---
The air in the Dead Veins tasted like rusted chains and old blood.
The pickaxes struck the rock through the measure of fatigue, never quick, never slack. Workers were aware of what occurred when you went to fast. The guards would consider it as a rebellion. Slow and they would interpret it as rebelliousness.
Lucen Vale struck the wall with exact timing. One. Two. Three. He'd memorized the pattern the guards preferred. They liked obedience that sounded mechanical.
He gave them what they wanted.
Not because he feared them. He just calculated risk better than most.
A lad grunted by his side, and coughed out dust and blood. The sort of cough which leads into having someone hauled out and not seen again. Lucen turned not to look. He did not show assistance. It is not in sadism that he did this and, in fact, he knew the situation would be of no consequence.
The mines didn't reward mercy. They punished inefficiency.
Instead, Lucen's gaze wandered upward, to the jagged ceiling above their heads. Cracks had spread across the upper supports. Subtle. Easy to miss unless you paid attention. But Lucen always paid attention.
Seventeen cracks. Two beams about to fail. Six-point-one percent sag across the load-bearing line. Collapse in... less than two hours.
He kept digging.
Minutes passed like whispers.
When the tremor came, it was softer than expected. But Lucen's eyes snapped wide.
"Move," he said.
No one listened. They never did.
Lucen dropped his pickaxe, dashed left, not toward the tunnels, but into the side shaft. One used for old storage. He dove inside as the earth above screamed and collapsed.
Rocks thundered down like angry gods. Screams. Snaps. Dust and death. He didn't look back. Didn't flinch. Just pressed his back against the far wall, arms wrapped around his knees, mind racing.
When silence returned, the world was different.
He waited in the dark.
Ten breaths. Then twenty.
A groan of shifting stone echoed above. His makeshift tomb held, barely.
Lucen rose slowly, blinking through the dust. The shaft was blocked behind him. Escape was cut off. Lightless. Quiet.
He was alone.
Good.
He preferred it that way.
---
It took him nearly an hour to navigate deeper into the ruins, using a rusted metal pipe as a walking stick. Every step he took was calculated. Every footfall tested.
Eventually, he came to a strange hollow, a carved chamber buried in time. Its walls were inked in unreadable symbols. An altar stood at the center, black stone veins pulsing faintly with a light that shouldn't exist down here.
Lucen said nothing. But his mind sharpened like a blade.
No ventilation. No moisture. This isn't natural light. It's powered. Still active after who knows how long. Systemic. Artificial. Controlled.
He stepped forward, studied the altar. Blood grooves lined its surface. Ancient, but deliberate. Something here had required sacrifice.
He knelt.
His fingers touched the surface... and a current surged into his body.
Pain lanced through his spine like glass fire. His mouth opened, but he didn't scream. He couldn't. His throat locked. Vision blurred. Then...
> [Soulprint Theft Protocol: Synchronizing with Host.]
[Blank Status Confirmed. Binding Override Activated.]
[You may now take what others are.]
Lucen's breathing slowed.
A system?
That meant rules. And if there were rules, they could be broken, bent, rewritten.
He didn't understand it fully yet, but instinctively he knew... this wasn't a blessing. It was a weapon. And weapons were meant to be used, not worshipped.
He leaned forward and whispered one word into the darkness.
"...Good."
---
When Lucen awoke, the altar was dark. The light had died. The runes had gone cold.
But the voice was still there, dormant in his thoughts. Waiting.
A sound made him freeze. A moan. Not far. He followed it, stepping through a collapsed stone tunnel and finding a body beneath a fallen beam. A man, barely alive. Bloodied. A miner like him. Soulprint-active, barely glowing.
> [Skill Detected: Stone Skin (Level 1)]
[Soulprint Harvest Available.]
Lucen stared at him.
The man looked back, pleading. "Please... I don't... I don't want to..."
Lucen crouched.
He didn't speak.
He didn't enjoy what came next.
But he did it.
> [Soulprint Acquired: Stone Skin (Damaged)]
[Memory Fragment Bound. Echo Risk: Low.]
The man shuddered once and went still.
Lucen sat there beside the corpse for a long while, not moving.
Not thinking.
And then, like a switch flipping in the dark, he stood.
He tore a strip of cloth from his sleeve. Pulled a broken bone from the corpse's arm. Sharpened it. Wrote one word on the cloth in dried blood:
Soul Ledger.
---
End of Chapter 1
---