Jaxon was a boy who knew the weight of every coin and every crust of bread. He had grown up in the shadow of the Inner Walls of Old York.

Those walls were made of shimmering white stone and gold plating. They looked like heaven from the outside.

To Jaxon, the Inner Walls were not a place of beauty. They were a reminder of everything he did not have.

His life was small. It was lived in a shack made of corrugated metal and reinforced plastic. The only thing in that shack that mattered was his sister, Mia.

She was five years old with hair that was always messy and eyes that were far too big for her thin face.

The Outer Walls were a lawless place. If you did not have a Trait, you did not exist to the government.

You were just another mouth to feed in the slums. Jaxon had spent his childhood scavenging for scrap metal and dodging the gangs that roamed the alleys.

He had been beaten for a half-eaten ration pack more times than he could count.

Everything changed when he turned seventeen. He felt a heat in his chest that did not come from the sun.

He had awakened a Trait. The Flames, a guild that helped Outer kids like him, took him in. They tested him and found he had a C-Rank Pyromancy Trait.

It was a miracle.

In the Outer Walls, a C-Rank was a ticket out. It was a golden key to the Inner Walls. If he could just pass one Tunnel run and become a registered Crusader, he would be a citizen.

He would get a real apartment. Mia would have milk every day. She would have shoes that did not have holes in the soles.

"I will be back by dinner, Mia," Jaxon had said that morning. He had ruffled her hair and felt her tiny arms wrap around his waist.

"Promise?" she asked.

"I promise. We are going to the Red Tunnel. It is easy. Like a walk in the park," he told her. He was lying. No tunnel was truly easy. But the Red Tunnel was the safest bet for new awakeners.

He met his team at the entrance. Kael, Elara, and Sora were just like him. They were kids from the slums who just wanted a life where they did not have to worry about the next meal.

They were not heroes. They did not want to save the world. They just wanted to be citizens.

But they never expected that fate would be cruel to them. Just like always.

The moment they stepped through the shimmering portal, the world changed. The Red Tunnel should have been a well-lit cave with a few stray slimes and weak insects.

Instead, the air turned cold and heavy. The walls shifted from red to a dull, dead gray. The light from their torches seemed to be swallowed by the shadows. The tunnel had mutated.

The system screens in their minds flickered and turned colorless. It became an Apocalypse difficulty Tunnel. It was a freak event that happened once in a million runs. Jaxon had watched his friends die one by one.

He felt the cold steel of the Hobgoblin Assassin’s dagger slide into his chest. It was a strange feeling. It did not hurt as much as he expected. It just felt like his life was leaking out onto the floor.

As he fell backward, his vision started to blur.

He thought of Mia. She would be sitting by the door of their shack. She would be waiting for the dinner he promised.

She would wait until the sun went down. She would wait until the gangs came out. And he would not be there to protect her.

The grief was worse than the wound. He felt a tear roll down his cheek and mix with the blood.

"I am sorry, Mia," he mouthed. He had no breath left to say it aloud. Or rather, he was already dead. It was Ayla who controlled the last bit of his nerves to speak that.

[Racial Form Acquired: Human]

[Trait Acquired: Pyromancy (C-Grade)]

Name: Ayla

Trait: Perfect Assimilation, Pyromancy (C)

Rank: Iron

Level: 2 (0/20)

Available Forms:

Form 001: Human (Equip? Y/N)

(NB: Host’s trait will make the physical form replicate perfectly for the race.)

The goblins finished tearing at the other bodies and turned toward the spot where Jaxon had fallen.

They found nothing but scraps of his torn clothes. The boy was gone. The hobgoblin mage looked around the cavern and hissed in confusion. Its prey had vanished into thin air, making it angry.

Ayla had already slipped away. She moved her round body through a narrow crack in the tunnel wall. She felt a heavy fullness in her belly.

Even though she had eaten the entire body of a human, her slime form remained the same small size. The biomass was being compressed into her core.

As she glided through the darkness, she began to sift through Jaxon’s memories. The memories of the goddess were dangerous.

She had to keep them locked behind a thick wall in her mind so they wouldn’t erase who she was. But Jaxon’s life was simple. It was easy for her to understand.

She felt a strange pang of sadness when she thought about Mia. She saw the image of the helpless little girl waiting in a shack in a ruthless world.

Ayla paused. Why should she care about a human child? She was not Jaxon.

His memories were just data. They influenced her thoughts, but they did not change what she was. Still, the memories made her curious.

She thought about the Outer Walls and the Inner Walls. She thought about the guilds and the idea of citizenship.

Humans were more complex. They had systems and goals. They seemed to be fun. Her curiosity grew.

She wanted to know more about this world above the tunnels. To do that, she decided she would need to eat more human brains. She needed more perspectives to truly understand them.

When Ayla was sure she had reached a safe distance from the goblin horde, she stopped in a small, quiet alcove. It was time to try her new power.

[Biomass consumed...]

[Constructing perfect human body...]

The fullness in her stomach vanished instantly.

The mass inside her began to shift and expand. A violent sensation attacked her from every direction as her liquid form turned into solid matter.

It was an overwhelming feeling of heat and pressure.

In the place of the pale slime, a naked human girl now stood. She had long silver hair that fell to her waist and eyes that glowed like polished gold.

Her face was perfect, possessing a beauty that would take the breath away from any person who saw her.

Ayla raised her new hands and looked at her fingers. She opened her mouth and spoke. Her voice sounded awkward and shaky, as if she were learning to use a tool for the first time.

"It is so cold."