He rose before dawn—if this underground world even had dawns. Muscles slick with yesterday's exhaustion and limbs aching down to the bone.
"Fuck," he muttered, clutching his side. Bruises from training bloomed across his torso like dark flowers.
He adjusted the strap of his pouch. Coins shifted inside—cold promises of power and pain. The black card pulsed faintly in his hand. It wasn't light, it was accusation.
Ragpicker Wraith. Threadbare Spectre. Hollowed Hound.
Each name carved a curse into his thoughts.
He exhaled slowly.
"Up and at 'em, stray." Asha's voice cracked the silence. She stood at the corridor's end, blade strapped across her back, eyes filled with annoyance.
"You are planning to wake the whole damn guild." He rubbed his temples, trying to push back the pounding in his head.
She shrugged and slipped on a leather gauntlet. "Would you rather prefer if I whispered? Five minutes. Gear up."
He ignore her sarcastic remark and quitely followed her to the armory—walls lined with relic pistols, jagged hunter blades, and armor worn thin from use.
A veteran hunter, Ralko, stood there tightening his chest straps.
"Morning, Bronze," Asha said, tossing Ashen a curved blade with a saw-toothed edge.
Ralko glanced at him and grinned.
"Nameless still breathing? Going after a Wraith today?"
Ashen slid the blade into his sash. "Yeah. Ragpicker."
Ralko's grin turned cold. "Bold. Don't get shredded. See you at dawn's end—or not at all."
The market outside the guild pulsed with flickering flame and hushed dread. No sunlight ever touched this place, only the glow of oil braziers and ember-tinted haze.
At the Obsidian Gate, two massive iron doors yawned open like hungry maws. Beyond: dark silence and acrid chill.
Asha flicked her wrist. The doors slammed shut behind them with a thunderclap. He flinched.
"Ready?" she asked in a low voice.
He nodded.
She pressed a hand to the runes on the gate. The tunnel beyond lit with green pulses.
"This is the Wraiths' domain," she said. "Ragpicker Wraiths feed on regret. They'll try to seduce you with your own memories."
He straightened his spine. "I don't regret anything."
Her eyes softened, just for a heartbeat. "You will. Now move."
They descended into darkness.
Shattered pillars and cage bones lined the path—relics of past failures. Cold air brushed his neck like skeletal fingers.
Then he saw it.
A figure hunched in rags, draped in memory-torn cloth. White eyes glowed like dying stars. Mist curled from its fingers as it sifted through a pile of shredded memory maps.
A Ragpicker Wraith.
A flash burned through him- a child's laugh that didn't belong to him. Warmth swelled in his throat. He stumbled.
The Wraith turned, head tilting unnaturally. Its grin was like a slash of moonlight on black water.
He staggered back, breath caught in his throat. "Asha… I—"
She knocked him aside with a sharp kick. "Focus, stray!"
The Wraith's voice hissed into his skull.
Laugh, boy. Laugh at the chaos you forgot.
He gritted his teeth. The illusion cracked. Reality rushed in like cold water.
Blade met shadow. He lunged.
The Wraith hissed—claws slashing wide. He ducked low, instincts flaring. The combat coin he'd absorbed days ago pulsed in his blood. He struck.
The blade sank in. Black mist burst from the wound. The Wraith shrieked in pain, slicing through the tunnel like broken glass.
The wrath recoiled and behind the shredded veil of its form, a coin glimmered.
"Now!" Asha shouted.
He dove and closed fingers around the coin. The Wraith lunged, but he pressed the coin to his temple—
And the world shattered.
Rain hammered a tin roof, crack of wood against skin and mother's whisper, soft as dying breath.
His knees buckled and his breath hitched as the Wraith shattered into the motes of silver dust-- forgotten regrets turned into ash.
He collapsed but clutched the coin as it burned into him, a regret etched in white fire. Silence fell. Only his breathing remained.
Asha knelt beside him and put one hand on his shoulder. "You actually did it."
He looked up and sweat smeared on his face.
"what… the fuck just... happened?"
She handed him a flask. He drank—water cold enough to sting.
"A Ragpicker's core," she said. "You've touched a regret. Now it'll either sharpen you… or break you."
His hand trembled as he spoke, "I have got nothing left to regret."
Her gaze lingered. "Not yet."
He stared at the coin that now embedded in his mind—its sorrowful images still burning behind his eyes.
He rose slowly.
"Let's go back," he rasped.
She nodded and helped him standing.
As they crossed the threshold of the gate, the rune above flickered once and dimmed.
The cavern no longer seemed so suffocating. He felt… hollow and full at once like a vessel carved for borrowed ghosts.
And now, with a single regret whispering in his blood, he knew:
His journey had truly begun.