"Congrats."
The voice slithered through his mind like a whisper of smoke.
Hope froze.
It was his own voice—
But it wasn't him speaking.
A cold shiver ran down his spine.
He knew this presence all too well.
His Flaw.
The voice that lurked within him—
The cruel, relentless shadow that never stopped whispering.
"Now you're acting like the madman you are."
Hope shuddered.
He clenched his fists, but didn't respond.
The voice chuckled.
Mocking.
Cruel.
"Biting into corpses now? Tearing into flesh like some starving beast? Hah. What next, Hope? Will you start lapping up the blood too?"
Hope kept walking.
The voice didn't stop.
"Maybe you should just accept it—you're no different from the monsters you fight."
Hope ignored it.
"Look at you. Almost naked. Starving. Desperate. Was this what you had planned for yourself? To be nothing more than a scavenger in the dark?"
He ground his teeth.
He wouldn't let it get to him.
The voice had always been there, ever since he first awakened.
It spoke in his own voice.
But it wasn't him.
It was something else.
Something born from his very existence.
A flaw—
A crack in his soul that the Veil had left behind.
But it always came back.
"Face it. You're alone. No one to rely on. No one to save you."
The words scraped against his thoughts like shards of glass.
"You should have died already."
Hope kept walking.
The silence stretched between them—
Until, finally—
The voice faded.
Hope exhaled.
His chest felt tight, his mind heavy.
But the voice was gone.
For now.
He took a slow, steadying breath, pushing the lingering weight of the voice out of his mind.
Then, instinctively, he checked his Soul Essence.
[Soul Essence: 2000/5000]
His jaw tightened.
"Damn."
He had burned through a large chunk of his essence.
Activating his Awakened ability—his ability to dissolve into darkness—had drained him more than he expected.
He needed to be careful.
If he kept wasting essence like this—
He'd be helpless the next time he faced a real fight.
His gaze shifted to his Darkness Fragment.
He needed to increase its rank.
The higher his affinity with darkness, the less essence his abilities would consume.
But that would take time.
And time—
Was something he didn't have.
Hope sighed.
Another problem for later.
His fingers brushed against the Dark Cloak draped over his shoulders.
It was warm.
Almost like fur.
It was a low-tier Memory, so it didn't drain too much essence to keep its physical form.
But it still took something.
A slow, steady trickle of energy.
Hope barely noticed it.
For now—
It was worth it.
Even the small protection it gave was better than nothing.
He tightened it around himself, pulling the hood over his head.
Then—
He looked down at his hands.
At the raw meat he had torn from the Dark Wolf's corpse.
It was fresh.
Edible.
But it needed fire.
Hope sighed again.
"One problem at a time."
His throat was dry.
Uncomfortably so.
He hadn't realized it until now—
But he was thirsty.
Badly.
His body had already been pushed to its limits.
He needed water soon.
Or he'd be too weak to fight, no matter how much essence he had left.
Hope tilted his head back, gazing at the sky.
A pale moon hung above him.
Cracked.
Shattered.
Fragments of stone and dust drifted around it like broken remnants of a past catastrophe.
At least there weren't eight moons this time.
Hope let out a breath.
"Damn the Veil."
Then—
He kept walking.