The slums of Aetherion don't have a proper name.
People just call it the Gloom, because everything here's already dead — light, hope, dignity. All of it rotting in the same mud.
When the dawn smoke rolls in, it burns your lungs before you even realize the day's started. The air tastes like rust, cheap oil, and despair. A perfect breakfast for the gods' leftovers.
I pulled my hood low as I walked through the market. Couldn't let anyone see the back of my neck too clearly — not because I was hiding something, but because I wasn't supposed to have it.
The Crest inked there wasn't real.
Just a tattoo — drawn years ago by some drunk street-artist who swore he'd seen real ones. He carved the pattern into my skin with ink mixed from crushed embers.
It looked the part: a faded sigil, the mark of a supposed "dormant" Fire Crest.
Fake as hell, but good enough.
To the people here, I'm just another Sparkless — one of the abandoned. Someone who had a Crest but lost their "divine spark." Not great, but better than being what I actually am — Crestless.
Down here, that word's a death sentence.
So yeah, the fake Crest's my armor. My little middle finger to the gods.
The Gloom's a hellhole stitched together by desperation. Rusted shanties, leaky roofs, flickering lamps running on stolen mana batteries. Half the people here used to live in Paradise — before their Crests went dark. Now they drink and fight and pray for a miracle that never comes.
The only rule here is simple: you work or you rot.
I made my way to the job board. The same wall of misery, different day.
"Guard needed. One night. Low pay."
"Expedition porter wanted. Must carry heavy."
"Scrap scavenger. Danger level: moderate to suicidal."
I grabbed the guard job and tore the notice off.
A man nearby snorted. His Crest flickered faintly blue — Wind type, if I remembered right.
"Hey, you lookin' to die, fake flame?"
I ignored him.
If he looked close enough to notice my Crest didn't spark, I'd have to gut him.
Not because I wanted to — because that's what you do here when someone sniffs out a lie.
As I walked back, I passed the forge district — the heart of the Gloom. The clang of metal echoed like dying bells. Sparks flew everywhere, bright but empty, just like the people swinging those hammers.
That's the joke of this place: even fire burns cold.
You wanna know how this world works? Let me spell it out.
Every person born in Aetherion's got a Crest — a divine mark linked to one of the Six Domains: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, or Shadow.
That Crest holds a Spark, your divine core. It decides what you can do — burn, heal, shape, vanish, all that godly nonsense.
When your Spark and Crest sync, they call it Resonance — that's when power really flows. Knights, Mages, Sentinels — all the shiny bastards in Paradise live off that Resonance like it's air.
But when the Spark dies out? You become Sparkless — a broken tool the gods threw away.
And if you never had a Crest to begin with — like me — you're Crestless.
You're not just powerless. You're unnatural.
A bug in the gods' perfect design.
The priests say Crestless are born from "divine errors."
Guess I'm the glitch in their heaven.
Night came fast. The Gloom doesn't do sunsets — the sky just fades from gray to black like it's giving up.
I sat by the canal, watching the water reflect the glow of Elysium Spire, the upper city's crown. From down here, it looked like a blade of gold stabbing through the clouds. Paradise. The world of light.
And we? We were the rust on its handle.
"Two worlds," I muttered. "One shines, one starves."
That's when I heard the footsteps — soft, uneven.
An old man stepped out of the shadows, wrapped in a torn prayer cloak covered in burned sigils. His eyes were milky, but his smile was sharp.
"You talk like someone the gods forgot," he said.
"Guess they misfiled my name," I replied.
He laughed, dry and ugly. "Good. The gods hate the forgotten. Means you've got a chance."
He tossed something my way — a shard of metal, smooth and cold, carved with ancient runes that pulsed faintly before dying out again.
"What is it?"
"A Crest fragment," he said. "When a blessed one dies, their Crest sometimes shatters. The pieces remember things."
"Remember what?"
He tilted his head. "Depends. Some hum, some whisper. Maybe yours will talk back."
Before I could ask anything else, he walked off into the smoke, leaving me with the fragment.
It was warm. Warmer than it should've been. And for a split second, I felt something — a pulse. Like the damn thing recognized me.
Like it knew I wasn't supposed to have a Crest at all.
I pocketed it and headed home.
That night, lying in my cot under a leaking roof, I stared at the ceiling, listening to the rain.
The tattoo on my neck itched — a reminder of my lie, my survival, and the world that had already thrown me out.
"If fate's real," I whispered, "then screw it. I'll rewrite it myself."
The shard in my pocket pulsed once, faint but sure — like a heartbeat.
Maybe it was just my imagination.
Or maybe the gods were finally paying attention.
Either way, I'd make them regret it.