Death in the Lower City always smelled of putrid rot. Here, sandwiched between two civilizations amidst the endless refuse discarded by the Upper World, a life was worth exactly as much as one could scavenge for rusty scrap metal.
Lucian hated that smell. But he hated hunger even more.
Today was a bad day. Sector Seven was teeming with life like a disturbed anthill. Hundreds of scavengers scurried across the landfill, desperate to find anything that could be bartered for a ration pack. Lucian had been stuck with the lot where medical waste, bio-trash, and occasionally even corpses were dumped.
"Nothing... nothing," he muttered, thrusting his hands into a mass of used bandages and shattered vials. His fingers, coarse and mapped with tiny scars, moved with the practiced ease of someone who had done this his entire life. "There has to be at least one intact..."
Amidst the heap of filth, he spotted a pile of grimy rags. Shifting his gaze slightly to the right, Lucian grimaced. A corpse lay there, pinned under the debris. In the Lower City, bodies were part of the landscape, no different from the rusted husks of old cars. This one was fresh, judging by the maintenance jacket it wore—almost entirely free of holes.
Lucian scanned his surroundings, noting that the other scavengers were too preoccupied. He crawled toward the dead man, trying to remain silent. The man was middle-aged, his face frozen in a mask of horror. He had likely crossed paths with a patrol or succumbed to an overdose.
Lucian didn't care. That jacket was worth a three-day ration.
He began rifling through the pockets. Finding nothing of use except a pack of cigarettes, he started tugging the jacket off the body. To an onlooker, it would have looked humiliating and foul, but for someone like Lucian, it was simply survival.
As the jacket came away, he noticed the dead man's right hand was tightly clenched. Prying the stiffened fingers open with effort, Lucian froze.
In his palm lay a lantern. It was an ancient, heavy thing made of dark metal, turned green by the passage of time. Its glass was cloudy, coated in layers of dust, and inside, there were no LEDs or battery compartments to be seen.
"An artifact..."
Lucian stared at the object in awe, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"This couldn't just be junk."
The cleaners from the Upper World never threw away antiques. Did the dead man steal it? Or find it somewhere the "rats" usually didn't dare to go?
Glancing around, Lucian tucked the lantern into the breast of his old tunic and pulled the looted maintenance jacket on over it. If this was an artifact, he could sell it for a fortune. With that kind of credits, he might actually buy a transport ticket to the Mid-City—where the air was cleaner and the food was real.
The shop known as "The Mole" was located in the basement of a ruined tower. Inside, it resembled a cavern cluttered with junk. Shelves lined the walls, crammed with jars of preserves, sacks of grain, old books, and assorted hardware.
In the center, behind the counter, stood The Mole. He was a hunched old man in a tattered robe, sporting unnaturally large spectacles on the bridge of his nose. He was constantly tinkering with a pile of iron scraps, soldering and muttering to himself.
Approaching him, Lucian set the lantern on the table.
"What'd you bring, rat?"
"An artifact. From the Outskirts."
The old man adjusted his glasses and prodded the lantern with distaste. He turned it once, then twice. The Mole let out a sound like a dry cough.
"An artifact? You call this an artifact?"
"Look at it! Look at the metal! The glass... it's handcrafted!"
The old man shoved the lantern back toward Lucian.
"It's junk, kid. No core, no energy. Who are you going to sell this to? It's no good for smelting; the alloy is too impure. I wouldn't give you half a ration for it."
"But... the dead man was clutching it so tight..."
"Dead men clutch all sorts of shit, thinking it'll save them. Take your garbage and get out."
Lucian reached for the lantern. His hope, his thirst for survival, and his pride in the find all crumbled into dust at once. Realizing there was no point staying in the musty shop, he stepped out into the street.
Sector Twelve was his home. His apartment was an old shipping container, half-buried under a mountain of plastic bottles. It was cramped inside and smelled of dampness, but it was the only place he could be alone.
Lucian entered the container and collapsed onto a pile of old rags that barely passed for a bed. The maintenance jacket was flung into a corner; he didn't even bother to watch where it landed. Now, the prize felt like a mockery.
He picked up the lantern and set it on the floor. Outside, darkness had fallen, and the dim streetlights of the Lower City flickered to life. Inside the container, absolute gloom reigned.
Lucian fumbled for his fire-striker. He struck it once, then again. Sparks showered the wick he had—to his surprise—discovered inside after removing the cloudy glass.
The sparks flew, but nothing happened. The wick wouldn't catch. There was no oil, no fuel, nothing that could burn. It was just an empty metal frame.
"Just trash. The Mole was right. I'm a rat, and everything I find is shit."
In a fit of rage, he hurled the object into the corner. The darkness instantly closed in over him. Lucian lay in the dirt, his eyes fixed on the spot where the useless lantern lay.
They said the world was different once. The elders whispered of times when the sun shone on everyone equally, not just the chosen few of the Upper World. But three hundred years ago, everything changed. The Gods arrived on Earth.
Higher entities from other dimensions carved humanity into pieces, turning survival into a resource. The Upper World became their favorites, gifted with technology and magic. Meanwhile, the Lower City became a landfill. Here lived those whose ancestors weren't fit for the "Scenarios," or those who had lost in the Gods' endless wagers.
No one asked for an invitation. Divine retribution struck without warning. A person would simply vanish from reality, finding themselves inside a "Scenario." It could be a labyrinth with a minotaur, an abandoned asylum full of ghosts, or an assassination contract. Those who failed fertilized the soil with their remains.
But the few who survived their first Scenario returned changed. They became the Awakened.
They gained access to Skills and Incarnations—the ability to channel the power of their divine patron. Successful Awakened receive a golden ticket: passage to the Upper World. There, the Awakened lived as the elite, fighting monsters from the Rifts and entertaining their celestial masters.
Lucian always thought that since he was born a rat, he would never be chosen for the first Scenarios. The Gods loved a spectacle, and what spectacle was there in a scavenger from Sector Twelve?
He believed his fate was to rot here, in this tin can, without ever seeing the clear sky of the Upper World.
But everything changed the second he felt a pulsing sensation beneath his skin. It felt as if liquid ice had been injected into his veins, slowly crawling toward his heart. Suddenly, in the corner where Lucian had thrown the lantern, something shifted. There, in the absolute blackness, a speck was born. It didn't look like ordinary light. It was a bluish-black spark that literally ate through the space around the old metal.
Lucian pushed himself up on his elbows as his breathing quickened. A translucent interface window floated before his eyes—the same kind he had seen on the massive screens in the center of Sector Seven when the Awakened announced the results of their bets.
[WARNING!]
[YOU HAVE BEEN FORCIBLY SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FIRST SCENARIO.]
Scenario #1: "The Threshold of Truth"
Objective: Reach the Lighthouse.
Time Limit: 14 Days
Clear Reward: Awakening, Random Skill.
Failure Penalty: Death (Your soul will be consumed by the Void).
[NOTICE: YOUR INCARNATION WILL BE FORMED UPON COMPLETION. THE GODS ARE WATCHING YOU.]
Shortly after, Lucian was swallowed by the darkness.