Ezra woke with a gasp.

  Air tore into his lungs as if he'd been pulled from deep water. His chest heaved and his heart hammered, raw and confused. For a moment he thought it would never find a steady rhythm again.

  Something inside him felt missing. Not pain—something the shape of absence. Each breath came thin and shallow, barely enough to keep him upright.

  He tried to push himself up and his arms betrayed him. Muscles shook so hard that they felt like they might give way. He stared at his hands, and the sight of them tightened his chest: they seemed lighter, almost foreign, as if overnight the strength that had been his had been shaved away.

  His hair ticked into his eyes. He blinked, and froze—longer. He ran a hand through it and realized, with a prickling unease, that it had grown.

  Then the thirst hit—slow at first, then a hot, raw ache that crawled from his throat down into the ribs. It had nothing to do with ordinary hunger. It was an animal pressure that would not be ignored.

  “W-what’s happening to me?” The whisper scraped his own throat.

  When he tried to stand his legs buckled and he fell hard. The impact stole the air for a moment; when the room righted itself he dragged his weight forward inch by fragile inch.

  The apartment felt colder, too quiet, like it had been emptied of its safe corners. He stumbled to the kitchen, hands shaking as he fumbled at a bottle. He drank until the water blurred his vision. It did nothing.

  Another bottle. Then another. The thirst did not ease; it edged into something sharper, more demanding. His stomach rolled—not with hunger for bread or rice, but for something else, raw and immediate.

  Ezra tore open the refrigerator and began consuming whatever he could find—leftovers, packaged meat, things meant to keep. Taste had already retreated; he ate like someone filling a void with motion rather than flavor. When the food was gone the hollowness did not fill. If anything, it pushed inward.

  He stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and barely recognized it. His face was thinner, the shadows beneath his cheekbones deeper than they had any right to be. His skin had a pallor that made him look drained. His eyes seemed dull at first, as if someone had dimmed the light inside them.

  “…Is this me?” The question arrived with no comfort.

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  Ezra changed into oversized clothes to hide as much as he could, slipped on a mask, and left the apartment with hands that still trembled. The door across the hall opened and a neighbor stepped out holding her child. Ezra looked away.

  A small cut gleamed on the child’s palm—tiny, unimportant. The sight was ordinary, but in Ezra’s chest something snapped. The world sharpened with a sudden, terrifying clarity: the air narrowed to the pulse in that small hand, to the scent of warm blood. Sound muted, light narrowed. Heat flooded his head.

  Blood.

  He stumbled backward, slamming his door and bolting it with shaking hands. He pressed himself to the wall and slid down until the cool paint rested against his spine.

  “This isn’t right,” he breathed.

  Fear came quick and with it a frantic, almost childish attempt to restrain himself. Ezra wrapped his arms around the bedframe and wound the sheets tight—an ugly, practical knot to hold him if the urge became a motion he could no longer stop. Sweat slicked his skin. His muscles twitched as if something inside him wanted out.

  Exhaustion finally took him.

  He woke later—well after midnight. The building was wrapped in a heavy, listening quiet. By then his body had settled into a fragile patience, a slow, aching readiness.

  He left the apartment carefully, each step measured. The night air tasted like metal and old pavement. Voices drifted from a back-street, sharp with tension. When he rounded the corner he saw the scene: a woman surrounded by men with aggressive hands and mean eyes.

  It should have been easy to look away. Instead, Ezra moved forward, because there was a part of him that could not let harmless people be harmed.

  He didn’t fight the men like a trained soldier. He shouted, got between them, took a hard blow that sent pain lancing through his shoulder. Chaos worked in his favor—the attackers scattered, more startled by the disruption than courageous. He helped the woman into the alley and steadied her.

  “Thank you,” she said, voice trembling.

  He nodded and then saw it—the small nick at her wrist, a bead of red where her sleeve had been torn. The scent hit him. The pressure rose like a tide, fierce and immediate.

  “Please,” he said, voice gone thin. “Go. Leave. Get away.”

  She stepped closer, concern knit on her brow. “Are you hurt? Do you need—”

  The scent erased everything else.

  He lost control.

  When awareness returned, the woman was silent on the ground and the room tasted of iron. For a panicked moment he didn’t know where he was. Then the system pinged—cold, unavoidable words in the air of his vision.

  Race Requirement Fulfilled.

  Lights in the street blinked as if someone far away had noticed. Voices—distant and alarmed—rose and fell. Ezra ran, not fast so much as fumbling with the terror that chased the realization of what he’d done. He fled the city and plunged into the forest until his legs could go no more.

  He collapsed beneath a tangle of roots and leaves, the night pressing down with indifferent stars. Strength—true, heavy strength—flooded back into him slowly, like a tide reclaiming sand.

  And with that return came a crushing, terrible knowledge of cost.

  [Status Window]

  Name: Ezra

  Class: None | Race: Human

  Level: 10

  Strength: 6

  Vitality: 7

  Endurance: 6

  Agility: 8

  Intelligence: 14

  Mana: 9

  Race: ???