The Extra's Rise

The transition stabilized.

I didn't land in a hellscape. I stood on the roof of a glistening, obsidian skyscraper, staring out at a skyline that rivaled—no, surpassed—anything on Earth.

The Abyss.

It wasn't a pit of fire. It was a sprawling, hyper-advanced megalopolis under an eternal night sky. Holographic billboards the size of mountains floated in the air, advertising cybernetics, weapon mods, and Miasma-infused energy drinks. Flying transport ships weaved through designated air lanes, their ion thrusters leaving trails of neon blue against the dark clouds.

Down below, the city hummed with electricity. Real, industrial power. Miasma wasn't a fog here; it was a resource, piped through massive conduits like oil or mana, powering the high-grade tech that kept this society running.

"Civilization," I whispered, adjusting my coat as the rain began to fall—acidic, industrial rain that hissed against the metal roof.

This was the memory Akasha wanted me to see. The origin of the monster.

I dropped from the roof, phasing through the solid matter of the building, descending toward the lower districts. The further down I went, the grittier it got. The sleek alloys of the upper crust gave way to rusted steel, flickering neon signs, and the heavy thrum of overworked generators.

I found her in Sector 4, a slum sandwiched between two massive Miasma processing plants.

She was crouching in the shadow of a vending machine, trying to hotwire a discarded heating unit.

She looked to be about twelve. Small, thin, and undeniably frail. While the demons passing by on the street were tall, muscular, and radiating the subtle pressure of their Miasma, she felt... hollow.

She had no horns. No visible mutations. And crucially, no Gift.

She wasn't sick. She was just ordinary. And in a world of super-soldiers, being ordinary was a death sentence.

"Hey! Trash-rat!"

Tenebria flinched. She dropped the wires and scrambled backward, putting the vending machine between her and the voice.

A man stepped out from the heavy rain. He wore a heavy synthetic bomber jacket with a glowing emblem on the back—a local gang sign. He was holding a half-eaten energy bar in one hand and a stun-baton in the other.

He wasn't a Lord. He was a nobody. But he had the Gift of Gluttony. I could feel it—a passive Authority radiating from his core that allowed him to metabolize energy efficiently, making him twice as dense and twice as strong as a normal biological entity.

"I told you this is my corner," the thug spat, kicking the heating unit Tenebria had been working on. It shattered.

Tenebria didn't speak. She stared at the broken heater, her jaw tightening. She wasn't terrified; she was exhausted.

"I needed that," she said, her voice raspy. "The nights are getting colder."

"Unblessed don't get heat," the thug sneered. "You don't produce enough value to waste electricity on. You're a waste of space, kid. No Gift, no future."

He took a bite of his bar, chewing loudly. "Look at you. You can't even reinforce your body with Miasma. If I punched you, you'd break like glass. It's embarrassing to share a species with you."

That was the pain of the Sinless. It wasn't poison; it was irrelevance. She was a human in a world of tanks.

"Leave me alone," Tenebria muttered, trying to edge away toward the alley exit.

"Nah," the thug grinned, tossing the wrapper aside. The Gift of Gluttony flared in his eyes—a faint orange light. His muscles bulged slightly as his body converted the calories instantly into kinetic force. "I'm bored. And I feel like breaking something."

He swung the baton.

It wasn't a master's strike. It was a sloppy, arrogant backhand.

But the speed was supernatural.

Tenebria tried to duck, but she was physically limited. The baton clipped her shoulder.

CRACK.

The sound of bone snapping was sickeningly loud.

Tenebria didn't scream. She gasped, a sharp intake of air, and was thrown into the wet pavement. She rolled, clutching her shoulder, her face pale.

"Fragile," the thug laughed, stepping closer. "See? One tap. You're a genetic dead end."

He raised the baton for a finishing blow. He wasn't going to kill her—murder in the city was illegal without cause—but he was going to put her in the hospital. Or the morgue, if she couldn't afford the med-bay.

Tenebria looked up.

Her eyes were dark, dark pools. And in that moment, looking at the man towering over her, something shifted. She didn't look at his face. She looked at his chest. At the core where his Gift resided.

She didn't want mercy. She wanted what he had.

As the baton came down, Tenebria didn't dodge away. She threw herself forward.

She slid across the slick pavement, going under his guard.

The thug blinked, surprised by the suicidal move.

Tenebria pulled a jagged shard of conductive metal from her pocket—a piece of the heater he had just broken. It was wired to a small, scavenged battery pack she had strapped to her wrist.

It was a primitive taser. A shiv made of trash and basic physics.

She jammed it into his groin.

"Raaargh!" The thug howled as 50,000 volts of dirty electricity surged into his nervous system.

His Gift of Gluttony made him tough, able to regenerate flesh, but it didn't make him immune to lightning. His muscles seized. He dropped to one knee.

Tenebria didn't stop. She ignored her shattered shoulder. She scrambled up his paralyzed body like a rat climbing a sinking ship.

She wrapped her good arm around his throat. She couldn't choke him out—he was too strong.

So she bit him.

She clamped her teeth onto the exposed vein in his neck and tore.

It was brutal. Primal. Ungifted violence.

Blood sprayed across the neon-lit alley. The thug thrashed, trying to throw her off, but the electric shock had scrambled his motor control. He fell backward, his head cracking against the concrete.

Tenebria didn't let go. She kept tearing until he stopped moving.

She sat up, spitting out blood. She was panting, clutching her broken shoulder. She looked at the corpse.

"Stronger," she whispered, her voice trembling with hate. "You were stronger."

And then, I saw it.

Floating above the corpse wasn't a soul. It was a dense, intricate geometric pattern of light. A concept given form.

The Gift of Gluttony.

Usually, when a demon died, the Authority dissolved, returning to the planetary cycle to be reborn in a new infant.

But it hovered. It hesitated.

It was drawn to the vacuum.

Tenebria stared at it. She felt the pull. Her empty soul, devoid of any innate Authority, was acting like a gravity well.

She reached out with a bloodstained hand.

Her fingers brushed the light.

FWOOM.

The energy didn't resist. It slammed into her chest.

Tenebria arched her back, a silent scream leaving her mouth. Her veins glowed bright orange for a second.

Then, the glow settled.

I watched with my Divine Eyes, stunned.

The shattered bone in her shoulder popped and knit itself back together in seconds. The bruises on her face vanished. Her frail, malnourished frame seemed to swell slightly, filled with a sudden, supernatural vitality.

She stood up. She took a breath, and I could see the Miasma in the air rushing into her, metabolized instantly by her new engine.

She wasn't Unblessed anymore.

"She... slotted it," I realized, the implication hitting me like a truck.

I had three Gifts because I was a transmigrator, a glitch in the system. But she? She was a native. She had just proven that being born with nothing meant she had room for anything.

Tenebria looked at her hands. She clenched her fist, feeling the supernatural strength—the 'Gift' that the thug had used to bully her—now obeying her command.

She looked at the dead body. Then she looked up at the neon skyline of the Abyss, at the towers where the Lords lived.

She didn't smile. She just looked hungry.

If one Gift made her this strong... what would happen if she took the other six?