the pulse of the black blood

Litus was no soldier, but the Cadaver Disposal Unit treated him like fodder. The job was simple: clean up the remains of the fallen beasts before their "black blood" could infect the soil.

As he dragged a massive, severed limb across the rubble, Litus felt a strange vibration coming from the book hidden beneath his uniform. It wasn’t a mechanical tremor, but a heartbeat. The mysterious boy who had given it to him sat nearby on a heap of debris, watching him with an unsettling intensity.

"You feel the call, don’t you?" the boy whispered.

At that exact moment, a mangled chunk of flesh from a beast that should have been dead suddenly twitched. A mass of oily black tentacles lashed out toward Litus’s throat. It happened in an instant.

Litus didn't think. His Instinct didn't tell him to run; it told him to command. A surge of dark blue energy raced through his veins, visible beneath his skin like cold flames. Without even a touch, the tentacle disintegrated in mid-air, turning into magical ash.

Litus fell to his knees, gasping for air. The book in his pack had stopped beating, but now a single page had become legible. It revealed a symbol: a mountain shrouded in thick smoke.

"Magic is not a gift," the boy said, stepping closer. "It is what remains of the human dignity those bastards stole from us. Welcome to the awakened, Litus."