Shawn brought his tiny hands up to feel his face. He had overestimated himself, he hadn’t been ready to steal an advanced stat. Now, he was paying the price. He tugged at his soft fur, he was a rat. However, the situation wasn’t all bad. Unlike last time this had happened to him, he had managed to hold on to his sense of self to some degree.

He knew that his current mental state would not last. Within his mind, a war was being waged between his rat and human side. Surprisingly, the rat was winning the mental battle. He liked to think that his sense of self was more powerful than a rat's, and it probably was, but the home turf advantage was too much for him to overcome.

Before long, the human side of his brain lost the battle. Shawn groaned as his mind slowed, its abilities reduced to that of the average rat. The details of his life fell away as his sense of self dissipated. By the end process, the only thing he remembered was his name.

A small part of him remained conscious in the back of his mind, able to slightly influence his actions, but for the most part, he was a passenger in his own body. Not that he was aware that he was a passenger, he legitimately thought he was a rat.

His sharp nose detected the presence of another rat. He squinted his eyes but was unable to locate their exact position in the dark cave. The rat squeaked at him, their words were utterly incomprehensible to him. Something clicked in his mind and suddenly the squeaks made sense.

“Don’t ignore me, you smelly bastard! Where have you been, everyone has been worried sick about you,” The rat said. He triangulated the rat's position using his keen sense of hearing and hesitantly walked forward. Using his whiskers, he filled in all the details that his eyes failed to pick up and deftly maneuvered around all the obstacles in his path.

“Sorry, I don’t remember.” Shawn deeply sniffed the air, tracing his path. For some reason, the process felt slow and clumsy, but he was able to determine that he had sat in this cave for half a day based on the intensity of the scents he picked up. “I’ve been here the past half a day, I don’t know why.”

“Whatever, come back to the nest Etar. We have games to play,” the juvenile rat said excitedly, his tail wagging quickly.

The rat had called him Etar, but the name did not resonate with him. Deep down in his bones, he knew his name was Shawn, not Etar. Shawn was about to ask the rat not to call him Etar, but he was stopped by a jolt of electricity in his head. Suddenly, all thoughts of revealing his real name left him.

Shawn followed the rat through a series of tall dark tunnels. The top of the tunnel was so far away that he couldn’t see it. However, he could smell the top of the tunnel. About ten body lengths above him he could smell the distinct scent of wet stone. Shawn quickly realized that he didn’t need to have his eyes open to be able to navigate the cave system, his nose and ears were more than powerful enough to handle the job.

With more confidence in his gait, he followed the friendly rat. “What’s your name again,” Shawn asked?

“Freun, don’t act like you forgot it, we hang out every day.”

“Sorry, the joke was funnier in my head.” Shawn rubbed his little rat hands together feeling like an evil mastermind. His plan had worked, he had managed to learn Freun’s name without arousing his suspicion.

Shawn wondered why he cared about not appearing suspicious, that wasn’t something he would normally worry about. Before he could dwell too deeply on the matter, his rat brain was quickly distracted by the sound of running water.

“We’re back,” Freun said as he stepped through an archway into a large cavern. Shelf-like protrusions lined the walls and long ropes hung from the ceiling, providing a fast means of travel. Of course, Shawn couldn’t see the city with his eyes, he couldn’t see more than ten feet with them and what he perceived through them was blurry.

He was able to get a feel of the cavern's layout just by sniffing the air. Each material had a distinct smell making it easy for him to navigate across the room. The duo climbed down a thick rope and entered a large room filled to the brim with rats.

It was easy to see why, literally. A small lightbulb hung from the ceiling, making it the only room where he could actually see. A group of juvenile rats ran up to him. “Etar where were you, you missed the elders' storytime.”

“Sorry, I got lost. I’ll be sure to make it next time.” Shawn’s tail twitched in anger. He really did not like it when others called him Etar.

“You better.”

“Calm down Ebel, he doesn’t have to listen to the elders' lectures if he doesn’t want to,” a burly rat said. “They are a bit dull. I’m sure everyone has considered skipping them at least once.”

Ebel gasped, distraught that anyone would think that the elder’s lectures were boring. Freun stepped between them before an argument could break out. “Let’s play tag,” he suggested. The group nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll start. You get a ten-second head start.”

In short order, Shawn was running through the tunnels having the time of his life. The days passed quickly and he found himself growing closer to the group of rats. At first, he didn’t like them very much. Their insistence on calling him Etar rubbed him the wrong way. However, after playing with them for so long, he had no choice but to call them his friends.

The small group of juvenile rats weren’t the only ones he could call his friends. Everyone in the city was kind to him. Even the elders were nice, although they were dreadfully boring once they got started talking. His favorite elder, an old rat whose fur had turned completely grey, sometimes sneaked him extra food when he attended a lecture.

Life was good, life was peaceful. Until it wasn’t. One day, the great beast of legend, the shadow claw attacked his home. The day had started off the same as any other; playing with his group of friends. They raced through the tunnels playing an intense game of tag, laughing all the while. However, on their return to the city, they immediately noticed something was wrong. There was a certain tension in the air.

“What’s wrong,” Ebel asked.

“People have been going missing, it’s not safe to travel the tunnels alone right now,” an adult rat who was standing in the area answered.

Shawn gulped, he didn’t want to go missing. It had been drilled into his head from the elders’ lectures that it was dangerous to travel the tunnels alone, but it was rare for someone to actually go missing while exploring them. Especially because there was no reason to go into the deeper and more dangerous parts of the tunnels.

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The sacred vault that the elders protected was capable of feeding their whole city many times over, letting them lead a more sedentary lifestyle than other colonies of rats.

High pitch screams of terror rang out on the opposite side of the city. His heart froze, he couldn’t see what was causing the panic, but the scent of blood was rich in the air. Drawn to the sound he moved closer to investigate, absentmindedly he noted that his friends had followed him.

As he moved closer the scent of blood became more powerful. He almost screamed in fright as he accidentally stepped in a pool of black blood, but Ebel snaked her paw out in front of his mouth and silenced him before he could make a sound. However, he did not care about her paw pressing into him, for some reason his brain fixated on the color of the blood. An old memory of his that he could barely remember sprang to the front of his mind. Blood is red, it’s not black.

A splitting headache overcame him as he realized that he didn’t know what the color red looked like. Ebel’s hand shook, ruffling his fur, and making him forget what he was thinking about. Shawn tilted his head in confusion. Ebel’s whole body shook in fear. He opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, but she cut him off, simply pointing ahead of her.

Shawn turned and for the second time that day, his heart froze. A great demon many times his size blurred towards them. Anyone that was in the beast's way was instantly slain, cut in half by its sharp claws. He tried to run, but his muscles were frozen, he couldn’t move. He stared into the demon’s deep blue eyes as its killing spree brought it closer to him.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you all here,” Shawn said as the demon set its sights on them. He urged his body to move, but it refused his commands. With nothing else to do, he closed his eyes and waited for his death.

Even with his eyes closed, he could track the demon's movements. “I’m sorry,” he muttered for one last time. He felt the air grow heavy as the monster lunged at him; claws outstretched.

Just as he was about to be sliced in half, the kind elder who would give him extra food after lectures pushed him out of the way, taking the attack in his steed. The demon's large claws stabbed through the elder's chest with barely any resistance. “Run you fools,” the elder said as he grabbed onto the creature's long black limb, trapping it in place.

The spell locking his muscles in place was broken and he sprinted away, streams of tears falling from his eyes. From that point onward, he did not look back. He later decided that it was one of the best decisions of his life. After the carnage of the attack died down, the remaining elders reported that about half the city's population had been decimated. He wasn’t mentally strong enough to face that type of destruction, if he had looked back and seen the mountain of dead bodies his mind would have broken.

After the attack life became hard. The source of their food, the sacred bin had been taken over by the shadow claw. Its attack had not been random, its intention was to take over the food source. The greedy demon would not allow them to get close to it, any who dared come close died. Even though there was more than enough food to satisfy the two groups, the demon did not share.

The bodies were buried and the rest of the city seemed to move past the demon’s attack, but Shawn didn’t. He could still smell the blood on the ground a month later. One by one he watched those he cared about die to starvation and fall to the beasts that roamed the tunnels.

Enraged he approached the last remaining elder in search of answers. The meeting did not go how he expected, the elder broke hundreds of years of tradition and taught him the secrets of cultivation. But, the encounter hadn’t been all positive. The elder had given him an ominous warning.

“If you seek to follow this path of revenge you must dig two graves, one for yourself and for your enemy. Whatever the result, the old you will not survive the experience.”

His fur greyed as he bided his time, slowly amassing power. In his search for power, he forsook his relationships and focused solely on cultivating. His mood took a downward spiral as he wasn't able to see his friends anymore. Not that it was much of a difference, most of them were dead by now.

Over time, his attachment to the name Shawn lessened, and he began to refer to himself as Etar. It was simply a matter of convenience. It strained his small rat brain to no end having to deal with everyone calling him a name he did not identify with. So, he folded and did away with his old identity to lessen his troubles. He had enough things to worry about.

The mystical winter the elders of the past spoke of had arrived. With the coming of winter, dangerous disks of pure cold fell from the sky, sapping their strength and blocking their homes. Etar wasn’t affected overly much by the cold, but it pained his heart to watch the juveniles suffer. The cold wasn’t the only danger of winter, for some mystical reason the plants had become barren, dwindling their food supply further.

On a particularly cold day, the shadow claw returned to the city. He had been outside the city, practicing his techniques in the tunnels when it had first arrived. However, he had returned before it could do too much damage.

His hair stood up in shock as he entered the colony. The scent of blood was thick in the air.

Moving quickly, he rushed past the fleeing rats, running directly towards the danger. His heartbeat sped up as the demon's ugly form came into view. He had dreamed of this day for years. However, he wasn’t alone, he couldn’t afford to lose himself in the heat of battle just yet.

A small rat stood frozen in terror as the demon’s claw cut through the air. Etar’s perception of time slowed and his body moved without him realizing it. Just like the elder that had saved him years ago, he shoved the child out of the way of the strike, taking the hit head-on. The demon's claws burst through his chest, puncturing his vital organs.

He knew he didn’t have much time left. Blood flowed freely from his wounds, he would die soon.

But, that was okay. He hadn’t been truly alive since the day the shadow claw had first attacked. He had accepted his death, he had already dug his grave. The small rat ran away at full speed. Etar grinned, now he could let loose.

Enhancing his teeth Qi, he bit down upon the demon’s limb with all his might. The monster recoiled in shock as his sharp teeth bit deep into its arm, tearing out a chunk of flesh. The shadow claw sank its fangs into his shoulder. The pain barely even registered to him, he was too busy gnawing on the demon’s limb to care that his shoulder had been bitten off.

The shadow claw attempted to pull its paw away, but his grip was firm. The demon was not able to remove its claw from his chest. Finally, his sharp teeth cut all the way through the monster’s limb, completely severing it.

With his Qi, he dug a small hole underneath the demon's back foot. In combination with its missing paw, the hole was enough to knock it off balance. Sending a giant plume of dust into the air, the demon crashed into the ground. Etar did not hesitate to advance. The darkness had already begun creeping in, he only had seconds left to live.

Unholstering a wooden spear he had found long ago in a particularly delicious morsel of food, he stabbed forward, puncturing the demon’s eyeball. The beast roared in pain and swiped Etar away.

Etar tried to get up but failed. He had lost too much blood. The demon however was still able to move even though it was heavily injured. It slowly approached, before it lost interest, realizing he wasn’t long for this world. Instead, it slowly approached a group of juvenile rats that had stayed to watch his battle.

Just like Etar and his friends all those years ago, they had been frozen in fear, too afraid to move a muscle. The light completely dimmed from his eyes, leaving him blind. Even without his eyes, he could perceive the world. Through his strong sense of smell, he could track the demon’s actions.

It lazily strode forward intent on killing the young rats. “Run,” he wheezed his voice barely louder than a whisper. They didn't hear him. He poured Qi into his bleeding chest, enhancing the parts of his body responsible for speech. “Run you fools,” he yelled so loud that his injured lungs ruptured.

The rats ran away and the shadow claw ignored them, instead, it chose to approach Etar’s mangled body. The demon poked him with its claws curious as to how he was still alive. Slowly, he raised his arm and grabbed the demon’s claw. It let him limply hold on to its paw, confident that he no longer posed a threat. Which if he was a normal rat would have been true, all his vital organs were destroyed and he couldn’t move a muscle.

But Etar wasn’t a normal rat. He had trained for too long to fail now.

Summoning his Qi for one last time, he collapsed part of the ceiling, sending a barrage of rocks falling down upon himself and the demon. He listened to the beautiful sounds of the rocks falling. He had done it. The colony, no, his family was safe now.

The rocks crashed into the ground.

Etar died.