"Why isn’t this working!?"

Ronan ran flat out, his entire left side split open, blood pouring from a ragged gash as he dumped healing potions over it.

Glass shattered in his hands, shards biting into his skin as he emptied every last vial from his porter’s inventory in a frantic attempt to stay alive.

They weren’t even his. They belonged to other hunters that had him carry their items, but they were all dead anyway. Survival was the only thing that mattered now.

And still, nothing. No matter how much he used, the wound wouldn’t close. The flesh stayed torn and raw, hot blood seeping through his fingers as he clutched his side and kept running.

The expedition into Tartarus-B was a disaster. They’d expected another bountiful world, like the great World-Class Gates of the past. Instead, they’d walked into a nightmare, a world so vicious it had wiped out three S-Rank hunters in the first week.

"Someone, please...!"

Ronan staggered through a dead city, one that looked uncomfortably like Earth, if Earth had been left to rot for centuries. Buildings sagged and leaned into each other, concrete and steel swallowed by moss, rot, and creeping vines.

Above, a violet moon washed everything in a sick, haunting glow.

He was the only one left.

"Shit—"

His foot caught on a discarded sheet of paper in the middle of the street. He slipped, crashed hard, and rolled across the cracked pavement.

"Ah—!"

Pain exploded along his side. Ronan bit down on his tongue to stop a scream from tearing out of his throat. The last thing he needed was to draw a monster to him.

[Unknown Entity Overtaking—???]

[—System Overridden]

"H-Huh? My system...?"

[Continue forward]

Ronan pushed himself up on shaking arms, blinking as he reread the message. It pointed him toward a small, half-collapsed shrine tucked beneath dead trees and shrivelled shrubs at the end of the street.

Suspicious.

Dangerous.

But if he stayed here, he’d bleed out.

Those were his options: die slowly, get eaten by whatever was nesting inside that shrine, or somehow find salvation.

He knew which ending he didn’t want.

"Dammit."

He forced his legs to move. Each step sent fresh agony lancing through his side. The healing potions had done absolutely nothing, not even a hint of regeneration.

Whatever had clawed him, its venom or curse was still chewing through his insides.

The shrine loomed closer with every stumbling step.

Up close, it was even more ruined than it looked from a distance. The stone walls were blackened with age, smothered in vines that seemed to throb faintly in the violet light.

The roof had caved in long ago, leaving only jagged ribs of what might once have been ornate carvings.

But the archway still stood.

Carved into the stone above it, worn almost smooth by centuries of neglect, was a symbol Ronan hadn’t seen since he was a kid.

A crescent moon.

Upside down.

Pierced by three vertical lines.

Sarael.

His grandmother used to trace that symbol on his forehead before bed.

"For protection from the night, little one. The Dark Mother watches over those who remember her."

He’d stopped believing when he turned twelve. Stopped whispering her name when the other kids mocked him for worshipping a "ghost."

Now, bleeding out in a dead world, Ronan staggered through the archway anyway.

"W-What...?"

The thick stink of Tartarus-B vanished the moment he stepped inside. The shrine smelled of old incense, dust, and something else, something sweet, like flowers that bloomed only at night, after everything else had died.

The violet moonlight didn’t reach the interior. But it wasn’t dark.

A soft, pulsing glow came from the back wall, where a broken altar slumped beneath a shattered stained glass window. The window had once shown a woman surrounded by shadows and kneeling figures.

Now, only one piece remained intact.

Her eyes.

Deep violet eyes that seemed to follow him as he collapsed against the altar.

"Please..."

Ronan didn’t even know who he was begging anymore. The goddess he’d tossed aside? The indifferent system that ruled over hunters? The same system that had given him nothing but extra inventory space?

His blood spread out beneath him, thick and dark in the strange light.

His vision blurred at the edges.

’This is it, then.’

Twenty-three years old. D-Rank porter. No family left to mourn him. No guild that would bother with a memorial service. He’d die in a forgotten shrine on a dead world, and the only witness would be a goddess who probably stopped existing the moment the last believer forgot her name.

’What a joke.’

Ronan’s eyes drifted shut.

But then it hit him.

Warmth

A hungry warmth. A fire that started in his chest and spread outward, licking along his veins like something alive. His blood, still pooled beneath him, began to steam.

"What—"

He tried to move.

Couldn’t.

His body was no longer his own.

The altar behind him hummed.

[System Alert: Foreign Entity Detected]

[Error: Cannot Classify]

[Error: ERROR—]

And then the system went silent.

’System.’

Nothing.

’System...’

Absolute silence.

But in its place, something older woke up.

The shattered stained glass window above the altar began to glow. A deep, throbbing violet that filled the entire shrine, that turned the shadows into living things that reached for him with gentle, curious fingers.

The single intact piece of glass, the woman’s eyes, glowed like twin moons.

Then they blinked.

"Oh."

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Inside his skull, against his skin, curling through the spaces between his ribs like smoke.

"Oh, you poor, broken thing."

Ronan’s breath caught. Not from fear.

From recognition.

He’d heard that voice before. Not often. Only in the quiet moments of his childhood, when his grandmother would whisper prayers into the dark before sleep.

"Dark Mother, who walks between shadows, who loves the forgotten and the lost, hear us."

"Grandmother was right," Ronan whispered, his voice cracking. "You’re real."

The shadows in the corners of the shrine began to move. They gathered, swirled, and coalesced into a shape that made Ronan’s heart stutter.

A woman.

Tall and pale. Dressed in nothing but darkness that clung to her like silk, shifting and flowing as if it were alive. Her hair was the colour of this world’s violet moon, spilling down her back in waves.

But her eyes.

Gods, her eyes.

Violet. Deep and endless and fixed entirely on him. Not the disinterested gaze of a deity surveying a mortal. This was focused, intense, the look of someone who had been starving for centuries and had just found their first meal.

She knelt beside him, not caring about his blood soaking into her skin. Her hand, warm, impossibly warm, pressed against his torn side.

"You came back."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

"You poor sweet thing, it’s okay, I’m here for you. Forever, and ever... and ever. I’m not going to let you leave me again, okay?"

"You are mine now, my last beloved believer, my dear precious Ronan..."

[System... sy-sys-tem... em...]

[ERROR]

[Rebuilding System]

[Class: Porter (D-Rank)] - [Corrupted] [Unreadable]

[Reassigning]

[New Class: God-Bound (???) ]

[You have formed a Divine Pact]

[Bound Entity: Sarael]

[Relationship: ???] - [Corrupted] [Unreadable]

[Reloading]

[Relationship: Lover]

[Warning: This bond is permanent.]

[Warning: This bond does not break.]

[Warning: Entity is... unsta-ble... un-sta... ble]

[Warning Taken Back]

[Entity is -normal-]