Kairo walked.
It had been three hours since the ritual—at least, he thought it had. The sun hadn't moved, but shadows did. Not like time was passing, but like reality itself didn't want to look stable. Things flickered when he looked too long. Trash cans became statues. Pigeons turned into bricks. Sounds looped.
He was in Armath, but not.
This version of the city was... glitched.
People didn't see him. Not really. They noticed something was there—just long enough to move around it. Like you notice a chair in a room but forget it the second you blink. One woman glanced at him—and her face erased itself. Just melted into static, like her identity wasn't loaded properly.
Kairo ducked into an alley. His mind felt like a webpage buffering on a dying connection.
Then he saw him.
Sitting at the end of the alley.
A man with one eye glowing red, and one eye stitched shut. He wore a white coat covered in scribbles—notes, equations, diagrams—and on his fingers were rings shaped like tiny typewriters.
He spoke without moving his mouth.
"Welcome, First Draft."
Kairo didn't answer. Not yet. He stared. Tried to understand what was wrong about this man.
He looked... overexposed. Like someone turned his contrast too high. His edges were too sharp for this world. His shadow had angles that shouldn't exist.
Kairo finally asked, "What are you?"
The man tilted his head. "A placeholder. Like you."
He stood. Every movement made a sound like tearing paper.
"Do you know what you've done, boy?"
"I traded my name."
The man laughed. "You think that was the price? Names are keys. You gave up your lock."
He walked forward and extended a hand. Kairo didn't take it.
"You're between states now," the man continued. "Not fully real. Not fully gone. A Draft. Unpublished. Editable. That's what they made you."
"Who?" Kairo demanded.
"The Architects."
The man waved his hand, and the alley vanished. Gone. Just clean white space with floating black shapes—cubes, circles, lines of text scrolling in languages that looked like code and glyphs at the same time.
A void, built from ideas.
Kairo stumbled back. "Where are we?"
"A sandbox," the man said. "Their construction site. This is where they design the edits. Delete people. Rewrite laws. Crash civilizations. Everything that happens in your world? Happens here first."
"Why show me this?"
"Because you asked for the design." The man's eyes sharpened. "And the design always comes with a burden."
He pointed to the void.
"You now have edit access."
Kairo frowned. "To what?"
"To reality."
The man snapped his fingers.
A girl appeared. Mid-teens. Blonde. Smiling. Alive. She reached out to Kairo and said, "You don't remember me, but I remember you. You saved me once."
Then she glitched.
Eyes turned to black static. Smile stretched. Her body flickered into pieces—limb by limb—like a corrupted file being force-deleted.
"She was real once," the man whispered. "But her existence was overwritten. This is what the Architects do."
"Why?" Kairo asked.
The man leaned close. "Because they must. They are editors of fate. Architects of stability. They remove variables that threaten the draft of reality."
"You mean people like me."
"No. People like who you'll become."
The man pointed at Kairo's chest. "You gave up your name. That removed you from their control. You're no longer saved. That means you can write. And change. And break."
Then he said something colder than anything Kairo had heard so far.
"That means you're a threat."
Suddenly, pain. Kairo clutched his skull.
Memories—not his—began to flood in.
A fire. A contract. A shattered family. A lie passed down for generations. And something else…
A tower.
Black. Monolithic. With a massive symbol of the Eye etched in molten red.
A whisper filled his brain like venom.
"Find the Glyph of Binding. Or you will unravel."
The void shattered.
Kairo fell through something not quite space. And woke up on the pavement. A tram roared overhead. Neon signs buzzed. Rain fell.
Normal.
But it wasn't.
Kairo stood. Looked at his hand.
His blood had turned black.
And the name carved into his blade had changed.
Kairo Vale // Draft 2.0