CRUCIFY THE SMILE: The boy who ate death.

### Synopsis

We go in thousands and return in digits.

Listen close. I’ll only say this once.

The universe is hungry. Colonies burn. Planets crack like eggshells. Whole races vanish—no names, no graves, not even a footnote in some dead archive.

And you want to be a hunter?

You cross the portal at seven. You’re meat by seven-thirty. That’s if you’re lucky. The beasts don’t torture; the Chip does.

You crawl back through the rift with your guts barely inside you, and the Chip lights up. Cold. Silent. Suddenly, your hands aren't yours anymore. You’re an asset—a blade with a barcode. You kill who the Chip says to kill until your organs give out or a cleaner puts a round through your skull.

Fifty years if you’re smart. Longer if you’re rich. Most don’t see thirty. The poor rot where they stand. Brain decay. Lung rot. Children slit throats in the deep lanes for a can of filtered air. Smuggle. Drift. Die. Repeat.

Nobody is safe.

The colonies think the beasts are the enemy. The hunters think the Chip is the cage. The rich think credits buy eternity. They’re all wrong.

Something older than the colonies walks among us. Something wearing human skin like a borrowed coat. It smiles with your neighbor’s mouth. It watches from the bathroom mirror at 3 AM when you can’t remember why you woke up.

You ever catch your reflection grinning when you’re not?

You ever hear the lights flicker and feel hungry?

No.

You haven’t.

But he has.

There’s a boy in the deep lanes. Doesn’t look like much. Thin wrists. Hollow eyes. Another corpse waiting to happen.

Except he ate Death.

Not killed. Not defeated. Ate. Swallowed it whole like it owed him rent. And now something stirs behind his teeth. Something that makes the cosmic things in human skin nervous.

He smiles in the mirror.

The reflection smiles back.

But they’re not the same smile.

Snap.

Pray you never find out which one’s real.

You’re not ready for what comes next.

WHAT TO EXPECT 

[ Fast paced book. Highly cinematic. Only very few chapters slow momentum down but it's a great binge.]

A combo of solo leveling meets cyberpunk edge runners meets attack on titan with a new type of protagonist.

The boy who looked into his mirror and saw his reflection smiling at him.

Whose dead sister's voice was used by the thing in his head to torment him.

The only one whose holographic UI screen glitches.

And the void who would soon eat death whole till it's fully digested.

He is born to be the potential LORD OF HOST.

Wish you a cool read.

I wrote the drafts myself but used AI to polish grammars .