Caleb abandoned him then.

Of course, he did. Russell was the one who had lost the team the championship, the school’s pariah, the town’s very own outcast, the monster.

Russell clambered to his feet, choking as the creeping dread strangled the life out of him. Who told him to be complacent, now more than ever when his own life was on the line? To trust in anyone else aside from himself? No one else had stayed behind, not one teammate, not his so-called friend. Only an empty window.

And an ominous growl.

He came to his senses and cast an apprehensive look over his shoulder.

The monster stood well within the restroom now, its ears perked, its head tilted curiously to one side. It beheld the dark and narrow space with a sightless gaze. Then its head cocked to the other side, tongue snaking out to lap its blood-drenched maw.

Russell whirled around and plastered his back on the ruined wall. His body went numb. His limbs shaking, his breath frozen still, burning his lungs as he struggled to make his presence vanish.

A single blast.

A single attack and he’d be dead.

The monster’s nostrils flared before it snapped its head down and chomped on the bits of leftover flesh on the floor. It missed Russell altogether.

His boot slipped.

The floor was slick with blood, and his hand shot to the side, his fingers finding the deep gash on the wall, keeping him from falling, from making any noise.

The chewing stopped.

Keeping his head still, Russell slid his gaze back to the monster.

The monster “gazed” back.

His stomach dropped.

The beast licked the blood dripping from its snout…and resumed gorging on its meal.

He smothered a relieved sigh as his desperate eyes took in the restroom. The monster stood at the opposite end in painfully clear view, blocking the only viable way out. Around him, blood and human remains littered the floor. To his right, a row of sinks and mirrors. To his left…

He pushed off the wall, and with silent steps, crept toward the bathroom stalls.

The blood-soaked yards felt like miles.

Reaching the closest stall, he palmed the louvered door and gave it a small push. The wooden frame let out a wail as it opened, and he froze.

Silence. More silence. Chewing.

He slid the door halfway open, just enough for him to squeeze through the opening. Once inside, he guided the door back, closing the stall and plunging himself into darkness.

He didn’t dare lock it, not willing to risk any more noise, not trusting his trembling fingers to fail at such a simple task.

Instead, he held his cold, sweaty hand flat on the door, his other hand grasping his…

He grasped at nothing; his flashlight wasn’t there.

Because he had forgotten his only weapon outside the stall.

He rested his forehead on the horizontal slats of the door, grinding his teeth in frustration. He might have killed a monster with a sledgehammer, a proper weapon. He might be able to put up a fight with a flashlight, a passable weapon. But now? Now he didn’t even have a weapon at all.

Fatigue found him weak and weary, and he let out the breath he had been holding. His mind blanked out. His body shut down. His situation was hopeless, his struggle pointless. And it felt like all he could do now was give up…

A droning sound drowned the restroom in a continuous blare, cutting straight through his lethargy.

The town siren had resumed.

His sluggish mind imagined Solace Springs in a state of emergency, pictured the townsfolk calling for help, his own sister calling for help.

Rosalyn screaming for him.

The kids yelling for him.

Their haunted cries swept away the despair crippling his mind, taking him hostage. It didn’t matter how hopeless or how pointless. He couldn’t give up now. He still needed to get home.

And he’d rather die trying than die hiding in the toilet.

He drew a shuddering breath. He needed a moment to gather himself. He needed to think of a plan, to fight his way out, but with what? His flashlight was his only…

Shards. His hands curled into fists so tight his nails bit into his palms. I still have my shards.

Hope rekindled in his chest. Tamping down the rush of excitement, his mind called for the possibility he had been disregarding, the answer to his prayer idling within his reach—the System.

[Status]

[Shard Configuration]

[Force Rating]

[Soul Storage]

He didn’t bother with the rest and jumped straight to his storage.

[Soul Storage]

Shards - 2

He couldn’t believe it. All this time, he had two shards in his possession, wasting away. And because of what? Because he had been too stubborn?

Or too afraid?

It didn’t matter now. With one hand still on the door, he held the other out in front of him—closed in a fist instead of an open palm out to block any light—and willed one of the shards to manifest within his grasp.

A flash of white seeped through his fingers before dimming into a weak shine the next moment.

[Affinity Shard]

The same shard Rook had handed over to him. The small fragment was both solid yet ethereal in his grasp, tingling against his skin, buzzing with hidden energy.

But the moment it materialized in his palm, the song changed.

The chewing stopped. The heartbeat he sensed accelerated.

Then something clicked outside, causing him to flinch.

Scanning shard…

He berated himself for not having done this earlier. Leaning closer to the door, he peered between the slats but saw nothing, only the words tracking his vision.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

[Heart of Embers]

Type: Affinity Shard

Contains a basic aspect of fire.

Aspect of fire? His brows furrowed. What the hell does that even—

Another click, something sharp rapping against a hard surface, something like…

Sharp claws clicked on the tile floor as the monster one slow, deliberate step at a time, creeping closer.

Calculating compatibility…

His breath caught. His head jerked away from the door, and his eyes caught the soft glow of the shard, buzzing inside his fist, throbbing with power—drawing the monster.

Shit.

Even as he urged the prompts to speed up, the song intensified, its volume increasing by the decibel.

Compatibility: 3%

Would you like to assimilate this shard? [Y/N]

Russell accepted as soon as the question popped into view, mentally smashing his fist down the letter key.

[Error]

His thoughts stuttered to a stop.

Error? What freakin’ error? He glared at the words and gave it another try, refusing to accept the outcome.

[Error]

Insufficient compatibility.

Assimilation impossible.

His hand quivered, the shard halfway slipping through his cold, deadened fingers. He stared at the words, dumbstruck, lightheaded, reading them but not understanding them.

Assimilation…impossible.

Only then did his mind catch on, only then did his lagging thoughts make sense of his pathetic compatibility rate with the shard—a mere three percent. A pathetic three percent.

Of course, it didn’t work. Of course, this would happen now. Of course, the System failed him when he needed it the most.

Everyone else already did.

A clicking sound yanked him back to the present. He mentally tossed the shard back to his soul storage, but it was no use.

The monster had sensed it as soon as the shard appeared.

And now a large shadow covered the paneled door, pouring onto the floor, seeping inside the stall.

The monster had found him.

The door creaked open. His trembling arm fell away from the door as he retreated a step.

Faint light poured in as the hinges groaned. A large snout wormed through the small opening, sniffing the floor, the monster’s menacing form creeping low.

The back of Russell’s knees bumped against something hard, and he dropped on the toilet seat.

His boots pushed against the floor, but the toilet’s open lid pressed against his back. His hands scrambled for the toilet tank, the wall, anything. But he had run out of space to back away.

He was trapped inside his hiding place, and a strange sense of deja vu struck him.

Boyo… a voice called out.

Through the widening gap in the doorway, his eyes tracked the monster’s flaring nostrils, its eyeless head raising from its bow, the spines jutting from its back, the long, sinuous tail standing high and stiff behind it.

And past its tail, from across the room, he glimpsed his own reflection in the mirror staring back at him, dark and obscured, a pathetic figure hiding inside a stall.

Hiding inside a closet.

Where are you, boyo…

The alien song rose to its peak…and the rising song in his blood answered.

The monster bared its teeth, growling in ravenous hunger.

And the monster inside Russell growled in return.

He saw red.

The monster roared, and Russell roared back swinging—smashing the toilet tank lid into its head.

It staggered, howling in pain as porcelain exploded against its scales. But he didn’t give it time to weep.

Hands grasping the doorway, Russell braced himself against the stall and slammed his foot into the monster’s chest, booting it across the room.

The Scaletooth crashed into the mirror and dropped down to the sink, dislodging the countertop from the wall before crumpling to the floor, roaring in anger.

And Russell flew after it, roaring back, only seeing red.

The Scaletooth was propping itself on its front legs when he tackled the half-ton monstrosity, flattening the marble countertop against the wall, and shattering what was left of the floating cabinets under the sink.

Russell rebounded to the side, tumbling in the air, the wall, down on the tile floor.

His head rang. His right shoulder throbbed with a dull ache as if he had run into a boulder. Beside him, the monster’s head rose, its scales hardly damaged, looking no worse for wear.

While Russell’s human body was battered after a single exchange.

Fighting through the burn, he gnashed his teeth and struggled to his feet, a bestial growl rumbling from his chest. The pain was nothing but a distant echo to him.

Thoughts lost in a frenzied, red haze, his feet brought him forward—not toward the monster but the dislodged bathroom sink leaning against the wall. He squatted before the countertop, grabbing the bottom edge of the thick marble.

Teeth clenched, he lifted the heavy slab from the ground. Letting it scrape against the wall, he scooped the countertop past his knees, caught it over his shoulders, and heaved the hundreds of pounds of weight on his extended arms. He held it on its edge, keeping it precariously balanced high over his head, as he stood over the monster already rising from the ground, snarling.

He snarled back, bringing the premium marble down onto its head. The countertop detonated in an explosion of rock, choking the area in a gray cloud.

Yet all Russell saw was red.

He dove through the swirls of dust, homing in on the still-beating song, and began lashing out at the monster’s head with his bare fist.

The beast under him wailed a desperate cry, but all he heard was the pounding of his own heart as his fists pounded the beast with a merciless beat.

His hands screamed in pain, and it felt like he was hammering flesh against steel, but the agony was nothing compared to the fury raging inside him, burning him from within.

He had no hammer, no flashlight, no weapon of any kind. He only had his anger. His Strength that had surpassed the limit. But his Endurance was above average at best, his Constitution still fully human. His skin and bones couldn’t keep up with the onslaught, still too fragile, too weak.

But they were more than enough.

His madness took care of the rest.

Savage strikes rained down in a drizzle of dust and a shower of blood—until his mangled fists were pounding right through the monster’s skull, pulverizing the floor underneath.

You have slain [Scaletooth Savage - 8th Shard / Level 3].

The alien song cut off. The dust settled with his heartbeat. Then silence returned.

Russell wobbled to his feet, heaving deep breaths into his fiery, unquenchable lungs as he stared at the large corpse lying on the restroom floor, already starting to glow.

“Who’s the boyo now?“

The world spun around him as he dragged himself toward the nearest intact sink, blood dripping from his fists, his strength ebbing away. The blood on him glowed, drifting away into nothing, carrying away the metallic stench of iron.

And yet the smell lingered; his blood remained.

The sink had no sensor, only a traditional faucet, and he let out a sigh of relief. Soon, the sound of running water and pained hisses filled the restroom. He washed away the dust and blood—his blood—from his ruined hands even as tendrils of white light rose from the corpse behind him in a brilliant smoke.

You have absorbed a major portion of its soul essence.

He welcomed the warmth, but he barely felt it settle inside him, barely felt its mitigating effect on his exhaustion, on his wounds, on the stinging pain continuing to sear the nerves running through his fingers, around his knuckles, radiating as dull ache throughout his body.

Unraveling Core…

The bright glare behind him had long dimmed to a weak glow. In the light’s absence, there was a faint crack, a shattering of glass, and a clinking on the tiled floor. Yet all he cared about was scrubbing the sole of his boots clean against the floor, scouring the blood clean from his hands, as if lathering his open wounds with liquid soap half a dozen times would miraculously make everything better.

If only his hands didn’t look like they’d been fed into a wood chipper.

The ends of his limbs had been only a few careless blows away from turning into a bloody pulp. Gashes marked the back of his hands, lacerations on his knuckles so deep he could see bone. So bad he couldn’t even tell whether the water was searing hot or freezing cold.

He licked his chapped lips and leaned down to drink, giving the cool water a taste. He let it quench his thirst before rinsing off the dust and sweat from his face. Grabbing two fresh hand towels, he wrapped them around his knuckles and braced his uninjured palms against the countertop as he studied his reflection, leaving the water running.

A stranger stared back at him, his face gaunt, his blue eyes dull and empty. The curls of his auburn hair peaked out from under his hoodie, matted with sweat, losing all luster with the weariness hanging heavy on his shoulders. Dust and grime covered his flannel shirt and jeans, but his bloodstains were only visible on the once-white undershirt.

When was the last time he had suffered such injuries? His flesh torn, his bones fractured? He had never looked so miserable in his life, worse than any hangover, worse than slaving under the scorching sun for days.

But worst of all, he had lost control. Lost his mind. Consumed by a bout of rage so intense he ended up maiming himself in the process. Now here he was, looking worse for wear, no better than a walking corpse…and yet he was still here. He was still standing, breathing, lucky to be alive.

So why did he feel dead all the same?

Perhaps because he had been left for dead. Abandoned and forgotten.

There’s nothing wrong with you, Russell told himself. He was only human. He only wanted to survive.

Slipping his hands out of their covers, he splayed them on the bloodied towels and examined his wounds. The bleeding had already subsided. He knew it would. And he knew it was healing even now, at a rate almost visible to the naked eye. He also knew it had nothing to do with the meager increase in his Constitution, nothing to do with the System.

No, this ability had always been his, a curse he had long forgotten.

But that same curse had saved his hide a few times tonight—including now.

He shut off the faucet, his gaze flicking to the mirror next to his, at the reflection of the entrance to the restroom.

As if mocking his recent brush with death, a new shadow loomed over the doorway.

[Scaletooth Savage - 7th Shard / Level 3]

The beast popped its head inside, a curious growl rumbling from its throat.

But its attention wasn’t on him.

Russell’s gaze swiveled back to the mirror in front of him, on the reflection of a glowing shard lying on the floor.