Chapter 1: The Dead End
Draewyn stank of rust, ash, and wet stone. A city of towers that reached toward broken skies, it clawed at the heavens with rusted ambition. The streets never dried. Filth clung to everything and down in the deepest tiers, below the noble spires and merchant lights, the gutter people moved like rats through a maze of leaking pipes and shattered bridges.
Kieran was one of them. Just another shadow among thousands. He'd learned to keep his head down, his feet quiet, and his mouth shut. At seventeen, he'd lived longer than most of his kind. He didn't plan to test that luck.
Tonight, though, luck wasn't part of the plan.
He crouched behind a rust-choked pipeline, heart hammering against his ribs like it wanted out. Across the alley, light spilled from a busted door—flickering, unstable, powered by stolen current. Inside, a man paced, muttering to himself as he toyed with a box the size of a child's coffin.
A relic.
Old magic. Ancient tech. Illegal, unstable, maybe even cursed.
Which made it perfect.
Kieran waited until the man wandered deeper into the back room, then slipped from cover. Three quick steps, silent on bare feet, and he was inside. His fingers closed around the edge of the relic.
Heavy. Cold. Buzzing.
He didn't have time to wonder what it did. He turned to run—
And froze.
The man was there. Eyes wide. Hand outstretched. Lips moving. Words pouring out in a language Kieran didn't know.
The relic ignited.
Light. Blinding. Screaming inside his skull. The alley was gone. The room was gone. His body was gone.
Only the voice remained.
[Initialization Accepted.]
Kieran floated in blackness. Not empty—too full. Like standing in a crowd with no faces, every breath borrowed, every thought threaded through with static.
[Candidate Identified: Null Origin. Zero Sequence. No Lineage.]
Words carved across the void.
[Authorization... bypassed.]
[Welcome, User.]
Then the whisper.
Not from around him. From inside him.
"Do you want to change it?"
Kieran tried to speak. He had no mouth. No lungs. But the thought screamed loud enough.
Yes.
The world snapped like a bone.
He woke in a pile of trash, smoke drifting past his nose. Somewhere above, metal shrieked and sirens wailed. His head throbbed. His hands shook. But he was alive.
Alive?
He sat up.
The relic was gone.
So was the man.
But something had changed. In the corner of his vision, barely visible, a faint shimmer hovered. No shape. No interface. Just a feeling of presence. Watching.
Kieran staggered to his feet. Around him, the alley pulsed with wrongness. Colors too sharp. Shadows too deep. His senses felt jacked open.
And then came the shift.
A movement not his own.
He stepped forward. Not because he chose to. Because something inside him tugged.
His foot landed on a copper disc half-hidden in the muck.
[Pattern Accepted.]
Reality folded.
When he could see again, he was standing in the same alley. But it wasn't raining. The pipes were whole. The buildings weren't burned out.
A woman passed by, cloaked in robes he'd only seen in noble catalogs. She didn't see him. A man followed, laughing, holding a relic lantern bright as day.
Kieran gaped.
He knew this place. This alley. But it hadn't looked like this in years.
Not since the fire.
Not since House Veylan purged the lower tiers.
The system had pulled him into the past.
"No," he whispered.
The shimmer pulsed.
[Time deviation: 31 months prior. Duration remaining: 00:00:07]
Seven seconds.
He turned, eyes wide.
There. Behind the trash bin. A small crate. Unburned. Untouched.
He lunged.
The moment his fingers touched it, the world cracked again.
Back. Rain. Trash. Burned stone.
But the crate was in his hands.
Inside: a vial of glowing red fluid. Two relic tokens. A ring marked with a symbol he didn't recognize.
Loot. From the past.
He laughed. Sharp. Ragged.
He wasn't dead. He was armed.
And someone, somewhere, was going to want this back.
Kieran didn't go home. He didn't have one. Instead, he slipped into the understructure—the buried levels beneath Draewyn where pipes hissed and warmth clung like breath.
He needed to think. And hide. Mostly hide.
He sat behind a rusted furnace, fingers twitching. The crate sat beside him, open. The red vial shimmered.
"What the hell are you?" he muttered.
No answer.
Then a flicker.
The shimmer returned.
[Directive available.]
Words bloomed in his mind.
Use: Assimilate. Observe. Repeat.
He stared.
Use what? How?
"Are you... you're the system, right?"
No answer.
Only one word, whispered in the dark of his skull:
"Change."
He picked up the ring.
It pulsed.
[Assimilation in progress...]
Pain. Bright and sharp, like lightning through bone. He bit back a scream as the ring liquefied and sank into his skin.
His eyes burned.
And then the world... shifted again.
Not time. Not space.
Perception.
He looked at the furnace. Saw not metal, but energy. Faint heat runes. Weak points. Structural lines.
He could read the world.
The whisper came again.
"Do you want more?"
His fingers curled.
Yes.
He didn't care if it was cursed. He didn't care if it killed him.
This was the first time in his life anything had wanted him.
Even if it was a lie.
Even if it was a monster.
He would use it.
Before it used him.