Corvin Blackmoor had never believed in the bright colors of flags, or the honeyed lies of politicians. He believed in cold mornings, in the crack of a rifle bolt, in the wet pull of blood soaked sand between his fingers. Raised in the shadowed streets of London, he had been hardened before he ever touched a battlefield.
He was only eighteen when he joined the military, a thin edge of desperation driving him forward. Patriotism wasn't in his heart. Necessity was. It was not long before his talents were noticed and he was taken into the Special Air Service. The SAS, Britain's quiet, lethal answer to a violent world.
From the humid jungles of South Sudan to the ruined streets of Mogadishu, from Baghdad's infernal nights to the brutal cliffs of Helmand, Corvin waded through the worst humanity had to offer. He slit throats in back alleys and kicked down doors in ghost towns where even the dogs had fled. He survived mortar storms, ambushes in poppy fields, betrayals sold for scraps of gold.
In 2016, during a black operation in southern Afghanistan, a shrapnel blast shattered his side while tearing apart the Taliban fighters he had cornered. He killed three more men before collapsing. When he awoke in a hospital bed in London, he was no longer fit for the field.
Rather than throw him away, they reassigned him to Defense Intelligence, where he sifted through human filth in the form of intercepted communications, data leaks, and coded messages. At first, he thought it would be boring. Instead, it poisoned him.
He watched governments sell children into wars they would never fight themselves. He watched agents swap loyalties with the ease of changing coats. He watched entire countries crumble under signatures of crooked politicians. In the neat fluorescent corridors of intelligence analysis, Corvin's last illusions burned to ash.
He trusted no one. He loved no one. An orphan of the streets he started to his life, only his status changed at least streets were safer when compared to snake pit of intelligence and government offices. He served only because survival was a habit he hadn't broken yet.
In those cold nights, when he could not stomach another briefing on how many innocents would be classified as collateral, Corvin found a different kind of peace in the pages of fantasy novels, in grim worlds where power was earned and loyalty was simple. He despised the garish drivel of cultivation novels, the idiocy of young master tropes. If he was to believe in any kind of world, it would be one where blood paid for blood, and no apologies were made.
He died in an alley not far from where he was born. It was late 2024, and he had stumbled onto something ugly. Political disinformation plot carefully stitched together by an Iranian Quds Force cell, aimed at destabilizing half of Europe's fragile alliances.
They silenced him with three neat shots to the chest. No grand firefight. nor a final stand. The Crown called it a "random mugging" before the blood dried.
Corvin Blackmoor died at thirty seven. Cold, bitter, alone.
As the world blurred around him, as the cold seeped through broken ribs into his bones, he thought not of family, or country, or gods. He thought only that he would never again waste loyalty on creatures who didn't deserve it.
And somewhere, far beyond the reach of Earth and all its hollow promises, something heard that oath.
--
Darkness, vast and slow coiled itself around his dying soul. And when Corvin's consciousness stirred again, there were no stars. silence.
He stirred, or tried to. His mind sparked into existence like a guttering flame caught in a hurricane. He felt... nothing. No heartbeat. No breath. No pain. And when he tried to move, the body that cradled him responded like a slab of petrified stone.
It was wrong. The stiffness was unnatural, not the exhaustion of flesh after battle, or the bone deep fatigue of wounds. It was ancient. The limbs he strained against were cold, hollow, brittle beneath his will. The fingers he could barely sense were curled tight like the claws of some long dead thing frozen mid death.
Panic bloomed, primal and ugly.
He tried to scream, no sound came. He tried to breathe, his chest did not rise. Blind, deaf, entombed in some husk, he wondered if this was hell. Not fire, nor punishment, just endless, suffocating darkness.
Am I dead? Or is this... worse?
But time stretched, and stretched further, and realization crept over him like slow oil:
He was not dying. Nor was he living.
He existed in between, a soul chained to a corpse. The body around him was not his, and yet it was becoming his. He could feel the faint, pitiful echo of bloodless veins. Could feel the hardened ligaments, like dry leather cracking in winter.
And somewhere, deep beneath the dead nerves, something shifted.
A sudden pulse of instinct. A flicker of hunger, not for food or water but for motion, for life itself.
In that moment, a shimmer unfolded across his fading consciousness. Floating before his blind eyes, a window of light formed in the blackness. Silent, clinical, absolute:
[Status]
Name: Corvin Blackmoor
Race: Dark Parasyte (Dormant)
Level: 1
Strength (STR): F-
Endurance (END): F-
Agility (AGI): F-
Intelligence (INT): E
Wisdom (WIS): E
Luck (LCK): F
Skills:
Shadow Siphon (Dormant)
Evolutionary Growth (Dormant)
The letters burned themselves into his mind. Neither cruel nor kind, merely indifferent.
Corvin Blackmoor, a soldier, an intelligence officer who trusted nothing and no one, floated inside a shell, once a warrior perhaps. Now only a cage.
And somewhere within the ruined strands of bone and memory, the last spark of an extinct predator stirred to life.
--
The Status Screen hovered silently in his mind, crisp and stark against the infinite black.
Dark Parasyte, Corvin read, the words etching themselves deeper into his awareness. He didn't flinch, not anymore. Cold pragmatism took over his panic.
Dark Parasyte? He turned the words over in his mind. It sounded like something torn from the darker corners of the fantasy novels he once read to escape the lies of his old world.
A long forgotten memory surfaced, those hours spent devouring grim fictions, laughing at young masters, grinding his teeth at idiotic heroism. He remembered: transmigrations, new worlds, second chances... and worse.
Is this one of those? he thought, grim amusement flickering inside the dead hollow of his borrowed flesh.
Maybe. Maybe not. For all he knew, this could be an asteroid. A shattered planet. A hellscape ruled by machines. Anything was possible.
He needed information, and as if answering that silent need, more text bled into view, this time slower, as if being dragged from the bones of memory:
[Race Insight: Dark Parasyte]
An apex predatory species once feared across worlds. Extinct.
Evolution based lifeform: adaptive, parasitic, and sovereign.
Signature Skill: Shadow Siphon. Capable of harvesting and fusing the strengths, abilities, knowledge and traits of other beings.
Growth tied to parasitic assimilation.
Current State: Dormant.
Structural Integrity: Critical Low.
Regeneration Pending Siphoning.
A slow, sardonic grin formed somewhere inside his locked mind.
So that's the game. He was something rare. Dangerous. A fossil from an ancient nightmare or at least the soul of one, now latched onto a broken shell.
But he was weak. Vulnerable. Barely more than a whisper trapped in dead stone.
Corvin focused harder, reaching out with what remained of his senses. There, faint as mist against a midnight field, he felt it.
Movement. Soundless vibrations. Scrapes. Shuffles. Above him creatures. No, people.
He could not see them, not yet. The husk of a body he occupied was useless for vision or speech. But there were living beings near. Many of them. One truth burned hotter than instinct: he needed to latch on.
Guided by raw survival, Corvin reached inside himself, into the dark knot where Shadow Siphon slumbered and the power stirred.
From the broken fibers of the ancient corpse, etheric spores bloomed invisibly, drifting upward, unseen, unfelt. Tiny seeds of hunger.
He scattered them lightly, carefully. No grand attack. No reckless surge. Just a quiet, patient infection.
The first tendrils latched onto a warm pulse above. Then another. And another.
And as Corvin waited, cocooned in darkness, he smiled inwardly.
He might be buried in ruins. He might be no more than a ghost inhabiting a dead frame. He might not know where he was, or what fate awaited beyond the dust.
But one thing was certain, he was not alone anymore.
And for a Dark Parasyte, that was all he needed to begin.
The first touch was electric.
As Corvin's invisible spores latched onto the living pulses above, faint streams of information trickled back into him with the life force, like cold rain sliding down the gutters of a dead city.
At first it was fragmented: warmth, breath, the clumsy thud of heartbeats. But then, more. Textures. Forms. Patterns of life etched into nervous systems he could barely grasp.
The ancient husk he inhabited trembled almost imperceptibly, microscopic cracks spiderwebbing beneath the surface.
And deep inside the corpse, something began to stir.
His limbs, stiff as ironwood, brittle as fossilized bone twitched in sluggish rebellion against centuries of stillness.
The spores were dying already. He could feel them burning out, one by one, their brief lives extinguished like fireflies in frost. But they had done their work. Each siphon, however shallow, fed a tiny spark back into him.
And with that spark came understanding.
Glimpses of words, language understanding. Images of the hosts. He saw them faintly through the dying spores' final glimpses: tall figures, slender as spears, faces carved by beauty so cruel and cold it hurt to witness. Their ears swept back in elegant points. Their eyes shone with hues, different by human standards. Bright emerald, sapphire, starlight silver.
Elves, he thought grimly. The old myths had been right about one thing: if gods had ever sculpted mortals, they must have made these first.
Graceful, beautiful most importantly alive.
Corvin gritted phantom teeth, feeling his limbs throb with the slow return of stolen vitality.
With renewed focus, he sent out another careful scatter of spores. Six this time. Only six. Each thread drifted up like a ghost's hand reaching for warmth.
One spore died instantly, burned by something he could not yet name, but the others anchored.
It was enough.
He could feel his toes now, the cracked, hardened things beginning to soften. His fingers curled weakly, scraping dry earth. The thick collar of stone around his neck groaned under the slow resurgence of strength.
Still trapped, blind. But no longer helpless.
He began the slow, brutal work of moving.
First a twitch, then a lurch. Then the grinding, ragged pull of an arm fighting to rise where it had lain broken for centuries. Now started to heal.
He strained, tendons crackling like dry rope. Bone screeched. The ancient tomb of his rebirth shuddered, dust falling in lazy spirals around him.
He had no idea where he was nor has he a weapon or allies.
But he knew one thing, crystalline and cold as starlight. He had to get out.
And no force on this new world, not gods, not kings, not even death itself would keep entombed entombed any longer.
--
Selenor Luren still remembered the thrill when they first unearthed the ruins.
Far older than any they had touched before, not two, not five, but over fifteen thousand years, by their mentor's estimate.
He had felt it: the strange electricity in the air, the silent weight pressing down on every breath they took among the broken stones.
The expedition team had been digging for nearly two years now, cutting through roots and fallen towers, peeling back the history of an ancient war long forgotten even by the oldest songs.
Dozens no, hundreds of fossilized elves lay tangled among the shattered bones of monstrous creatures no scholar could name. It had been a battlefield, frozen in time. A mausoleum dressed in silence.
Their mentor, Arcanist Sharian Perjeon, a name that commanded respect even within the Starlight Arcanum, had barely left the excavation site since their first breakthrough. She moved through the ruins like a spirit, whispering to walls, brushing fingertips over long dead sigils.
But today, something changed.
Sharian froze mid step. Her sharp features, usually composed, cool, imperious tightened. She raised a single hand and said in a voice that brooked no argument:
"Quarantine the inner sanctum."
No explanation given, no hesitation shown.
Within minutes, the command rippled outward. Apprentices, Novices, even Adepts hastily packed equipment, whispered wards, and moved away from the heart of the ruins.
By the time they finished, the sky had begun to darken. A heavy, oppressive shade crawling across the stars. The sun would soon disappear, but it felt as if the world was holding its breath.
Far beneath them, something else had been holding its breath longer. Much longer.
Corvin felt the last crust of dead stone fracture. Air, cool, thin and crisp kissed his ruined skin for the first time. He could see now, just barely: the stars fading, the dark blue bleeding toward the edges of a coming dawn. He recognized the dig site.
No time. No safety.
He knew the type. Academies, researchers the kinds who would bind him, carve him, turn him into a thing of study and misery. His movements were jerky, awkward not yet graceful. But he could move, and that was enough.
Dragging himself free from the cracked ruin that had birthed him, Corvin pulled his half formed body up into the cold, predawn world.
He stumbled once, cursed silently, and forced his limbs into line. Every step was a tearing strain, like wet leather being pulled tight. But he pushed onward, mind cold, calculating.
He erased what he could in silence, dragging loose stones over the pit he had emerged from, brushing away his own foot prints in the dirt. Clumsy, imperfect but hopefully enough.
He could not leave a trail. Not yet. Not until he understood this world, its laws, its dangers. The predators here would wear elegant faces and speak fine words, but he knew better than to trust any of them.
Corvin Blackmoor vanished into the waking forests of Thalasien, the ruin behind him settling back into its thousand year slumber. Almost as if it had never been disturbed.
Almost.
--
Arcanist Sharian Perjeon couldn't stop shivering.
Even now, sitting in the carriage moving as fast as she could toward the Starlight Arcanum's southern annex, the memory clung to her. That alien sensation gnawing at the edges of her mind, slithering past her defenses like a phantom. She had known immediately: this was no dormant curse, no idle field of old magic.
Something alive had brushed against her. Something ancient. Something wrong.
The moment she had felt it, she stopped the dig without hesitation. Sealed the site. Quarantined the inner ruins.
Standard procedure, at least on parchment. Reality, however, rarely followed scripts.
Already a dozen of her underlings were reporting nausea, vertigo, weakness. Aetheric contamination, she suspected. Or worse.
No matter. Whatever had stirred in that cursed site would be unearthed, dissected, and, if possible, repurposed to serve the glory of the Aurelian Dominion, crown jewel of the High Elf kingdoms.
As she pressed the driver to move faster toward the misted treeline, she vowed to herself: Nothing that dangerous would go unclaimed.
Nothing.
--
Nearly a kilometer away from the dig site, in the deep cradle of predawn mist, something else moved. Something forgotten. Something, now free.
Corvin crept silently through the underbrush, his movements now far more fluid, the stiffness of centuries seeping slowly from his reborn limbs.
He crouched at the edge of the expedition's camp, studying the flickering lamplight, the haphazard lines of canvas tents, the faint snores and sighs of exhausted elves.
So many. Too many.
He smiled faintly. Predators rarely found such feasts waiting so willingly.
Without a sound, he loosed his spores again, a silent, invisible wave washing over the sleeping encampment. He faced his first limit. It seems he was not able to release spores infinitely. only seven were released.
Minutes, that was all it took.
By the time he retreated into the woods, his new body was no longer the cracked fossil he'd been shackled to.
He was whole. Stronger. Sharper.
Corvin flexed a hand, feeling power ripple under the skin, cords of dense muscle, living steel wrapped in taut flesh. He stood now nearly 2.10 meters tall. A tower of brutal elegance. Heavily muscled where the other elves were slender, graceful.
Their forms were beautiful, yes, sharp jawed, large eyed, ethereal. But brittle, delicate compared to what he had become.
He had siphoned more than strength and life force. The siphoning had bolstered every corner of his existence.
Strength, Endurance, Agility each leaping from F- to E-, functional at last.
Luck stabilizing at E, a silent thread weaving itself through his fate.
Wisdom and Intelligence, the twin pillars of magic. Swelling gloriously, from E to D-.
He has elemental affinities now: Air, Fire, Earth, Water, Lightning. Fledgling magics curling in his veins like coiled serpents. Water Magic, strongest among them, flickering proudly at E+.
He scavenged what he needed from the sleeping camp.A robe, rough and simple but serviceable. A satchel of old books on various subjects, maps, lexicons, arcane notes.
He even took time to study the elves themselves, crouching beside a dozing scholar, comparing their physiology to his own.
They were close, almost identical to his uneducated senses. But he was denser, stronger, heavier, taller and larger. A wolf among gazelles. The fantasy novels were defiantly true about the elven beauty. He confirmed it at least visually through the female researchers at the camp.
Satisfied, Corvin vanished into the shadows once more.
He had what he needed: knowledge, strength, and freedom.
Now he needed understanding.
Where he was. What ruled here. What wars were fought. What monsters wore crowns.