Grion lay bound, his body restrained by thick, enchanted ropes that coiled around his limbs like venomous serpents.


    Layers upon layers of binding spells pressed down on him, their weight crushing, suffocating.


    His muscles twitched, his veins burned with resistance, but his body refused to obey.


    He could feel everything—every breath, every heartbeat, every agonizing second of stillness.


    But worst of all, his mind was clear. Too clear.


    There was no haze to shield him, no fog to dull the reality before him.


    He saw it all.


    And he would never forget.


    The massacre was over.


    The once-thriving village had been reduced to nothing but a graveyard of torn flesh and fading echoes.


    Smoke still coiled in the air, the scent of burning wood mingling with the metallic tang of fresh blood.


    The ground, once teeming with life, was now a canvas of ruin, painted in reds and browns.


    Yet even in death, the humans did not allow the doppelgangers peace.


    Their lifeless bodies lay scattered, but their torment was far from over.


    Grion’s golden eyes widened in horror as the soldiers moved methodically through the corpses, their boots squelching against blood-soaked earth.


    They knelt beside the fallen, not to mourn, not to offer prayers, but to desecrate.


    One by one, they plunged their hands into the cooling bodies, fingers digging through ruptured chests, parting flesh and bone with brutal efficiency.


    And then, they tore the cores free.


    Glowing spheres of black and crimson pulsed in their hands—essence, identity, life itself—ripped from the very beings they had slaughtered.


    Grion’s breath hitched.


    Some of them were still alive.


    Broken bodies twitched, fingers curled weakly in the dirt.


    Ragged, wheezing breaths fought against the weight of death.


    But the soldiers didn’t hesitate.


    Blades gleamed in the dying firelight.


    Steel plunged into soft stomachs.


    Hands reached into still-warm torsos, pulling, twisting—


    The air filled with screams.


    They weren’t the cries of warriors.


    They weren’t the desperate wails of men begging for mercy.


    They were raw, primal, torn from the depths of suffering no being should endure.


    Grion couldn’t move.


    He couldn’t scream.


    He could only watch.


    Then he saw them.


    His wife.


    His daughter.


    Their bodies lay close together, arms outstretched as if reaching for each other in their final moments.


    Their skin was pale, lips slightly parted, frozen in the cruel mockery of sleep.


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    He wanted to believe they would wake up.


    That they would stir, look at him with tired eyes, whisper his name.


    But they wouldn’t.


    They never would.


    And then, the butchery began.


    A soldier grabbed his wife’s limp form, rolling her onto her back as if she were nothing but an object.


    A mage knelt beside her, hands pressing into her chest, feeling for the core within.


    Grion’s pulse pounded in his ears.


    No.


    The blade came down.


    The metal slid through flesh like a hot knife through butter, cutting deep, splitting her open with sickening precision.


    Grion thrashed, a raw, animalistic scream tearing from his throat. His bonds burned against his skin, the spells cracked through his nerves like whips of fire.


    "Stop! Please!"


    But they didn’t.


    Their hands reached inside, fingers wrapping around the still-warm core nestled within her body.


    They pulled.


    Her body spasmed, a grotesque, unnatural jerk—like a puppet with its strings cut.


    And then, they tossed her aside.


    Like waste.


    Like nothing.


    A choked sob clawed its way up Grion’s throat, but there was no time to grieve.


    Because now, they were reaching for his daughter.


    She was so small. So fragile.


    A soldier chuckled, his lips curling into a smirk.


    "This one’s core should be fresh."


    Something inside Grion snapped.


    A violent, all-consuming rage erupted within him, black and red, hotter than fire, heavier than grief.


    He thrashed wildly, muscles screaming, throat raw from the force of his own cries.


    The ropes cut into his flesh, his skin seared where the spells tightened their hold, but none of it mattered.


    "Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare touch her!"


    But they did.


    Their hands reached—


    And then, she was gone.


    ---


    The portal swallowed him whole.


    Grion’s body twisted as he was dragged through, every fiber of his being stretching, tearing, unraveling—only to be pieced back together in a place far, far worse.


    When his vision cleared, he was no longer in his village.


    He was somewhere cold. Artificial.


    The air was thick with the stench of rot and chemicals, a suffocating mix of death and something vilely unnatural.


    Rows of glass tubes lined the walls, stretching into the darkness, each one containing a shape—some shifting, some still, some barely clinging to life.


    Tables overflowed with dissected bodies, their organs methodically arranged like tools in a craftsman’s workshop.


    Jars of cores lined the shelves, stacked like trophies, their once-vibrant light dimming with every passing moment.


    Grion’s body was hoisted into a glass tank.


    The liquid inside was thick, cloying, wrapping around him like an unrelenting grip.


    It pressed against his skin, seeped into his lungs, suffocated him without mercy.


    He clawed at the glass.


    He thrashed, but there was no escape.


    And beside him, he wasn’t alone.


    To his left, a golden-eyed hobgoblin bared his teeth, his body marred with deep, seared scars.


    "Damn them all! These wretched humans! If I were free, I’d tear them apart—!"


    To his right, two slimes pulsed weakly, their translucent forms flickering like candle flames on the verge of extinction.


    "We are the last… The last of our kind…"


    Their voices were filled with sorrow.


    Grion understood them.


    Doppelgangers, masters of transformation, could understand any tongue, any language.


    Grion’s rage was a storm—violent, endless, and consuming.


    It had taken time, far too much time, but he had finally uncovered the reason behind the massacre.


    And it was so simple. So pathetic. So monstrous.


    The king and his nobles wanted to live longer.


    That was it.


    That was all it took for them to burn his village to the ground, to butcher his people without a second thought.


    To rip the glowing cores from his wife’s and daughter’s bodies while grinning, their eyes alight with the twisted pleasure of extending their own wretched existence.


    They feared death.


    So they hunted creatures with long lifespans.


    Dark slimes, beings as ancient as the mountains, were dragged from their hidden caverns, their essence extracted drop by drop.


    A golden hobgoblin, a rare and noble creature whose blood was rumored to slow the decay of time, was captured and bled dry, his agonized cries ignored as the nobles drank his life away.


    And Grion—


    Grion, the immortal one.


    His eternity made him the most valuable of all.


    So they took him.


    They bound his wrists in chains forged from cursed silver, magic searing into his flesh with every movement.


    They paraded him through the castle halls like a trophy before locking him away in the depths of their accursed laboratory.


    Not as a prisoner.


    Not even as a living being.


    But as a specimen.


    A thing to be examined, torn apart, and reshaped at their whim.


    His entire race had been slaughtered for nothing more than the greed of cowards.


    He tried to break the glass.


    He slammed his fists against the barrier, again and again, but the enchantments held firm.


    The chamber around him trembled with the force of his rage, his muffled roars sending ripples through the thick, sickly fluid that encased his body.


    The mages on the other side only laughed.


    "Still resisting? You should be honored, monster."


    "Your body will give birth to eternal kings."


    Then the pain came.


    It always did.


    The arcane sigils carved into the floor flared to life, filling the chamber with a suffocating pressure.


    Magic surged into his veins, burning, twisting, seizing every fiber of his being.


    He convulsed as thin, gleaming instruments pierced his flesh, slicing through muscle and bone with precise, merciless efficiency.


    They peeled his skin away in layers, watching it regrow with fascination.


    They drained his blood, replacing it with substances thick and black, waiting to see how his body would react.


    They forced him to consume monster after monster—injecting their essence into his core, pushing him past the limits of what should have been possible.


    Some experiments left him writhing, his limbs contorting into grotesque shapes.


    Some filled his lungs with liquid fire, each breath a struggle against suffocation.


    Some shattered his mind, reducing him to a trembling husk on the chamber floor.


    But he never died.


    He couldn’t die.


    So they kept going.


    Time lost all meaning.


    Days blurred into months.


    Months bled into years.


    He stopped counting.


    The chamber beside him, once occupied, now lay empty.


    The golden hobgoblin had screamed until his voice broke, had fought until his body gave out, had pleaded for mercy until his final breath.


    And then, like all the others, he had been discarded.


    The dark slimes, their fluid bodies contorted in agony, had been forced to watch as their cores were extracted one by one, their bodies dissolving into nothing.


    Their wails still echoed in his ears.


    And then came new prisoners.


    New creatures dragged in.


    New cries of suffering.


    And the cycle continued.


    Grion’s rage never faded.


    It only grew.


    Through the agony, the torment, the endless suffering, he noticed something.


    He was changing.


    The experiments, the forced mutations, the injections that had been meant to break him—


    They had made him stronger.


    Each time they shattered him, he reformed faster.


    Each time they forced a new essence into his core, his body adapted.


    At first, his transformations had been weak, unstable.


    He could mimic only small changes, altering his skin to resemble the humans around him.


    Then he could shift further, his limbs stretching and twisting, his bones bending like molten iron.


    And now—


    Now he could do more.


    His arms could lengthen into the razor-sharp talons of a eagle.


    His legs could coil with the strength of a werewolf, ready to pounce.


    His bones could harden, becoming an unbreakable fortress of armored titan’s hide.


    He could shift, morph, become anything.


    But he hid it.


    He let them believe he was still weak.


    Still broken.


    Still their helpless specimen.


    Because he was waiting.


    Waiting for the right moment.


    For the perfect time.


    To break free.


    To tear them apart.


    To make them suffer, just as they had made his family suffer.


    And when that moment came—


    Not a single human would be spared.