Caelin’s life was darkness. The last thing he remembered had been a flash of light, a dragging sensation, then... nothing.
Now, he was nowhere, deep in the nothingness between worlds.
The Void, the Harbinger, the others, all seemed distant. The absence of the other Silenced Ones was like a severed limb, a piece of himself carved away without warning. He’d never questioned their presence before. Never needed to. They had always been there, whispering, commanding, guiding, scheming. Now, silence. Worse than silence, more nothingness.
Something wet dripped down his face. Flicking his tongue out, he tasted blood. It wasn’t Soul Blood, Harbinger knew he’d tasted the Soul Blood from a thousand planets. This was… the blood of a Silenced One? The Harbinger’s? His face and tongue tingled as the power in the blood reacted to his presence.
Running hands over his armor, he tested for damage. He was whole, physically, at least. But at the same time, he felt wrong. Like a blade knocked out of alignment, a weapon dulled in ways it shouldn’t have been. He felt hollow.
He reached out into the darkenss and nothing responded. The Harbinger was gone. The realization hit him harder than expected. There was no command pressing into his mind, no guiding force directing his path. No shackles, nothing. It was freedom. Not the freedom the Souls he had Reaped begged for, it was more nothingness. He was no longer part of something. He knew freedom should’ve felt different, but after eons of servitude it felt like something had been taken from him. Now he felt like he was standing at the edge of an abyss, looking down, realizing the ground beneath him had never been real in the first place. Or, the only thing real was gone, and now he was just drifting away. Untethered to reality. Alone.
Caelin sucked in a breath and reached further. The Silenced Ones. Surely they were still there, he needed them to be there.
He found threads, the network was in tatters, dozens, hundreds. So many of his brothers and sisters, severed, unraveling away from him. His mind grasped for something solid. Some anchor in a turbulent sea of screaming nothingness.
Then, a single thread burned bright. Strong. Unyielding.
Ansen.
Caelin’s grip on reality solidified for a moment. If Ansen was alive, then there was still something familiar in the Multiverse. He strained further, then recoiled as more threads snapped. Silenced Ones were falling, vanishing, being erased. Threads drifted closer to Ansen’s, like ships on a darkened sea only to be dragged beneath the waves as Ansen drew near, a predator lurking in the dark.
His pulse quickened. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be Ansen, he had been the best of them. The strongest, the most trusted, the most… Ansen had wanted power. He had been different, the Harbinger had made him different. One of the few Silenced Ones forged from the Souls of Originals. One of The Nine. The rest, Caelin clenched his fists, the others, including himself, had been forged from shattered Souls, the leftover power from Echos. Those deemed inferior. Still, if it wasn’t Ansen, the System shouldn’t be able to do this. The Silenced Ones had been created within the System but had always been separate from it, the Harbinger was… had been a jealous master. Though, would he, one of the Reapers, one othe the Harbinger of Death’s Silenced Ones, would he even know if the System had the power to reap the reapers? Would he remember if he knew?
Caelin’s existence lurched. A portal tore open and the darkness, the nothingness, was gone.
----------------------------------------
Caelin shot from the void like a projectile. His body collided with a ruined building, tore through concrete and metal then slammed into something more solid. The impact drove the air from his lungs, but his bones were grinding and popping back into place before he even registered the pain.
He lay still for a moment, remembering where he had been, remembering threads drifting within the nothingness. Small details blazed with exceptional clarity, there was no reasoning as to why certain memories remained, while the rest of his existence… those memories were tantalisingly close, but just out of reach. The Silenced Ones slowly ceasing to exist. Then, slowly, he rolled onto his back, allowing his eyes to be dragged skyward. The world around him burned. Fires raged through the ruins, choking smoke blotting out the sun.
Panning his gaze down, he saw where he had impacted. A slab of old and rusted metal that had been exposed in the destruction that had been wrought on the city, or town he now found himself within. Flicking his eyes back up he focussed on the Activation Node that called forth his HUD.
Location - Campbelltown, New South Wales, Earth 784G457
System Incursion - Active
Eclipses - Inactive
Straining his memory, Caelin couldn’t remember ever visiting the planet before. The Earths had always held a certain fascination for his maker.
"Not just my Maker. My Jailer.".
The thought was sharp, unbidden. He crushed it before it could take root. The thought came with an unsettling realisation that he remembered next to nothing from before a flash of light. The time in the nothingness was fresh, but other than hazy memories everything was hidden from him. His heart hammered painfully. Ruins stretched endlessly, fragments of familiarity that slipped away like sand through shaking fingers. Panic rose, suffocating.
Even without reviewing his HUD he knew his body was intact, but his mind... It felt like it had been shattered, then hastily reassembled using pieces that didn’t belong. For the first time since his creation, his forging within the Soulspire his Soul felt frayed, like the edges were unraveling, held together by willpower alone.
Caelin rose slowly, shattered concrete sliding off his shoulders as he stood in the jagged crater his body had created. The acrid stench of burnt rubber and melted plastic permeated the air, mingling with thick smoke that rolled across the devastated landscape, creating shifting curtains of grey that obscured his vision. Occasional drafts of blistering heat swept past him, radiating off burning cars and twisted metal, alternating unpredictably with strangely cold pockets of air, reminders of where the Void’s unnatural touch lingered.
A dialogue box flickered into existence, its light dim and unsteady, as if barely clinging to reality. It was precise and coldly informative, nothing like the fragmented, organic notifications he'd known from the Silenced One Network. This felt disturbingly clinical, disturbingly... System-like.
Soul Stability - 5%
He stared at it, unease building in his chest. His personal HUD notifications had always been internal, intuitive, private, but this felt entirely different. The Silenced One Network had been fragmented, organic, personal. But never so precise, clinical… never this disturbingly System-like. It had always felt alive, chaotic, a patchwork of whispers and impressions, not this structured, sterile clarity. Caelin forced his mind to roam, searching for the Network, again he just felt threads. Fragments of memory resurfaced, pop-ups from within the Network had been intuitive, personal, responsive. But this? This was something else entirely. With an irritated wave Caelin dismissed the pop-up, but the lingering discomfort refused to fade completely.
His vision sharpened briefly, involuntarily taking in the city around him. Towering office blocks stood shattered like colossal tombstones, their upper floors blasted open, exposing jagged interiors of twisted metal and dangling wires. In the distance, intermittent explosions rumbled, a car or gas line succumbing belatedly to destruction, each boom reverberating painfully through his chest, underscoring his own sense of fragility.
A noise tore through his fragmented thoughts, barely audible but his instincts magnified it. Footsteps on broken concrete. Caelin turned and sniffed the air, sweat, blood and fear, all coming closer. It was daytime, but the thick black smoke from the ruined buildings and cars rendered the sun useless. Another scuff of boots on debris. Closer this time.
His body moved before his mind caught up. He inhaled sharply, immediately regretting it as a wave of bitter, metallic flavor assaulted his senses. It was a vile medley of burning plastic, spilled fuel, and blood, mingled grotesquely with an unsettling sweetness of charred flesh. Each breath scorched his lungs, intensifying his irritation at the interruption.
An ethereal blade appeared in his grip. It slid through an unarmored throat. A single flick of his wrist sent the head tumbling from its shoulders to land in his outstretched hand.
He hadn’t meant to summon the blade. Hadn’t even meant to kill. But he had. He had. Then, like he’d done it countless times before, he flicked the stained blade to the side which caused all the blood to be cast to the ground. The body slumped to its knees into blood rapidly pooling below it. More footsteps. Armed humans rushed into view, weapons raised.
“Weak,” the word emerged from his mouth without him actively thinking it. It was coloured with a rush of unexpected anger and disgust.
Before the corpse hit the ground, Caelin kicked it towards an enemy off to the side, the body ragdolled through the air until it took its former ally to the ground. While that was happening Caelin turned with the head still in his grasp. He stood amid the onrushing attackers, hands trembling uncontrollably, panic clawing through his chest. Was this what he'd become, a killer without thought? One of the Native’s eyes widened in horror above a thick beard.
"Bastard! I’ll kill—"
The words barely registered.
The severed head left his grip, slamming into the bearded man’s face with a wet crunch.
Caelin moved in just behind it, blade carving through the Earth 784G457 native’s throat before the body even hit the ground. It was like his body acted purely on instinct, he was just a passenger. Memories of fighting and killing slid into his mind.
Screams. War cries. Wet slashing sounds. Piteous begging was all that followed. Caelin was mechanical. Instinctual. Efficient.
Then there was silence.
Caelin stood tall, covered in both blood and ash, bodies littering the ground at his feet.
He counted. Eleven. Eleven dead to his hands. Eleven wasted lives, they could never have killed him, they were weak. Weak and…
Blood dripped slowly from his blade onto scorched rubble, sizzling slightly against hot metal fragments littering the street. His fingers brushed against a steel girder, feeling sharp, heat-softened edges catching on his gauntlets. Residual warmth seeped through his gloves, a grim reminder of the inferno that had raged moments before, echoing the violence he'd just wrought.
A power stirred within him, instinctually reaching out to claim its due, a HUD notifications flashed up to give him more information.
Absorption (Racial Ability): Absorb power from defeated foes. Absorbing Echoes grants a small boost to all stats. Absorbing the Soul of an Original provides far larger increases but risks mental fragmentation. Absorbing Silenced Ones provides limited benefit dependent on their Soul Stability.
Then his vision was impeded by another pop-up, this one was flickering and barely visible.
Soul Stability - 7%
Caelin exhaled slowly, Network pop-ups he’s received before had always come with information from the Silenced One who had initially put the details together. This was so… separate. But it came from within the network. Again, Caelin waved it away, suspicion bubbling just below the surface.
A distant roar rumbled through the sky. Caelin’s gaze snapped to the horizon. Smoke billowed endlessly, blotting out the sun, creating a perpetual twilight cast in unnatural hues of orange and grey. Tiny embers drifted lazily through the thick haze, glowing briefly before dissolving into nothingness, each like a fragment of life burning away into oblivion. A powerful gust rippled through the smoke-choked street, accompanied by a deep, resonating thrum, the wing strokes of the Leviathan somewhere above. Moments later, an entire bus appeared through the smoke, tumbling end over end as if hurled by a colossal, invisible hand. It crashed violently into a half-collapsed building across the street. A towering column of fire and void energy erupted through the haze, illuminating the shattered skyline in a flickering blue-black glow before vanishing into the murk. The Leviathan. He couldn’t see it—not yet—but he could feel its presence, the weight of its existence pressing against reality.
It wasn’t looking for him. Not yet.
That would change soon.
The streets were a graveyard. The once-bustling sprawl of this ruined city was now little more than a smoldering corpse.
Collapsed shopfronts sagged inward, their metal shutters warped and melted. The remains of a burned-out transit station jutted from the landscape, its skeletal framework twisted from the heat. Nearby, the charred husk of a train lay half-derailed, its windows shattered, metal siding warped from fire and void exposure.
The air was thick with smoke and scorched chemicals, carrying the acrid bite of burning plastic, spilled fuel, and charred flesh. Yet, beneath it all, there was something else. A scent that nagged at his memory.
“Void.”
Instinct guided him—deeply ingrained reflexes filling gaps left by fractured memories.
The Void clung to the ruins in patches, unnatural scars in the fabric of reality. Walls where light bent strangely, streets where shadows stretched in the wrong direction. Places that felt... hollow.
Something in him knew what this was.
But the memory wouldn’t come. A sharp metallic creak echoed through the ruins.
Caelin stopped. His instincts reacted first—shoulders squaring, weight shifting, pulse slowing. His breath evened out before he even realized why. The air shifted. Smoke rolled through the remains of an intersection, stirring debris across the cracked pavement. His nose caught something fresh. Sweat. Gunpowder. The iron tang of blood still wet.
Not corpses. Someone alive. Close.
A heartbeat later, a figure stepped into view.
A man, armed, standing in the middle of the ruined road. His rifle was old, rusted, the kind of weapon passed between desperate hands. His grip was steady, but his heartbeat wasn’t.
Caelin heard it—fast, erratic. Fear.
"Stop," the native said, voice rough, uneven. "Drop your weapons."
Caelin didn’t stop.
The man swallowed, adjusting his grip. "I don’t know what you are. But you don’t belong here."
Caelin tilted his head slightly.
There was no hesitation in his movements. No tension in his stance. Just stillness.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
"If you knew what I was," he said, voice low, "you wouldn’t be talking."
The man’s fingers twitched near the trigger.
A choice.
Caelin had no interest in pointless slaughter. But this man was in his way. He would not stop.
"People are still alive," the native said. "This city isn’t yours to take."
Caelin exhaled slowly, stepping forward.
The man fired.
The bullet, such as it was impacted Caelin’s armour, then fell to the ground. The man’s eyes widened. His breath hitched.
Caelin didn’t slow.
A flicker of motion. A blur of steel.
The rifle clattered to the ground.
The man clutched at his throat, blood welling between his fingers. He staggered backward, mouth opening as if to speak, but there were no words left.
Caelin stepped past him as he crumpled to the pavement.
“Weak.”
Then, the world shook.
A roar tore through the city like a detonation.
Caelin staggered, instinctively dropping low as the force of the soundwave ripped through the ruins. Nearby structures groaned under the impact, crumbling as debris cascaded into the streets.
The ground beneath him trembled. His cloak snapped violently behind him.
A steel beam shrieked as it tore loose, hurtling through the air.
Caelin moved.
The impact sent up a wall of dust where he had stood seconds ago.
It wasn’t looking for him specifically.
Not yet.
But it had sensed something.
System pop-ups flashed up in the sky above, precise and clinical. These were directly from the System itself, clearly separate from his HUD or the potentially compromised Network. This was an alert to everyone in the area.
Probability Matrix Calculating... Adjusting Terrain... Suppressing Target...
The ground beneath his feet shifted.
A second roar shook the ruins. A collapsed building suddenly gave way, its broken skeleton crashing toward him.
The System was trying to kill him.
It couldn’t see him, but it could predict him.
Caelin’s body moved before he thought. A sharp pivot, a low dash through the crumbling wreckage. His instincts took over. He wasn’t reacting anymore, he was anticipating.
The next building gave way seconds before he reached it. He rolled beneath the falling debris, dodging before the System could finish its own calculation.
It was too slow.
The System adapted. He adapted faster.
“It’s targeting the blind spot… smart,” he muttered.
Somewhere deep inside, a memory stirred. A world devoured. Not darkness, but a deeper wrongness, black stained with seeping purple, a corruption that bled through the sky itself. He remembered running through streets that twisted and tore apart, Void tendrils lashing down from the sky, each strike ripping entire chunks of the world into nothingness. It had not been strength that had driven him forward. It had been survival. Pure instinct sharpened by fear, by the crushing certainty that he had been abandoned and left behind. He had run toward the distant silhouette of the Soulspire, its ancient defenses barely holding back the Void’s hunger. Every step had been a fight against despair, every breath stolen from a world already lost. The Void did not belong to him. It had tried to consume him, and he had simply refused to die.
As he moved, the name surfaced bitterly in his mind. Serrakia.
A pop-up flickered into existence just as Caelin threw himself sideways. The memory had distracted him, and the System had nearly predicted his path.
Silenced Nature (Racial Trait)Immune to System interference. Undetectable and untargetable by System sensors. Separated physical matter is detectable. Gains power through Absorption and Adaptation.
Caelin didn’t slow, waving the notification away as confusion gnawed at him. This pop-up—it couldn't be directly from the System. His Traits were protected, separate. Yet it felt uncomfortably Systematic. Regardless, the Leviathan was waiting.
Smoke churned around him as he pushed forward, the last remnants of the ruined city stretching ahead.
Looking around, he saw the lingering Souls and Echoes left by the Void. A grinning leer split his face beneath the hood as something stirred inside him.
Soulstorm Surge Active
The notification appeared in his HUD, followed by a pop-up which he didn’t have time for.
He didn’t bother reading it, didn’t process the limitations of the Ability..
There wasn’t enough time.
He just kept moving.
His heightened senses sharpened every detail into painful clarity. Oppressive heat radiated from nearby fires. The cacophony of destruction echoed in his ears. A nauseating medley of scents assaulted him relentlessly. Movement flickered in peripheral vision, a flutter of torn fabric in a shattered window, buildings trembling moments before collapse. Each detail registered sharply, pulling insistently at his splintered mind and anchoring him to the stark reality of imminent violence.
The Leviathan reacted with a tidal wave of fire and void energy, it surged forward consuming everything in its wake but Caelin was already moving.
He cut through the flames like a specter, blades extended to shift the attack to both sides, his ragged cloak whipping in the force of the explosion as he vaulted over the burning husks of ruined train cars. The tracks beneath him buckled and twisted, steel groaning under the sheer heat.
The momentum of Soulstorm Surge hadn’t faded yet.
Everything was heightened. The world around him blurred, not because his vision was failing, but because he was moving too fast for it to keep up. The battlefield pulsed around him, the air thick with the remnants of devoured Souls.
The ground cracked beneath his boots.
A final burst of power propelled him forward, straight onto the Leviathan’s back.
Caelin launched himself forward, watching as the Void Energy seemed to lose its lock on the blind spot he created and instead homed in on humans that were cowering in fear trying to hide from the Leviathan and the Void. The skill dragged the power left by the unfortunates in the area and fuelled his speed. The loss of Souls and Echoes would have to be borne, Caelin couldn’t see an alternative. Serrakia was still vivid in his memory.
Lethargy fought to control him. The high of Soulstorm Surge was fading fast. The weight of stolen Souls burned through his limbs, threatening to drag him down. He fought it.
He needed to keep fighting it.
The Leviathan hadn’t even noticed him yet.
It would.
The moment his blade tore through its wing joint, the beast screamed.
The world shook with the force of its pain.
The ability wasn’t just affecting him.
As the Leviathan roared, the battlefield responded.
The lingering remnants of Echoes and Souls, the ones Caelin had pulled from the void-ravaged city began to unravel.
Faint, spectral figures flickered around him, torn from the force of their own destruction. They weren’t conscious, weren’t alive, but they recognized something in him.
He was a Reaper, A Silenced One once bound in servitude to the Harbinger of Death. He had been forged with one simple purpose, Reap the weak. Over the eons of his servitude he had never failed.
.
The weight of so many devoured Echoes should have shattered him. But he was still standing. Still fighting.
The Leviathan was finally looking at him. Its eyes were hollow pits of void energy. Its massive body flexed and twisted as it turned its full attention toward the tiny creature that had just become a real threat.
New notifications slammed into his HUD.
Warnings. System alerts.
Something about his Soul Stability dropping as he burnt Echoes for power. Something about Soulstorm Surge’s limitations.
He ignored them all.
There was no time for that now.
With a draconic roar, the Leviathan took notice of Caelin. Hot blood pumped from the wound, splashing over Caelin and down to the ash-covered ground far below. Spitting the vile liquid from his mouth, the Silenced One smiled with blood-stained teeth and drove his sword directly into the wound. The System Tag above his head went from orange to red as the Leviathan stopped breaking buildings and turned its attention on the tiny creature savaging its neck.
Bone spikes infused with Void fired from the Leviathan’s back, causing Caelin to jump backwards as he parried them with his blade. The creature twisted its sinuous neck, and Caelin watched as muscles coiled and flexed, preparing to breathe either fire or void energy over him. Pausing for a moment, he queried his memories on whether creatures born of the Void were resistant to it, but nothing came back to him. The Harbingers very rarely allowed secrets from the Domains to leak out. If anyone knew, it would’ve been his Maker… his Jailer. And the Harbinger of Death wasn’t typically free with his knowledge. Pain, however, was another story. He had enjoyed providing pain to his creations. Caelin shook his head as if to clear it, then gritted his teeth.
“Focus!”
A bone spike tore through his cloak and into his armor. The pain was nothing. The damage was nothing. The armor would self-repair, and the cloak would regenerate in the shadows. Knowing that he had let himself get distracted, that hurt more. The blood, he couldn’t afford to lose much, and a large spike tearing through his side meant a lot was now running freely down his right leg. Caelin slammed a door in his mind shut on the pain and prepared himself. Pain was nothing. Memories were nothing. The Harbinger’s Wrath would open him up to both.
Harbinger's Wrath (Active - Class-Specific): Channel the destructive power of the Harbinger of Death for a limited time, gaining +20% to all stats. This surge of energy enhances combat capabilities, but with it comes a dangerous cost. The longer this power is wielded, the more it strains the mind and soul, causing instability and emotional volatility. Prolonged use risks mental fragmentation, leaving the user vulnerable to loss of control. After the effect ends, a period of reduced focus and precision follows, slowing attacks and reactions. The power can only be maintained for 30 seconds and can only be used once per day
30 Seconds Remain
Combined with the lethargy he was holding at bay from the use of Soulstorm Surge, and the prodigious loss of blood, he was on borrowed time. Using his two overpowered skills so close to each other, he was already getting distracted. The Leviathan’s throat constricted. Caelin waited. The Leviathan lined its jagged maw up with the Silenced One, and stll Caelin waited. A glowing conflagration appeared at the back of that huge mouth and rushed toward him, the sound like that of an oncoming volcanic eruption.
At the last second, Caelin jumped, slashed out with his blade, and fell down the side of the titanic body. The Soulblade cut a deep glowing furrow in the beast's flank, inflicting another serious wound while also slowing and controlling the Silenced One’s fall.
Caelin returned the blade to its sheath with a force of will, bounded off a bony wing joint, and sprang back up to the wound in the Leviathan’s neck. Blood continued to gush from the injury, but for the first time, Caelin slowed.
22 Seconds Remaining
The creature had no Soul, it contained nothing. Or more accurately, it contained nothingness. This was the first entity, other than the Harbinger of Death, he’d ever encountered with no Soul.
Removing his blade again, he looked deep into its eyes and paused. Quickly coming to a decision he reached to the side, calling forth the ethereal version of his blade. With both in hand, they started to emit a brighter light, drawing on the remaining enhancement from Harbinger’s Wrath. Already he could feel the strain upon his mind. With a scream of defiance and fury, Caelin launched himself at the gushing wound, driving both the physical and the ethereal blades forward.
The massive creature stumbled to the side and released a gout of Void energy. Caelin felt multiple Souls get snuffed out when the energy reached the ground. Using his blades to climb the edifice that was the creature’s chest, he regained its shoulder and savagely cut into the opposite wing joint, tearing the blade across its back.
Caelin rode the Leviathan to the ground as it fell, presumably from the pain and blood loss. Surely the fact that its wings had basically been severed had nothing to do with its ability to stay upright. That would be a huge design flaw by the System.
With his remaining strength, Caelin ran down the creature’s neck just as his ethereal blade phased out and, without thinking twice, drove his physical blade into the large eye that blinked before him.
Pop-ups flashed up, faster than he could track.
System Intervention Attempted
Eyes of the Leviathan Madness Averted Silenced Nature Triggered
Caelin flinched. Maybe the Harbinger hadn’t been completely wrong when it came to skill and trait creation. With a shake of his head he continued.
9 Seconds Remaining
The eye flexed as the blade pressed into it and Caelin pushed harder, then with a terrible pop he was inside the great beast's ocular cavity. Slicing inwards, his mouth was filled with yet more draconic liquid. He tore through the ocular nerve and found the brain. With one mighty swing, followed by several more attempts at power then finally a tired hacking motion, Caelin split the brain in half before severing it from the spinal column.
With a terrible finality, the creature shuddered and then went still as Caelin collapsed in the skull. The brain started to liquify, running out through the eye socket. Resting his sword across his thighs, Caelin dragged himself to the inner wall of the skull and rested against it. The head was large enough that no humans would be able to access the empty eye socket. He could rest, for a moment. He still had work to do.
3 Seconds Remaining
Combat gave him access to memories, allowed his instincts to take over which in turn, returned his Abilities and Skills. It was how he would win, how he’d find Ansen, how he’d challenge the System, how he’d-
System Intervention Multiverse Hunt Kill All Silenced Ones Destroy Death’s Reapers
Another pop-up, clear and unmistakable, broadcasted by the System itself. His blood had betrayed him, marking him for the natives to find.
Earth 784G457 - Silenced Ones - 7
PRIORITY EXECUTION ORDER - ELIMINATE THEM ALL
"10 minutes, that’s all I need."
The pop-ups hung in the air, Silenced Nature protected him from the System, stopped it from getting an exact lock on him, looking down he frowned at the trail of blood he had left on the bone when he’d dragged himself to the wall, it didn’t protect him from his own blood. The Network pop-ups gnawed at him, their wrongness and unfamiliarity deepening his unease. He'd need answers soon, uncertainty could quickly become a weakness.
With that, Caelin allowed the pain to flow through him. He let the side effects from his skills catch up and let the last hour wash over him. As he closed his eyes, he heard shouts from below.
"Maybe 15."
---------------------------------------------
Unique Traits:
Silenced Nature (Racial Trait)
Forged by the Harbinger of Death beyond the System’s direct governance, Silenced Ones are innately immune to direct System interference, rendering their physical bodies completely undetectable and untargetable by standard System sensors. This immunity grants significant autonomy within System-controlled domains, shielding them from direct location or status tracking.
This protection applies strictly to the Silenced One's physical form, any blood, bodily fluids, or physical matter separated from their body immediately becomes detectable by System sensors. Although the System cannot directly target a Silenced One through this trace material, it can indirectly approximate their general location, employing other methods to attempt detection and interception.
Absorption (Survivor Ability) Absorb power from defeated foes. Absorbing Echoes grants a small boost to all stats, absorbing the Soul of an Original provides far larger increases but risks mental fragmentation. Absorbing Silenced Ones provides limited benefit dependent on their Soul Stability.
Overpowered Skills:
Soulstorm Surge (Active - Movement & Energy)
In an explosive burst, a Silenced One absorbs the Souls and Echoes of recently slain foes within a large radius, regardless of whether they were responsible for their deaths. This grants the Silenced One unparalleled speed, agility, and reflexes for 40 seconds. During this time, movement speed increases dramatically, and evasion becomes almost instantaneous.
Side Effects: The absorption of Souls and Echoes temporarily suppresses System functions causing a brief malfunction in System-based abilities.
Limitations: This skill can only be used once every 60 minutes. Overuse causes mental strain, and the benefits of speed and agility dissipate quickly, leaving the Silenced One weakened for a short period (30 seconds). The more Souls absorbed, the greater the toll on mental stability. The Limitations can be pushed off, the longer this is done the more damaging they are.
Harbinger's Wrath (Active - Class-Specific)
Channel the destructive power of the Harbinger of Death for a limited time, gaining +20% to all stats. This surge of energy enhances your combat capabilities, but with it comes a dangerous cost. The longer you wield this power, the more it strains your mind and soul, causing instability and emotional volatility. After the effect ends, you suffer a period of reduced focus and precision, where your attacks and reactions are slower for a short time. The power can only be maintained for 30 seconds and can only be used once per day.
Caelin’s Soulblade (Unique): Forged by the Harbinger of Death from the shattered fragments of Soul Echoes, this blade is intrinsically tied to Caelin’s fractured soul. Its power grows in unison with him, each swing an extension of his will to reap the worthy and unworthy alike. When sheathed, it manifests as a faint ethereal form, capable of delivering quick debilitating strikes during combat. However, when fully drawn, it becomes a formidable weapon, harvesting the souls of the fallen and amplifying Caelin’s strength. This weapon does not simply cut, it claims, tethered forever to the Reaper who was forged with it
