SSS- Rank Awakening: Soul Devourer

The declaration of war hung in the command center of Asylum. Like a shroud. On the large tactical map, glowing red runes marked the locations of the mustering Crusader armies. They were gathering on their borders. A steel tide preparing to crash against them. The world had become a cage. The walls were closing in.

For days, Edward's war council was a tense storm of desperate ideas.

"We must return to the Wilds," Kira argued. Her voice was sharp with urgency. Her finger traced a path back into the deep forests of the Beast-Kin Territories. "The terrain is our greatest ally. We can bleed them in the mountains. Lose them in the ancient woods. A standing army is useless there."

"It's predictable," Selene countered. She did not look up from her reports. "They will expect us to retreat to our stronghold. They will simply surround the entire territory and starve us out. It is a slow death." She gestured to a string of desolate, monster-infested islands on the map. "We should vanish. The Shadow Isles are a maze of shifting realities. No army can follow us there."

"And do what?" Fenris growled. Her voice was a low rumble of frustration. "Hide again? We just swore we were done hiding."

Edward remained silent through it all. He stood before the map. His gaze was distant. His new Sovereign blades were strapped to his back. He wasn't just looking at the enemy positions. He was looking at the spaces in between. The patterns. The assumptions. The monumental arrogance of his enemy. They saw him as a cornered beast. They would expect him to act like one.

Finally, he spoke. His voice was quiet. It cut through the arguments like a razor. "We will do neither."

He reached out. He tapped a single spot on the map. A place so saturated with red markers it was almost completely obscured. The Royal Capital.

The room fell silent. His lieutenants stared. Their expressions a mixture of confusion and alarm.

"Edward, that's insane," Sarah said softly. Her voice was filled with worry. "That's the heart of their power. The Grand Cathedral of the Inquisition is there. The Royal Palace. Their armies…"

"Exactly," Edward said. A cold, predatory light was in his eyes. "It is the one place in the entire world they would never expect us to be. The wolf does not hunt where the sheep are watching. He sleeps in the barn, right beneath their noses."

The plan was madness. Audacious, suicidal madness. And it was brilliant. Instead of running from the closing cage, he planned to walk right into its center. A place so dangerous it paradoxically became the perfect hiding spot.

The operation was set in motion under a moonless sky. Asylum groaned to life. They didn't march across the land. They descended. Using ancient, forgotten subterranean passages that Selene's network had discovered. To mask their passage, Edward used the resources from the cult. He activated powerful cloaking artifacts. Large, dark shards of polished obsidian. They seemed to drink the light. When activated, they didn't turn the fortress invisible. They wove a powerful illusion. Making the massive golem appear like a natural part of the rock. A moving wall of shadow and stone.

The journey was a slow, nerve-wracking crawl through the bowels of the earth. The constant groaning of stressed rock and grinding metal was the only sound. For weeks, they moved in near-total darkness. A secret shuffling beneath the feet of their enemies.

Finally, they reached their destination. They emerged not into the light. But into a different kind of darkness. They were in the Undercrown. The vast, lawless slums that existed in the chasms and forgotten foundations beneath the gleaming Royal Capital. A vertical city of rust, ruin, and desperation. A wound in the world's foundation. Where the sun was a myth. And dripping water was the only clock.

Edward guided the fortress into a colossal, forgotten chasm. A place so deep and treacherous that even the slum dwellers avoided it. With a final, shuddering groan, Asylum settled into the darkness. Edward gave the command. The cloaking artifacts activated at full power. The massive, city-sized golem vanished. Its form blended seamlessly into the chasm wall. Just another cliff face in a lightless abyss.

They had done it. They were hiding in plain sight.

Life in the Undercrown was a state of constant, simmering tension. Above them, they could hear the faint, muffled sounds of the capital. The rumble of carriages. The distant chime of cathedral bells. The marching feet of the very soldiers who were hunting them. They were ghosts haunting the foundations of their enemy's power. Edward became a true commander. He spent his days in the war room with Selene. Analyzing troop movements and supply lines. Striking from the shadows not with a sword, but with information. Disrupting their enemy's logistics from within their own city.

But he grew restless. He needed to see the terrain for himself. Donning a simple cloak and hood, he began to scout the Undercrown alone. He moved through the labyrinthine streets like a phantom. He saw the city's forgotten people. The ones his vow was meant to protect. He saw their poverty. Their resilience. And their fear.

It was during one of these scouting missions that he began to notice something was wrong. There was a new kind of fear in the Undercrown. A quiet panic. It had nothing to do with the Inquisition or common criminals. People were disappearing.

At first, just whispers. A beggar vanished from his corner. A family from the higher levels was gone overnight. Their meager belongings left untouched. Then he saw the posters. Crude charcoal drawings of missing faces plastered on rusted metal walls. It wasn't just the poor. Selene's informants reported that minor merchants and even a few low-level nobles from the city above had vanished. This was not the work of a simple killer. This was systematic.

One night, drawn by a strange feeling of unease, Edward entered a recently abandoned hovel. The place was cold. The air was thick with the scent of fear. A half-eaten bowl of gruel sat on a table. A sign of a sudden departure. On the floor, half-kicked under the cot, was a small, leather-bound journal. Edward picked it up. Most entries were simple recordings of a hard life. But the last few pages were different. Filled with a spidery, panicked script.

Day 42: The feeling is back. I'm being watched. It's not the City Guard. It's something else. Something in the shadows.

Day 44: I saw it last night. Not a person. Just… a shape. And an eye. It was staring right at me from the dark.

Day 45: It's coming for me. I can feel it. If anyone finds this, don't trust the eyes. The eyes see everything. The eyes are always…

The entry ended there. The ink was smudged. As if the writer had been dragged away mid-sentence. At the bottom of the page, there was only a single, crudely drawn symbol. A simple sketch. Yet it filled Edward with a primal sense of dread.

It was a single, unblinking eye.