Gloomstep Ward tilted wrong.
That was the first thing you learned, growing up there. The cobbles sloped downhill, then up, then sideways, like the whole district had been dropped onto the city at an angle and left to settle. Rainwater didn't know where to go. Neither did drunks.
Kael Varren loved it.
He stood on the edge of a three-story tenement, toes hanging over a broken gutter, staring down into the alley below. Twenty paces of air between him and the ground. A mess of clotheslines. Two rusted chimneys. One dead pigeon lodged in a crack. And, at the far end where the alley spilled into the main street, a squad of armored men forcing people to their knees.
"Right," he muttered. "Terrible plan time."
Behind him, the rooftop door creaked open.
"Kael?" Old Mera's voice was a rasp. "If you piss off the guards again, I'm not hiding you this time."
He didn't look back. "I hear your words, Mera, but unfortunately, I'm extremely stupid."
"We know," she said. "We've always known."
Down below, the city's watch—no, not the regulars; these had bright blue sashes and better armor—were dragging people out of their homes and lining them up by the wall. A family from across the stairwell. A baker. Two kids, heads shaven, collarbones sharp with hunger.
A man in the sash uniform stepped forward, unrolling a scroll.
"In the name of His Radiant Majesty and the Crown Concord," he called, voice amplified by a little brass cone, "this ward stands accused of harboring unregistered Vector practitioners. All must submit to testing. Resistance is treason."
The word Vector hissed through the crowd like a spark.
Mera swore under her breath. "It's the Concord's dogs. Get down, Kael. Now."
He grinned, more teeth than humor. "If they take people for 'harboring' unregistered, what d'you think they'll do when they find the unregistered idiot himself?"
"Kael—"
He stepped off the building.
For a heartbeat, gravity did what it always did. The alley rushed up. Gut rose into throat. Wind tore past his ears.
Then he reached into the world and grabbed it.
It wasn't physical, not like grabbing a rope or a ledge. It was a pressure at the edge of his mind, the way Gloomstep always felt heavy and off. He found the thin currents of kinetic energy—the swing of hanging laundry, the sway of loose shutters, the shiver of carts rolling on the street nearby—and he tangled them.
Anchor. Path. Release.
It wasn't conscious thought, not really. Just a habit his nerves had learned: pull from there, push to here. He siphoned just enough motion from everything around him, stole speed from flapping cloth and wobbling signs and the lazy turn of a rooftop weather vane, and shoved it into himself.
His fall slowed. His boots hit the ground with a thud instead of a crunch.
The dead pigeon fell out of its crack and exploded into feathers beside him, all the motion he'd stolen from its stiff, rotting perch dumping out uselessly. Feathers drifted down like tired snow.
Kael straightened, flicked blood-streaked feathers off his jacket, and walked toward the street like it was a normal day and he hadn't just used illegal Vector work in the middle of a sweep.
The alley spit him out into chaos.
Old stone buildings leaned in close over narrow lanes, laundry lines connecting balcony to balcony. The main street was a wider scar of cracked cobbles, jammed with carts and market stalls. The blue-sashed squad had pushed the bystanders to one side, leaving a clear space between the kneeling Gloomstep residents and the men with loaded arbalests.
Kael counted: six with crossbows. Four with swords. One with the scroll and the cone. Their insignia was Crown Concord, for sure. Not city watch. Concord meant Vector hounds.
A man in the front of the kneeling line looked up.
"Kael?" he whispered. "Get out of here."
Kael waggled his fingers by his ear in a little mock salute. "Hey, Jorren."
The arbalest nearest him swung to aim. The others followed a heartbeat later.
Kael lifted both hands.
"Okay, okay," he said. "Let's all calm down. No need to shoot the local idiot. I bruise easy and cry a lot, it's embarrassing for everyone."
"On your knees," the squad leader snapped. He had an officer's helmet and a scar from eyebrow to ear, and a Concord badge polished to an obnoxious shine. "Now."
Kael tilted his head. "You planning to test us all? How's that work? You got a little stick you wave and it beeps when someone's fun?"
The officer's jaw flexed. "There are reports of unlicensed Vector use in this ward. You will submit to identification and registration."
"And if we don't?" Kael asked, just to hear it said.
"Then you disappear," someone muttered from the crowd.
The officer didn't contradict them.
Gloomstep had gone very quiet. No hawkers shouting. No kids running. Even the usual distant clang of a forge was wrong, its rhythm staggered, out of sync—like the whole ward was holding its breath.
Kael walked forward.
"Kael," Jorren said again, in a tone that carried a lifetime of exhausted pleading.
"You know me," Kael told the officer, cheerfully. "I'm Kael Varren. Terrible at authority. Great hair. Worse decisions. You want unregistered Vector trouble, you came to the right ward."
"Last warning," the officer said. "Down, or we put you down."
Kael stopped a few paces away, hands still up. His heart was pounding hard enough to shake his ribs. He dragged in a breath and tasted the familiar off-ness of Gloomstep, the way every motion seemed a little dulled, like someone had wrapped the world in wet cloth.
He could sense the currents now that he was focusing: the tremble of crossbow strings under tension, the twitch of nervous muscles in the kneeling line, the slow creak of cartwheels, the flutter of a flag above a nearby tavern.
All that motion. All those little streams.
All he had to do was pull.
Kael smiled, lopsided and irritating. "I don't think I'll kneel today."
The officer jerked his head.
"Loose."
Six crossbows thrummed.
Kael moved.
He seized the motion of the bolts the instant their strings snapped. It was like grabbing six white-hot wires at once. They lanced outward, hungry to bury themselves in flesh—and he yanked, hard.
Anchor: the flying bolts. Path: a circle. Release.
The bolts curved in the air, arcs of snarling metal. Two spun around and buried themselves in the cobbles at his feet. One slammed into a barrel, sending pickled cabbage erupting in a wet, sour explosion. The rest spun out and slammed into shields, helmets, one unlucky man's thigh.
The street went insane.
"Vector!" someone screamed. "He's a Vectorist!"
"No shit," Kael muttered.
He reached again, grabbing the rebound of bodies jerking backward, of carts jolting, of panicked feet starting to run. He stole that motion, twisted it, and flung it all at once toward the center of the squad.
Power flooded his limbs, making his muscles feel too small and his skin too tight. He laughed, because it was that or scream.
The Concord soldiers staggered as the ground bucked under them. One dropped his arbalest. Another pitched forward, tripping over nothing. A third spun sideways as if shoved by an invisible hand and slammed into his comrade.
It looked ridiculous. It looked like a badly rehearsed street play, bodies colliding in clumsy, painful slapstick.
Then Kael gave the energy somewhere to go.
He snapped his fingers and let the built-up kinetic flow explode outward in a ring.
It slammed into the soldiers like a physical wave. Armor clanged. Men flew backward, knocked off their feet and into each other and into carts. One unfortunate soul went up instead of back, crashing into the low second-story balcony of a tavern and collapsing it in a spray of wood and curses from the patrons above.
The crowd gasped. Then, as one of the arbalests accidentally fired upward and killed a hanging sign, some of them laughed. Horrified, shocked laughter, but laughter all the same.
Kael grinned wider.
"This," he announced, "is your friendly neighborhood lesson in not pointing crossbows at my neighbors."
He barely finished the sentence before something hit him.
Not a physical blow. A jolt. The world lurched sideways. The color drained out of everything for a heartbeat, leaving the street washed in grey. Sound muffled, as if someone had cupped their hands over his ears.
And then it happened.
The crossbows fired again.
Kael blinked.
He watched the same six bolts streak toward him—the same tiny, particular wobble in the fletching of the leftmost, the same frightened flinch from the young soldier second from the right.
He watched the same barrel burst with the same wet cough of pickled cabbage when a bolt hit it. The same man took a bolt to the thigh again, same strangled grunt, same spray of dark blood.
He hadn't done anything yet.
What?
For a half-second, everything doubled: two sets of motions overlaid, slightly out of sync. Two Kaels, two choices. In one, he jumped left. In the other, he did what he'd already done—grabbed the bolts.
His mind chose the familiar path before he could think.
He yanked. The bolts curved. Men flew. The barrel burst. The balcony broke.
The wave of force crashed outward. People screamed, laughed, hissed. The grey drained away, color slapping back into the world so sharply it almost hurt.
Kael swayed.
"What," he said aloud, very softly, "the fuck was that?"
He'd diverted projectiles, redirected motion, even slowed his own falls more times than he could count. He'd never watched the same second play twice.
He turned, slowly, and caught a glimpse—that was all, but it burned.
At the mouth of the alley he'd come from, twenty paces back, a man stood in a tattered coat. Early thirties, maybe. Hair a little longer than Kael's, a few more scars, eyes like pits left after stars went cold.
The man was him.
Same nose, same jawline, same stubborn crease in the brow. Just… emptied.
The older Kael watched him with a small, tired smile. Then he lifted two fingers to his brow in a mocking salute, just as Kael had done to Jorren.
Kael blinked, and the alley was empty.
"Kael!" Mera's voice, from somewhere behind him. She sounded terrified, which was new.
He didn't have time to be terrified himself.
The officer was getting up.
His armor was dented. Blood ran from his cheek where something had cut him. His eyes were wide—not with fear, but with a brittle, grinding focus.
"Kill him," the officer rasped. "Kill the Vector bastard. Drop him and burn the body."
Kael took a breath that didn't feel like it quite fit in his chest.
"Rude," he said. "I saved your men from—" He gestured vaguely, trying to find the words. "Well. From the grim inevitability of gravity?"
No one laughed this time.
He could feel the mood changing. Shock giving way to panic, to anger. The kneeling civilians were clambering back, some reaching for him, others shying away like he was a wild animal. The soldiers still conscious were hauling themselves up, drawing blades.
"Back!" someone shouted. "He'll explode us all!"
Kael waggled his fingers at the crowd. "If I was going to explode, you'd already be decorating the buildings. I'm very efficient."
"Kael!" Jorren hissed. "Run."
He could. He could grab motion from the shifting crowd, from the swinging wreckage of the balcony, from the arbalests being cocked again, and pour it into his own legs, sprinting away down some crooked Gloomstep alley.
He almost did.
Then the officer grabbed the nearest kid.
The little boy hadn't even gotten up yet. He was maybe ten, shaved head, elbows knobby through a threadbare shirt. The officer hauled him up by the collar and shoved a sword against his throat.
"Stop right there, Vector," the officer said. "Or I open him and then the rest of them."
Silence slammed down.
Kael's heart stuttered. His hands dropped to his sides.
The officer's lips peeled back in something that wasn't a smile. "Kneel," he said. "Or they pay for you."
Kael hated these little moments. The way the world suddenly narrowed to a choice he didn't like.
He glanced at the boy. The kid's eyes were huge, shining, fixed on Kael like he was supposed to do something amazing and impossible.
"Fuck," Kael whispered.
He let his knees bend.
"Good," the officer said. "Now—"
A flicker of motion snapped at the edge of Kael's senses.
Not big. Not obvious. Just a tremor in the air behind the officer, like heat off stone. But it was bright and focused, like a razor.
Kael had no time to think. His body moved on instinct, his hands sweeping up, grabbing that invisible tremor and pulling.
Anchor—
The officer's arm jerked. His blade skated off the boy's throat, missed by a hair. At the same time, something whistled past where the officer's head had been: a bolt, high-powered, from somewhere out of sight.
The officer stumbled sideways. The bolt buried itself in a stall-post instead, splintering wood.
"What—?" he started.
Then another bolt hit his chest, right over the Concord badge, driving him back into his own men.
Crossbow fire rained down from above.
Kael looked up, head snapping toward the source.
On the roofline of the opposite building, silhouettes in dark leathers had appeared, moving with practiced, clean movements. No blue sashes. No city colors.
One of them carried a staff that hummed with controlled Radiant energy, invisible to most but bright to Kael's senses.
"Oh," Kael said faintly. "We're upgrading from street comedy to full theater."
The newcomers picked off the remaining arbalest-men with ruthless precision. One tried to swing his weapon around; a bolt punched through his wrist instead. Another ran for the alley; a line of compressed light lanced out from the staff and dropped him screaming as his armor superheated.
The whole thing took maybe ten seconds.
When it was done, five Concord soldiers lay dead or dying. Two more crawled away, dragging injured limbs. The officer was pinned to the wall by his own badge, the bolt through it driven deep into cracked stone.
The boy skittered away on hands and knees and vanished into the crowd.
Kael stayed kneeling, because his legs weren't taking instructions anymore.
A figure dropped down from the rooftop. Not jumped—dropped, then slowed mid-fall with a neat, practiced twist of the air. She landed in a low crouch, coat flaring around her, then rose smoothly.
She was tall, dark hair braided back tight, eyes sharp as cut glass. Her coat was reinforced leather, practical and worn. On her left shoulder, a small metal emblem gleamed: Crown Concord.
"Shit," Kael said. "They sent the expensive kind."
Her gaze swept over the mess—the dead, the wounded, the panicked crowd, the bent and broken shapes that had once been proud officers. Then it settled on Kael.
"You're Kael Varren," she said. Her voice was level, carrying without needing a cone. "The Gloomstep anomaly."
Kael struggled upright, ignoring the way his vision fuzzed at the edges.
"'Anomaly' is such a cold word," he said. "I prefer 'local charm.' Or 'walking disaster,' if you must."
A corner of her mouth twitched, like a muscle she wasn't used to using almost remembered how to smile.
"I'm Serah Ilyane," she said. "Crown-licensed Vector Sovereign, acting on authority of the Concord."
"Fancy," he said. "Is this the part where you thank me for doing half your job?"
She looked past him, to the shimmering distortion that still hung faintly over the street, where reality had hiccupped and repeated. It was fading now, but Kael could feel it like a bruise on his nerves.
"No," she said. "This is the part where I confirm that a Tier Two street rat just triggered a localized temporal echo."
She took a step closer. Up close, Kael could see the fine shimmer of heat around her, the way light bent slightly near her skin. Thermal and Radiant Aspect, at least. Serious power.
Her eyes were very, very intent.
"That," she said quietly, "is not supposed to be possible."
Kael swallowed. His throat was dry.
"Yeah," he said. "I noticed."
For a moment, they just looked at each other, standing in the middle of the tilted Gloomstep street with bodies cooling around them and cabbage brine running in little streams between the cobbles.
Somewhere behind Kael, Mera started sobbing softly. Somewhere else, a child laughed once, high and shaky, then clapped a hand over their own mouth as if afraid to be heard.
Serah's gaze flicked past him again, toward the alley he'd landed from. Her brow furrowed.
"You're coming with me," she said at last.
Kael lifted his brows. "Is this a date? Because your definition of flirting needs work."
"It's a choice," she said. "Either you let the Concord study you, train you, maybe keep you from tearing a bigger hole in reality than you already have… or you stay here and let the next squad finish what this one started."
His instinct, the one that had kept him alive this long, screamed at him to run. To turn, grab the nearest stream of motion, and vanish into Gloomstep's crooked guts.
But when he turned his head, just a little, he saw the alley again.
For a heartbeat, there he was: the older self, the man with dead-star eyes, watching him. No smile this time. Just a look that said, very clearly: We both know how this ends if you do nothing.
Kael looked back at Serah.
"I hate choices," he said.
"Pick fast," she replied.
He sighed, rolled his shoulders, and did the stupid thing.
"Fine," he said. "Let's go see how badly your people can break me."
He tried to grin, but it felt thin.
Behind his eyes, the dead universe laughed.