In an instant, the roar of the crowd died.

  The silence that followed sent a chill down Ace’s spine.

  He stood in the center of the arena, surrounded by Fleshstitcher corpses, and their blood was still warm on Ace's hands. He stared down at them, his back to his team once more as he tried to process what had happened—and what he had become.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he cautiously peered over one shoulder to see how his team was doing.

  But they were gone.

  He stiffened and scanned the ring, certain this was some sort of mistake. He must’ve blacked out in his bloodlust and lost track of them, or maybe they were simply behind one of the blood-drenched pillars, or—

  "Tara?" His voice hit dead air.

  No echo.

  No response.

  He slowly circled the pile of corpses that marked his warpath moments before, his combat boots grinding bone and gravel alike. Where Tara and the others had stood seconds ago, only the empty arena floor remained.

  They were simply gone.

  All of them.

  Their absence felt like a hole in his awareness, an exposed flank he couldn't guard. In the stadium seats far above him, a low murmur spread across the crowd. Thousands of whispers vibrated through ancient stone, their concern and dread almost like a physical pressure bearing down on his shoulders.

  Yet again, they knew something he didn’t.

  His enhanced hearing picked up individual voices now, betting odds and death threats mixing into a symphony of anticipated violence. The sound bounced off the arena walls, amplified by acoustics designed to make every scream echo.

  “What did you do with them?!” he demanded of the empty air.

  That infuriating child could hear him. He knew that much for certain.

  “Oh, they’re safe,” her faceless voice answered. It echoed in his brain, just as it had before, and there was a sinister lilt to her tone. “For now.”

  “Then what—”

  “You really are fun,” she interrupted. “You’re a worthy favorite, I think, but I want to make sure you deserve the title.”

  “I don’t want to be your favorite.”

  “Of course you do, silly.” She giggled, the haunting sound echoing in his mind and drowning out his thoughts. He winced as it grew louder, and a low growl of frustration rumbled through his chest.

  “I did what you wanted,” he snapped. “I killed something. Now, keep your end of the bargain and give me a weapon. I want out of this arena.”

  “Soon,” she replied. “If you survive, that is.”

  The System's voice dripped honey-sweet poison into his mind. She manifested before him—a little girl in a sundress, pristine amidst the gore. Her smile didn't reach her eyes. It never did. Each step she took left no footprints in the blood-soaked sand, as if she wasn't quite real.

  “Let's see what you're truly capable of, shall we?” she said.

  Ace's newly enhanced vision caught every detail of her expression. The predatory gleam in pupils that were too dark and too deep. The way her skin seemed to ripple like oil on water when she moved.

  The arena floor began to shift, ancient mechanisms grinding beneath the stone. Ace dropped into a defensive stance, his military training meshing with new predatory instincts. The sound of rusted chains echoed through the chamber as massive gates rose from the ground, the metal screaming against stone as yet another set of doors opened into the arena. Something shifted in the darkness beyond—something big enough to make the Fleshstitchers look like practice dummies.

  Whatever the System had planned, he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of seeing him break.

  But as the gates lifted higher, revealing glowing eyes in the shadows, Ace had to wonder if breaking him was exactly what she had in mind.

  “Weapon,” he demanded. “Now.”

  She laughed again, walking closer to him with measured steps, and there was a sinister glint in her eye. “So bossy, Sergeant. Then again, I guess you’re used to bossing others around, aren’t you?”

  “That was the deal,” he pressed.

  Before she could respond, shadows spilled into the arena from the door like an oil slick, spreading across blood-stained stone. The torchlight cast long shimmers through the smoke as it glided across the ground. The darkness had weight. Presence. Hunger. It pooled and gathered, coalescing into a form that made Ace's newly enhanced predator instincts scream in warning.

  Red eyes ignited in the void—twin points of hellfire floating in absolute darkness. It took a few more moments before the entity fully took shape, and from the smoke stepped a towering bear. It was a thing of nightmares. Eight feet of pure terror manifested before him, its fur so black it seemed to devour light. Each movement left trailing wisps of shadow, like ink bleeding through water.

  “What the fuck is that?!” Ace asked.

  “It’s a nightmare bear!” the System said as she clapped her hands happily.

  Huh.

  An appropriate name.

  The nightmare bear emerged from the shadows as if the blackness itself was giving birth to a monster. Its claws dragged across the arena floor, carving furrows in solid stone. The gouges it left behind smoked with residual darkness, as if reality itself was wounded by the creature's touch.

  "Do you like him?" The System's voice carried a teacher's proud enthusiasm. "I summoned him here just for you.”

  “How flattering,” Ace said dryly.

  “It’s like this,” she continued, oblivious to his sarcasm. “You keep trying to hold onto what you were. Noble Marine. Decorated sergeant. Hero." She spat the last word like a curse. "But that's not our deal, is it?"

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  The bear's head swung toward Ace, its jaws parting to reveal teeth like rusted daggers. Shadow dripped from its maw, sizzling where it hit the ground. The stench of rot and ruin rolled off its fur in waves—the smell of graves and decay and things that should stay buried.

  "You promised to be my monster," the System continued, circling him with predatory grace. "My perfect little killer. But you keep fighting it. You keep trying to stay human, when you’re simply not. So it’s time for a little lesson on how to tap into your darker side! Let's see how long those morals last when you're fighting something that doesn't even pretend to play fair."

  The bear rose onto its hind legs, towering over him. Its shadow stretched across the arena floor, somehow darker than the void of its fur. Those burning eyes fixed on Ace with terrible intelligence.

  “Too bad you haven’t picked a class yet.” The System clicked her tongue in mock disappointment. “You really need skills to fight off something this powerful. You can’t even tell what Level it is.”

  “So that’s what this is about.” He grimaced and shook his head in frustration. “You’re punishing me for telling the others to wait before choosing their classes.”

  In answer, she simply grinned.

  He studied the bear again as the smoke around it slowly coalesced into its fur, though wisps still rolled off its body in putrid waves that reminded Ace of a rotting corpse. It snarled and rose onto its hind legs, studying him intently.

  Damn it. He needed information. Intel. Weaknesses. Strengths. Things to avoid.

  “Is there some kind of prompt that can tell me about this thing?” he asked the little girl beside him. “Like that stats screen you showed me earlier?”

  “Sure,” she said with a lazy shrug. “But you don’t have Identify, so you don’t have access to any of that information.”

  He groaned in annoyance.

  This little girl was getting on his nerves.

  “Good luck, Sergeant,” she said sweetly. In an instant, the System disappeared, leaving a twinkle of white light in the air.

  The creature before him roared. The sound sent shockwaves through the ground, and Ace sank into his stance as the arena floor trembled beneath the monster’s scream. It crescendoed, and Ace felt something crack inside his chest. The sound carried power beyond mere volume—it was as though this thing were trying to break something fundamental in him, to shatter whatever remained of his humanity. The arena floor fractured beneath the sonic assault, spiderweb cracks racing through stone that had weathered centuries of bloodsport.

  Ace sank into his stance as the tremors intensified, letting muscle memory and new predatory instincts guide his posture. The world sharpened around him, his enhanced senses cutting through the shadow-smoke pouring from the bear's jaws.

  The System had summoned this nightmare just for him.

  Fine.

  It was time to show her what Marines did with nightmares.

  The beast charged. Its claws dug into the arena floor, kicking up dust as it exploded forward with impossible speed. One moment it stood thirty feet away. The next, it loomed over him, its front claw raised to strike.

  Ace's enhanced reflexes acted on instinct. He launched into a combat roll, a maneuver that had saved his life countless times in active duty.

  It wasn’t enough.

  The bear adjusted mid-charge with fluid grace that defied its massive bulk. Shadow trailed behind it like ink in water as it pivoted, compensating for his evasion before he had even completed it.

  He skidded to a stop and twisted out of the way, throwing himself backward in a desperate attempt to avoid getting his head ripped open by this towering monster. The bear's left paw carved through the space where his torso had been a fraction of a second earlier. Claws longer than combat knives ripped through the air. The attack missed his skin but caught his shirt, shredding fabric like tissue paper.

  Ace's thoughts raced as he recovered his footing. The beast moved like no natural predator he had ever studied. Its mass shifted incorrectly, too fluidly, as if it wasn't bound by the laws of physics. Each of its movements left afterimages of pure darkness, making it impossible to track its true position.

  It loomed over him yet again, and he slashed with his clawed fingers as the bear pressed its advantage. His blow clashed with its midnight-black fur, and his attack slammed against its massive bulk with all the resistance of punching a brick wall. The impact jarred his arms clear up to his shoulder. The bear's hide didn't just resist him—it seemed to drink in his body’s momentum, leaving his arms numb.

  The sergeant pushed off the bear and jumped out of its reach. He rolled onto his feet and sank again into a fighting stance as he scanned it for weaknesses.

  “Well,” he muttered to himself. “This is just fucking great.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” the System asked.

  He didn’t bother looking around for her. Her voice echoed in his head yet again, and he figured he wouldn’t even see her if he looked back.

  Besides, despite her immense power, the bear was the more pressing threat.

  The creature's burning eyes fixed on him with cruel intelligence. Shadow-smoke curled from between them like exhaled poison.

  "Having fun yet?" The System's voice carried clearly over the bear's rumbling growl. "This is what happens when you try to play by old rules, Sergeant. Time to embrace what you've become."

  Ace didn't waste breath responding. The bear was already moving again, its bulk defying inertia as it flowed toward him like living darkness. He had seconds to figure out a new strategy before those claws dug into him.

  Standard combat tactics weren't going to cut it. It was time to see what his newfound vampire nature could really do.

  Ace exploded forward, crossing the space between them in a blink of an eye thanks to his newfound speed. His claws extended instinctively, black talons that could rend steel. He struck like a viper, targeting the bear's extended foreleg—a disabling blow that had dropped bigger targets in combat.

  His claws bit deep. To his relief, the thing didn’t have an armored hide. It was just flesh and fur, ripe to be ripped apart just like any other creature.

  The bear's roar of pain shook dust from the arena ceiling. Black blood that moved like living shadow sprayed from the wound, but Ace didn't have time to celebrate. The creature's right paw clawed through the air, forcing him to duck. The left followed in a brutal uppercut that defied natural movement.

  Ace threw himself backward, but not fast enough. Claws wreathed in darkness raked across his chest. His reinforced skin flickered with crystalline light where the attack landed, but the bear's supernatural strength pushed through his defenses. The wound burned like acid boiling away at his skin, and he gritted his teeth in agony. Shadow energy seeped into the gash.

  The sergeant stumbled backward, his hand pressed against his bleeding chest, and he sucked in greedy gulps of air as the intense burn spread through his body. He grimaced, still trying to catch his breath, and he glared at the beast with raw hatred.

  “I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he said.

  In answer, it snorted and roared.

  Ace charged. He pushed through the pain, and his enhanced speed carried him toward the bear's flank. It was a solid move—one that had worked against larger opponents countless times. Get inside their reach, deny them leverage, control the engagement.

  But the bear moved like smoke in a hurricane.

  Its entire body pivoted with impossible grace. Its rear leg caught Ace mid-motion, a perfectly timed counter that slammed into his torso with the force of a truck.

  His skin flared with crystalline light at the point of impact, but the bear's raw power overwhelmed even his vampire durability. The impact launched him skyward. He tried to correct his trajectory, to twist into a landing he could roll with, but tendrils of darkness wrapped around him mid-flight. They pulled against his movement, turning controlled flight into helpless tumbling.

  Stone cracked as he hit the arena wall fifteen feet up. The impact kicked the air from his lungs and sent fresh waves of agony through his shadow-tainted wounds. He dropped to the ground, his newfound vampiric durability the only thing keeping his spine intact.

  Damn it.

  That hurt.

  His standard combat playbook was worse than useless. Every trained response, every tactical pattern he'd developed over years of warfare—the bear read them all like a children's book. He needed something different, something unpredictable.

  But as the creature stalked toward him, shadow smoking from its fur like heat waves off hot asphalt, Ace had no idea what that something was. His predatory instincts screamed at him with conflicting impulses: attack, flee, feed, survive. The tactician in him demanded a plan while the predator demanded bloodshed.

  The bear's burning eyes fixed on him, and Ace saw his own reflection in them—a soldier trying to fight like a human in a monster's war.

  Maybe that was the problem.

  Maybe—just maybe—the System was right.

  It seemed as though only monsters could survive in this hellscape, and perhaps that truly was what he had to become to survive.

  A blood-hungry beast.

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