The amalgamation surged forward before Koda could move, a sudden rush of corrupted flesh and tooth, faster than its grotesque form should have allowed. It didn't crawl. It poured—a tidal wave of limbs and writhing mass crashing into him like the hand of a starving god.
Koda barely raised his blade.
Too late.
The impact threw him across the chamber, his back cracking against a support column. The air ripped from his lungs. His sword clattered across the floor, out of reach. The thing came again, a sweeping arc of malformed hunger, shrieking in a thousand whispering tongues.
He rolled just enough to avoid the crushing descent of what used to be a man's arm—now a bladed trunk of bone and muscle. Chunks of ancient stone shattered beneath the strike.
It was on him again, pinning him with impossible strength. Dozens of fingers clawed at his flesh. Faces wept against his skin. Teeth sank into his shoulder, pulling, tugging—not just at his body, but at his essence.
And then—his vision blurred.
Not from pain. From a system flash.
[Warning: Anomalous entity detected]
[Fragment of the Dead God absorbed]
…
[Unique Trait Acquired - Gluttony (Unholy)]
Everything stopped. Sound. Motion. The world bent.
Then came the hunger.
It bloomed inside him like a second heart—a black, throbbing mass that pulsed not with life, but with absence. It beat out of time with his own, a dissonant rhythm that made his ribs ache and his stomach twist in on itself. Not with pain. With need.
He gasped.
The air turned dry as ash. His throat tightened, clenching around breath that wouldn't come. His stomach convulsed once—twice—and kept pulling, clawing inward as though trying to fold itself into some smaller, tighter core. A knot of starvation. A point of collapse.
His tongue cracked at the edges. His teeth ground together, not with tension, but with yearning, each one pulsing in its socket like it wanted something to bite, to tear, to fill the widening void opening beneath his skin.
His blood thinned in his veins, slowing like oil poured across ice.
Muscles spasmed and locked. He doubled over, hands splayed wide as he felt his core hollow. The ache wasn't local—it wasn't something he could hold or soothe. It was everywhere. A fever made of teeth and emptiness. A heatless fire, kindled in the center of him and radiating outward in waves of gnawing desperation.
He could feel it crawling through him.
Not figuratively.
Literally.
Tendons pulled in strange directions. Skin puckered along his arms as something moved beneath it—threading, like maggots working their way beneath the dermis, like rot seeking seams in the soul. A thing without shape, but not without will. Every nerve it touched trembled with a single whispered command:
More.
His vision blurred. The chamber bent.
The stone was too dry.
The air was too thin.
The light itself hurt. He didn't want to see anymore. He wanted to own it. Swallow it. Snuff it out between his fingers and feel it dissolve on his tongue.
He was starving.
Not for food.
For everything.
For breath. For light. For mana. For motion. He wanted to drink noise. Eat memory. Suck the soul from laughter and keep it caged behind his ribs. He didn't want to consume a meal. He wanted to devour the concept of fullness itself.
And the hunger didn't scream.
It moaned.
It licked at his mind with soft, wet thoughts. Slippery ideas he couldn't pin down. He didn't hear words.
He felt desire.
His stomach ached with the memory of every meal he'd ever missed. His tongue remembered fruit he'd only tasted once, a lifetime ago. His skin craved heat. His bones missed marrow. Even his thoughts felt thin, like echoes stretched too far across time.
He wanted to be full.
He wanted to be so full he forgot there was ever such a thing as emptiness.
The world around him began to fade—not in color, but in relevance. Everything that wasn't him became optional. He could feel the amalgamation moving, shrieking—but the sound no longer mattered. It wasn't a threat. It wasn't even a monster.
It was opportunity.
He didn't remember reaching toward it. One moment his arms were shaking against his sides. The next, they were outstretched. Fingers twitching.
Not clenched.
Open.
A man might raise a blade to strike. A sorcerer might raise their hands to cast.
But Koda reached like a child to a feast.
His fingers plunged into the amalgamation's mass, and the hunger howled with joy.
Not a roar.
Not even a scream.
A soundless surge of pressure in his skull—an unbearable wave of yes—as the contact was made. The thing tried to pull away, but he dragged it closer. Closer. Inch by inch. The creature bucked, its mass writhing. Dozens of mouths gibbered. Limbs flailed. But it didn't matter.
He didn't care.
He couldn't.
The hunger took that too.
It stripped away fear.
Stripped away purpose.
Stripped away identity.
He no longer felt like Koda. Not exactly.
He felt like a hole with hands. A fracture given shape. A vessel in the loosest, cruelest sense—something into which the world was poured, and from which nothing ever came back out.
The amalgamation wailed as it began to unravel.
Its flesh sloughed off in wet, steaming ribbons. Its teeth fell inward. Not broken—absorbed. The very mana that bound its form began to flow. Not leak. Obey.
Koda wasn't consuming it.
It was delivering itself to him.
And still, the hunger pulsed louder.
Faster.
Needier.
It made no promises. It offered no reward.
Because it had no ending.
That was the truth behind Gluttony.
Not indulgence.
Not greed.
But a forever-thirsting mouth in the soul. A gnashing void born from the fear that nothing would ever be enough—not love, not power, not peace, not God Himself.
And now, that void had tasted the divine.
And it wanted more.
Koda's mouth opened—but he didn't speak.
His throat was dry, lips cracked, lungs hollowed by strain. If he had words, they would have come from the hunger itself.
But it didn't need to speak.
It had already become him.
But then, the system spoke:
[Bestowed Eternal Guide's Blessing]
[Trait Evolution: Trait Gluttony is Evolving]
The words burned brighter in his vision, not with pain—but purpose.
The hunger twisted, buckled, and then snapped—contained not by his will alone, but by something greater that stirred deep within. The mark of something ancient and watching.
[Trait Gluttony Has Evolved]
The room was dead silent.
[New Trait Acquired: Temperance (Divine)]
The void inside him quieted—not filled, but harnessed.
And in the silence that followed, Koda stood alone.