagement and brothers in arms—tried to surface.

  But the vampire in him had found its killing rhythm, and all it wanted was blood.

  The kills blurred together in a symphony of evolution and hunger. Each monster’s death evolved him, pushing him to be more, strengthening him into something entirely other. Bodies fell before him. Their dark blood splattered across the sand.

  The System said something, her voice echoing through his mind, but he wasn’t listening.

  Kills five through eight hit his system like Fentanyl mixed with raw bloodlust. His tendons unraveled and reconstructed themselves for explosive force, but it was the psychological changes that most enraptured him. Each kill felt better than the last, and his hunger grew with every drop of black blood spilled.

  By kill twelve, he wasn't just hunting anymore. His entire nervous system sang with predatory joy, reading the battlefield like a butcher's diagram. The human part of him watched in horror as the monster reveled in its evolution.

  The thirteenth Fleshstitcher died messily, its serrated limbs shattering as Ace tore through its defenses. Pain lanced through his broken ribs, still aching from where the wolf had thrown him against the wall, but his rage drowned out everything but primal need.

  For kills.

  For evolution.

  For bloodshed.

  Fletchstitchers number fourteen and fifteen fell in rapid succession, their deaths barely registering through the haze of predatory focus. His broken hand screamed in protest as he ripped through semi-translucent flesh, but the vampire within him didn't care.

  Sixteen tried to flank him. Seventeen died mid-lunge. By number twenty-six, the cuts were adding up—shallow slices across his arms, a deep gash in his side that refused to close. His enhanced hearing caught the creak of broken ribs grinding against each other with each movement.

  Careful, Sergeant.

  The System’s voice rang in his head, and he couldn’t tell if it was really her or just a memory.

  You don’t want to run low on HP now, do you? A little blood ought to fix you right up…

  Ah.

  A memory, then.

  The world around him went suddenly quiet, save for the lone Fleshstitcher scrambling desperately toward him. It lunged, and his instinct took over. He grabbed it by the neck, holding it suspended in midair above him, and it clawed at his wrist. Every time its claws scraped his skin, however, crystalline patches appeared and protected him from harm. Though the monster’s razor-sharp claws left deep gouges in his skin, it couldn’t slice his hands deep enough for him to let go. It screamed, the shrill shriek boring into his skull.

  Given the agonizing pain rippling through his body, and given how many of these bastards had already tried to kill him, he was not in a forgiving mood. His human side roared at him from the back of his mind, but it was distant, like a voice underwater, and all he cared to notice was the writhing bastard raised above his head as if it weighed nothing.

  Before he could second-guess himself, he slammed its head into a nearby pillar. The stone cracked from the impact, and the beast in his hand went limp.

  That should’ve been the end of it. No more monsters clawed their way toward him. The crowd cheered, the sound distant and muffled by his bloodlust. Everything in him expected the world to snap back into focus, and for him to come to his senses.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, his hunger only worsened.

  He teetered. He could feel himself getting weaker. He could feel how his grip loosened involuntarily as he tried to tighten his hand into a fist. He could sense his life fading from his body. His vision blurred from his injuries, from the several concussions he had no doubt gotten during his time in this cursed arena. The crowd’s roar only became more muffled, and his eyelids drooped as he struggled to stay on his feet.

  The last Fleshstitcher slumped to the ground, black blood pulsing through its veins and pooling beneath its corpse.

  At that, the hunger consuming his body roared, drowning out the last whispers of human hesitation. Ace's fangs extended, and he bit deep into translucent flesh.

  This was probably going to be disgusting as hell, but he needed to heal, and he was out of choices.

  The taste hit him like an artillery strike to his senses. Not metallic or rancid like he'd expected, but earthy—like freshly pulled carrots that had just been washed in a river, like life itself distilled into liquid form. His body sang as the blood hit his system. His bones snapped back in place. His skin knit itself together. The rush of EXP Solutes evolution burned through him like napalm in his veins.

  And it was ecstasy.

  When he was done, he dropped the corpse onto the ground. He spat, still somewhat disgusted with himself for giving in, but his wounds were gone. He studied his hands, and though they were drenched in blood, they were intact. The broken hand that had screamed in protest now flexed and curled on command without so much as a whisper of pain. His ribs had reforged themselves stronger than before. He had the sort of strength he had only dreamed of in his human life, and even as his sanity returned, he couldn’t deny the raw sensation of power he now carried within him.

  He stood, and in a rush, the roar of the crowd hit his senses. He winced in pain as his enhanced ears took it all in. The world around him sharpened. Colors became more vivid. Details in the stone that he had previously missed now seemed as obvious as a cloud in the sky.

  His makeshift team stood in the center of the ring surrounded by Fleshstitcher corpses, though there were more corpses by him than on their end of the field. The dragon shifter lay on the ground, lifeless amidst a pile of the monsters’ bodies, his head cut cleanly from his neck. He stared up at the cavern ceiling far above, his eyes still white from the transformation he evidently didn’t get to finish.

  Tara, Marcus, Victor, Rachel, and Olivia stood in a cluster, each of them watching him in silent horror, but he didn’t care.

  The System wanted him to be a monster—and to survive this bloodsoaked hellscape, maybe that was exactly what he had to become.

  So be it.

  He had a squad to protect, and he wasn’t going to die here. Not for the System’s amusement. Not for sport. Not for anything or anyone.

  Ace would get home, one way or another, and absolutely no one would stand in his way.

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