The quarry swallowed sound.
Lio had always thought of it as a mouth—wide, jagged, and endlessly hungry. From the city streets above, it looked almost orderly, terraces cut into the stone like steps. Down here, it was chaos: echoing shouts, iron striking rock, the cough of dust-choked lungs bouncing off walls that never seemed to get closer no matter how long you stared at them.
The overseers drove the Nulls forward with poles and shouted counts.
"Move! Move! Sun's already up—you think the stone waits for you?"
Lio kept his head down and his pace steady. The copper tag on his collarbone still burned, a low, angry heat that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He tried not to touch it again. Touching it never helped.
Around him, the quarry workers fell back into the rhythm of survival. Pick. Strike. Lift. Haul. Breathe when you could.
No one talked about the execution.
They never did.
But the image wouldn't leave Lio's mind: silver threads peeling out of a man's body and drifting upward like smoke that knew where it belonged.
It didn't go into the basin.
That thought looped again and again, tightening his chest.
"Hey."
The voice came from his left, low enough that the overseers wouldn't hear.
Lio glanced sideways.
Tarin worked the adjacent line—a thin boy with sharp eyes and a crooked nose that had healed wrong. He was a year or two older than Lio, already Level 9 and bitter about it. Level 9 was the worst place to be as a Null. Close enough to the cap to taste it. Too low to matter.
"You okay?" Tarin asked, swinging his pick into a seam of pale stone.
"Fine," Lio said automatically.
Tarin snorted. "You look like you saw a god naked."
Lio almost laughed. Almost.
"Don't say that," he muttered. "You'll get flagged."
"Everything gets flagged," Tarin said. "Breathing too loud probably costs XP."
That earned a weak smile.
They worked in silence for a while. The sun crept higher, turning the quarry walls from gray to blinding white. Sweat ran down Lio's back, mixing with dust until his skin felt like it was coated in paste.
After an hour, a familiar dull sensation settled behind his eyes.
Fatigue.
He pushed through it. Everyone did.
Another hour passed. His arms burned. His fingers trembled when he lifted the stone slabs onto the sled.
Normally, this was the point where the System nudged him—a tiny whisper of progress for effort, just enough to keep despair from becoming total.
It didn't happen.
Lio paused mid-lift, breath coming fast.
Focus, he told himself. You're imagining things.
He heaved the slab onto the sled and straightened, rolling his shoulders. The dull ache in his muscles sharpened, then… shifted.
Not faded.
Changed.
It felt like pressure, deep and internal, as if something inside him were compressing rather than expanding.
A headache bloomed behind his eyes.
Then—
+0.03 Strength
The notification flickered into existence.
Lio froze.
The text was faint, the letters thinner than usual, like they'd been printed with half the ink.
Strength gains didn't show up in decimals.
They never had.
He blinked.
The notification didn't vanish.
"Did you see that?" he whispered.
Tarin frowned. "See what?"
Lio swallowed. "Nothing."
He bent down quickly, heart hammering. The slab he lifted next felt… different. Still heavy. Still exhausting. But his grip held more easily, his fingers biting into the stone with a confidence they hadn't had before.
It was subtle. Almost insulting in how small it was.
But it was real.
Another hour passed.
The ache returned, stronger this time, but it didn't hollow him out the way it usually did. Instead, it settled into something dense and controlled.
When he hauled the next load, another flicker appeared.
+0.02 Endurance
Lio's breath caught.
He didn't smile. He didn't react at all.
He worked.
By midday, his body screamed, but something underneath the pain felt… anchored. Like the strength he gained wasn't evaporating the moment it arrived.
When the overseer finally called for a water break, Lio collapsed onto a stone ledge beside Tarin and Jessa.
Jessa drank first, hands shaking. "Execution took longer than usual today," she muttered.
Tarin grimaced. "Always does when they want to scare the merchants."
"They scared me," Jessa said flatly. "I'll dream about that rope."
Lio said nothing.
He watched the water ripple in his cup.
The System didn't interrupt them. No reminders. No efficiency warnings. That alone was strange.
Tarin leaned closer. "You sure you're fine?"
Lio hesitated.
This was how mistakes happened. This was how people disappeared.
But Tarin had shared his bread before. He'd taken a beating once so a younger Null wouldn't have to.
Lio lowered his voice. "Do your gains ever feel… wrong?"
Tarin blinked. "Wrong how?"
"Like they don't stick."
Tarin let out a humorless laugh. "That's just leveling. You work, you get a spark, then it's gone. Keeps you hungry."
Lio's stomach tightened. "What if it's not supposed to be?"
Jessa's head snapped up. "Lio."
Her eyes were sharp now, fear cutting through the exhaustion. "Don't."
"I'm just asking," Lio said quickly.
Tarin studied him for a long moment. Then he looked away. "Careful questions get people corrected."
"I know."
The bell rang. Break over.
They went back to work.
By the end of the day, Lio's vision swam. His muscles felt wrung out, but not empty. When he dragged himself toward the labor lanes, another faint notification appeared.
+0.01 Will
Will.
He'd never seen that stat move before.
He didn't even know Nulls were allowed to have it.
The moment the thought formed, pain lanced through his collarbone. He gasped, nearly dropping his sled.
The copper tag burned hot enough to make his eyes water.
Don't think about it, he told himself desperately.
The pain eased.
The System remained silent.
That night, the Null quarters buzzed with low conversation. The execution had unsettled people more than usual. Whispers crept through the narrow alleys like rats.
Lio lay on his thin mat, staring at the ceiling beams. Every muscle ached, but beneath it was a strange steadiness, like his body had learned something it wasn't supposed to.
He focused inward.
Normally, checking his status felt like knocking on a locked door and being told, politely, to go away.
This time, the door opened a crack.
No announcement.
No chime.
Just text, dim and flickering, hovering at the edge of perception.
STATUS (UNSTABLE)
Name: LioRank: NULLLevel: 2
Strength: 4.05Endurance: 4.02Agility: 3Intelligence: 3Will: 1.01
Active Effects:— System Desync (Dormant)
Lio sucked in a sharp breath.
His Strength had been 4 this morning.
Endurance too.
They hadn't reset.
They hadn't drained away.
The numbers trembled, as if aware they weren't meant to be seen.
At the bottom of the window, new text flickered—so faint he almost missed it.
XP Routing: INCOMPLETE
The window vanished.
Lio lay there in the dark, heart pounding, listening to the sounds of the Null quarters settling into uneasy sleep.
Above him, somewhere beyond the stone and the towers and the banners, the gods were feeding.
For the first time in his life, Lio knew—deep in his bones—that a tiny part of him hadn't.
And whatever that meant, it was dangerous.