Kaelen woke again before dawn.
This time, it wasn't pain that dragged him back to consciousness—it was instinct.
Something was wrong.
He opened his eyes to darkness so complete it felt solid, pressing against his retinas like a physical weight. The gray veil that usually hung high above the Rotlands had thickened overnight, descending like a shroud to swallow whatever faint starlight the sky still remembered how to give.+1
For a long moment, he lay absolute still, listening.
The wind moved through the broken stone of the ruins nearby, sounding like air escaping a lung. Dry grass whispered against itself, a sound like paper skin rubbing together. Far off to the north, something large collapsed—not loudly, but with a soft, crumbling sound, like a breath being released for the last time.+1
No footsteps. No scraping of chitin against rock. No Silence tightening around his skull like a vice.
Kaelen exhaled slowly, the breath pluming white in the freezing air, and pushed himself upright.
His body protested immediately, a chorus of agony. The stiffness had set in while he slept, hardening the previous day's trauma into something deeper and meaner. His spine felt like it had been threaded with broken glass. Every movement came with a half-second delay, as if his nerves were negotiating terms with his brain before agreeing to cooperate.+2
He ignored it. Survival didn't care how you felt. It only cared if you moved.
He reached into his trench coat and checked his supplies by touch alone, his fingers numb. One cracked canteen, barely a quarter full. A single ration bar he'd been saving for emergencies—now reduced to dust and crumbs in the wrapper. A knife with a chipped edge. No medical packs. No stim injectors. No mana crystals.+1
It was nothing he hadn't lived with before. He had spent ten years scavenging on the edge of starvation.
Except now, he was loud.
Kaelen stood and rolled his shoulders carefully. The motion sent a dull spike of pain down his injured arm, but it passed. He adjusted the strap of his pack and scanned the ruins around him with [Observer Eyes], though the System interface flickered weakly, disconnected from the server.
The wall he'd slept against had slumped further during the night. A thin, jagged crack split the bricks from top to bottom. It wasn't just a structural failure; the crack was glowing faintly with a sickly violet light before sealing itself again, vanishing as if the bricks had never been broken.
[ WARNING: LOCALIZED REALITY FLUX ]
The Rot was active here. Restless.
He couldn't stay.
Movement drew attention. Staying still invited deletion. There was no comfortable middle ground anymore.
Kaelen turned east.
The land dipped gently there, sloping away from the skeletal remains of the city toward the open wasteland. It was a graveyard of steel and stone. Sparse vegetation clung to the earth—plants that had learned how to survive without expecting tomorrow. Black-leafed shrubs that tasted of ash. Pale, translucent grasses that bent but never broke.+1
He started walking.
Each step hurt less than the last. Pain, at least, was honest. It followed rules. If you walked on a broken leg, it hurt. If you stopped, it throbbed.
It was the Silence he couldn't trust.
Half an hour in, he felt it again.
That pressure behind the eyes. Subtle this time. Curious. It wasn't the aggressive hunting intent of a Silencer; it was the passive observation of the world itself.
He didn't stop. Instead, he altered his pace—slowing just enough to avoid looking like prey, steady enough to avoid looking like panic. He kept his breathing controlled, his movements economical.+1
You're still here, the world seemed to murmur in the wind. Why?
Kaelen didn't answer. He just kept placing one boot in front of the other.
He crested a low ridge of fused glass and froze.
Below him, nestled between two collapsed highway overpasses, was a camp. Not ruins. Not debris.
People.
Five of them.
They huddled around a small, carefully contained fire, its light shielded by broken concrete slabs arranged in a rough semicircle to hide the glow from the horizon. A gray tarp had been stretched between two bent support beams, forming a low shelter against the wind.+1
Supplies were laid out neatly—too neatly for mindless scavengers. Survivors.
Kaelen's first instinct was to turn away. To fade back into the darkness.
Groups were dangerous. Groups drew attention. Groups panicked. In the Rotlands, a group was just a larger target for the Eraser.
But hunger tugged at him, sharp and insistent. And something else, too—a pull he hadn't felt in a long time. A resonance in his chest where the Authority slept.
Recognition.
He crouched and watched them.
They were thin. All of them. Wrapped in layers of mismatched clothing—rags, old corporate uniforms, scavenged leather.
One woman moved with a pronounced limp, favoring her left leg. Another figure—young, maybe seventeen—kept glancing nervously toward the ridge Kaelen stood on, his fingers twitching near a rusted pipe he was using as a club. They were scared. They were exhausted.
But they were alive.
Kaelen made his choice.
He stepped into view.
Five heads snapped up at once. The movement was synchronized, born of high-alert paranoia. The boy with the pipe raised it immediately. The limping woman cursed under her breath, shifting her weight. A man with a shaved head reached for something hidden beneath his coat—a gun, or perhaps just a sharp rock.
Kaelen lifted both hands slowly, showing his empty palms.
"I'm not a Silencer," he said.
His voice came out rough, unused, sounding like gravel grinding together.
Silence stretched between them. The fire crackled softly, the only sound in the dead world.
"How do we know?" the shaved man asked. His eyes never left Kaelen's hands, tracking the faint blue sparks of static that sometimes jumped from Kaelen's fingertips.
"You don't," Kaelen replied evenly. "That's why I stopped where you can see me.".
That earned him a flicker of consideration. Logic was a rare currency out here. The boy lowered his pipe an inch.
The limping woman squinted, her eyes narrowing. "You're bleeding."
Kaelen touched his nose. His fingers came away wet and red. The aftereffects of the Denial he had used yesterday were still leaking out of him.
"Yeah," he said, wiping it on his sleeve. "That happens.".
Another pause. The wind howled through the overpass above them.
"Move closer," the shaved man said, his hand still inside his coat. "Slowly.".
Kaelen obeyed.
As he descended the slope, sliding slightly on the loose shale, he felt it—the tightening behind his eyes. It was sharper now. More focused.
The Silence had noticed the camp.
Of course it has, he thought grimly. I walked straight into it. I am the beacon..
He reached the edge of the firelight and stopped.
Up close, they looked worse. Their eyes were sunken, dark circles bruising the skin beneath them. Their lips were cracked from dehydration. Hands that shook with exhaustion rather than fear.
The limping woman gestured to a flat stone near the fire. "Sit," she said. "If you're lying, you won't get far anyway.".
Kaelen sat.
The heat was a relief he hadn't expected. It soaked into his frozen joints, loosening the knot of pain in his spine. His hands trembled as he held them out, palms down, toward the flames.
"What happened to you?" the boy asked, unable to keep the morbid curiosity out of his voice. He was looking at Kaelen's trench coat, which was torn and stained with dust that smelled of ozone.
Kaelen considered lying. He considered telling them he was just a scavenger who got lucky.
Truth came out instead.
"I fell," he said. "From somewhere that doesn't exist anymore.".
The shaved man snorted. "Figures. Half the world doesn't exist anymore."
They shared food—thin, watery broth ladled carefully into tin cups. Each portion was measured down to the drop. Kaelen took his without complaint, savoring the warmth more than the taste of the stale root vegetables.
"You heading somewhere?" the limping woman asked, watching him over the rim of her cup.
Kaelen hesitated. He looked East, toward the deep wasteland. Toward the unknown.
"No," he said finally. "But I can't stay here."
Her gaze sharpened. "Why? We have fire. We have a perimeter."
Because I'm a beacon, he thought. Because the Goddess evicted me to save you.
"Because things follow me," he said instead.
As if summoned by the words, the air shifted.
The fire flickered violently, turning from orange to a sickly, translucent blue. The boy looked up, his eyes widening. "Do you feel that?".
Kaelen stood. The broth in his cup rippled.
"Get ready to move," he said quietly.
The shaved man swore, jumping to his feet. "What is it? Scriveners?"
"Attention," Kaelen replied.
The Silence descended like a held breath finally released.
Shadows stretched wrong, elongating toward the camp like fingers. Sound dulled, as if they were suddenly underwater. The world around the camp began to thin.
It wasn't darkness. It was a loss of fidelity. The edges of the concrete overpass blurred. The color bled out of the ground, turning the dirt to gray static.
The boy screamed.
Kaelen looked at him. The boy's arm—the one holding the pipe—was flickering. He was becoming transparent. The Silence was trying to edit him out.
"What's happening?" the boy shouted, clutching his fading arm.
Kaelen stepped forward, placing himself between the camp and the encroaching void.
He didn't raise his hands. He didn't shout a spell.
He simply existed.
He anchored himself to the coordinate. He remembered his own weight. He remembered the smell of the fire. He remembered the pain in his spine.
I am real, he projected into the void. They are real.
The Authority answered.
Not loudly. Not with the divine clarity of the Core. It wrapped around him, strained and imperfect, like a cracked shield forced into place by a desperate hand.
[ AUTHORITY: DENIAL - LOCALIZED ]
The pressure slammed into Kaelen's mind.
The thinning stopped.
Not everywhere. Just enough.
The boy's arm solidified. The fire roared back to orange. Color bled back into the ground, rushing in like water filling a drain. Sound returned in a deafening rush of wind.
Kaelen staggered, dropping to one knee as blood poured from his nose.
The shaved man caught him before he hit the ground.
"What did you just do?" the man demanded, looking at Kaelen with terror. "What are you?".
Kaelen breathed through the pain, his vision swimming with black spots. "Bought you time.".
The limping woman stared at him, something like awe breaking through her fear. She looked at the boy, who was sobbing and clutching his solid arm.
"You could've run," she whispered. "You resisted It.".
Kaelen met her gaze. His eyes were dimming, the blue light fading back to gray.
"So could you," he replied.
The Silence withdrew—not defeated, but frustrated. It lingered at the edges of the light. Watching. Always watching.
Kaelen pulled himself free of the shaved man's grip and stood, swaying like a drunkard.
"You need to leave," he said, wiping the blood from his face. "Now. Head south. Don't stop until the land starts lying to you less.".
The boy swallowed. "What about you?"
Kaelen looked East. Into the dark.
"I'll go the other way.".
They didn't argue. They packed fast, fear lending them speed. Within minutes, the camp was gone, the fire extinguished, the shelter dismantled.
The limping woman paused before leaving. She looked at Kaelen one last time.
"You didn't have to do that," she said.
Kaelen shrugged weakly. "I know.".
She nodded once, a gesture of respect, and limped after the others into the southern gloom.
Kaelen stood alone again as the sun finally crept over the horizon, pale and uncertain.
His legs gave out.
He sank to the ground, breathing hard, his vision blurring. The Authority receded, leaving behind a hollow ache that settled deep in his bones.
This is how it starts, he realized dimly.
Not with a throne. Not with a banner. With people looking at him like he was something other than prey.
Somewhere far beneath the earth, beneath the sealed doors of the Library, something ancient adjusted its calculations.
The anomaly wasn't just surviving anymore.
He was interfering.