The walk back to Bastion Seven took longer than Levi expected.
Not because of the distance, though that was considerable. The Outlands stretched for miles between the fortress city and the corrupted zones where the Swarm presence was strongest. No, it took longer because every few hundred yards he had to stop and just stare.
He'd written this world. Spent five years building it piece by piece. Described the landscape, the mutations, the way dimensional energy had warped the environment into something alien and hostile. But seeing it, actually being in it, was different.
The trees near the edge of the safe zone had bark that looked almost normal until you got close and realized the texture was wrong. Too smooth in some places, too rough in others, like someone had tried to recreate wood from memory and gotten the details slightly off. Plants grew in clusters that followed no natural pattern, their leaves catching the light in ways that made his eyes hurt if he looked too long.
And the sky. He'd described it as having a purple tint from the dimensional rifts, but actually seeing it was something else. The color shifted depending on the angle, sometimes more blue, sometimes deeper violet, like looking through stained glass that changed with your perspective.
'I created this,' he thought as he walked. 'Every detail. And now I'm actually here.'
The surrealism of it hit him in waves. He'd reach down to push aside undergrowth and the texture would feel exactly how he'd imagined it. The musty smell of the Outlands, the way sound seemed to carry differently here, the oppressive quiet that made every footstep feel too loud. All of it matched what he'd spent countless hours researching and describing.
Part of him wanted to just stop and explore everything, to see how accurately the world had manifested from his imagination. But the smarter part, the part that remembered he was in a body that could still die, kept him moving toward the city.
The walls of Bastion Seven appeared on the horizon around midday.
He'd described them as massive, a hundred feet high, built from reinforced concrete and salvaged materials from the old world. But the description hadn't done them justice. They dominated the landscape, gray and imposing, stretching in both directions farther than he could see. Gun emplacements dotted the top at regular intervals. Watchtowers rose even higher, their searchlights sweeping the Outlands even during daylight.
'I built this,' he thought again. 'This is mine.'
The main gate was smaller than he expected but that made sense from a defensive standpoint. Easier to fortify, harder to breach. A checkpoint stretched out in front of it with barriers and guard stations funneling people into inspection lines.
He joined the queue behind a group of hunters returning from their own expedition. They looked exhausted, their gear stained and damaged, but they were alive and carrying sacks that probably held beast cores or materials. From all indications, it was a successful hunt.
The guards at the checkpoint wore standard military uniforms that was coloured gray with Spark-tech rifles slung across their backs. They checked each person methodically, scanning IDs and permits, asking questions, sometimes pulling people aside for more thorough inspection.
When Levi's turn came, the guard looked him over with tired eyes. Mid-thirties maybe, with a scar running down his left cheek that pulled his mouth into a permanent half-frown.
"Permit," the guard said. It wasn't much of a question.
"Uh, yeah." Levi patted his pockets, hoping Finn's muscle memory would help. His hand found something in the right front pocket. He pulled it out. It was a card.
The permit was about the size of a credit card but thicker, made from some kind of synthetic material that felt like plastic but wasn't quite. It had Finn's name embossed on the front along with a string of numbers and a holographic seal that shifted colors when he tilted it. The photo showed a younger version of Finn, maybe sixteen.
The guard took it and slid it through a scanner attached to his belt. The device beeped twice, then displayed something on a small screen Levi couldn't see.
"Outer District resident," the guard said, more to himself than to Levi. "Finn Porter. Eighteen. Registered hunter, unawakened." He looked up. "You go out alone?"
"Had a group," Levi said. "Got separated."
The guard's expression didn't change but his eyes lingered on him for a moment longer. Probably wondering if there was a story there worth investigating. Then he handed back the permit.
"Gate three. Don't cause trouble."
Levi took the card and moved through the checkpoint into the city proper.
The regulations made sense once you understood the world. Resources were scarce, even with how far humanity had recovered in three hundred years. Bastion Seven housed over two million people within its walls. Every one of those people needed food, water, shelter, medical care. The city couldn't support unlimited immigration or unrestricted movement.
So they tracked everyone. Residents got permits. Visitors needed passes. Break the rules and you lost your housing, got thrown in detention, or worse, exiled back into the Outlands.
It wasn't fair. It definitely wasn't equal. The inner districts had better everything while the outer districts scraped by on rationed supplies and secondhand equipment. But it kept order. Kept people from rioting when resources got tight. Kept the city functioning when the alternative was chaos.
Levi had written it that way because it made sense for a post-apocalyptic society trying to rebuild. Now he was living in it and realizing how much it sucked for anyone born on the wrong side of the wall.
The outer districts sprawled out from gate three in a maze of narrow streets and cramped buildings. Nothing here was new. Everything had been salvaged, repurposed, or jury-rigged from whatever materials people could scavenge. Buildings stood three or four stories high, their walls patched with mismatched panels. Power lines hung overhead in tangled webs, connected to generators that hummed constantly in the background.
People filled the streets despite the late afternoon hour. Workers heading home from whatever jobs they'd managed to find. Street vendors selling questionable food from carts. Kids running between buildings, their laughter sounding too loud in the cramped spaces. Everyone looked tired. Everyone looked like they were just trying to get through another day.
'This is what I wrote,' Levi thought as he walked. 'Background details, atmosphere and world-building to make the setting feel lived in.'
Except these weren't background details anymore. These were real people living real lives in conditions he'd created without thinking too hard about what that actually meant. The woman selling grilled rat meat on a stick because that's what people could afford out here. The old man sitting on a stoop with a mechanical leg that looked twenty years past its expiration date. The kid who couldn't have been more than twelve working at a repair shop, his hands stained with grease.
He'd written all of this as set dressing for his protagonist's journey. Now he was living as one of the extras, one of the nobodies who existed to make the world feel real.
'Finn Porter,' he thought, remembering the shallow memories. 'Orphan. Outer districts. Joined hunting parties to make rent.'
The memories showed him the way home through the winding streets. Left at the building with the red door. Right where the power lines sagged lowest. Straight through the narrow alley that smelled like old cooking oil and mildew.
His building was five stories, gray concrete with rust stains bleeding down from broken gutters. The ground floor housed a laundromat and a pawn shop. The other floors were residential units, small apartments stacked on top of each other like boxes.
Finn's place was on the third floor, unit 3C.
The lock opened with a key he found in his pocket. The door stuck slightly, swollen from moisture and age, but yielded when he put his shoulder into it.
The apartment was small. One room that served as bedroom, living area, and kitchen all at once. A bathroom barely big enough to turn around in. Maybe three hundred square feet total.
This was what the city allocated to anyone who turned eighteen. Your own space. Your own door. The catch was the mortgage. The city owned the building and you paid them back over time for the right to live there. Most people never finished paying it off. The debt just stretched on for decades, keeping you locked into whatever job you could find, making sure you stayed compliant and useful.
Levi stood in the doorway and looked around.
A narrow bed against the far wall, sheets rumpled and unmade. A small table with two chairs, one of them missing a leg and propped up with a stack of books. A kitchenette with a hotplate and a mini fridge that hummed loudly. Clothes scattered across the floor. Dishes piled in the sink.
Finn Porter's life. This was it. This was everything he had.
'I did this,' Levi thought. 'I created a world where extras live like this while protagonists get hero mansions and guild sponsorships and everything handed to them.'
The unfairness of it hadn't really registered when he was writing. Of course the main characters got better things. They were the main characters. That's how stories worked.
But Finn wasn't a main character. Finn was supposed to die very early in the story, forgotten by everyone. And this apartment, this debt, this struggle to make rent by hunting beasts in the Outlands with cheap gear, this was the life Levi had assigned him without thinking twice.
He closed the door behind him and locked it.
The apartment was stuffy and smelled like old sweat and stale air. He crossed to the window and forced it open. Cool air drifted in, carrying with it the sounds of the district. Distant conversations. The hum of generators. Someone's radio playing music that sounded almost normal except for the way it crackled with static.
He should eat something. Should check his supplies. Should figure out what Finn's life actually looked like beyond the bare minimum he'd written.
But first, he needed to wash the Outlands off him.
The bathroom was cramped, barely big enough for the toilet, sink, and shower stall that looked like it had been installed thirty years ago and never updated. The water pressure was weak and the temperature took forever to warm up, but eventually steam started to fill the small space.
He stripped off Finn's torn and bloodstained clothes and stepped under the spray.
The water was lukewarm at best but it felt incredible. He watched the blood and dirt swirl down the drain, remnants of the Razorwolf fights washing away. His muscles ached in a good way, the kind of soreness that came from actually using his body instead of sitting at a desk for weeks.
This body was in better shape than his original one had been in years. No diabetes. No chronic fatigue. No medications needed just to function. Just a healthy eighteen-year-old body that responded properly when he moved it.
Small victories.
He stayed under the water until it started to run cold, then shut it off and grabbed the threadbare towel hanging on the back of the door. As he dried off, he caught sight of himself in the small mirror mounted above the sink.
Silver hair, almost white, falling past his ears in wet strands. Bright blue eyes that almost seemed to sparkle even in the dim bathroom light. A lean build, not muscular but not thin or sickly either. Defined enough to show he'd been active but without the bulk that came from serious training.
"Huh," he said out loud. "Not bad."