Chapter 1: The Rabbit
The rabbit was dying, and Kaelen didn't know why he stopped.
He'd been walking home through the eastern woods, the same path he'd taken every evening for ten years, his mind full of nothing but the ache in his feet and the empty stew pot waiting in his cottage. The library closed at sunset. It always closed at sunset. There was no reason for him to be in the woods after dark, no reason to leave the path, no reason to push through the underbrush toward a sound he hadn't consciously heard.
But here he was.
The rabbit lay at the base of an old oak, its flank torn open by something with claws or teeth or a farmer's desperate swing. Fox, maybe. Or a hawk that lost its grip. Or any of the thousand small violences that happened in the woods every day without anyone noticing.
Kaelen noticed.
He knelt in the damp leaves and looked at the rabbit. Brown fur, matted with blood. Sides heaving too fast, too shallow. Eyes wide and dark and full of the kind of fear that doesn't know it's dying.
He should walk away.
That's what Nulls did. They walked away from things they couldn't change, because they couldn't change anything. That was the definition. That was the truth. Every child in every village learned it before they could read: A Null has no class, no skills, no future. A Null accepts what is.
The rabbit's leg twitched.
Kaelen reached out and touched it.
---
The feeling hit him like a falling star.
Not pain. Not heat. Something else—a shudder that started in his fingertips and exploded through his skull, leaving static in its wake. For one impossible second, he saw words burned into the air above the rabbit's head:
[Minor Regeneration — Active]
[Corrupt? Y/N]
He blinked.
The words vanished.
And the rabbit—
The rabbit screamed.
Its wound, the gash that had been slowly, painfully closing, reversed. Flesh pulled apart. Blood flowed faster. The rabbit convulsed once, twice, and then lay still.
Kaelen stared at his hand.
It looked the same as it had always looked. Pale. Calloused from shelving books. Human.
The rabbit did not look the same. The rabbit looked wrong—not just dead, but unmade, like something had reached into its body and twisted the parts that made it alive.
I did that.
The thought arrived cold and certain.
I touched it, and I did that.
Kaelen stumbled backward, hit a tree, slid down to the ground. His breath came too fast. His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted out.
The woods were quiet. The sun was setting. The rabbit was dead.
He sat there for a long time.
---
He buried it with his bare hands.
The dirt was cold and wet and caked under his fingernails. He didn't care. He dug until the hole was deep enough that nothing would dig it up again, then lowered the rabbit in and covered it and pressed the earth down flat.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no."
But he didn't know what he was denying.
He walked home in darkness. The village was quiet—supper time, families gathered around tables, the warm glow of hearth fires through shuttered windows. Kaelen's cottage had no hearth fire. It had a cold stove and a bed that sagged in the middle and shelves full of books he'd borrowed from the library and never returned.
He didn't light a candle.
He sat in the dark and looked at his hands.
You're a Null, he told himself. Nulls can't do anything. Nulls are nothing.
But Nulls didn't see words in the air. Nulls didn't feel reality shudder under their fingers. Nulls didn't kill rabbits with a touch.
What am I?
The darkness didn't answer.
---
He didn't sleep.
At dawn, he walked back to the woods. The grave was undisturbed. He stood over it for a long moment, then turned and walked to the library.
The village was waking. Farmers heading to fields. Children running to their morning lessons. A group of teenagers clustered outside the butcher's, comparing skills—one of them made a spark dance across his palm, another lifted a rock with her mind, a third made her voice echo off the walls.
Showoffs. But happy showoffs. Proud showoffs.
Kaelen walked past them without looking up.
"Hey, Null!"
He kept walking.
"Hey! I'm talking to you!"
A hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned. It was one of the teenagers—the spark-maker, a boy named Renn with a mean smile and friends who laughed at his jokes.
"I said hello," Renn said. "You ignoring me?"
"No," Kaelen said. "I heard you."
"Then why didn't you answer?"
Kaelen looked at him. At the spark-maker. At the boy who'd never spent a day of his life wondering what he was.
"I didn't have anything to say."
Renn's smile flickered. He didn't know how to respond to that—no insult, no fear, just empty honesty. His friends shifted uncomfortably.
"Whatever," Renn muttered, releasing Kaelen's shoulder. "Freak."
Kaelen walked on.
Freak, he thought. Null. Nothing.
The words followed him all the way to the library door.
---
Inside, he went through the motions. Unlocked the shutters. Swept the floor. Dusted the shelves. Two hundred and seventeen books, every spine familiar, every title a comfort.
He pulled one at random: Common Monster Species of the Eastern Reaches. Opened it to a random page.
Wolves, the entry began. Common monsters found throughout the region. Base level ranges from 3 to 8. Known skills include [Pack Hunter], [Feral Senses], and (rarely) [Alpha's Command].
Skills.
Everything had skills. Wolves had skills. Rabbits had skills—Minor Regeneration, the words had said. Even the smallest creature had something the System had given it.
Everyone except Kaelen.
He closed the book.
You're wrong, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. You have something. You just don't know what it is.
He thought of the words he'd seen. The question they'd asked.
[Corrupt? Y/N]
Yes, he'd answered. Without meaning to. Without knowing how.
And the rabbit had died.
He set the book down carefully, precisely, exactly where it belonged.
Then he walked to the back corner of the library, where Old Marta used to keep a journal. She'd written in it every day for fifty years—village gossip, weather observations, notes on who borrowed which book and when. After she died, Kaelen had kept it. Not to read, exactly. Just to have.
He pulled it from the shelf now, opened to a blank page at the back, and found a pencil stub in the drawer.
He wrote:
Day One.
Something happened in the woods. I don't understand it. I don't know if it was real.
But if it was real—if I really did what I think I did—then I'm not a Null.
I don't know what I am.
But I'm going to find out.
He stared at the words for a long time.
Then he added one more line:
I need to find out before I hurt someone who isn't a rabbit.
---
Outside, the village went about its day. Farmers farmed. Children learned. Teenagers showed off their skills and laughed at the Null who wasn't there.
Kaelen sat in the library with Old Marta's journal and waited for sunset.
He didn't know it yet, but the rabbit was only the beginning.
And somewhere far away, in a city of spires and System light, a man in grey robes opened his eyes and smiled.
"Interesting," he murmured. "A Null who isn't null. The Purists will want to know about this."
He rose from his chair and began to pack.
His name was Darius Blackwood.
And he was coming.
---
End of Chapter 1