They called him Nullborn. Not in the way a name is given, but like a curse muttered behind clenched teeth, like spitting filth from the tongue. It wasn't his birth name—whatever that had been was long lost in the fires that took everything. Names had power in the old world. In this new one, they were tombstones.
Noe stood ankle-deep in ash.
The wind, sharp and dry, swept across the bones of a dead city. Charred stone teeth jutted from the earth, blackened spires half-swallowed by dust. A church bell, rusted and cracked, hung crooked above the broken frame of its steeple, as if mourning the silence it now rang over.
Noe did not flinch at the howling gusts or the scent of scorched iron that still clung to the land. He had lived too long among ruins to be moved by ghosts.
The sky was the same dull iron it had always been. Sunless. Lifeless. The aftermath of the Last War had not ended with explosions or treaties, only with forgetting. The war didn't stop. It simply became the air, the soil, the blood that dried and never washed away.
He was sixteen now. Or close to it. Time passed poorly in the Wastes.
And still, he remained powerless.
Not weak. Powerless. That was the distinction.
In a world governed by Tiers, Affinities, and Ascensions, being born with nothing was worse than death. At least the dead were remembered. Nullborns were erased while breathing.
He wore a coat too large for his frame, stitched from scavenged cloth and lined with hidden scraps of hardened leather. His boots, cracked and patched with tar, sank into the ashen ground with every step. He carried no weapon. There was no point.
He had never advanced a single Tier. Not even Level One.
Most children awakened by nine. Twelve at the latest.
By sixteen, those with Affinities had already been tested, trained, and categorized into the growing hierarchy of survivors—slotted into Common Classes, if lucky, or drafted for labor if not. The stronger few — those with Rare or even Legendary Classes — were lifted into the ruling caste. They became weapons, nobles, or worse.
Noe had no Class.
No Tier.
No chance.
Only a whisper of something… else. A wrongness he felt in his own bones at night. A cold beneath his skin that made shadows feel thicker than they should.
But he never spoke of it. He wasn't stupid.
The city was called Greyreach, though no one called it that anymore. Its name had died with the banners that once flew from its high towers, towers now buried or shattered. It had been rebuilt in parts—cheap stone over sacred ruins, government halls where temples had stood.
Still, beneath the cobbled surface, the bones of the old city stirred. Wyrmspine, some called it now. A mockery. A warning.
They said that things from the deep had begun rising again. Monsters without names. Others with too many. Crawlers that whispered secrets into sleeping minds. One such creature had been seen by a foraging unit weeks ago—skinless, with dozens of blind eyes stitched across its flesh. A Grinlor, the survivors called it. Only three of the ten came back.
Noe had listened. He always listened.
But no one ever looked at him when they told such stories. To them, he was part of the ground. Another piece of the wreckage.
Until one day, something changed.
He was in the Pit Market, where the unwanted bartered scraps for rot-rations. Black fungus stew, bone powder, and rusted tins traded like coin. The ruling enforcers never came here. They didn't need to. The desperation policed itself.
A man stumbled through the stalls, bleeding from the shoulder. His armor was cracked. A sigil burned on his gauntlet—the mark of a Tier Four Pyrewalker, faint and flickering. People stared, wide-eyed. He should've been untouchable.
Noe stayed still, watching.
The man clutched a girl by the wrist. She couldn't have been older than ten. Her skin glowed faintly with golden threads—Affinity-marked, untrained. A rare one, from the looks of her. That meant she was worth something.
Too much.
The man collapsed. The girl screamed, a sound like tearing silk.
And then—
It came.
Something moved at the edge of the square. Not through the crowd—but through the stone itself. It rippled as it passed, like fabric stirred by wind.
A creature.
Noe saw its shape only briefly: long-limbed, faceless, dripping darkness like oil in sunlight. Its eyes—if they were eyes—flashed violet for a split second.
The Pyrewalker tried to lift his hand. Flame sputtered from his fingers.
Too late.
The thing reached him, and his body twisted—not torn, but unmade, as if time forgot he had ever existed.
The girl screamed again.
And the creature turned… toward Noe.
He didn't run.
Not because he was brave. Not because he was defiant.
He didn't run because his legs stopped working. Not out of fear—but recognition.
It looked at him—and in that moment, he saw something familiar in the way it moved, the way it lingered in shadow as if the light rejected it.
The crowd ran. The girl was gone. The Pyrewalker was gone.
Only Noe remained.
And the thing… stepped back.
Not in fear. Not in retreat.
But in acknowledgment.
Then it melted into the stone again, vanishing without a trace.
Noe wandered for hours after.
His hands shook. Not from fear, but from knowing. Something inside him had stirred—a whisper that hadn't spoken in years. The same one that chilled his veins in sleep, the one that made flames flicker when he passed.
He found himself near the southern wall—what remained of it. Beyond lay the true Wastes, where the Lords were said to have first walked.
No one crossed the wall without permission. The creatures out there weren't bound by human rules. They had names long forgotten, written only in blood and prophecy.
Noe sat beside the bones of a cart, rusted and forgotten.
There, in the silence, he looked at his palm.
There was no mark. No glyph. No sign of Affinity.
But the shadows beneath his fingers did not behave.
They moved—slightly out of sync with the light.
He said nothing.
Told no one.
The ruling class would kill for less. Nullborns were garbage—but dangerous garbage? That had to be incinerated.
He remembered a boy, years ago. Power stirred in him too late. Not registered. Not sanctioned.
They fed him to the Iron Maw—one of the Lords' pets.
Noe wouldn't end like that.
The next day, the market was sealed. Guards in ivory armor searched the ruins. They questioned everyone. Everyone but him.
Noe drifted through them like smoke. Not hidden. Simply unseen.
He watched them draw glyphs in the dirt, searching for residual power. They spoke of the creature in code. "Type-Null Aberrant," one called it.
That wasn't its name.
Noe had heard it whispered in his dreams before:
Abysskin.
He didn't know how he knew. Only that he did.
That night, when he lay beneath his patched blanket inside a cracked cistern, he dreamed again.
Of violet eyes, a shattered city, and something beneath it all… waiting.