Midmorning in the lower districts.
Cloudy skies meant thinner crowds. Good.
Kael didn't like walking the city anymore without his hood up — not since his last exploit went viral on a private hunter's forum.
He wasn't famous.
Not yet.
But between guild whispers and mercenary netboards, enough eyes were starting to trace his path.
He had to change gear sets just to shop in peace.
He moved through the stalls with quiet purpose. Dull-glow light from the glyph lanterns flickered overhead. Vendors bartered fruit, relic chips, weak-tier augment dust. A Synthweaver advertised cooldown-thread embroidery for raid cloaks. Her hands glowed as she worked, her eyes never looking up.
Kael bought nothing.
He was here to observe.
That, and… to walk.
Think.
Breathe.
He kept to the alley's edge when he heard the voices.
Two raiders — teens, judging by posture. Light armor. Eager eyes. One carried a cheap raid halberd across his back. The other had dyed hair and a cracked shoulder plate. Both spoke too loud for someone sharing dangerous rumors.
"I'm just saying, it's not a coincidence," said the halberd.
"That mid-tier guy? No guild? Shows up right before enrage timers glitch?"
"Yeah, but 'Rollback Choir'? That's a cult thing, man. That's not guild strategy."
"Doesn't matter. You heard what they say — he rewrites boss AI."
Kael's body tensed.
The second one laughed, but not entirely convinced.
"Next you'll tell me he's the one who silenced that Forge Warden last month."
"Bro, that cooldown flicker? That wasn't silence. That was a patch. Hotfix mid-fight. I saw it — the glyph lines lit up in the ground."
Kael leaned slightly closer behind a vendor cart. Pretending to examine low-rank crystal marrow.
"You see his face?"
"No, no one has. Just the name."
"What name?"
A pause.
The halberd leaned in, grinning now, like it was a joke he didn't believe but wanted to.
"The Corruptor of Balance."
The other rolled his eyes. But he still shivered.
Kael stepped back, silent.
Turned.
Walked.
Breath measured.
His hand drifted to the band under his glove — the one wrapped over the latest glyph-crack down his wrist.
Corruptor.
Of Balance.
He hadn't corrupted anything.
He'd fixed it.
He'd saved them.
But someone… somewhere…
Was watching him.
And they were telling a different story.
Kael didn't go in at first.
He stood across the street, under the low awning of a shuttered relic shop, watching the way the lantern-glow flickered inside the tavern windows. The place used to be known for decent food and bad whiskey — a safe haunt for unaffiliated Awakeners. Quiet. Boring.
Now, the crowd inside looked different.
Younger. Hungrier.
Eyes tilted upward, not downward.
Not soldiers.
Believers.
Kael crossed the street.
Slipped inside.
No one noticed him.
Not in a city like this, not in gear this forgettable.
He didn't sit. Just hovered near the door. Let the buzz of the crowd sink in.
Then the voice began.
"And in the fifth breath of the enrage," the man called out, "he spoke the fix, and the frame shuddered!"
He was standing on a chair at the far end of the room, near a broken holo-screen that flickered with random zone-code.
Kael knew that screen.
It used to loop raid highlights.
Now it just stuttered glyph patterns that shouldn't compile.
"Cooldowns that should have burned instead flickered!"
"Threat lines reversed!"
"What should have ended in death — became a miracle!"
The preacher lifted a tattered scroll of synth parchment, unreadable to anyone with a basic education in raid mechanics — but familiar, somehow. The formatting looked like debug script.
Kael's chest tightened.
"He walked into the crash, but the system bent around him."
"He glitched the gates and whispered to the shadows behind the frame!"
"And when the bosses roared—he patched reality."
A few in the crowd clapped.
Some laughed.
But others… nodded.
Silently.
Like it all made a kind of broken sense.
Kael turned, slipping back into the street before anyone could notice him watching.
He ducked into an alley two blocks down and leaned against the cold stone wall.
Pulled his glove off.
Looked at the glyph-cracks running up his palm.
Still faint.
Still pulsing.
But lately… longer.
More persistent.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered.
But maybe… someone else had.
Kael shut the door behind him.
Liora looked up from the couch, eyes rimmed red from sleep deprivation and quiet worry. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
He gave her a tight nod, unbuckled his cloak, and crossed the room silently toward the comm-hatch embedded in the hallway wall.
Senna's crayons were still scattered across the table — a few new curls and spirals catching his eye. But he didn't stop.
The glyph-ping was waiting.
Encrypted.
Double-signed.
Aria's.
He opened it with a breath glyph — one only she and Kael had ever used.
The message unfolded in air:
ARIA / ECLIPSE // UNTRACED // NO COUNCIL ACCESS
"You didn't fix this."
Attached was a data clip — raid footage.
He loaded it into the projection rune and let it play.
Mid-tier gate.
Boss: Leviathan Rootmare.
The raid party was losing badly — healer down, aggro collapse. Then it happened.
The Kael in the footage stepped forward, raised his hand…
…and rewound three seconds of the raid.
Everyone repositioned.
The healer blinked back to standing.
The cooldowns refreshed.
"That's not real," Kael muttered.
And it wasn't.
The light was too clean.
The glyphs pulsed too evenly.
Even the timing—too perfect.
It looked like Kael.
It felt like his work.
But it wasn't.
The logline below the projection glitched briefly.
A string of corrupted runes surfaced:
𝘾𝙊𝙍𝙍𝙐𝙋𝙏𝙊𝙍://𝘽𝘼𝙇𝘼𝙉𝘾𝙀.𝙑𝙊𝙄𝘿()
Then vanished.
Kael closed the projection.
His hand hovered over the crystal.
He whispered:
"They're building a legend out of lies."
He opened the second attachment.
Text only. Aria's voice, cold and clinical.
"This isn't you. I know that. But the council won't care. They're already asking questions. Someone wants you famous… and infamous. The same hand that builds the myth will burn it down when it's done. Stay ahead of it."
"—A."
Kael sat back against the wall.
Closed his eyes.
The Reapers weren't the only ones watching him now.
Someone was copying him.
But not just copying…
Framing him.
The walk to Senna's hall should have been short.
Four blocks, two turns. Familiar paths, familiar crowds.
But Kael took a detour.
He didn't tell himself why.
Didn't need to.
Something in his ribs had been prickling all day — not pain, not exactly. But a kind of internal buzz. Like a patch running long after deployment. Like feedback waiting for response.
He walked slower.
Watched the windows.
Watched the walls.
And then he saw it.
Back alley. Between an old blacksmith depot and an archive tower sealed for years.
The glyph was six feet tall, carved directly into the darkstone wall. Not with tools. Not even with magic.
It had been burned in — lines blackened, edges crisp, pulsing faintly with residual light.
At first glance, it was his glyph for Threat Nullification. A simple loop-patch designed to dampen aggro spikes during phase two transitions.
But something was… off.
Kael stepped closer.
Studied the curves.
The initial hook was inverted — drawn right to left, not left to right.
The loop opened wide instead of tight.
The anchor stroke ended in a serrated shard instead of a clean taper.
It was his.
And not his.
He raised a hand, traced a slow circle near the edge.
No response from the glyph.
No activation.
No system ping.
Just… presence.
It wanted to be seen.
That much was clear.
A sound behind him.
Kael turned instantly, hand half-raised.
Just a courier boy, darting past on a boardwheel, too fast to notice anything but his next delivery ping.
Kael turned back to the glyph.
It had dimmed slightly.
Or maybe that was the sun shifting overhead.
He couldn't tell anymore.
"It's bait," he muttered.
A mimic glyph.
Not functional.
Just… symbolic.
Someone had taken his raid work and turned it into graffiti — propaganda.
It didn't matter if it worked.
It only mattered if it looked like him.
He pulled his hood lower and kept walking.
Senna's school bell rang two blocks later.
Her voice rose above the others — high and happy:
"Papa!"
He turned just in time to catch her leaping into his arms, all gangly limbs and light laughter.
"You're glowing again," she said, squinting up at him.
Kael didn't answer.
He just held her closer than usual.
"Do we have time for lemon rolls?"
Senna was already tugging his arm, half-bouncing in her steps, eyes wide with the impossible optimism only kids and the terminally unaware ever managed to maintain. Kael didn't answer immediately.
His mind was still back in that alley.
Back with the glyph that bore his name without his hand.
Back with the preacher's voice calling him a miracle.
A myth. A weapon. A lie.
But Senna was watching.
He offered her a smile — tired, crooked, but real.
"Sure. One roll."
She beamed. "Two."
He sighed. "Negotiation later."
The bakery was familiar.
Third-tier district. Modest. Run by a war-widow who always snuck Senna extra glaze. Kael didn't know her name — never asked — but she'd nodded at him once after a raid left the district trembling. Just a nod. That was enough.
The glass window displayed sugar braids and flaked fruits, but Kael barely glanced.
Something in his chest buzzed again.
That same static itch from earlier.
The one he should have listened to.
Senna pressed her nose to the glass.
"I want that one," she said, pointing to the largest lemon roll in the case.
Kael looked past her reflection—
—and froze.
Behind them, in the window's mirrored surface—
A shape.
No face.
No body.
Just length.
Height.
A suggestion of cloth and shadow.
Its head tilted — impossibly slow.
Not a flicker.
Not a glitch.
Just there.
Kael turned immediately.
Hand on Senna's shoulder.
Nothing behind them.
Just pedestrians. A street vendor arguing with a cart AI. The faint scent of burnt synth-oil from across the road.
He turned back to the window.
Senna was still staring.
Now quiet.
The shape was gone.
But the glass—
The glass rippled.
Like water disturbed from the inside.
Senna reached for his hand.
He didn't notice until her fingers squeezed his.
"Papa…" she whispered, voice smaller than usual.
"I think that one was real."
By the time they got home, the shadows had deepened. Not from the hour — but from the stormfront building above the city. Slow, hungry clouds rolling in like static signals.
Kael opened the door, let Senna bounce inside first.
Liora looked up from the kitchen — already reading the weight in his shoulders.
She didn't ask.
She just placed a steaming mug near the edge of the counter and said, "You left your crystal on again."
Kael blinked.
Right.
The projection rune.
Still idling from earlier.
He palmed it off, nodded his thanks, and crossed the room without a word.
Senna was already on the floor, crayons out, legs crossed like a perfect spiral of chaos. Her sketchbook lay open in front of her — page after page of tangled glyph shapes and raid monsters reimagined as silly cats.
Kael's lips twitched.
But then he saw the page she was coloring now.
The lines were too clean.
Too deliberate.
The glyph was the same one from the alley wall.
His glyph.
But wrong.
"Senna," he said, too quickly.
She looked up, wide-eyed.
"Did you… make that one up?"
She blinked. "No. I just copied it."
"From where?"
Senna fished under her sketchpad. Pulled out a folded slip of parchment paper. Handed it to him casually.
He unfolded it with stiff fingers.
Black ink. Crisp.
At the center — the glyph. Warped. Stylized. Identical to the wall carving.
And below it, scrawled in tight angular letters:
ALL HAIL THE CORRUPTOR OF BALANCE
He who patches the broken world.
Kael stared at it for a long moment.
Then lowered the paper slowly.
"Senna… who gave you this?"
She shrugged. "Someone on the street. I dunno. They were wearing a mask with holes in it."
His heart thudded.
"Did they talk to you?"
"No. Just handed it. Walked away."
"Did anyone else—"
"Papa," she interrupted softly, "what's 'corruptor' mean?"
He looked at her.
Really looked.
Her eyes were so open. So clear.
She didn't understand.
She couldn't.
And that scared him more than the flyer in his hand.
Kael stood. Walked to the sink.
Set the flyer down on the burner plate.
Activated the flame glyph.
Watched it curl, blacken, disappear.
He stared into the smoke a long while before whispering:
"It's what they call you when you don't follow the rules."