Burning Starlight [Science-Fantasy Cultivation LitRPG] (Book 1 Complete!)

Blake sighed as Kitt pulled away. Alone again. Hopefully, anyway. He didn't intend to give the Outsider any foothold this time. He could do without the gnawing self-doubt in his own abilities that the thing had foisted on him.

He checked his gear, thankful he hadn't ever fully fallen out of the habit despite the instinctual knowledge his bond with Kitt normally allowed him. He was nearly done checking his mags he saw a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. Verdict was in his hands almost instantly, even as Blake pivoted his entire body to put himself into a firing stance facing the unexpected visitor.

Blake had thought he was good with handling surprise, but this was one that actually gave him pause.

Leaning against a wall just outside of the safe area created by the Leviathan, smirking like a schoolyard bully despite the weapon aimed at his chest, was a familiar Skaeldrin. His arm gleamed in the cool blue light of the sub-core as he waved playfully at Blake.

"Did you forget about me?" Rax asked, as if he had every right to be standing where he was instead of rotting in the ground where his own subjects had dumped him.

Blake didn't respond verbally, letting Verdict speak for him. A single round, as a test, center mass. The round slammed into the wall behind Rax, leaving no visible injury in its passing. An illusion then. The outsider trying some new method to fuck with him.

"Nice little bubble you've got here," Rax continued, waving his cybernetic hand lazily at the barrier separating safety and corruption. "Mind if I come in?"

Before Blake could say anything, Rax was sauntering into the safe area. His movement was uncanny, like watching an animation that dropped frames. Worse than that, though, was the Rax was inside the safe area. Either the sub-cores couldn't actually protect against the outsider's influence, or…

"I should have been here sooner, but that parasite is always hogging the good seats up front. And then with the outsider there was a queue to get front and center, even after she finally left." Rax circled casually around the space, still ocassionally skipping forward unnaturally. Blake circled in place, never taking eyes off the manifestation. "Honestly, who'd think your empty skull was so popular?"

"What are you?"

"I'm in your head, Connover. I know you're thick but you aren't actually stupid. You know what I am."

"Gravedigger," Blake said, practically spitting the word.

"Got it in one! There's hope for you yet."

Blake's jaw tightened. He reached into his mind, calling up the words of the damned title, the reason this apparition now stood before him.

Gravedigger

As a Gravedigger, you carry the weight of those lost in your presence. When significant individuals die nearby, they may leave behind a Gravestone: an imprint of their Gnosis—an echo of their Path. You can choose to integrate this Gnosis into your own Path, preserving a part of their spirit, or reject it entirely.

Incorporating these Gravestones into your Path has the potential to grant you insight and power from the fallen, but might just as easily warp your path in ways that cannot be predicted.

Choose carefully, Gravedigger.

"This doesn't say anything about getting haunted," Blake grumbled. "Just that pieces of the dead might be left behind. Not that they'd be back to make me want to kill them all over again."

Rax threw his head back, a harsh, grating laugh echoing in the chamber. It sounded like metal grinding on bone.

"What did you think you'd get, Connover? A few words on a screen, and that's it? Surprise, asshole, the Demiurge doesn't work like that." He took another uncanny, skipping step closer, his eyes fixed on Blake. "The point of the system isn't to make things easy. There's always some kind of catch, if you can find it. Always a bill come due. And dealing with me is yours."

"I'll make it simple, then," Blake said, reading over the title's text again. "I reject it. Your path. Your petty totalitarian bullshit. Your use of your people as pawns. It's poison. I won't incorporate it into who I am."

Rax stopped, his head cocking to one side. The cruel smirk vanished, replaced by a vacant stare as his form began to flicker. The edges of his body blurred, shimmering like heat haze rising from sun-scorched asphalt. Blake smirked as he watched the Skaeldrin fade out. But as the image of Rax thinned, a sharp, lancing pain shot through Blake's core—a sudden, hollowing emptiness, as if a part of him was being carved away.

The shimmering stopped. Rax solidified, his form as sharp and clear as before. The smirk was gone. In its place was a look of detached, analytical curiosity. He studied Blake, his head still tilted.

"Huh. That must have been a fluke. Go on. Try it again. Push me out."

Blake focused his will, pushing against the phantom presence with everything he had. The pain returned, twice as sharp, a violation that seized his breath. Still he pushed—pushed until the pain completely overwhelmed him.

Only then did Rax begin to laugh. The sound was cold and grating, like metal grinding on bone.

"No no no, you won't get out of this one easily, Blakey-boy," Rax hissed, his form now as real as anything else in Blake's vision. He stepped closer once more, his eyes burning with an amber light that reminded Blake unnervingly of his own.

Then there was a rush, a feeling of vertigo, and for a fraction of a second the world inverted. He wasn't looking at Rax. He was Rax, looking at Blake.

He stood in front of himself, still as stone, gun aimed uselessly at the ground. He saw the sharp angles of his face, the set of his jaw, the eyes like chips of amber. He saw the way his ready stance had slipped, just a little bit, a dangerous lapse in discipline. He saw the practiced stoicism, the layers of control he had built around himself like armor.

But beneath it, Rax saw something else, and now Blake saw it too.

A flicker in the eyes. A tremor in the tightly held posture. There was insecurity there, something for Rax to snag hold of with his mental cultivation. A lever to manipulate. Cold, deep fears that Blake kept buried.

Blake recognized it instantly. It was the fear he pushed away, called a distraction, a weakness. The fear that told him he couldn't protect everyone. A fear of not being enough, of failing the people who looked to him.

He didn't like seeing it, didn't like the truth of it reflected back at him through Rax's eyes.

Why had the system not accepted his rejection of Rax and his Path? Was there more he had to do, or did the System simply not believe him? Did he really believe himself?

Did he truly believe himself when he said he rejected Rax's path?

The question wouldn't have occurred to him a minute ago.

The world snapped back into place. Blake was himself again, the gun still aimed at the ground, but now he snapped it up toward's the apparition's head. He knew the moment he did that he just shown his hand, given in to a desire to be in control of the situation, despite his gun being useless. He was showing Rax how right he was about those insecurities. He ground his teeth in frustration and let Verdict fall back to his side.

Rax was smiling like the goddamned Cheshire Cat.

"You see it now, don't you, Connover?" Rax's voice was a rasp, like sandpaper on steel. "That little sliver of doubt, tucked away where you thought no one could find it. It's not about what you say you reject. It's about what you are. What you carry inside you, whether you like it or not."

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"You're a parasite. A ghost in the machine. You're not real."

"Oh, but I am," Rax countered, taking another slow, deliberate step. "More real than you think. You took my Gnosis, you sanctimonious prick. You took my part of my soul. You don't get to just send it back."

Blake pushed forward through the twisted corridor, his boots crushing fragments of corrupted metal beneath each step. The walls pulsed with that sick red light, veins of infection spreading through the Leviathan's dying body. He kept Verdict raised, scanning for threats, trying to focus on the mission. On the next beacon. On anything but—

"Look at you," Rax's voice slithered through his thoughts, casual as a drinking buddy at a bar. "Stomping around like a caged animal. All that power, all that anger, and nowhere to put it. Must be frustrating."

Blake's jaw tightened. He'd dealt with psychological warfare before. In Kandahar, the Taliban had used loudspeakers to broadcast threats and propaganda at night. You learned to tune it out. Focus on the objective. Trust your training.

He rounded a corner, checking his corners with practiced efficiency. The corridor ahead split into three passages, each one warped and unstable. He activated [Warden's Insight], searching for the path to the next beacon.

"Oh, that's cute," Rax commented. "Using your fancy abilities to find your way. Remember when you used to just blow through walls when they got in your way? Simpler times."

Blake chose the middle passage, the one that showed the least corruption. He moved faster now, each step sharp and deliberate. If he could just get to the beacon, stabilize it, then—

"Come on," Rax interrupted, his tone playful. "Try it again. Push me out. I dare you."

Blake's stride faltered for half a second. He'd felt what happened when he tried to reject Rax's presence. That hollowing pain, like something essential being torn apart.

"What, are you afraid of what might come crawling into the hole I leave behind?" Rax continued, savoring each word. "Maybe you're afraid. You've seen what's out there. Don't want to let something like this Outsider in, that's for sure. At least I'm the devil you know."

Blake forced himself to keep moving. He built a mental wall, the same technique he'd used during interrogation resistance training, now supercharged with mental cultivation. Compartmentalize. Lock down. Focus on the immediate task. Count your steps. Control your breathing. One foot in front of the other.

"Trying to keep me out?" Rax laughed, and the sound came from everywhere and nowhere. "Adorable. But the call is coming from inside the house, bucko. I'm already inside."

The wall Blake had built didn't crack—it simply wasn't there anymore. Rax's voice didn't break through his defenses; it spoke from within them, using his own mental architecture against him.

How the fuck was he making references like that? How long had he spent in his hea—no. He shouldn't even think about it. Starve the ghost of the attention it wanted so badly. His hands tightened on Verdict. He could feel his pulse quickening, his control slipping. The corridor ahead twisted, reality bending in ways that made his head spin. Or maybe that was just—

"You still don't get it, do you?" Rax's voice dropped to something almost pitying. "You think you're good at ignoring outside interference, and you're right."

That made Blake slow his march somewhat, curious what game the damned ghost was playing now.

"But the Demiurge knows who you are, Connover. And it knows how to make sure you actually engage with the gravestones you accumulate." Rax was suddenly in front of him again, eyes glowing intensely.

"I'm not the ghost of Rax. I'm not some parasite that latched onto you when you ate his Gnosis. I've got Rax's personality, I've got a bunch of his memories, but under all that I'm something you can't ignore."

Blake stopped walking. His veins turned to ice as he considered what Rax was saying. He knew one person whose opinion he couldn't ignore, and the implications of that horrified him.

In front of him, Rax smiled, and his grin was sharp and unnaturally wide.

"That's right, buddy. You figured it out. Go on, say it."

Blake remained silent. His stomach roiled.

"Say it," Rax repeated. His eyes bore into Blake. Eyes that, more than ever, looked exactly like Blake's own.

"You're me."

The thing calling itself Rax laughed.

"Good! You get it! I'm every choice you ever made to use overwhelming force when there was another option. Every time you heard some degen fascist arguing and couldn't fully refute their logic? I was there, telling you not to stress about it. I'm every flicker of satisfaction you felt when you put an enemy in the ground."

Blake's breathing had gone shallow. No. That wasn't—

"You loved to take the charity missions, the feel-good hostage recoveries, the drug busts. Anything to make you feel like a hero. But it was ME who was taking the jobs that paid the bills so you could go play hero. Every time you ignored that sick feeling in your gut just to get a paycheck I got stronger. I know how badly you wanted to just roll over and die, Connover. How deep you were buried under the mountain of your regrets. But I had gotten too strong for that. I wouldn't let us die, because I didn't hate what we were becoming."

Blake couldn't breathe. His heart was a piston in his chest.

"You didn't take Rax's Gnosis on accident, Connover. Like calls to like." The voice was triumphant now.

Blake tried to speak, but he didn't have the words.

"You can't shut me out. I'm already home."

The corridor seemed to spin. Blake braced one hand against the wall, feeling the corrupted metal pulse beneath his palm. This wasn't possible. He wasn't like Rax. He protected people. He—

"Remember how that business with the cartels in the Choco shook out?" Rax pressed on, relentless. "You didn't do it for justice. You did it because they took your team from you, because they took what was yours, and you needed to make an example. That was me."

Blake shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. But he couldn't deny the truth buried in it. He had felt satisfaction. Not in the violence itself, but in the execution. In the proof of his superiority.

"The French asset in North Korea," Rax continued. "You could have extracted him quietly. Instead, you left thirteen guards dead because it was faster. More efficient. Because you could."

"They would have raised the alarm—"

"Then there was the business with that warlord in the CAR? We both know what you did to him after you found those kids in his bedroom. How long did it take? Hours? And you never even asked who would replace him. Whether they'd be worse. You just decided what was right, and because you could you made it happen."

Blake found himself pressed against the wall, Verdict hanging loose in his grip. He wanted to argue, to justify, but the words still wouldn't come. Because beneath every rationalization, every mission briefing and tactical necessity, there was that core truth.

He'd chosen force because he could. Because he was good at it. Because part of him—

Part of him was exactly what Rax claimed.

At some point he had crossed that moral event horizon and become exactly the thing he had enlisted to fight.

Blake forced himself to straighten, to look at the truth without flinching. He couldn't destroy this part of himself. Couldn't cut it out like a tumor or starve it into submission. It was woven into the fabric of who he was, every mission, every choice, every life he'd taken in the name of necessity.

But he could choose what to do with it.

Blake took a breath, then another. His hands steadied on Verdict. When he started walking again, his stride had changed. Not the angry, driven march from before, but something more deliberate. Controlled.

He would acknowledge what Rax represented. The capacity for violence, for dominance, for might-makes-right thinking that lived in his bones. But acknowledgment wasn't surrender. He could choose, with every step, every decision, to be something more. To walk the Roadwarden's path not because it was easy, but because it was right.

"Oh yeah, good idea," Rax's voice dripped with mockery. "Rely on the part of you highlighted by that damned Roadwarden class. That'll make you into some kind of perfect moral actor, won't it?"

Blake kept walking, focusing on the beacon's signal through his Insight.

"But, Blake, ask yourself this: who decides what actions the Roadwarden takes? Whose objective authority are they acting under?" Rax's tone shifted, becoming almost reasonable. "If they're just following their own moral code, aren't they just enforcing their morals on others? And the way you enforce your morals in particular..."

Blake slowed, then stopped again. The words coiled around a truth he'd never wanted to examine too closely. The Roadwarden stood between civilization and chaos, yes. Protected those who couldn't protect themselves. But who decided what needed protecting? Who determined where the line between order and chaos should be drawn?

Him. Always him. His judgment. His moral code. Enforced by his strength, his skills, his willingness to do violence in the name of his principles.

Which meant Rax still wasn't wrong. The Roadwarden path still relied on might to make right. It just dressed it up in prettier clothes.

He heard Rax's words again, ringing in his head. You won't get out of this one easily.

"Fuck."