The shaking didn’t stop.

Ronan sat in the middle of the dead street, his back against a rusted vehicle, watching his hands tremble in his lap. The violet moonlight made his skin look wrong, pale and sickly, like he’d already become part of this world.

Six levels.

He’d gained six levels in a single fight.

His old self, the D-Rank porter who’d spent three years grinding for scraps of experience, would have wept at the impossibility of it. Twenty-seven monsters in forty-seven days.

That was his old kill count. Mostly E-Rank. A few D-Ranks when the hunters let him finish off wounded prey.

Now he’d killed five B-Ranks in under three minutes.

"System," he whispered.

[Ronan Night]

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

[Level: 8]

[STR: 22 +20]

[AGI: 20 +20]

[CON: 18 +20]

[MAG: 12 +20]

[Available Points: 0]

[Active Skills:]

[Night’s Caress] [Passive]

[Shadow Consume]

[Lover’s Protection]

[Shadow Merge]

[Shadow Storage:]

[Skitter (B-Rank) - Summoned]

[Skitter (B-Rank)]

[Skitter (B-Rank)]

Three slots, and one was currently being used.

Ronan stared at the storage list longer than necessary. Two more skitters waiting in the dark beneath his feet. He could feel them down there, dormant but aware, pressing against the edges of his consciousness like caged animals.

If he summoned all three at once, he’d have a small army.

B-Rank monsters that hit like low A-Ranks.

At level eight.

Too bad the one-target-at-a-time rule killed any chance of that.

"Greedy," he muttered to himself. "You’re already broken as hell."

His summoned skitter melted out of the shadow beneath the awning and crept closer. The violet glow in its eyes dimmed slightly as it approached, like it was trying to look less threatening.

It failed.

But Ronan noticed the attempt.

"You understand me," he said. Not a question.

The skitter’s jaw unhinged slightly. Its three-tongued tendril flicked out, then retreated. It tilted its head at that same unnatural angle, and Ronan could have sworn it was waiting for him to continue.

"Can you understand me, or are you just mimicking responses?"

No answer. Just the faint clicking of its too-many-jointed limbs settling against the pavement.

Ronan sighed and leaned his head back against the vehicle.

The shaking was starting to subside. Not because he was calming down, but because his body was simply too tired to keep wasting energy on fear. Forty-seven days of adrenaline crashes had trained him to recover fast.

Sleep.

He needed sleep.

But sleeping here, in the open, with only a dead goddess and a monster made of shadow for company?

His eyes drifted to the buildings lining the street. Most were collapsed or crumbling, but a few still had intact upper floors. Somewhere he could barricade himself in. Somewhere with only one entrance.

Somewhere safe.

"Find me a building," Ronan said, pushing himself to his feet. His legs held, but only barely. "Intact, with multiple floors."

The skitter’s head swiveled toward a structure three blocks down. A former hotel, maybe, or an apartment complex. The lower floors had collapsed inward, but the top three stories still stood, connected to the street by a fire escape that looked mostly intact.

Ronan squinted at it.

"That’s... actually perfect."

He started walking. The skitter fell into step behind him, its too-long limbs moving with an eerie silence that belied its size. Ronan’s own shadow stretched out ahead of him, distorted by the moon, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him from within it.

Not the skitters.

Something else.

"Sarael," he tried again. "If you’re there... I don’t need anything. Just... I don’t know. A sign? Something to let me know I’m not going crazy?"

The wind picked up.

Cold, sharp, and carrying that sweet, night-blooming scent he’d smelled in the shrine.

It wrapped around him like arms, lingered for a moment, then dissipated.

Ronan’s chest tightened.

"Okay," he whispered. "Okay... that’s enough."

The fire escape groaned under his weight but held.

Ronan climbed slowly, testing each step before committing. His summoned skitter didn’t bother with the ladder.

It simply flowed up the side of the building, claws finding purchase in brick and mortar, violet eyes tracking his progress from above.

By the time he reached the third floor, his arms were screaming.

Not from exhaustion. His stats had fixed that. But the phantom memory of fatigue still haunted his muscles, a ghost of the weakness he’d carried for over a month.

The building’s third floor was a mess.

Furniture overturned. Windows shattered. Dark stains on the walls that Ronan deliberately didn’t look at for too long.

But there was a corner room with only one door and no windows facing the street. Just a small bathroom attached, the pipes long since gone dry.

It would do.

Ronan dragged a heavy dresser in front of the door. Not because he thought it would stop anything determined to get in, but because the scraping sound would wake him if something tried.

His skitter settled into the darkest corner of the room, folding its too-long limbs beneath itself like a sleeping spider. The violet glow in its eyes faded to a dim pulse, barely visible.

"Guard," Ronan said.

The glow brightened once, acknowledging his command.

He collapsed onto the floor, back against the wall, and closed his eyes.

Sleep came faster than he wanted it to.

***

Ronan didn’t dream.

Or if he did, he didn’t remember.

What he remembered was warmth. A heavy, suffocating warmth that pressed against him from all sides, like being wrapped in a blanket made of living shadows.

It should have been uncomfortable. It should have been terrifying.

Instead, he’d slept more deeply than he had in weeks.

When his eyes opened, the violet moon was still fixed in its place. No passage of time, no dawn. Just the same sick glow filtering through the broken windows, painting everything in shades of purple and black.

Ronan sat up slowly.

His body felt... different. Not stronger or weaker, just different, like someone had rearranged his insides while he was sleeping and forgotten to tell him.

But then he felt something at his side; he could swear something was grinding against him, the sensation of flesh and warmth.

A slow, deliberate friction against his hip that made every nerve in his body fire at once.

Ronan’s head snapped down.

Sarael was curled against his side, her body pressed flush against his, one pale thigh hooked over his leg. Her face was buried in the crook of his neck, lips parted, breath hot against his skin.

And she was moving.

Grinding.

Slowly and lazily, like a cat kneading something soft.

"Wha—"

Her eyes opened.

Violet and dilated. Unfocused in a way that had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with hunger.

"You said my name," she whispered against his throat. Her voice was thick, syrupy, like she’d been holding it in for centuries, and it had curdled into something richer and more dangerous. "You said my name..."

Ronan’s body went rigid.

Not from fear.

But from her.

The warmth he’d felt in his sleep, the suffocating blanket of shadow, it hadn’t been a blanket at all. It had been her.

Wrapped around him and pressed against every inch of his skin while he lay unconscious and defenseless.

"You were sleeping so peacefully,"

Sarael continued, her hips rolling against his in a slow, rhythmic motion. She wasn’t wearing anything. The darkness that usually clung to her like silk had pooled around her waist, leaving her bare from the ribs up.

"I tried to let you rest. I really did, but you just kept murmuring. Little sounds, little breaths, and I just..."

She bit down on his collarbone.

Not hard enough to draw blood, but definitely hard enough to leave a mark.

"Couldn’t help myself."

Ronan blinked.

Just once.

A single, involuntary flutter of his eyelids.

When they opened, the warmth was gone. The weight on his hips. The breath against his throat. All of it, erased like it had never existed.

She was gone again, just like that.