Sol let go of the hilt and stepped back, his chest heaving as he let out a deep, shivering breath. The hot spray of blood on his face was already beginning to cool, turning tacky in the stagnant air of the hollow tree.

Everything fell still. No noise followed the final, wet thud of Vurok's head against the wood. The forest outside seemed to have gone mute, offering only a silence that was full, heavy, and absolute.

Sol stood there in the dark, and for the first time since he had woken up in this world, he felt light. It was as if a physical weight had been sliced from his shoulders. The weight of years of the predecessor's bullying, the phantom pains of a thousand beatings, and that cold, shivering fear of the dark that had haunted this body's marrow… it all dissolved, melting into the rot and soot of the iron-bark tree.

Sol felt a strange, terrifying sense of peace. The "Modern Sol" was gone, and the "Cripple Sol" was also finally at rest.

He looked at the withered husk and instinctively felt the Ash-Gray energy in his chest flare up. It was hungry. It wanted to reach out, to latch onto the fading essence of the man and pull it in. But… he stopped.

A lingering thread of his humanity… or perhaps a flicker of pity for his own kind… held him back. He didn't know if what he was absorbing was simply energy or the actual soul of the man. If it was the latter, he wasn't ready to play God. Even for a monster like Vurok, Sol found he didn't want to deprive a being of the right to an afterlife, whatever that might look like in this primal world.

He reached out, his movements calm and clinical, and closed Vurok's wide, staring eyes with a blood-stained thumb.

"Rest in the dirt, Vurok," Sol whispered into the dark. "No matter how much of a dirtbag you were, you did help me adapt to this primitive world. You were the whetstone I sharpened myself on. So... go on. Enjoy the afterlife."

Sol turned, his matte-black cloak rustling as he prepared to step out into the moonlight. He took two steps toward the exit, his mind already calculating the path back to the village, but then he suddenly stopped.

He stood frozen for a second, a memory flashing in his mind Sol immediately backtracked. He stepped back over the cooling corpse, looking down at the face he had just "mercifully" closed the eyes of.

Ptui.

He spat directly onto Vurok's mangled face.

"This is for spitting next to my face on that night," Sol murmured, his voice cracking with a dark, psycho-edged amusement. "Mercy is mercy, Vurok, but revenge has to be taken in full. Balance is important, don't you think?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He turned on his heel and walked out of the hollow tree, moving with a leisurely, predatory grace. The cooling evening air a welcome change from the stagnant, copper-heavy breath of the trunk. He closed his eyes, tilting his head back toward the evening sky, and took a long, deep breath, tasting the damp earth and the scent of primitive jungle.

He looked down at his hands… they were steady, almost relaxed. No tremors, no cold sweat.

His mind began to replay the last few hours in a vivid, high-definition loop: the frantic hunt in the West, the thunderous power of leading the Garth-Boar pack like a dark god of the forest, the wet, messy massacre in the ravine, and finally... the systematic dismantling of Vurok.

For the others, he had a layer of insulation…an excuse. The boars had done the killing; he had just provided the opportunity. But Vurok? Vurok was different. He had felt the snap of the bones under his own fingers. He had seen the light leave those eyes while his own hand held the blade.

He stood there waiting for the reaction, waiting for the sudden lurch in his gut, the bile in his throat, or the staggering weight of guilt that every movie, book, and "civilized" story had promised would follow a first murder. He waited to feel "broken."

But as the minutes passed, he felt... nothing. No discomfort. No retching. Just a flat, hollow calm.

"Isn't it said that you'll feel bad... that you'll lose your lunch after killing for the first time?" he thought, a tiny, leisure-filled smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Isn't there supposed to be a scene where I puke my guts out? Where I scream at the sky and wonder what I've become?"

He tilted his head, genuinely curious about his own lack of humanity. Maybe I was always like this, and am just a natural, he mused. Maybe it's the result of being desensitized by all that gore seeing the worst of humanity through a screen in my last life. Or…

His thoughts shifted to the Ash-Gray energy swirling in his chest. He had "overdosed" on the souls of predators. The Obsidian-Cobra was a creature of cold, unblinking efficiency. The Purple Toad was a nightmare that lived for the slow, paralyzed torture of its prey. He was a cocktail of cold-blooded instincts now. He had overdosed on the very essence of things that lived for the kill.

Was this coldness a permanent change or a temporary side effect of the "overdose"?

He considered the possibilities for a moment, then simply shrugged, the matte-black scales of his cloak rustling.

Anyway, whatever. Not like it matters much," he whispered, his voice smooth and untroubled. "Vurok deserved worse, and in this primitive world, it's better to be a ruthless monster than a softie who ends up in a hole."

He checked the horizon. The sun was still low, the purple twilight stretching long, elegant fingers across the Eastern Zone. It was too early to go back. The night was young, and the adrenaline from the kill had left him with a restless, playful energy.

Sol began to whistle a low, hauntingly leisurely tune… something catchy from a world he no longer belonged to. He adjusted his matte-black hood, his Charcoal eyes scanning the brush for any sign of movement.

"Well," he murmured, his smile widening into something dark and jagged. "Since I'm already out, might as well see what else is hiding in these woods."

ヾ(≧▽≦*) Ohohoho.....

A/N: Merry Christmas! And don't be a bad kid like Sol. Unlike him you won't have another life so, spend time with your family, laugh, eat, and enjoy what you've got and remember to always be positive.

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