The lift dropped past the public sectors. Past the garage. Down into the sub-levels that were redacted from the blueprints. The walls shifted from corporate chrome to raw concrete. Then they transitioned to a biomorphic material that looked grown rather than poured. The climate control died. The air grew frigid. By Sub-Basement Ten, his breath was visible.

  At Sub-Level Fourteen the doors slid open. The medical wing looked like it had been designed by someone who'd only heard descriptions of hospitals but had never seen one. Everything was too white, too clean, too sharp.

  Doctor Parker was waiting, and she was exactly as Marcus had described. Six arms, each one ending in different surgical implements. When she smiled, he could see her teeth had been replaced with tiny surgical saws.

  "Mr. Dorn," she said, her voice surprisingly pleasant. "Ready to evolve?"

  Silas looked at the operating table, at the restraints that were clearly designed for something that might try to escape mid-procedure. The floor drain was oversized, designed to handle high-volume fluids best left unidentified.

  "Do I have a choice?" he asked.

  Parker's smile stretched her skin. "There's always a choice. It's just that some choices have already been selected for you."

  Within Doctor Parker's laboratory operating tables lined the walls, each one occupied by something that might have once been human. Some were breathing. Some were pretending not to be. One was definitely photosynthesizing, its skin a mottled green, chest rising and falling with a rhythm that had nothing to do with lungs.

  "Strip," Doctor Parker commanded, her six arms working independently. One prepared syringes, another calibrated something that looked like a chrome spider, two typed on separate terminals, one held a cup of coffee, and the last made notes on a translucent datapad. "Everything. The biomod needs direct access to your neural pathways, and synthetic fabrics interfere with the integration process."

  Silas complied, his fingers steady despite the sweat running down his spine. His Lucent Domain was already reacting to the stress, fragmenting his perception.

  "Interesting," Parker murmured, studying him with eyes that had been replaced with compound lenses, each facet focusing independently. "Eighty percent purification, but your Domain integration is unusual. You've been forcing it, haven't you? Using external stimulants to boost your connection."

  "I've been... eager to advance," Silas admitted. No point lying to someone about to cut him open.

  "Eager," she repeated, amused. "That's what they all say. Lie down."

  The operating table was cold against his skin. The restraints locked around his wrists and ankles. Additional restraints he hadn't noticed, bands of metal, wrapped around his forehead, throat, and chest.

  "The biomod is based on technology we recovered from a Sequence Two Lucent," Parker explained, holding up a container filled with something that looked like liquid starlight. "He had achieved something thought impossible: he could see through time itself, observing all possible futures at once. Unfortunately, seeing everything that could happen drove him quite mad. He killed himself. Forty times. Simultaneously. In different timelines."

  "That's... not possible," Silas said, his mouth suddenly dry.

  "Neither is this," Parker replied, and plunged the first needle into his spine.

  The pain was immediate and absolute. Something fundamental, as if his DNA was being rewritten one base pair at a time. His Lucent Domain flared involuntarily, his consciousness fragmenting across every reflective surface in the room. He could see himself from a hundred angles, each one showing a different stage of transformation.

  "The biomod contains synthetic Domain crystals," Parker narrated, her voice clinical as she worked. "Grown from the temporal cortex of that Sequence Two. They'll integrate with your existing Domain, creating new neural pathways. Think of it as... installing software that was written for hardware that hasn't been invented yet."

  She injected something into his eyes. The world exploded into fractals, each moment splitting into infinite possibilities. He could see himself succeeding, failing, dying, ascending, all simultaneously. His mind tried to process it all and began to tear at the edges.

  "Ah, there's the psychotic break," Parker noted, checking something on her datapad. "Earlier than expected. Increasing neural stabilizers."

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  A second injection, this one directly into his brain through a port she'd drilled without him noticing. The fractured timelines didn't disappear, but they organized themselves, filing into neat rows like soldiers.

  "Your body is rejecting the initial integration," Parker observed. "This is where sixty percent of subjects die. Their Domains recognize the foreign enhancement as a threat and essentially commit suicide rather than accept it. Let's see if you're in the lucky forty percent."

  Silas felt his powers convulsing, trying to expel the foreign matter. His reflection in the overhead surgical lights showed him aging rapidly, then reversing, his body unable to decide which timeline it belonged to. Blood began leaking from his eyes. No, not blood. It was something more like liquid metal.

  "Wait." Parker leaned closer, her eyes widening as she studied the liquid metal. "That's not rejection hemorrhaging. That's absorption overflow." She ran one finger through the metallic blood. "Fascinating."

  She recalibrated her instruments, muttering to herself. "The symptoms mimic rejection, but the cellular activity is completely inverted. You're not dying because your body is fighting the biomod. You're trying to absorb it too quickly. Your Domain is starving for advancement. It's trying to eat the biomod whole instead of integrating gradually."

  She did something with one of her many hands, and Silas felt a cold spreading through his chest. It was a dampening field, forcing his Domain to slow its consumption.

  "This is the critical moment," she said, leaning over him. "The biomod is going to show you something. A possible future. Maybe several. Your mind will try to make them real. Don't let it. The future is meant to be observed, not lived."

  The world shattered.

  Silas was in Marcus's office, but Marcus was dead, his corpse still deleting itself, taking parts of the building with it. Silas was holding the murder weapon: his own reflection, somehow made solid and sharp.

  He was in Cole Walker's apartment, standing over the sleeping mercenary, preparing to strike. But when Cole opened his eyes, they were mirrors reflecting infinite versions of Silas, each one showing a different choice, a different level of guilt.

  He was Sequence One, his body made of living light, looking down at a burning city. He had transcended humanity but lost everything that made him human. The power was intoxicating. The loneliness was absolute.

  He was in Sub-Basement Fourteen, watching Doctor Parker operate on another version of himself, an infinite recursion of surgery and transformation.

  "Focus," Parker's voice cut through the visions. "These are possibilities, not prophecies. The biomod is teaching your Domain to see beyond linear time. Accept the knowledge but reject the experience."

  Easier said than done. Each future felt real, had weight and consequence. In one, he betrayed Nexus and joined Vertex. In another, he betrayed everyone and took Marcus's position through careful assassination.

  "His neural activity is spiking beyond safe parameters," one of Parker's arms noted, checking a monitor. "Beginning emergency stabilization."

  She injected something else, something that felt like liquid nitrogen spreading through his bloodstream. The futures didn't disappear, but they became more distant, like looking through frosted glass. Still there, still accessible, but no longer overwhelming.

  "Final phase," Parker announced. "The biomod needs to anchor itself to your core timeline. This will hurt."

  She hadn't warned him about the other pain. This must be special.

  She was right.

  It felt like being turned inside out while simultaneously being compressed into a single point. Every possible version of himself was being forced through the eye of a needle, condensed back into one body, one mind, one timeline. But they left traces: ghost memories of futures that might be, paths not yet taken.

  When it was over, Silas found himself looking at the ceiling with eyes that saw too much. The standard fluorescent lights were there, but also their past, being installed, and their future, burning out in three days, seven hours, forty-two minutes. Doctor Parker's face appeared in his vision, all six arms visible, but he could also see the phantom of a seventh arm she was considering adding.

  This was going to take some getting used to.

  The Lucent Domain had always shown possibilities of the present, but never the future.

  "Integration successful," she announced. "Congratulations, Mr. Dorn. You're now approximately 93% purified. The remaining advancement should occur within the next few weeks, maybe sooner, assuming you survive the adjustment period."

  "Adjustment period?"

  "Oh yes," Parker said, already turning to clean her instruments. "The visions will continue for a while. You'll see possible futures constantly. You will hopefully learn to filter them out. And if you don't... well, there's always room in Sub-Basement Sixteens containment cells."

  The restraints released. Silas sat up, his body moving in ways that felt both familiar and foreign. In his peripheral vision, he could see ghostly afterimages of himself: potential movements he might make, words he might say.

  "Get dressed," Parker commanded. "Marcus wants a report on the procedure's success. Oh, and Mr. Dorn? A word of advice: don't look too far ahead. The future has a way of looking back, and some things that could be should never know they might exist."

  The biomod pulsed in his spine like a second heartbeat, and Silas realized that Doctor Parker had succeeded. He was stronger now. Strong enough to take what he wanted.

  The question was: which future would he choose to make real?

  As he left Sub-Basement Fourteen, the phantom-futures trailing behind, Silas smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression. In at least three visible timelines, people who saw that smile started running.

  He had work to do.

  [Bloodborne-Inspired Grimdark Progression Fantasy]

  “Once, the world belonged to us. But now, it belongs to them — the creatures of the night.”

  No prejudice.

  When it demands transformation…

  Does he still deserve to be called human?

  ?? What to Expect:

  - Bloodborne-inspired horror

  - Weak-to-Strong progression

  - Eldritch abominations

  - Stolen goods, arson, grand theft limb, and a pinch of manslaughter

  Release Schedule:

  Daily @ 12:30 PM Central / Eastern Time