Jake sat under the tree and stared at nothing.

At least that’s what it looked like to everyone else.

People walked past him; they were busy doing the camp work.

Dragon Maidens. Iron-suited soldiers. Even Eskar, who glanced at him once and then kept moving with the careful deliberateness of a man who had decided that whatever Jake was doing was none of his business.

They were all busy setting up camp for the night. Tents are going up. Fires being started. Horses being tended to. The normal business of a traveling company that had been on the road for two days and would be on the road for several more.

Nobody bothered Jake.

Nobody asked what he was doing or if he needed anything, or if he was okay. They just looked at him for a second and then looked away and kept moving. There was something about the way he was sitting that communicated very clearly that an interruption was not welcome.

What they couldn’t see were the screens.

Jake could see them perfectly. Three of them are floating in the air in front of him at eye level. Translucent blue panels that only he could see. The Blood-Shadow System had been relatively quiet since the awakening at the rest stop. It had stabilized him and shown him the basic structure of what had changed. But it hadn’t explained everything. There was too much to explain all at once.

Now it was explaining.

Jake had questions.

The system was answering them.

The conversation was happening entirely inside his field of vision in a way that looked from the outside like a young man staring at empty air.

[ AWAKENING PROCESS COMPLETE ] The first screen read.

[ BLOODLINE: RAIKARNDEL — FULLY INTEGRATED ]

[ PHYSICAL CHANGES: RECORDED ]

[ ABILITY STRUCTURE: UPDATED ]

Jake focused on the second screen. It showed his body. Not a picture exactly. More like a diagram. Lines of energy running through him in patterns that hadn’t been there before. His muscles were denser. His bones were stronger. His blood moved differently. The cauldron had tried to extract his essence and, in trying, had triggered something that was supposed to happen eventually but had happened all at once instead.

He was different now.

He could feel it.

His body responded faster when he moved. His senses were sharper. He could hear conversations happening thirty meters away if he focused on them. He could see details in the treeline that should have been too far to make out clearly. Everything was turned up.

WHAT CAN I DO NOW?

Jake typed the question mentally.

The system responded immediately on the third screen.

[ CURRENT ABILITIES AVAILABLE: ]

[ 1. SHADOW MANIPULATION — INTERMEDIATE LEVEL ]

[ 2. BLOOD MAGIC — LOCKED ]

[ 3. RAIKARNDEL CLAN TECHNIQUES — ACCESSIBLE ]

Jake focused on the second one.

WHY IS BLOOD MAGIC LOCKED?

The system’s response appeared quickly.

[ BLOOD MAGIC IS FORBIDDEN PRACTICE ]

[ REASON: EXTREME DANGER TO USER AND SURROUNDINGS ]

[ CONTROL REQUIREMENT: MASTER LEVEL ]

[ CURRENT CONTROL LEVEL: NOVICE ]

[ RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT ATTEMPT USE UNTIL PROPER TRAINING IS ACHIEVED ]

Jake absorbed this. Blood magic, probably an inherited art from his mother. Part of what made Raikarndel what it was. And he couldn’t use it because it was too dangerous and he didn’t know how to control it properly. The system was being very clear about this. The kind of clarity that suggested attempting it anyway would result in consequences nobody wanted.

Fine. He could work with that.

He focused on the third option.

[ RAIKARNDEL CLAN TECHNIQUES ]

A new screen opened.

This one was longer. A list of abilities and skills that his father had developed or inherited or learned during whatever time he’d spent being powerful enough that people used the word omnipotent around him. The list was organized by difficulty. Basic techniques at the top. Advanced ones further down. Master level techniques at the bottom.

Jake started reading.

[ BASIC TECHNIQUES: ]

[ — SHADOW STEP: SHORT-RANGE TELEPORTATION THROUGH CONNECTED SHADOWS ]

[ — NIGHT VISION: ENHANCED SIGHT IN DARKNESS ]

[ — VEILSTRIDE : ELIMINATE SOUND FROM FOOTSTEPS AND BREATHING ]

He kept reading. The intermediate techniques. The advanced ones. Some of them he recognized from what he’d already done. Shadow Reach was there. Shadow Mirror was there. But there were others. Techniques with names like Void Strike and Blood Sense Enhancement and Shadow Binding.

His stats were at the bottom of the main screen.

[ NAME: JAKE ALTORAS ]

[ BLOODLINE: RAIKARNDEL ]

[ CLASS: II ]

[ TALENT RANK: 1 ]

[ TITLES: ??? ]

The title section was blank except for question marks.

Jake frowned at it, not knowing why it was showing no title. He was a swordsman before, but it had changed to a question mark.

He was about to ask the system what that meant when he heard the shouting.

It started at the edge of camp.

One voice.

Then two. Then five. People yelling. Not panic exactly. More like an urgent alarm. The kind of shouting that happened when something unexpected was happening and people needed to deal with it quickly.

Jake looked up from the screens.

They dissolved immediately. Gone from his vision as they’d never been there. He stood up from the base of the tree and turned toward the noise.

The Dragon Maidens were moving. All of them. Raani was at the front with her short blade drawn. The others had weapons out, too. They were forming a line between Jake and something he couldn’t see yet. Something behind him.

Behind him.

Jake turned around slowly.

The python was three meters away.

It was enormous. Easily ten meters long. Maybe twelve. Its body was as thick as an elephant’s torso. Dark green scales with black patterns running down its back. Its head was massive. Flat and wide with eyes that were gold and vertical-slitted and looking directly at Jake with an intelligence that snakes were not supposed to have.

It had come up completely silently.

No sound. No warning. It was just there.

Between Jake and the tree he’d been sitting under. Close enough that it could have struck him a dozen times already if it wanted to.

Jake froze.

Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to move.

To run. To do something other than stand perfectly still while a creature that could swallow him whole was staring at him from three meters away.

The Dragon Maidens were shouting. Raani was yelling something about not moving. About staying calm. About their handling of it.