The darkness inside the bypass vent was not empty. It was heavy, a suffocating blanket woven from heat, dust, and the vibration of the city's industrial guts. Aris crawled on his hands and knees, the metal grating biting into his skin through the thin fabric of his trousers. The air tasted of recycled exhaust and copper, a metallic tang that coated the back of his throat and made every breath a labor.
Behind him, Renna was weeping.
It was a quiet, hitching sound, the noise of someone trying desperately to be silent while their body rebelled against terror. Aris didn't stop to comfort her. He couldn't. If they stopped moving, the residual heat from the generator turbines below would cook them alive in their clothes. The soles of his boots were already soft and tacky, sticking slightly to the steel with every push.
"Keep moving," Aris rasped, his voice sounding hollow in the confined space.
"Count your breaths. Don't think about the heat."
"It's tight," Renna gasped. "Aris, the walls are getting closer."
"They aren't," he lied. They were. The vent was narrowing as it approached the filtration junction. "Just watch my heels. Don't look at the walls."
He dragged himself forward, his mind retreating to a cold, analytical place. He forced himself to ignore the claustrophobia clawing at his chest and focused on the inventory of his losses. The taste of strawberries. It seemed like such a trivial thing to trade for a miracle, a small sensory file deleted to grease the rusted hinges of reality. But the absence of it was a phantom ache, like a tongue probing a missing tooth.
He tried to summon the sensation of the fruit—the sweetness, the acidity, the texture of the seeds—and found only a smooth, gray blankness.
It was a terrifying precedent. If he had to burn a memory to open a door, what would he have to burn to save a life? What would he have to burn to kill a man?
The vent angled sharply downward. The roar of the turbines faded, replaced by a chaotic, low-frequency hum that sounded like a hive of angry hornets. It was the sound of humanity. Thousands of them.
"We're close," Aris whispered.
He shuffled forward until his hand hit a vertical grate. A dull, blue light filtered through the slats, illuminating swirling motes of dust. He pressed his face against the cool metal and looked down.
The sight that greeted him stole the breath from his lungs.
They were looking down into the Great Atrium of Sector 1, a cavernous space usually reserved for trade expos and military parades. Now, it had been transformed into a processing plant for human livestock.
The floor was a sea of heads. Thousands of youths from the lower sectors were herded into switchback lines by towering metal barriers. Floating above the crowd were the Seekers, their red eyes scanning the mob for dissent. At the far end of the atrium stood the Gateway—a massive, circular portal of spinning obsidian rings that crackled with unstable energy. It was the maw of the Synthesized Dungeon, the testing ground where the weak would be culled to feed the Core.
"Look at them," Renna whispered, crowding in beside him. "There are so many."
"They emptied the slums," Aris noted grimly.
He scanned the perimeter. The main entrances were heavily guarded by Wardens in riot armor, their shock-batons crackling with blue electricity. The lines were moving slowly toward registration kiosks where masked clerks scanned IDs and issued wristbands.
"Where do we drop?" Renna asked, her mechanic's eye already scanning the structural weaknesses of the grate.
Aris pointed to a stack of shipping crates located in the shadows of a loading bay, just beyond the final security checkpoint but before the registration desks. It was a blind spot, obscured by the glare of a massive floodlight.
"There," Aris said. "We drop behind the crates. We wait for a surge in the crowd, then we slip into the line for Kiosk 4. The clerk there looks tired. He's not checking faces, just scanning wrists."
"We don't have wristbands," Renna pointed out, her voice trembling again. "If we get to the front and we don't have pre-auth codes, the scanner will alarm."
Aris reached into his pocket and pulled out the iron compass. It was vibrating gently, a soothing hum against his palm. "Can you slice a terminal?"
Renna blinked, wiping soot from her forehead. "If it's standard Foundation tech? Yeah. But I need access."
"We aren't going to slice the terminal," Aris said, putting the compass back. "We're going to slice the wristbands. Look."
He pointed to a supply cart left unattended near the crates. It was piled high with boxes of the intake bracelets—dull gray bands made of cheap polymer.
"We grab two bands," Aris formulated the plan as he spoke. "You wire them to broadcast a generic signal. Can you do that?"
Renna squinted at the distant cart. "If I have a bypass tool. Which I don't."
Aris pulled his serrated knife from his belt.
"You have this. And you have nimble fingers.
Can you do it?"
She looked at the knife, then at the drop, then at Aris. The terror in her eyes hardened into a fragile resolve. She was a rat of the Static Zone, just like him. She nodded.
"Kick the grate," she said.
Aris braced his back against the top of the vent and drove both heels into the grating. The rusted bolts groaned, then sheared with a sharp crack. He caught the heavy metal square before it could clatter onto the catwalk below, lowering it silently.
They slipped out of the vent, hanging by their fingertips before dropping ten feet onto the top of the shipping crates. The landing jarred Aris's teeth, but he rolled instantly, absorbing the impact. Renna landed beside him, lighter and quieter.
They were in.
The noise of the crowd was deafening down here. It was a cacophony of crying, shouting, and the constant, amplified orders blaring from the overhead speakers.
CITIZENS. PROCEED IN AN ORDERLY FASHION. PREPARE YOUR BIOMETRICS. FEAR IS A REACTION TO INEFFICIENCY. PURGE IT.
They moved in a crouch, darting from the crates to the supply cart. Aris kept watch, his eyes darting between the bored Wardens and the sweeping sensor arcs of the drones.
Renna grabbed a handful of bracelets from an open box.
"Give me the knife," she hissed.
He handed it over. She huddled in the shadow of the cart, prying the casing off two of the bands. Her hands were shaking, but her movements were precise. She stripped a wire from a third band, using it to bridge the connection on the first two.
"I'm shorting the identity chip," she whispered, working feverishly. "It won't broadcast a name. It'll just broadcast a 'Pending' signal. It confuses the scanner. It thinks the data is downloading and waves you through to keep the line moving. It's how my dad used to steal power credits."
"Smart," Aris murmured. He watched a drone hover nearby, its red eye sweeping over the crowd. It paused, turning toward their hiding spot.
Aris held his breath. He reached for the compass, his mind racing to find a memory he could burn. The smell of rain? The sound of a dog barking?
The drone hovered for a heart-stopping second, then rotated away, drawn by a scuffle in the main line where a boy had tried to bolt. The Wardens descended on the runner with brutal efficiency.
"Done," Renna breathed, snapping the casings back on. She handed one band to Aris and snapped the other onto her slim wrist.
"Put it on," Aris said, sliding the cool plastic over his hand. It tightened automatically, a small needle pricking his skin to sample his DNA. A tiny red light blinked on the surface.
"Pending," Aris read. "Let's go."
They waited for the Wardens to drag the screaming runner away, creating a ripple of chaos in the line. Aris grabbed Renna's arm and they surged forward, slipping seamlessly into the gap in the queue. They were just two more dirty, frightened faces in a sea of misery.
They shuffled forward, the distance to Kiosk 4 closing with agonizing slowness. Aris kept his head down, his hood pulled low. He could feel the eyes of the Inquisitors on the balcony above, watching the herd.
When they reached the desk, the clerk didn't even look up. He was a pale, sweating man who looked like he had been stamping forms for twelve hours straight.
"Wrist," he grunted.
Renna went first. She held out her arm. The scanner beeped—a long, hesitant tone.
The clerk frowned, tapping the side of his monitor. "Data lag," he muttered, clearly annoyed by the equipment rather than suspicious of the girl. "Network is overloaded. Move along. Update inside."
He waved her through.
Aris stepped up. He held out his wrist.
The black band of the Curse was hidden beneath his sleeve, but the intake bracelet sat right over it. As the scanner beam hit his wrist, the compass in his pocket gave a sharp, hot jolt.
The scanner didn't beep. It whined.
The screen in front of the clerk flickered. For a second, red text began to bleed through the standard blue interface.
[ERROR. UNKNOWN SIGNATURE. VOID RESONANCE DETECTED.]
The clerk blinked, squinting at the screen. "What the..."
Aris felt the adrenaline spike. He prepared to use the Lock. He would freeze the clerk's vocal cords. He would take Renna and run into the dungeon blind.
But before the clerk could reach for the alarm button, the screen glitched violently and reset. The red text vanished, replaced by a generic green checkmark.
[SUBJECT: UNREGISTERED MALE.
DESIGNATION: FODDER CLASS.]
The System had cataloged him. It hadn't recognized the Heretical Class. It had simply looked at the strange, corrupted energy radiating from him, decided it was too complex to process during a mass intake, and categorized him as garbage to be disposed of in the dungeon.
"Glitchy piece of junk," the clerk swore, banging his fist on the scanner. "Go on, kid. Don't hold up the line."
Aris didn't wait to be told twice. He walked past the checkpoint, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He caught up to Renna, who was waiting near the entrance to the Gateway.
"We made it," she whispered, her face pale.
"We're not safe yet," Aris replied, looking at the massive portal. "That's just the door. The real hell is on the other side."
They were herded into a holding pen at the base of the Gateway. The air here was charged with static electricity that made the hair on Aris's arms stand up. The obsidian rings were spinning so fast they blurred into a solid sphere of darkness.
A new hologram appeared in the air above the crowd. This time, it wasn't the Overseer. It was a woman with severe features and eyes that looked like polished steel. She wore the uniform of the Academy Headmistress.
"Candidates," her voice was crisp, cutting through the murmurs of the crowd. "You are about to enter a Synthesized Reality. It is a reconstruction of a historical divergence point. Your objective is simple: Locate the Anchor Beacon and stabilize it."
She paused, her gaze seeming to sweep over them with utter indifference.
"Most of you will not survive. This is expected. Your deaths will provide the entropic residue required to fuel the Core for another cycle. Those who do survive will be granted citizenship in the Spire. Proceed."
The gates opened.
There was no order this time. The floor beneath them simply tilted.
A collective scream went up as thousands of teenagers lost their footing, sliding helplessly down a steep, slick ramp into the swirling darkness of the portal. Aris grabbed Renna's hand, locking his grip with a strength born of desperation.
"Don't let go!" he shouted over the roar of the vortex.
They hit the event horizon together.
The sensation was not like falling. It was like being unraveled. Aris felt his body stretch, his atoms vibrating apart. The darkness was absolute, but it was filled with whispers—millions of voices speaking in languages that didn't exist.
And then, the impact.
They hit water. Cold, freezing, salty water.
Aris plunged deep, the shock of the cold driving the air from his lungs. The disorientation was total. He thrashed, kicking upward toward the dim light filtering from above. He broke the surface, gasping, wiping the brine from his eyes.
He wasn't in a dungeon. He wasn't in a cave.
He was treading water in the middle of a storm-tossed ocean under a sky the color of a bruised plum. Rain lashed down in sheets, stinging his skin.
"Renna!" he screamed, spinning in the water.
"Aris!" Her voice was faint, choked by the waves.
He saw her bobbing ten yards away, struggling to keep her head above the swells. He swam toward her, fighting the current. He grabbed her collar and hauled her toward a piece of drifting debris—a massive wooden crate that had washed in with them.
They clung to the wood, coughing and shivering.
Aris looked around. The ocean stretched endlessly in all directions. But in the distance, looming out of the mist, was a silhouette that made no sense.
It was a city. But it wasn't floating. It was sinking. Massive gothic spires jutted out of the water at crooked angles, half-submerged. Ships made of iron and brass were entangled in the ruins, burning with green fire that the rain couldn't extinguish.
[WELCOME TO ZONE 1: THE DROWNED ARMADA.]
[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE TIDE.]
The blue text floated in the air, mocking them.
"Where are we?" Renna chattered, her teeth clicking together. "This... there's no ocean in Aethelgard. There hasn't been water like this for a thousand years."
"It's an Echo," Aris said, staring at the ruins. "A dead timeline where the world flooded."
Something brushed against his leg under the water.
Aris froze. It was large. Slick. And it was moving fast.
"Climb," Aris ordered, his voice low and dangerous. "Renna, get on the crate. Now."
"Why?"
"Because we aren't alone."
He shoved her upward. She scrambled onto the wet wood of the crate. Aris planted his hands to pull himself up, but something grabbed his ankle.
It felt like a hand, but the fingers were too long, too many joints. It clamped down with crushing force.
Aris didn't scream. He looked down into the murky water. Two yellow, glowing eyes stared back at him from the deep. A face, pale and finned, with a mouth full of needle-teeth, grinned up at him.
It yanked him down.
Aris took a breath before he went under. The water closed over his head. The creature dragged him deep, twisting and turning.
He reached for his knife, but the water resistance made his movements sluggish. The creature was fast, strong. It was going to drown him.
Use it, the darkness whispered.
Aris looked at his wrist. The black band was pulsing.
He couldn't lock the water. There was too much of it. He couldn't lock the creature; he couldn't see it clearly enough to target it.
He had to lock himself.
He visualized his own need for oxygen. The chemical process in his blood that turned air into life. He focused on the burning in his lungs.
Lock the asphyxiation.
Cost: The name of your first childhood friend.
He felt the memory tear away. A boy with messy hair. A name he had shouted across the alleys. Gone.
The burning in his lungs vanished. His body stopped needing to breathe. He had paused his own biological clock.
Aris stopped thrashing. He went limp.
The creature, confused by the sudden lack of struggle, hesitated. It pulled him closer, opening its maw to take a bite.
Aris opened his eyes. In the darkness of the ocean, his irises shattered into the familiar, fractured glass pattern. He wasn't breathing, but he was alive.
He drove the serrated knife into the creature's eye.
It shrieked—a bubbling, underwater sound—and released him. Black blood clouded the water. Aris kicked away, propelling himself upward with desperate strokes.
He broke the surface and clawed his way onto the crate, collapsing beside Renna.
"Aris!" She was sobbing, gripping his shirt. "I thought you were gone! You were down there for so long!"
Aris lay on his back, staring up at the alien, purple rain. His chest wasn't heaving. He didn't need to breathe yet. The Lock was still active. He felt cold, robotic.
"I'm fine," he said, his voice flat.
He checked the Book of Tethers in his mind. Name of first friend: [DELETED].
He sat up, the rain plastering his hair to his skull. He looked at the sinking city in the distance. The water teemed with shadows.
Other candidates were splashing nearby, screaming as the things below grabbed them.
"We have to get to the ruins," Aris said, pointing at the crooked spires. "The water is the kill zone. The buildings are the only safe ground."
"How?" Renna asked, looking at the churning waves. "Those things are everywhere."
Aris looked at his wrist. He had bought himself maybe two minutes of holding his breath. But he couldn't freeze the ocean.
"We don't swim," Aris said. He stood up on the wobbling crate, balancing perfectly. He looked at the drifting wreckage creating a treacherous path toward the city.
"We jump."
He offered his hand to Renna.
"Welcome to the Selection," he muttered.
The compass in his pocket spun wildly, pointing straight down into the abyss.